Chapter VI: Mr. Banks

There was silence in the room for a few minutes after the abrupt dismissal of Mabin. Mrs. Dale made a perfunctory gesture of invitation to her unwelcome visitor to be seated, and threw herself into a hard horsehair-covered armchair by the window, which she carefully closed.

The visitor, however, remained standing. She was evidently rather astonished at the high-handed behavior of the culprit whom she had come to examine, and uncertain how to deal with her. At last she said in a very cutting tone:

“I suppose I ought not by this time to be surprised at your behaving in an unbecoming manner to me, or to anybody. But as you pretended to profess some penitence for your awful sin on the last occasion of our meeting, I own I was carried away by my indignation when I found you receiving visitors, and young girl visitors. Surely you must recognize how improper such conduct is?”

“And which do you suppose is the more likely to do her harm? To stay with me knowing nothing, or to hear from your lips the awful thing you were going to tell her? Why, the poor child would never have got over the shock!”

“It would have been less harmful to her soul than constant communication with you, impenitent as you are!”

“You have no right to say that to me. How can you see into my heart?”

“I judge you by your actions. I find you here, talking and laughing, and enjoying yourself. And I hear that you have already created a most unfavorable impression in the neighborhood by your rudeness to people who have wished to be civil to you.”

“Was it not your own wish that I should shut myself up?”

“Yes, but in an humble, not in a defiant, manner. And then you drive about as if nothing had happened, and excite remarks by your appearance alone, which is not the appearance of a disconsolate widow.”

“By whose wish was it that I bought a carriage?”

“By mine, I suppose,” replied the other frigidly, “but I meant a brougham, so that you could go about quietly, not an open and fashionable one, for you to show yourself off!”

“Well, I refuse to drive about in a stuffy, shut-up carriage. I am quite ready to walk, if you wish me to put the carriage down. And I can quite well do with less money than what you allow me. But I maintain the right to spend my allowance, whatever it may be, exactly as I please. Because one has committed one fault----”

“Fault!” almost shrieked the visitor. “One grave and deadly sin.”

“Because I have done wrong, great wrong,” replied Mrs. Dale. And even to this antagonistic woman her voice shook on the words, “You have no right to think that I am never to lead an independent life. You have no right to the control of my actions. All that you can demand is that I should live decently and quietly. As long as I do so I ought to be, I _will_ be, as free as ever.”

“But,” persisted the other, “you seem not to understand what decency requires. In the first place it is imperatively necessary,” and as she said this there was a look of genuine anxiety in her eyes, “that you should hold no intercourse whatever with persons of the opposite sex.”

Mrs. Dale said nothing to this; and the look of questioning solicitude in the face of the other grew deeper.

“Surely,” she asked at last, “you must see this yourself?”

“That,” answered Mrs. Dale deliberately, “is also a matter which rests entirely with me. I won’t be dictated to on that subject any more than on any other.”

“Well, then, I warn you that I shall have to keep you in strict surveillance, and that if I hear of your encouraging, or even permitting, the attentions of any man, young or old, I shall feel myself bound in honor to put him in possession of the facts of your history.”

“And if you do,” retorted Mrs. Dale, rising and speaking in a low tone full of fire and passionate resentment, “if you interfere with me in my quiet and harmless life by telling any person whom I choose to call my friend the horrible thing that you hold over my head, I will break away from you and your surveillance once and for all. I will have the whole story published in the papers, with your share in it as well as mine, and let the world decide which of us is the most to blame: the young woman who has wrecked and poisoned her whole life by one rash and wicked act, or the old one who drove her to it, and then used it forever afterward to goad and madden her!”

She paused, and leaned against the table, white to the lips with intense excitement, panting with her own emotion. The other lady had grown white too, and she looked frightened as she answered:

“You are allowing your passion to carry you away again. I should have thought you had been cured of that.” The younger lady shuddered, but said nothing; “I was bound to put you on your guard, that was all.”

Mrs. Dale moved restlessly. Her face was livid and moist, her hands were shaking:

“Surely you have done that!” she said ironically. “Even the Inquisitors of Spain used to let their victims have a little rest from the torture sometimes; just to let the creatures get up their strength again, to give more sport on a future occasion!”

The visitor affected to be offended by this speech, and drew herself up in a dignified manner. But it was possible to imagine that she felt just a little shame, or a little twinge of remorse, for her persistent cruelty, for she went so far as to offer a cold hand to Mrs. Dale as she prepared to go.

Mrs. Dale looked as if she would have liked to refuse the hand, but did not dare. She touched the black glove with white, reluctant fingers, and let it go at once.

“Good-by, Dorothy,” said the elder lady “I am sure you will believe, when you come to yourself and think it over, that I have only your interests at heart in the advice I have given you. No, you need not come to the door. I shall take just one walk round to look at your garden before I go. I have a cab waiting.”

She sailed out of the room, the jet fringes on her gown and mantle making a noise which set Mrs. Dale’s teeth on edge.

