And each went home, thinking, not of that portending
interview with Mrs. Chater, but upon the love they
had declared.
Events And Sentiment Mixed In A Letter.
At ten o’clock that night Mary took up her pen.
“First, my dear, to tell you that it is all
right. I may stay. I had lunch with the
children in the nursery, and just as we had finished
a maid came to say that Mrs. Chater would see me in
the study. Down I crawled, wishing that I was
the heroine of a novel who would have passed firmly
down the stairs and into the room, ’pale, but
calm and serene.’ Oh! I was pale enough,
I feel sure. But as to serene!—my
heart was flapping about just like a tin ventilator
in a wind, and I was jumpy all over. You see
what a coward am I.
“Mrs. Chater had grown since last I saw her.
Of that I am convinced. She sat, enormous, thunder-browed,
bolt upright in a straight chair. I stood and
quivered. Books are all wrong, dear. In books
the consciousness of virtue gives one complete self-possession
in the face of any accusation, however terrible.
In books it is the accuser of the innocent who is
ill at ease. Oh, don’t believe it!
Mrs. Chater had the self-possession, I had the jim-jams.
“‘I have not seen you since last night,’
she said.
“I gave a kind of terrified little squeak.
I had no words.
“‘Your version of what happened I do not
wish to hear,’ she went on.
“This relieved me, because for the life of me
I could not have told her had she wished to hear it.
So I gave another little mouse-squeak.
“‘My son has told me.’ Her
voice was like a deep bell. ’How you can
reconcile your conduct with the treatment that you
have received at my hands, here beneath my roof’—she
was very dramatic at this point—’I
do not know.’
“Nor did I—but not in the way she
meant. I was thinking how ignoble was my meek
attitude in light of what had happened. But you
don’t know what it was like, facing that woman
and dreading the worse fate of being turned out into
this awful London again. Another wretched little
squeak slipped out of me, and she went on.
“‘My boy,’ said she, ’has
implored me to overlook this matter. My boy has
declared there were faults on both sides’ (!!!!).
’If I acted rightly as a mother, what would
I do?’
“I didn’t tell her, Georgie. Could
I tell her that if she acted rightly as a mother she
would box her boy’s fat ears until his nose
bled? I couldn’t. I squeaked instead.
“‘If I acted rightly as a mother,’
said she, ’I would send you away. I am
not going to.’
“I squeaked.
“’I choose to believe that your behaviour
in this matter was a slip. I believe the episode
will be a lesson to you. That is all. Go.’
I goed.”
