She rose, and they stood looking at each other for an instant.
“I don’t suppose you would care to shake hands with a woman like me,” said Mrs Cork slowly. Her mournful eyes had something shamed and beaten in their depths, something of the longing of a punished child for a kind word. Loree suddenly flung her arms about her and held her close, and then, at last, the other woman’s agonised heart found relief in the tears that had been denied her since she received the news of her loss. Amidst her bitter weeping, broken incoherent phrases came gasping from her lips.
“He was so beautiful, so gay! I wanted only to be good for his dear sake. It was enough—just to be his mother. But when I suddenly lost all my little fortune in a mining smash, there seemed no way to get money to keep him among the right people. He was so brilliant—I dreamed of his being one of the great men of England, some day. I thought, ‘What does my poor soul matter so long as he rises from the ruins of it?’ I would have lied, stolen, murdered, done anything, so that all might have been well with him—and see how the God of Equity intervenes! He knew that no man could ever be great who had a shameful mother—and He had pity on my son. Oh, Loree, Loree—if ever you have a son, starve with him in a garret, scratch with him in the gutter, but never imperil for him your immortal soul. ‘What you give of gold and silver stands nothing; only as much as you have of soul avails.’ Some great man said that, and it is true. Only what you give of the soul avails.”
In the morning, to a wretched Loree, weary-eyed from haunted dreams, came a letter from Quelch. It was restrained and tender, almost gentle, but it sounded the note of one who held the winning cards. Below the bold signature was appended the hour of the mail-train’s departure, and an added word like a cry:
“I have received a blow that only you can comfort me for, my beautiful Loraine Loree.”
She shivered, then burned. The thought that she must carry the memory of his illicit caresses all her life made her sick. Frantically she began to pack, then, remembering Valeria’s instructions, went to bed again. It was a dreadful day of pretence and subterfuge and lying. It seemed to her that she could never again erase from her soul the black marks of all the lies she told that day, that they would tarnish for ever all her future life with Pat. But then, had she not tarnished it already by her own wicked folly?
Under the counsels of Valeria Cork, a subtly evasive answer was written to Quelch’s letter. It told that she was too ill to leave her room that day, and gave no bond to be at the station on the next; it sent no word of love, and was a document that all the world might have read, yet a premise, elusive and fragile as the scent of spring, haunted the simple lines. Valeria’s lips were grim as she invented each delicate phrase.
“Skilled weapons against an unscrupulous fighter,” she contended. “When you are safely gone, he shall know who composed the letter. It is one of his punishments for what he has done to you—and me.”
She moved sombrely about the room, like one walking behind the bier of her dead. Nothing seemed alive in her except her smouldering eyes. At lunch-time, she went down stairs and sat before food she could not eat for the sake of spying out the land of the enemy. But he did not appear. There was nothing to report to Loree except that it was known in the hotel that his going to the Cape had been postponed until the following evening. Afterwards, she wrote a note to him and left it at the office. The office-girl mentioned to her that Mr Quelch was looking terribly ill, and she wondered what the bad news could be he had mentioned to Loree; but she was not a woman to waste time on idle curiosity. Having gone through Loree Temple’s trunks that morning, she had selected therefrom a pair of tan-cloth riding-breeches, a long habit-coat, and top-boots. All the rest of the lovely Viola clothes were stored away in the trunks labelled loudly for Cape Town—except one simple frock and such feminine necessities as would fill a small suitcase. Now she sallied forth to do some shopping, taking the suitcase with her.
“To get it mended,” she told the hall porter, and placed it herself in the taxi. But its true destination was the station cloakroom.