The cry came of her pride unbroken, sore bruised, and after a certain space for recovery combative. She said:
Any expiation I could offer where I did injury, I would not refuse; I would humble myself and bless heaven for being able to pay my debt—what I can of it. All I contend against is, injustice. And she sank into sensational protests of her anxious care of her daughter, too proud to phrase them.
Her one great affliction, the scourging affliction of her utter loneliness;—an outcast from her family; daily, and she knew not how, more shut away from the man she loved; now shut away from her girl;—seemed under the hand of the angel of God. The abandonment of her by friends, was merely the light to show it.
Midday’s post brought her a letter from Priscilla Graves, entreating to be allowed to call on her next day.—We are not so easily cast off! Nataly said, bitterly, in relation to the lady whose offending had not been so great. She wrote: ‘Come, if sure that you sincerely wish to.’
Having fasted, she ate at lunch in her dressing-room, with some taste of the food, haunted by an accusation of gluttony because of her eating at all, and a vile confession, that she was enabled to eat, owing to the receipt of Priscilla’s empty letter: for her soul’s desire was to be doing a deed of expiation, and the macerated flesh seemed her assurance to herself of the courage to make amends.—I must have some strength, she said wearifully, in apology for the morsel consumed.
Nesta’s being in the house with her, became an excessive irritation. Doubts of the girl’s possible honesty to speak a reptile truth under question; amazement at her boldness to speak it; hatred of, the mouth that could: and loathing of the words, the theme; and abomination of herself for conjuring fictitious images to rouse real emotions; all ran counterthreads, that produced a mad pattern in the mind, affrighting to reason: and then, for its preservation, reason took a superrational leap, and ascribed the terrible injustice of this last cruel stroke to the divine scourge, recognized divine by the selection of the mortal spot for chastisement. She clasped her breast, and said: It is mortal. And that calmed her.
She said, smiling: I never felt my sin until this blow came! Therefore the blow was proved divine. Ought it not to be welcomed?—and she appearing no better than one of those, the leprous of the sex! And brought to acknowledgement of the likeness by her daughter!
Nataly drank the poison distilled from her exclamations and was ice. She had denied herself to Nesta’s redoubled petition. Nesta knocking at the door a third time and calling, tore the mother two ways: to have her girl on her breast or snap their union in a word with an edge. She heard the voice of Dartrey Fenellan.
He was admitted. ‘No, dear,’ she said to Nesta; and Nesta’s, ‘My own mother,’ consentingly said, in tender resignation, as she retired, sprang a stinging tear to the mother’s eyelids.
Dartrey looked at the door closing on the girl.
‘Is it a very low woman?’ Nataly asked him in a Church whisper, with a face abashed.
‘It is not,’ said he, quick to meet any abruptness.
‘She must be cunning.’
‘In the ordinary way. We say it of Puss before the hounds.’
‘To deceive a girl like Nesta!’
‘She has done no harm.’
‘Dartrey, you speak to a mother. You have seen the woman? She is?—ah!’
‘She is womanly, womanly.’
‘Quite one of those…?’
‘My dear soul! You can’t shake them off in that way. She is one of us. If we have the class, we can’t escape from it. They are not to bear all the burden because they exist. We are the bigger debtors. I tell you she is womanly.’
‘It sounds like horrid cynicism.’
‘Friends of mine would abuse it for the reverse.’
‘Do not make me hate your chivalry. This woman is a rod on my back. Provided only she has not dropped venom into Nesta’s mind!’
‘Don’t fear!’
‘Can you tell me you think she has done no harm to my girl?’
‘To Nesta herself?—not any: not to a girl like your girl.’
‘To my girl’s name? Speak at once. But I know she has. She induced Nesta to go to her house. My girl was insulted in this woman’s house.’
Dartrey’s forehead ridged with his old fury and a gust of present contempt. ‘I can tell you this, that the fellow who would think harm of it, knowing the facts ‘s not worthy of touching the tips of the fingers of your girl.’
‘She is talked of!’
‘A good-looking girl out riding with a handsome woman on a parade of idlers!’
‘The woman is notorious.’ Nataly said it shivering.
He shook his head. ‘Not true.’
‘She has an air of a lady?’
‘She sits a horse well.’
‘Would she to any extent deceive me—impose on me here?’
‘No.’
‘Ah!’ Nataly moaned....
‘But what?’ said Dartrey. ‘There was no pretence. Her style is not worse than that of some we have seen. There was no effort to deceive. The woman’s plain for you and me to read, she has few of the arts; one or two tricks, if you like: and these were not needed for use. There are women who have them, and have not been driven or let slip into the wilderness.’
‘Yes; I know!—those ideas of yours!’ Nataly had once admired him for his knightliness toward the weakest women and the women underfoot. ‘You have spoken to this woman? She boasted of acquaintance with Nesta?’
‘She thanked God for having met her.’
‘Is it one of the hysterical creatures?’
Mrs. Marsett appeared fronting Dartrey.
He laughed to himself. ‘A clever question. There is a leaning to excitement of manner at times. It ‘s not hysteria. Allow for her position.’
Nataly took the unintended blow, and bowed to it; and still more harshly said: ‘What rank of life does the woman come from?’
‘The class educated for a skittish career by your popular Stage and your Book-stalls. I am not precise?’
‘Leave Mr. Durance. Is she in any degree commonly well bred?… behaviour, talk-her English.’
‘I trench on Mr. Durance in replying. Her English is passable. You may hear…’
‘Everywhere, of course! And this woman of slipshod English and excited manners imposed upon Nesta!’
‘It would not be my opinion.’
‘Did not impose on her!’
‘Not many would impose on Nesta Radnor for long.’
‘Think what that says, Dartrey!’
‘You have had a detestable version of the story.’
‘Because an excited creature thanks God to you for having met her!’
‘She may. She’s a better woman for having met her. Don’t suppose we’re for supernatural conversions. The woman makes no show of that. But she has found a good soul among her sex—her better self in youth, as one guesses; and she is grateful—feels farther from exile in consequence. She has found a lady to take her by the hand!—not a common case. She can never go to the utterly bad after knowing Nesta. I forget if she says it; I say it. You have heard the story from one of your conventional gentlemen.’
‘A true gentleman. I have reason to thank him. He has not your ideas on these matters, Dartrey. He is very sensitive… on Nesta’s behalf.’