She had leaped thirty years and was fingering rather sadly a star
sapphire beautifully set in diamonds to form a brooch. Presently she
laid it down and sitting with her hands folded in her lap fell into
one of those wideawake trances that ended too often in melancholy.
"What a beautiful brooch that is," ventured Miss Dorset.
There was no answer and no indication that Mrs. Greene had even heard
the remark.
Miss Dorset tried again.
"Is it a star sapphire?" she asked. "I don't think I've ever seen
one like that."
Mrs. Greene roused herself, but she spoke heavily and limply.
"Yes, it's a star sapphire, Geoffrey gave it to me." There was a
long pause. "We had a quarrel," she said at last, "nothing very
much; it began just as a disagreement of opinion, but I was very
hot-tempered; I always said more than I meant. So Geoffrey gave me
this brooch," she ended, inconsequently, a little furrow of pain
forming between her eyebrows at the recollection.
Miss Dorset murmured something inaudible, unable to offer any comfort
for a quarrel which had begun and ended probably thirty years ago.
Rather awkwardly, anxious to make a diversion, she moved come cases
nearer to Mrs. Greene. By chance one of them contained the brooch
which had been spoken of in the morning.
"That's what I want," said Mrs. Greene triumphantly, her depression
completely banished. "That's the brooch I want you to have; it was
another of my wedding presents and I used to wear it a great deal,
but I never wear rubies now, and I would like you to have it."
It was a very fine ruby. The sun lit up its dark wine-coloured heart
and turned to fire the diamond pentacle in which it was set.
Miss Dorset caught something of its glow and radiance.
"I can't possibly thank you," she said, "I've never had anything so
lovely before; it will give me real happiness."
With an unusually impulsive and graceful movement she lifted Mrs.
Greene's hand and kissed it.
The old lady was amazed at the happiness she had caused. She
remembered her thoughts of the morning. The brooch had seemed then a
cold and trivial thing. Now, lying on Miss Dorset's hand, enriched
by her unconcealed pleasure, it became a warm symbol of affection and
gratitude.
Mrs. Greene thought of services rendered, of fine discretions, of
considerateness carried far beyond the borders of duty into the realm
of intuition, and she was filled with immense satisfaction. There
were good things in life: loyalties, restraints, disinterested
devotion. One lived from day to day, from year to year, and at the
end it was bitten deep into the mind that baseness was transitory,
but that good quality endured.
Mrs. Greene braced herself.
"Miss Dorset," she said sternly, "all my life I've cared for the
quality of things and people. I'm old now; old enough to know the
truth that lies in platitudes, but if you see me slipping into an
easy tolerance, and putting up with the second rate, you'll know that
I'm dead, though my body lives on."
Miss Dorset was startled. Inadvertently she expressed her crude and
simple opinion, speaking as to an equal, happily forgetful of the
responsibility of youth towards age; a responsibility that leads to
concealments and subterfuges, to the elimination from conversation of
anything that might be unpalatable or alarming; to the whole
softening process that makes for safety and, presumably, content.
"Oh, no, Mrs. Greene," she said confidently. "You'll never become
tolerant. Young Mrs. Geoffrey often says you live on your critical
faculty and that it's my duty to give you something to pull to pieces
every day."
Mrs. Greene was delighted. She laughed with pure pleasure.
"Helen says that, does she? Well, she's quite right; I'm a malicious
intolerant old woman, and I don't suppose I'll change now."
At that moment there was the sound of a car drawing up at the front
door. Mrs. Greene looked in consternation at Miss Dorset.
"There's Sarah," she said. "And I've done nothing that I meant to.
I haven't even decided whether my necklace needs cleaning or not.
You'll have to put all these away now, Miss Dorset, and get them out
again to-morrow. But it doesn't matter; I've had a very happy
afternoon and now I'll go into the drawing-room and wait for Sarah."