I
Rosaleen came home from Miss Waters’ that afternoon terribly dispirited.
He hadn’t come!
The afternoons were growing very short now. The flat was altogether dark
when she let herself in, and she went from room to room, to light the
gas jets and turn them very low. First in the long hall, then in Mr.
Humbert’s room, with its flat top desk covered with papers and its
severe orderliness, then in Miss Amy’s room, where, in the mirror over
the bureau, she caught a glimpse of herself, still in her hat and
jacket, looking oddly blurred and misty in the dim light. Somehow that
image frightened her; she hurried into the dining room, her own little
cell, and at last, with relief, into the kitchen. Never had the rambling
old place seemed so large and so gloomy, or herself so desolate.
She put on her big apron and set to work preparing the supper, a
shocking meal of fried steak, fried potatoes, coffee, a tin of tomatoes
left unaltered in their watery insipidity, and a flabby little lemon
pie from the baker’s. She was nervous; she fancied she heard sounds
from all those silent dimly lighted rooms behind her. She started when a
paper bag on the table rattled stiffly all by itself. She was, for once,
glad to hear the sound of a key in the lock and Miss Amy’s heavy tread
coming down the hall.
She had been to the library; she was carrying four big volumes which she
flung down on the dining room couch. Then she looked into the kitchen.
“Mmmm! The coffee smells good!” she said, affably, and went off to her
own room. She never offered any assistance, even to setting the table.
She considered all that to be Rosaleen’s affair. Nor did she notice that
the child looked tired and pale and dejected.
Nor did she notice that Rosaleen ate almost nothing. They had, all three
of them, very small appetites, which, when added to their highly
unappetizing meals, made life very economical. Moreover, she considered
it meritorious to eat very little, and not to enjoy what you did eat.
They finished. Mr. Humbert rose, said, very pleasantly, “Ah...!” and
went off to his writing. Miss Amy sat down on the couch to look over her
library books, and Rosaleen, putting on her apron again, began carrying
out the dishes. She was slow that evening; she didn’t want to finish.
“If I only had a place where I could go and sit by myself!” she thought,
not for the first time. “I don’t want to go and sit there with _her_!
And if I go in my own room, she’ll be after me, to see what’s the
matter.”
She sat down in the kitchen and began to polish a copper tea kettle
which was never used.
Suddenly the door bell rang. She jumped up, pressed the button which
opened the down stairs door, and hurried along the passage. But Miss Amy
was before her, and stood squarely in the doorway.
In a dream, a nightmare, Rosaleen heard Nick’s voice:
“Miss Humbert?” he asked, politely.
“_I_ am Miss Humbert!”
“May we see Miss Rosaleen Humbert?”
“There’s no such person,” said Miss Amy.
There was a pause. Then another voice, a feminine one, soft, agreeable,
but unmistakably rebuking, said,
“Ah am Mrs. Allanby, Mr. Landry’s aunt.”
“Ah!” said Miss Amy.
“Ma nephew was afraid that perhaps you might not have liked his calling
on your cousin----”
“Rosaleen is not my cousin,” said Miss Amy, contemptuously.
Mrs. Allanby was just beginning to speak, when Nick broke in. He
couldn’t keep his temper any longer. The spectacle of his beloved and
dignified aunt standing outside the door, and being spoken to so
outrageously by this woman both shocked and infuriated him.
“Will you kindly ask Miss Rosaleen to step here for a minute?” he said.
“We won’t trouble you long!”
His air of disgust, of superiority, stung the unhappy woman to still
worse behaviour. She _could_ not stop; she took a sort of monstrous
delight in going on, in defying the warnings of her conscience and her
pride.
“Evidently you don’t understand,” she said. “You seem to think the girl
is a relative. She isn’t. My sister found her posing for a class of art
students, and she felt sorry for her and brought her home. My sister was
very good to her, and for her sake I’ve gone on feeding and clothing
her. She does a little light work round the place, to pay for her
keep....”
Suddenly all her annoyance, her years of irritation with Rosaleen, her
ill-temper kept under such iron control, all the suffering she had
endured from this false calm, this false pleasantness, this inhuman
repression of her natural self, burst forth.
“I’m sick and _tired_ of it!” she cried. “Such nonsense! The girl, with
her airs and graces.... Just a common, low Irish girl.... She’s had
advantages I never had in my young days.... I’m sick and tired of it!
It’s the final straw, for her to be asking company here.... I won’t have
it! It’s _my_ home, after all, and there’s no place in it where _she_
can entertain!”
They were all silent, aghast at her violence, her coarse cruelty. Her
voice was loud, so loud as to arouse Mr. Humbert from his work. He
thrust his venerable head out of his door, but instantly popped it in
again. Miss Amy, horrified at herself, trembling with rage, ready to
burst into tears, cried out, suddenly----
“You can just take them into the kitchen!”
And stood aside, pointing down the passage.
“Come along, Aunt Emmie!” said Nick. “Come away before I----”
But she had entered, and was going along the passage. Rosaleen went
before her into the kitchen, drew forward the one chair, and droned
another in from the dining room. Mrs. Allanby, gracious and kind, sat
down, and smiled at Rosaleen.
“Come and sit down beside me!” she said.
Rosaleen shook her head. Mrs. Allanby spoke again, she thought she even
heard Nick’s voice, but she couldn’t understand them. They sounded
very, very faint. She was dizzy, sick, her ears were ringing. She stood
leaning against the tubs, still in her gingham apron, staring at
them----
At that charming and beautifully dressed woman, at the scowling young
man standing behind her, proud as Lucifer, in the _kitchen_....
She flung her arm across her eyes.
“Go away!” she cried. “Go away!”