She was in a mellow mood and counted her blessings. How fortunate it was that she had always been able to indulge her sense of power, over servants, tenants, villagers, over the vicar and curate, over nearly all her friends and acquaintances. She was just, benevolent, and impartial, but she would have loathed to have been an underling. Even now she sometimes felt that her great capacity for command, for courage, for quick decision, for all the qualities of leadership, had not been fully used. A crisis — that now she would really rather like to be faced with a crisis, just to show herself what she could do.
“How absurd I am being. As if anything like that would happen to me! And what a bother if it did! Now, what have I to do this morning? Four letters to write, three visits to make—” She rose and opened the window, allowing the uninterrupted sunshine to fall over the handsome furniture, the rich carpets, the spotless silver, and all the other evidences of long established wealth and decorum.
Mary Fryer was a short woman with an aquiline nose and slightly prominent gray eyes; her complexion was very good and she had pretty hands. She wore a frilled dress of gray bombazine; her hair was the color of hay, very smoothly dressed in a net of black chenille. At her waist hung a multitude of small keys (the large keys she carried in a fiat basket) and in her close-buttoned bodice was her father’s gold watch on a thick gold chain, which passed several times round her neck.
As she stood there, in the house where she had been born and where she would die, looking over the land that seemed part of herself — as if she had been actually moulded from the warm earth — this little woman thrilled to a sense of her own power a power over others and, more triumphant still, power over herself.
In this matter of love, for instance, she had won a notable victory. In her youth she had coolly decided to marry no man unless he came up to her secret standard of what her husband should be. Not having found her ideal she was quite content to leave that aspect of life alone. And then, when, too late, she had met the man who would in every particular have satisfied her, she had been able to regard the situation with ironic amusement, able not to betray herself by a sign, able to preserve her happiness unblemished.
A timid tap at the door brought her out of her self-satisfied musing.
“Come in.”
It was Agatha who entered. One glance at her showed Miss Fryer that the girl was in the deepest distress.
“What is the matter, Agatha? Come into the room, child, if you please, and sit down.”
Miss Fryer closed the window and returned to her seat by the desk. The girl obeyed and took the high, stiff chair with the white and black head-embroidery.
“A chance to tell her about her heels,” thought Miss Fryer, but, as usual, kindly and reasonable, she waited for Agatha to speak. And while she waited looked at the girl with that poignant gaze she turned on her whenever she saw her, which was not often.
Agatha Lerder was eighteen years old with not very good features and a common, silly air. But she had the bright coloring, the starry eyes, the red lips, and the abundant fair hair which in her class passes for prettiness. She was easily excited and could be very pert and rude, but she was also good-natured and gentle.
Miss Fryer despised her with an intensity of contempt that often surprised herself.
“Well, Agatha, what is it?” she asked very pleasantly. “You look quite ill. It must be something serious, surely, for you to have disturbed me in the middle of the morning.”
Agatha did not reply; she sat slack and helpless, twisting the buttons on the cuffs of her lilac-sprigged gown; her face was blotched pink and white and her hazel eyes bulged like the eyes of a rabbit Miss Fryer had once seen caught in a trap.
And then, suddenly, terror gave a fixity to Miss Fryer’s serene gaze.
“Not — some accident — with Portis? A gun—”
“No, ma’am. He’s all right.”
“Well, then,” said Miss Fryer rather sharply, “tell me please, what is the matter. I am busy.”
The girl’s face puckered up. She began to weep.
Miss Fryer felt the keenest contempt for her in the world, that of an intelligent woman for a silly one, when it is softened by neither chivalry nor humor.
“Please stop crying, Agatha. If you upset yourself like that you will not be able to tell me anything, and I suppose that you wish me to help you? Very well, then. Now, you see I am calm. You want to confess something?”
Agatha nodded.
“Don’t pull like that at your cuffs. You have broken something? Spoiled something?” As Agatha continued to sob Miss Fryer added: “I hope that you haven’t stolen anything?”
“It’s not as important as that to you, ma’am,” whispered Agatha, writhing. “I haven’t touched anything of yours. It’s — the twenty-five pounds — that John gave me — his savings.”
“I see. The savings of John Portis. And he gave them to you, like a fool, to buy some things for your house. And you spent them, these savings, on finery in Hereford, I suppose?”
“No. It’s worse than that — ma’am.”
“Worse?”
The fair head sunk lower and lower, the pretty, hot, swollen lips stammered out:
“I gave — it — to Ted — he gambled it away, market day.”
“Ted? Who is he? You haven’t got a brother, have you? I don’t know very much about you, really. Please speak clearly.”
“Oh, Miss! How am I to make it clear! It’s Ted Branston, what used to be the carter here—”
“But I dismissed him for drunkenness. He is a good-for-nothing!”
“So they call him — but I—”
“Yes, you? — look at me, Agatha!”
The girl, timidly, yet not daring to refuse, raised her tear-sodden face, which quivered with terror at the sight of those pale, prominent eyes turned on her with so implacable a stare.
“Oh, ma’am! I’m a wicked, wicked girl! There’s no hope for me, that I well know. He had the money out of me afore I knew, his talk so tender and his ways so sweet—”
“Did he have anything from you beside the money?” Miss Fryer was caressing her watch-chain with quick movements: her gaze fell to the girl’s high, silly heels... pretty shoes, pretty feet, though.
“I used to meet him in Croom Wood. He’s not a man to respect a girl — like John. He used to frighten me, too. I gave him the money to go for a sailor — I hoped it would never be found out. But it will. I can’t go on. I feel ill, oh, so sick, Miss—”
“Stop, please, Agatha. What are you trying to tell me?”
“Oh, I haven’t the courage to tell you! If you was a married lady—”
“I think that I understand, even if I am an old maid, Agatha. You are going to marry John Portis, but you are going to have Ted Branston’s baby, and you gave John’s money to Ted. And now he is asking about the money and perhaps wondering why you aren’t well — and you are frightened, eh?”
Agatha passionately wept.
“Stop crying! How am I to help you if you make yourself ill? What do you exactly want?”
“The money. I’d work my fingers to the bone to repay—”
“Never mind that. You want twenty-five pounds. What else?”
“If I could be hidden somewhere — if you could think of something. I don’t know much about it — I’m scared!”
“I see. You want to deceive Portis. You intend to marry him, just the same.”
“It ’ud break his heart if he knew.”
“He — loves you — so much?”
“He’s fair set on me. Different from the way Ted was — if he were to find our he’d fair kill me—”
“And the other man — this drunken carter — what are your feelings there, Agatha?”
“I don’t care for him no more.”