She turned on me in the most terrible way, and asked
me how I dared to come between husband and wife, because
divorce or no divorce, whom God hath joined together,
and so on. And when Jim picked up his courage
in both hands and tried to interfere, she pushed him
back with one hand while she pointed the other at me
and called me a Jezebel.
She talked for an hour, having got between me and
the door, and she scolded Jim and Bella thoroughly.
But they did not hear it, being occupied with each
other, sitting side by side meekly on the divan with
Jim holding Bella’s hand under a cushion.
She said they would have to be very good to make up
for all the deception, but it was perfectly clear
that it was a relief to her to find that I didn’t
belong to her permanently, and as I have said before,
she was crazy about Bella.
I sat back in a chair and grew comfortably drowsy
in the monotony of her voice. It was a name that
brought me to myself with a jerk.
“Mr. Harbison!” Aunt Selina was saying.
“Then bring him down at once, James. I
want no more deception. There is no use cleaning
a house and leaving a dirty corner.”
“It will not be necessary for me to stay and
see it swept,” I said, mustering the rags she
had left of my self-respect, and trying to pass her.
But she planted herself squarely before me.
“You can not stir up a dust like this, young
woman, and leave other people to sneeze in it,”
she said grimly. And I stayed.
I sat, very small, on a chair in a corner. I
felt like Jezebel, or whatever her name was, and now
the Harbison man was coming, and he was going to see
me stripped of my pretensions to domesticity and of
a husband who neglected me. He was going to see
me branded a living lie, and he would hate me because
I had put him in a ridiculous position. He was
just the sort to resent being ridiculous.
Jim brought him down in a dressing gown and a state
of bewilderment. It was plain that the memory
of the afternoon still rankled, for he was very short
with Jim and inclined to resent the whole thing.
The clock in the hall chimed half after three as they
came down the stairs, and I heard Mr. Harbison stumble
over something in the darkness and say that if it
was a joke, he wasn’t in the humor for it.
To which Jim retorted that it wasn’t anything
resembling a joke, and for heaven’s sake not
to walk on his feet; he couldn’t get around
the furniture any faster.
At the door of the den Mr. Harbison stopped, blinking
in the light. Then, when he saw us, he tried
to back himself and his dishabille out into the obscurity
of the library. But Aunt Selina was too quick
for him.
“Come in,” she called, “I want you,
young man. It seems that there are only two fools
in the house, and you are one.”
He straightened at that and looked bewildered, but
he tried to smile.