As soon as she was alone, Dorothy threw herself face downward on the hard sofa and burst into a passion of tears and sobs, which rendered her deaf and blind and unconscious of everything but the awful weight at her heart, which she must carry with her to her grave, and of the cruelty which had revived in its first intensity the old, weary pain.

She was mad, desperate with grief. She felt that it was more than she could bear; that the remorse gnawing at her heart, the more bitterly for the pleasure of the morning, had reached a point where it became intolerable, where the strength of a woman must give way.

And then when she had crawled out of the room, with smarting eyes and aching head, and found the way up to her own shabby, gloomy room with staggering feet, there came to her ear from the garden the sound of a fresh, girlish voice, uttering words which were balm to the wounded soul.

“I don’t care,” Mabin was saying to some unseen person among the yew trees on the lawn, “I don’t care what she’s done. She is a sweet woman, and I love her all the more for having to be preached to by that old cat!”

No eloquence, no smoothly rounded periods of the most brilliant speaker in the universe could have conveyed to poor unhappy Dorothy half the solace of those inelegant words! She began to smile, all red-eyed as she was, and to feel that there was something worth living for in the world after all. And when she had bathed her face, and lain down for a little ease to her aching head, she was able presently to look out with an impulse of pleasure at the bright green of the lawn, where the shadows of the tall elms were growing long, and to listen to the sound of young voices talking and laughing, and to feel that there was something left in life after all.

The voices, as she knew, were those of Mabin and Rudolph. The Vicar’s son had called, with a huge bunch of flowering rushes, for Mrs. Dale, while the mysterious visitor was with her. The parlormaid, therefore, had informed him that Mrs. Dale was engaged, but that Miss Rose was in the garden; and he had lost no time in going in search of the latter.

He was surprised to find her in a state of great distress, shedding furtive tears, and trying to hide a face eloquent of grief.

“May I ask what’s the matter?” he asked, when she had begun to talk about the flowers and the trees, in a rather broken and unmanageable voice.

“Oh, I don’t know whether I ought to tell you!”

“Well, look here. I’ll go as far as the wall that shuts in the kitchen-garden; that’s on the other side of the house, you know. I’ll walk very slowly, and if I find any caterpillars on the gooseberries I’ll pick them off. That will give you a long time. And when I come back I shall expect you to have made up your mind whether you can tell me or not. Only,” added he wistfully, “I do hope you will make up your mind that you can; for I’m ‘dying of curiosity,’ as the ladies say.”

“No, they don’t say that,” said Mabin cantankerously. “Women are much less curious than the men, really. I wouldn’t have heard what I did for worlds if I could have helped it. And you are ‘dying’ to know it!”

“Well, I won’t argue with you,” replied Rudolph philosophically, as he walked slowly, according to his promise, in the direction of the kitchen-garden.

Mabin watched him, drying her eyes, and asking herself whether there would be any harm in confiding in him. She felt the want of some one of whom she could take counsel in this extremely embarrassing situation for a young girl to find herself in. If only Mrs. Haybrow had been at hand! She was a motherly woman, whose sympathy could be as much relied upon as her advice. Not once did it occur to the girl to write to her step-mother, who would have consulted Mr. Rose, with results disastrous to the reputation of poor little Mrs. Dale. For it was not to be supposed that a father could allow his daughter to remain in the house of a lady about whom there was certainly more than a suspicion of irregularity of some sort.

She was pondering these things, in a helpless and bewildered fashion, anxious to do right, and not quite certain where the right lay, when she heard a firm step on the gravel path, and, looking round, saw that the austere-looking lady who had descended so abruptly upon Mrs. Dale was coming toward her.

Mabin would have liked to run away, and did indeed give one glance and make one step, in the direction of the little path between the yews which led round to the kitchen garden.

But the person she had to deal with was not to be put off in that manner.

“Stop!” she cried, in such an imperious voice that Mabin obeyed at once. “I want to speak to you.”

Mabin glanced up at the hard, cold face, and her heart rose in rebellion at the thought that the severe expression was for poor Mrs. Dale. She drew up her head with a flash of spirit, and waited quietly for what the elder lady had to say.

“What is your name? And where do you live?” asked the lady.

At first, guessing that this vixenish woman wanted to communicate with her friends about the desirability of removing her from “The Towers,” Mabin felt inclined to refuse to answer. But a moment’s reflection showed her that it would be easy for the lady to get the information she wanted from the servants; so she said:

“My name is Mabin Rose, and my father is on his way to Geneva.”

“And how did he become acquainted with--” she paused, and added in a peculiar tone, as if the name stuck in her throat--“with Mrs. Dale?”

“They were neighbors,” answered Mabin shortly.

“You had better write to him and ask him to take you away,” said the lady. “There are circumstances----”

But Mabin put her hands up to her ears.

“Not a word!” cried she. “I won’t hear a word. I beg your pardon for having to be so rude, but I won’t listen to you; I won’t hear a word against my friend.”

