Late in the summer afternoon she walked through the park to the village with her letter, posted it and came back. Suddenly, at one of the turns of the avenue, half-way to the house, she saw a young man hover there as if awaiting her—a young man who proved to be Godfrey on his pedestrian progress over from the station. He had seen her as he took his short cut, and if he had come down to Brinton it wasn’t apparently to avoid her. There was nevertheless none of the joy of his triumph in his face as he came a very few steps to meet her; and although, stiffly enough, he let her kiss him and say “I’m so glad—I’m so glad!” she felt this tolerance as not quite the mere calm of the rising diplomatist. He turned toward the house with her and walked on a short distance while she uttered the hope that he had come to stay some days.
“Only till to-morrow morning. They’re sending me straight to Madrid. I came down to say good-bye; there’s a fellow bringing my bags.”
“To Madrid? How awfully nice! And it’s awfully nice of you to have come,” she said as she passed her hand into his arm.
The movement made him stop, and, stopping, he turned on her in a flash a face of something more than, suspicion—of passionate reprobation. “What I really came for—you might as well know without more delay—is to ask you a question.”
“A question?”—she echoed it with a beating heart.
They stood there under the old trees in the lingering light, and, young and fine and fair as they both were, formed a complete superficial harmony with the peaceful English scene. A near view, however, would have shown that Godfrey Chart hadn’t taken so much trouble only to skim the surface. He looked deep into his sister’s eyes. “What was it you said that morning to Mrs. Churchley?”
She fixed them on the ground a moment, but at last met his own again. “If she has told you, why do you ask?”
“She has told me nothing. I’ve seen for myself.”
“What have you seen?”
“She has broken it off. Everything’s over. Father’s in the depths.”
“In the depths?” the girl quavered.
“Did you think it would make him jolly?” he went on.
She had to choose what to say. “He’ll get over it. He’ll he glad.”
“That remains to be seen. You interfered, you invented something, you got round her. I insist on knowing what you did.”
Adela felt that if it was a question of obstinacy there was something within her she could count on; in spite of which, while she stood looking down again a moment, she said to herself “I could be dumb and dogged if I chose, but I scorn to be.” She wasn’t ashamed of what she had done, but she wanted to be clear. “Are you absolutely certain it’s broken off?”
“He is, and she is; so that’s as good.”
“What reason has she given?”
“None at all—or half a dozen; it’s the same thing. She has changed her mind—she mistook her feelings—she can’t part with her independence. Moreover he has too many children.”
“Did he tell you this?” the girl asked.
“Mrs. Churchley told me. She has gone abroad for a year.”
“And she didn’t tell you what I said to her?”
Godfrey showed an impatience. “Why should I take this trouble if she had?”
“You might have taken it to make me suffer,” said Adela. “That appears to be what you want to do.”
“No, I leave that to you—it’s the good turn you’ve done me!” cried the young man with hot tears in his eyes.
She stared, aghast with the perception that there was some dreadful thing she didn’t know; but he walked on, dropping the question angrily and turning his back to her as if he couldn’t trust himself. She read his disgust in his averted, face, in the way he squared his shoulders and smote the ground with his stick, and she hurried after him and presently overtook him. She kept by him for a moment in silence; then she broke out: “What do you mean? What in the world have I done to you?”
“She would have helped me. She was all ready to help me,” Godfrey portentously said.
“Helped you in what?” She wondered what he meant; if he had made debts that he was afraid to confess to his father and—of all horrible things—had been looking to Mrs. Churchley to pay. She turned red with the mere apprehension of this and, on the heels of her guess, exulted again at having perhaps averted such a shame.
“Can’t you just see I’m in trouble? Where are your eyes, your senses, your sympathy, that you talk so much about? Haven’t you seen these six months that I’ve a curst worry in my life?”
She seized his arm, made him stop, stood looking up at him like a frightened little girl. “What’s the matter, Godfrey?—what IS the matter?”
“You’ve gone against me so—I could strangle you!” he growled. This image added nothing to her dread; her dread was that he had done some wrong, was stained with some guilt. She uttered it to him with clasped hands, begging him to tell her the worst; but, still more passionately, he cut her short with his own cry: “In God’s name, satisfy me! What infernal thing did you do?”
“It wasn’t infernal—it was right. I told her mamma had been wretched,” said Adela.
“Wretched? You told her such a lie?”
“It was the only way, and she believed me.”
“Wretched how?—wretched when?—wretched where?” the young man stammered.
“I told her papa had made her so, and that SHE ought to know it. I told her the question troubled me unspeakably, but that I had made up my mind it was my duty to initiate her.” Adela paused, the light of bravado in her face, as if, though struck while the words came with the monstrosity of what she had done, she was incapable of abating a jot of it. “I notified her that he had faults and peculiarities that made mamma’s life a long worry—a martyrdom that she hid wonderfully from the world, but that we saw and that I had often pitied. I told her what they were, these faults and peculiarities; I put the dots on the i’s. I said it wasn’t fair to let another person marry him without a warning. I warned her; I satisfied my conscience. She could do as she liked. My responsibility was over.”