“Show this lady out,” I said, and I bowed and went to Walter in the drawing-room. I can only imagine how she must have felt. Nothing frenzies a woman—or a man—so wildly as to be sent away from a “scene” without a single insult given to gloat over or a single insult received to bite on.
The morning paper confirmed her statement of James’s condition. In fact, I didn’t have to wait until then, for toward twelve that night I heard the boys in the street bellowing an “extra” about him—that he was dying, and that none of his family had visited him. Those whose sense of justice is clouded by their feelings will be unable to understand why I felt no inclination to yield. Indeed, I do not expect to be understood in this except by those of my class—the men whose large responsibilities and duties have forced them to put wholly aside those feelings in which the ordinary run of mankind may indulge without harm. I don’t deny that I had qualms. I can sympathise now with those kings and great men who have been forced to order their sons to death. And I have charged against James the pangs he then caused me.
In the superficial view it may seem inconsistent that, while I stood firm, I was shocked by my wife’s insensibility. I had to do my duty, but she should have found it impossible to do hers. I could not, of course, rebuke her and Aurora for not transgressing my orders; but all that night and all the next day I wondered at their hardness, their unwomanliness. It seemed to me another illustration of the painful side of wealth and position—their demoralising effect upon women.
The late afternoon papers announced—truthfully—a favourable change in James’s condition. In defiance of the doctors’ decree of death, he had rallied. “It is that wife of his,” I said to myself. “Such a personality is a match for death itself.” I had a sense of huge relief. Indeed, it was not until I knew James wasn’t going to die that I realised how hard a fight my parental instinct had made against duty.
If I had liked Walter better I should not have been thus weak about James.
When I reached home and was about to undress for my bath and evening change, my daughter Helen knocked and entered. “Well?” said I.
She stood before me, tall and slim and golden brown—the colour is chiefly in her hair and lashes and brows, but there is a golden brown tinge in her skin; as for her eyes, they are more gold than brown, I think. Her dress reaches to her shoe-tops. With her hands clasped in front of her, she fixed her large, serious eyes upon me.
“I went to see James this morning,” she said; then seemed to be waiting—not in fear, but in courage—for my vengeance to descend.
I scowled and turned away to hide the satisfaction this gave me. At least there is one female in my family with a woman’s heart!
“Who put you up to it?” I demanded, sharply.