Chapter XIV

Amy meanwhile hurried upstairs, but May, who was coming down, met her on the landing, and knew at once from her flushed face and peculiar expression that something unpleasant had happened. For the moment she did not connect it with either herself or Rusk, so she paused to ask what was the matter.

Amy pushed past her roughly, “Leave me alone, can’t you? You’ve done enough already.” And she went on into her own room.

Thither May followed her, at a loss to know what new offence she had committed, for since their quarrel on the subject of Rusk they had tacitly agreed never to mention him, and she herself had rarely been with him alone. She was tired, however, of this attitude of perpetual jealousy, and willing to go more than half-way in order to bring about a reconciliation. It was impossible to go on living the way they lived now, at enmity about a man who had never shown more than the most ordinary friendship for either of them. When she entered the room Amy lay stretched on the bed, her face turned to the wall, and May again approached her.

“Has anything happened? What is it?” She spoke sympathetically, and with the best intentions, but Amy turned on her as if her words concealed some taunt.

“I suppose you have come in to triumph over me.... I wonder you weren’t listening at the door! Perhaps you’d have been satisfied at last!”

There was something so utterly hopeless--so far as any question of “making it up” went--in this childish obstinacy, this sort of fixed idea which no amount of reasoning could ever overcome, that May recognized on the spot the uselessness of attempting it.

“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” she said, not quite sincerely. “I seem to have done something, but I really don’t know what it is.”

“You do--I know it was you. It was you who told him. He would never have done it but for you.”

“Told him what? What has he done? What are you talking about?”

“Oh, you needn’t put on that little soft voice with me. You told him not to let me come into the library. You put it into his head at any rate, and he had the impudence to ask me not to come back another day.... I hate him.... I will get papa to send him away.”

“I never told him anything,” said May. “I don’t know what you think me capable of. I’ve hardly even _spoken_ to him for the last month, and any time I did speak to him you were there and heard all I said.”

“How do I know how often you see him?” cried Amy, bitterly. “Get out of my sight, can’t you?” She sat up on the bed. “You’ve done nothing but set him against me from the very first evening he came into the house.”

“Oh, but this is ridiculous!” May answered, losing patience. “If you’re going to begin all that stuff over again----!” And she made a movement toward the door.

“You can’t deny it then,” cried Amy, springing after her, her face flushed and her eyes shining. “You _did_ tell him?”

“I never mentioned your name to him,” answered May disgustedly. “But it’s useless talking to you. You seem to be half-mad about him. Only I don’t know why you need perpetually drag me into it.”

“I’m not mad about him. I detest him. It’s you who are in love with him.”

May took another step towards the door, but Amy grasped her suddenly by the arm.

“Let me go. You’re hurting me,” May cried.

“Will you swear to me that you aren’t in love with him?” asked Amy roughly. “Come--answer.” She gave a tug at the arm she held, and her fingers sank into the soft flesh. May gave a cry of pain, but Amy being bigger and stronger held her there, quite powerless to do more than struggle a little. Finding it hopeless to free herself she at last gave up the attempt.

“Do you want to keep him for yourself?” asked Amy fiercely. “Answer, can’t you?”

“I don’t want him at all,” said May, her voice trembling with anger. “I shall speak to papa to-night and get him sent away. This kind of thing is too unbearable. Papa will send him away at once when he knows.”

Her words, spoken very much at random, had an instantaneous effect upon her sister. Amy’s manner underwent a pitiful transformation. All her fierceness seemed to die out at once in the withering chill of this wretched possibility. “I only asked you if you were in love with him,” she said helplessly. “You needn’t answer if you don’t like, though after all I’ve told _you_--” She relaxed her grasp of May’s arm, and though she still stood between her and the door it was no longer to bar her passage.

“I’m not in love with him,” said May, with as much dignity as she could summon up. “I should be very sorry to be in love with anyone if it made me behave in the way you’ve been going on lately.”

“Then will you stop speaking to him?” Amy asked naïvely.

“Stop speaking to him! How can I stop speaking to him?” She raised her voice impatiently. “You talk in such a senseless way: as if you didn’t know as well as I do----”

“I know you like him,” Amy interrupted obstinately.

“What is it to you if I _do_ like him? Does it do you any harm? Why aren’t you jealous of Denis? I gave up going out sketching with him because it annoyed you, and this is all the thanks I get. I’m not going to give in to you any more. It only makes you worse. If you worry me about him again I’ll do what I said I would do; I’ll tell papa.”

Amy looked at her with heavy, sullen eyes. “You have never cared for anyone,” she answered. “You don’t understand. You couldn’t care for anyone if you tried. You don’t know what love is.”

“Love!” echoed May scornfully. “Do you remember when you were in love with the gardener’s boy? when you were in love with Jimmy Temple? Why, a few minutes ago you said you hated him.”

Amy made no reply. She turned away, and May left her to her own thoughts. These were gloomy in the extreme. She threw herself down on the bed once more, and lay staring at the ceiling. She hated Rusk, she hated everything, as her excitement gradually died down to a kind of sullen irritation. When she thought of how all along he had managed, as if by a deliberate scheme of action, to make her behave abominably both to him and to everybody else, to bring out all the worst elements in her nature, she wished that her father _would_ send him away, she wished she had never seen him. And she knew that May liked him and that he liked May, though that he was in love with her she did not really believe. It was the danger that he might become so that troubled her. May was certainly trying to attract him. For herself, whatever way she turned she seemed to be met by a high, unscalable wall, bringing her up sharply, barring all progress, yet pierced with tiny loopholes through which she could just get a glimpse of an unattainable joy beyond.