"So you are in the conspiracy, too! Women are all alike! Sitting here,
all smiles and flummery to my face, and then going away to abuse me
behind my back!"
"That's not true!"
I cried hotly. "At least, it's a very unfair representation. There was
no necessity for me to come here at all. I have done it because you
were a neighbour, and ill, and I wanted to help you--and even more to
help your wife. As for `smiles and flummery,' as you express it, there
has been no chance of anything so friendly. You have allowed no
chance!"
"You don't deny, I suppose, that you joined with matron in abusing me as
a monster of wickedness?"
"I said you had the worst temper I had ever met. So you have. I said I
believed that you poisoned yourself, as well as every one near you. So
I do. All the more credit to me for giving you so much of my time."
He lay silent, staring into my face. It was plain that the man had
received a shock. For once in his life he had been shown a picture of
himself as others saw him, and in the seeing _something_ had been hurt--
conscience, vanity, _amour-propre_--it was impossible to say which, and
now his brain was at work, trying to assimilate the new thought. All
the time I had been reading, he had been pondering and raging. Probably
he had not heard a single word.
"You women," he began again. "You women! Talk of ministering angels--
all very fine for a few days, while the novelty lasts--after that a poor
beggar can suffer tortures, and get nothing but revilings for bad
temper. Would you be an angel of meekness if you had to go through what
I am bearing now?"
"I should probably be exceedingly difficult and fretful. At times!
There would be other times--especially when I was getting better--when I
should feel overflowing with gratitude, and should say so, to the people
who had been patient with me through the bad times!"
"Words! Words!" he snarled scornfully. "Men judge by deeds. If you
want my character, you can hear it from the men with whom I have had to
do. I am a Churchman. I go to church every Sunday of my life. I was
once Vicar's churchwarden for three years."
Poor Vicar! What those three years must have been! I have known whole
parishes "set by the ears" by just one warped, self-opinionated man, who
put his own pet theories before anything else, and went about sowing
dissension--splitting up a hitherto united people into two opposing
camps. I said, with an air of polite inquiry:--
"And--did you part good friends?"
He did not answer, but the expression on his face was eloquent enough.
I _knew_, without being told. Suddenly he broke out at a fresh tangent.
"I suppose my wife--"