She was prepared in her excitement for some sort of struggle. But the lady merely glared at her through her long-handled eye-glasses in disgust, and with a pinched smile and a contemptuous movement of the shoulders, walked majestically back toward the house.

The parlormaid, trying to look discreetly incurious, was standing by the gate, to open it for the visitor to go out. But the lady paused to enter into conversation with her; and Mabin was filled with indignation, believing, as she did, that the stranger’s motives were not above suspicion. And she caught the words which the maid uttered just before the cab drove away with the stranger:

“Very well, my lady.”

And then she heard Rudolph’s voice behind her.

“Well, have you had time to make up your mind?”

She started and turned quickly. He was surprised to see that all traces of tears had disappeared, and that her face was burning with excitement.

“Oh, yes, yes. I must tell you now! If I didn’t, I should have to go and confide in Mrs. Dale’s little dog!”

“Well, I promise to be quite as discreet.”

“That cab that you saw drive away had in it a woman who came here to see Mrs. Dale, and who told me that I ought to go away and not stay in the same house with her!”

“Well?”

“Well! Is that all you have to say? Aren’t you disgusted? You who pretend to like and admire Mrs. Dale so much?”

“There is no pretense in it. I do like and admire her very much. But how can you be astonished after the warnings you have had?”

Mabin looked at him with wide open eyes.

“I thought,” she said rather coldly, “that you would take her part.”

“Yes, so I will; so I do. But I don’t feel quite sure whether you ought to.”

“And why not? Why, since I like and pity her too, shouldn’t I take her part too?”

For a few minutes Rudolph was silent.

“You’re a girl,” said he at last.

“But that’s no reason why I should act meanly!”

“Ah, well, if it’s not a reason, it’s an excuse.”

“I don’t think so. I like to stand by my friends. I haven’t many; I haven’t any I like better than Mrs. Dale. So, whatever it is that she has done, I shall stay with her as long as she wants me, and do all I can to prevent these stories getting to papa’s and mamma’s ears.”

Rudolph looked at her fair face, which was aglow with generous enthusiasm, and smiled in hearty approval.

“That’s right,” said he warmly. “And if people are too much shocked by your daring, why you can marry me, you know, and when once you’re married you can snap your fingers at them all.”

But at this suggestion Mabin had suddenly turned pale. In truth she liked Rudolph well enough not to be able to bear a jest on the idea of marriage with him. Naturally he was surprised and even a little hurt by the abrupt change in her sensitive face.

“Oh, you need not look so frightened,” said he, laughing. “I only suggested it as a last resource in case of extremity.”

“Oh, I know. But--what extremity?”

“If people think the worse of you for standing by your friend.”

Mabin drew her tall, slim figure to its fullest height.

“I shouldn’t care,” said she. “I should snap my fingers at them in any case.”

Rudolph considered her for a few silent minutes. It was then that she uttered the words which reached Mrs. Dale’s ears, and startled while they comforted the unhappy woman:

“I don’t care--I don’t care what she’s done. She is a sweet woman, and I love her all the more for having to be preached to by that old cat.”

And then she noticed that she and her companion were standing rather near an open window, and she walked quickly back to the lawn and the elm trees.

“What old cat?”

“Didn’t you see her? A tall woman with a face carved in marble. She was driving away as you came back.”

“I didn’t see much of her. Do you know who she is?”

“No. She’s a ‘ladyship,’ from what the maid said. And she looks like one, which ladyships hardly ever do. That’s all I know.”

“A relation of Mrs. Dale’s, I suppose?”

“Ye-e-s, I suppose so, from the things she said. But oh! Mrs. Dale has never done anything to deserve such a relation as that!”

“Poor thing! No. But one can’t help feeling curious.”

“I can help it,” cried Mabin stoutly. “I know how these spiteful old women make mountains out of molehills, and I will never believe that it isn’t a molehill in this case after all.”

Rudolph looked at her curiously.

“Do you know who it is that has taken your father’s house?” he asked in a dry tone.

“Yes, a Mr. Banks. He came this morning, as soon as papa and mamma were out of the house.”

“And do you know anything about him? Is he a friend of your father’s?”

“No. He was looking for a furnished house down here, and heard that we wanted to let ours. It was all arranged through his solicitor and papa’s. He is an invalid, I believe, come here for change of air. Why do you ask?”

“Because I was in the lane between your garden and this just before I came here, and I saw a man walking along the grass path, and recognized him as the man I found watching Mrs. Dale a fortnight ago. There’s a secret for you, in return for yours.”

Mabin looked frightened. She remembered her own suspicions that the man who had presented himself as Mr. Banks was an impostor.

“What was he like?” she asked.

“He was very thin and pale, and he looked like a gentleman. I could hardly tell whether he was old or young.”

“Perhaps,” she faltered, “he isn’t Mr. Banks at all!”

Rudolph did not answer immediately. Then he said slowly:

“I wonder what he has come for?”

Mabin stared at him stupidly. As they stood silent in the quiet garden, they both heard a slight rustling of the leaves, a cracking of the branches, near the wall which divided the garden from the lane.