“We’re not.”
“Why not?”
“My husband may return. If he doesn’t, I must stay here and keep up appearances till he gets safely out of the country. Heaven knows what he’s done!—— And it’s likely that I’d come to Topbury to be laughed at! You may want me, but what about Billy? You’ve both known this for a month, and you couldn’t even send me a line. Come to Topbury! No, thank you!”
There was so much to be explained and explanations were so tangled. Nan saw nothing for it but to make a clean breast. When she told Jehane of the years of borrowing that had been going on behind her back, she was justifiably angry.
“So you knew all the time! And for three years it was practically you and Billy who were running this house! And you kept me in ignorance! I must say, you’ve a queer way of showing friendship!”
“We did it because—because we were afraid, if you knew, you wouldn’t love him. And then matters would have been worse.”
“Love him! I’ve not loved him since we married. He started playing the fool directly after the wedding before the train moved out of the station. I knew then that I’d have to be ashamed of him always. I knew what I’d done for myself. He killed my love within an hour of making me his wife—— But how you must have amused yourselves, knowing what you did, when you received my letters about his getting on in the world—his progress! My God! how you must have laughed, the two of you! Every time he gave me a present it was your money.”
All this before the children!
She threw herself down on a couch and gave way to hysterics, wrenched with sobs, screaming with unhappy merriment, clutching at her breast and throwing back her head. The children began to cry, hiding in corners of the room, terrified. Only Glory kept her nerve and, following Nan’s directions, fetched water to bathe her mother’s face and hands.
When the insane laughter had spent itself, Jehane lay still with eyes closed, panting. Shame took the place of harshness. Nan asked whether there were any stimulants in the house; when a half-emptied bottle was brought from the cupboard, Jehane gesticulated it away with disgust. “I couldn’t touch it. It’s Ocky’s.” It was all that was left of his “medicine.”