IV.
The groans and curses of her adored Bob, his bulgy mouth and shutting eyes, his tender nose and the encrimsoned water where he had layed his wounds—these had so acted upon Mrs. Chater's nerves, plunged her into such vortex of hysteria, that the manner of her reception of Mary was true reflection of her fears, nothing dissembled.
Withdrawing her agitated face from the dining-room window as Mary and the children approached, she bounded heavily to the door; flung it ajar; collapsed to her knees upon the mat; clasped David and Angela to that heaving bosom.
“Safe!” she wailed. “Safe! Thank God, my little lambs are safe!”
Distraught she swayed and hugged; kissed and moaned again.
David pressed away. “You smell like whisky, mummie,” he said.
It was a dash of icy water on a fainting fit; wonderfully it strung the demented woman's senses. She pushed her little lambs from her; fixed Mary with awful eye.
“So you've come back—Miss?”
Mary quivered.
“I wonder you dared. I wonder you had the boldness to face me after your wicked behaviour. You've got nothing to say for yourself. I'm not surprised—”
Mary began: “Mrs. Chater, I—”
“Oh, how can you? How can you dare defend yourself? Never, never in all my born days have I met with such ingratitude; never have I been deceived like this. I took you in. I felt sorry for you. I fed you, clothed you, cared for you, treated you as one of my own family; and this is my reward. There you stand, unable to say a word—”
“If you think, Mrs. Chater—”
“Don't speak! I won't hear you. Here have I day after day been entrusting my beloved lambs to your care, and heaven alone knows what risks they have run. My boy—my Bob, who would die rather than get a living soul into trouble—sees you with this man you have been going about with. He does his duty to me, his mother, and to my precious lambs, his brother and sister, by reproving you, and you set this man—this low hired bully—upon him to murder him. I'll have the law on the coward. I'll punish him and I'll punish you, miss. No wonder you were frightened when my Bob caught you. No wonder.”
“That is untrue, Mrs. Chater.”
“Don't speak!”
“I will speak. I shall speak. It is untrue.”
“You dare—”
“It is a lie. Yes, I don't mind what I say when you speak to me like that. It is a wicked lie.”
“Girl—!”
“If your son told you he caught me with the man who thrashed him as he deserved, he told you a lie. He never saw me with him. He followed me into the Park this morning and tried to repeat what he did on Friday night. He is a coward and a cad. The man to whom I am engaged caught him at it and thrashed him as he deserved. There! Now you know the truth!”
Very white, my ridiculous Mary pressed her hand to her panting breast; stopped, choked by the wild words that came tumbling up into her mouth.
Very red, swelling and panting in turkey-cock fury, Mrs. Chater, towering, swallowed and gasped, breathless before this vixenish attack.
But she was the first to find speech; and incoherently she stormed as at a scratching do those persons whose true selves lie beneath a tissue film of polish.
She bubbled and panted: “Oh, you wicked girl!—oh, you wicked girl!—oh, you wicked girl!—bold as brass-calling me a liar—me—and my battered boy—engaged indeed!—I'll have the law and the police and the judges—my solicitors—libel and assault, and slander and attempted murder—boxes searched—my precious lambs to hear their mother spoken to like this—get out of the hat-rack, David, and go upstairs this instant—Angela, don't stand there—if I wasn't a lady I'd box your ears, miss—only a week ago didn't I give you a black silk skirt of mine?—and fed you like a princess, with a soft feather pillow too, because you said the bolster made your head ache—servants to wait on you hand and foot—and this is my reward—how I keep my hands off you heaven only knows—but you shall suffer, miss—oh, yes you shall—I'll give you in charge—I'll call a policeman.”
She turned towards the kitchen stairs; screamed “Susan! Kate! Jane! Susan!”
Small need to bellow. Around the staircase corner three white-capped heads—Kate holding back Susan, Susan restraining Jane, Jane holding Kate—had been with delighted eyes and straining ears bathing in this rare scene. With glad unanimity they broke their restraint one upon the other; crushed pell-mell, hustling up the narrow stairs.
Mrs. Chater plumped back into a chair; with huge hands fanned her heated face. “Fetch a policeman!”
They plunged for the door.
Bob's swollen countenance came over the banisters. He roared “Stop!”
Kate, Jane and Susan swung between the conflicting authorities.
“Call a policeman! Summon a constable! Fetch an officer!” In gusty breaths from behind Mrs. Chater's hands, working like a red paddle-wheel, came the commands.
“Stop!” roared Bob; and to enforce pushed forward the battered face till it stuck out flat over the hall.
His alarmed mother screamed: “Bob, you'll fall over the banisters!”
The two kept up a battledore and shuttlecock of agitated conversation.
“Well, stop those women!” Bob cried; “for God's sake, stop them, mother! What on earth are you thinking of?”
“I'll give her in charge!”
“You can't, you can't. Oh, my God, what a house this is!”
“She called me a liar!”
“You can't charge her for that.”
“She half murdered you!”
“She never touched me. Why don't you do as I told you? Why don't you send her away?”
“Mercy, Bob! you'll fall and kill yourself!”
“Do as I say, then! Do as I say!”
“Well, put back your head! Put back your head.”
“Do as I say, then!”
