The next evening she sat in the drawing-room before dinner, softly
playing an accompaniment to her thoughts. Why didn't she feel anything
about Robert Maper except a mild irritation at the destruction of so
truly platonic a converse? In a book, of which his proposal savoured, she
would have found him quite a romantic person. In the actuality she felt
as frigid as if his marble forehead was chilling her, and what she
remembered most acutely was his fishlike gasping. Then, too, the
contradictoriness of his social attitude, his desire to make her a rich
drone, his shame at his mother, his reclusive shyness--all the weaknesses
of the man--came to obscure her sense of his literary idealism, if not,
indeed, to reveal it as a mere coquetry with fine ideas and coarse
clothes. And then for a moment the humour of being Mrs. Maper's
daughter-in-law appealed to her, and she laughed to herself in soft
duet with the music.
And in the middle of the duet Mrs. Maper herself burst in, with her
bodice half hooked and her hair half done.
"What's this I hear, Miss Hirish Himpudence, of your goings-on with my
son?"
Eileen swung round on her stool. "I beg your pardon," she said.
"Oh, you can't get out of it by beggin' my pardon, creepin' into the
library like a mouse--and it's a nice sly mouse you are, too, but there's
never a mouse without its cat--"
"She'd have done better to do your hair and mind her business," said
Eileen, calmly.
Mrs. Maper's forefinger shot heavenwards. "It was you as ought to have
minded your business. I didn't pay you like a lady and feed you like a
duchess to set your cap at your betters. But I told Mr. Maper what 'ud
come of it if we let you heat with us, though I didn't dream what a sly
little mouse--"
The torrent went on and on. Eileen as in a daze watched the theatric
forefinger--now pointed at the floor as if to the mouse-hole, now leaping
ceilingwards like the cat,--and her main feeling was professional. She
was watching her pupil, storing up in her memory the mispronunciations
and vulgarisms for later insinuative improvement. Only a tithe of her was
aware of the impertinence. But suddenly she heard herself interrupting
quietly.
"I shall not sleep under your roof another night." Mrs. Maper paused so
abruptly that her forefinger fell limp. She was not sure she meant to
give her companion notice, and have the trouble of training another, and
she certainly did not wish to be dismissed instead of dismissing.
"Silly chit!" she said in more conciliatory tones. "And where will you
sleep?"
But Eileen now felt she must obey her own voice--the voice of her
outraged pride, perhaps even of Brian Boru himself. "Good-by. I'll take
some things in a handbag and send for my box in the morning."
Mrs. Maper's hand pointed to the ceiling. "And is that the way you treat
a lady--you're no lady, I tell you that. I demand a month's notice or I
shall summons you."
At this juncture it occurred to Eileen that this might have been her
mother-in-law, and a smile danced into her eyes.
"Himpudent Hirish hussy! Oh, but I'll have the lore of you. Don't forget
I'm the wife of a Justice of the Peace."
"Very well; you get Justice, I want Peace." And Eileen fled to her room.
She had hardly begun packing her handbag when she heard the door locked
from the outside with a savage snap and a cry of, "I'll learn you who's
mistress here, my lady."
Eileen smiled. She was only on the second floor, and captivity revived
all her girlish prankishness. She now began to enjoy the whole episode.
That she was out of place, out of character, out of lodging even, was
nothing beside the humour of this incursion into real life of the
melodrama she had mocked at. Was she not the innocent heroine entrapped
by the villain? Fortunately, she would not need the hero to rescue her.
She went on packing. When her handbag was ready she looked about for
means to escape. She opened her windows and studied the drop and the odd
bits of helpful rainpipe. Descent was not so easy as she had imagined.
Short of tearing the sheets into strips (and that might really bring her
within the J.P.'s purview) or of picking the lock (which seemed even more
burglarious, not to mention more difficult) she might really remain
trapped. However, there would be time to think properly when she had
packed her big box. Half an hour passed cheerfully in the folding of
dresses to an underplay of planned escapes, and she had just locked the
box, when Mrs. Maper's voice pierced the door panel.
"Well, are you ready to come to supper?"
The governess's instinct corrected "dinner." Mrs. Maper when excited was
always tripping into this betrayal of auld lang syne, but she preserved a
disdainful silence.
"Eileen, why don't you hanser?"
Still silence. The key grated in the lock.
Eileen looked round desperately. The thought of meeting Mrs. Maper again
was intolerable. The mirrored door of the rifled wardrobe stood ajar,
revealing an enticing emptiness. Snatching up her handbag and her hat,
she crept inside and closed the door noiselessly upon herself. "The
wardrobe mouse," she thought, smiling.
"Well, my lady!" Mrs. Maper dashed through the door, in her dinner-gown
and diamonds, her forefinger hovering, balanced, between earth and
heaven. She saw nothing but an answering figure ribboned and jewelled,
that dashed at her and pointed its forefinger menacingly.
The appearance of this figure as from behind the glass shut out from
her mind the idea of another figure behind it. The packed box, neat and
new-labelled, the absence of the handbag and of any sign of occupancy,
the open windows, the silence, all told their lying tale.
"The Hirish witch!" she screamed.
She ran from one window to the other seeking for a sign of the escaped or
the escapade. She was relieved to find no batter of brains and blood
spoiling the green lawn. How had the trick been done? It did not even
occur to her to look under the bed, so hypnotised was she by the sense of
a flown bird. Eileen almost betrayed herself by giggling, as at the real
stage melodrama.
When Mrs. Maper ran downstairs to interrogate the servants--eruption into
the kitchen was one of her incurable habits--Eileen slipped through the
wide-flung door, down the staircase, and then, seeing the butler ahead,
turned sharp off to the little-used part of the corridor and so into the
library. She made straight for the iron staircase to the grounds, and
came face to face with Robert Maper.
Twilight was not his hour for the library--she saw even through her
perturbation that he was pacing it in fond memory. His face lighted up
with amazement, as though the dead had come up through a tombstone.
"Good-by!" she said, shifting her handbag to her left hand and holding
out her right. Her self-possession pleased her.
"What!" he cried. And again he had the gasp of a fish out of water.
"Yes, I came to say good-by."
"You are leaving us?"
"Yes."
"Oh, and it is I that have driven you away!"
"No, no, don't reproach yourself, please don't. Good-by."
He gasped in silence. She gave a little laugh. "Now that I offer you my
hand, it is you who won't take it."