Mrs. Chater stopped the paddle-wheel; rose to her feet. Bob's ghastly face drew in to safer limits. She addressed Mary: “Again my boy has interceded for you. Oh, how you must feel!” She addressed the maids: “Is her box packed?”
They chorused “Yes”; pointed, and Mary saw her tin box, corded, set against the wall.
“Call a cab,” Mrs. Chater commanded; and as the whistle blew she turned again upon Mary.
“Now, miss, you may go. I pack you off as you deserve. But before you go—”
The battered face shot out again above the banisters: “Pay her her wages and send her away, mother. Do, for goodness' sake, send her away!”
“Wages! Certainly not! Mercy! Your head again! Go back, Bob!”
The maddened, pain-racked Bob bellowed: “Oh, stop it! stop it! I shall go mad in a minute. She is entitled to her wages. Pay her.”
“I won't!”
“Well, I will. Susan! Susan, come up here and take this money. How much is it?”
“She is not to be paid,” Mrs. Chater trumpeted.
“She is to be paid,” bawled her son. “Do you want an action brought against you? Oh, my God, what a house this is!”
“My boy! You will fall! Very well, I'll pay her.” Mrs. Chater turned to Mary. “Again and yet again my son intercedes for you, miss. Oh, how you must feel!” She grabbed around her dress for her pocket; found a purse; produced coins; banged them upon the table. “There!”
And now my Mary, who had stood upright breasting these successive surges, spoke her little fury.
With a hand she swept the table, sending the coins flying this way and that—with them a card salver, a vase, a pile of prayer-books. With her little foot she banged the floor.
“I would not touch your money—your beastly money. You are contemptible and vulgar, and I despise you. Mr. Chater, if you are a man you will tell your mother why you were thrashed. Do you dare to say you interfered because you found me with someone? Do you dare?”
With masterly strategy Bob drove home a flank attack. To have affirmed he did dare might lead to appalling outburst from this little vixen. He said very quietly, as though moved by pity: “Please do not make matters worse by blustering, Miss Humfray.” He sighed: “I bear you no ill-will.”
My poor Mary allowed herself to be denuded of self-possession. His words put her control to flight; left her exposed. Tears started in her eyes. She made a little rush for the stairs. “Oh, you coward!” she cried. “You coward! I will make you say the truth.”
Would she have clutched the skirts of his dressing-gown, forgetting the proper modesty of a nice maiden, and dragged him down the stairs? Would she indelicately have pursued him to his very bedroom, and there, regardless of his scanty dress, have assaulted him?
Bob believed she would. It is so easy for the world's heroines to remain calm against attack. My Mary was made of commoner stuff—the wretched, baser clay of which not I, but my neighbours, not you, but your acquaintances, are made.
Bob believed she would. He cried, “Send her away! Why the devil don't you send her away?”; gathered his skirts; fled for the safety of a locked door.
Mrs. Chater believed she would. Mrs. Chater plunged across the hall; stood, an impassable and panting guardian, upon the lowermost step. Her outstretched arm stayed Mary; a voice announced, “The cab'm.”
My Mary stood a moment; little fists clenched, flashing eyes; blinked against the premonition of a rush of tears; then, as they came, turned for the door.
“Go!” trumpeted Mrs. Chater. “Go!”
Mary was upon the mat when Angela and David made a little rush; caught her skirts. The alarming scenes had hurtled in sequence too rapid and too violent to be by the children understood. But a scrap here and a scrap there they had caught, retained, correctly interpreted; and the whole, though it supplied no reason, told clearly that their adored Mary was going from them.
“You're coming back soon, aren't you?” David cried.
“You're not going away, are you, Miss Humf'ay?” implored Angela.
Mrs. Chater shrilled: “Children, come away. Come here at once.”
Mary dropped one knee upon the mat; caught her arms about the children. She pressed a cool face against each side her wet and burning countenance, gave kisses, and upon the added stress of this new emotion choked: “Good-bye, little ducklings!”
“Oh, darling, darling Miss Humf'ay, we will be good if you'll stay!” They felt this was the desperate threat that so often followed their misdemeanours put into action.
She held them, hugging them. “It isn't that. You have been good.”
“Then you said you would stay for ever and ever if we were good.”
“Not ever and ever; I said—I said perhaps a fairy prince would come to take me. Didn't I?”
This was the romance that forbade tears. But David had doubts. He regarded the hansom at the door: “That's a cab, not a carriage. Fairy princes don't come in cabs.”
“The prince is waiting. Kiss me, darling Davie. Angie, dear, dear Angle, kiss me.”
She rose. Mrs. Chater had come from the stairs, now laid hands upon the small people and dragged them back from the pretty figure about which they clung.
They screamed, “Let me go!”
David roared; dropped prone upon the mat to kick and howl: “Take away your hand, mother!”
Angela gasped: “Oh, comeback, comeback, darling Miss Humf'ay!”
With a glare of defiance into Mrs. Chater's stormy eyes, my Mary stooped over David.
“David!” The calm ring of the tones he had learned to obey checked his clamour, his plunging kicks. She stooped; kissed him. “Be good as gold,” she commanded. “Promise.”
“Good as gold—yes—p'omise,” David choked.
Angela was given, and gave, the magic formula. Mary stepped back. Susan slammed the door.
With quivering lips my Mary walked to the cab.
“Drive down the street,” she choked; lay back against the cushions; gave herself to shaking sobs.