Lady Annabel did not look pleased. No doubt there was an obscure connection in her mind between the Ten Commandments and the Rector’s official position.
“My words were, of course, not meant to be taken literally,” she said. “Probably Mrs. Harter is shocked at what has happened, now, as we are all apt to be shocked by consequences when they are sufficiently serious and unexpected. But I must say I have very little pity for a woman who deliberately sets out to wreck the life of a man younger than herself.”
Mary turned rather white, but she had the courage to say:
“Bill Patch was a free agent. Apart from everything else, we ought to remember that he was a free agent. It’s she who’s left to pay the penalty, but it isn’t fair that she should bear the blame for both.”
And then Claire said, “De mortuis nil nisi bonum.”
So far as surface values went, it was a rebuke to Mary. But Mary’s values are not surface ones, and she is quite clear-headed about them. And I believe that Claire herself, in a way, understood better than she would let herself appear to understand. She has far too much intuition not to know that Bill and Mrs. Harter had been involved, together, in an adventure of real spiritual and emotional significance, and that it was Bill who had been allowed the easy way out and Mrs. Harter who, as Mary said, had been left to face the music alone.
Claire understood, to a certain extent. But she had always disliked Mrs. Harter, and it was not in her to accord to a woman she disliked the recognition of spiritual and emotional significance.
Lady Annabel, who bent her head in acquiescence to the “de mortuis” clause, was on another plane of vision altogether. She really couldn’t see any but the surface values.
Captain Patch and Mrs. Harter had sinned; and she was quite prepared to judge and condemn them both. But Captain Patch was dead, and so he could no more be spoken of except with pity and regret. Mrs. Harter, who was still alive, retained full responsibility for everything.
“It is a frightful affair altogether,” said Lady Annabel, “to have caused the death of a young man like that, in the very midst of the errors into which she had led him, without any time for preparation.... Well, I suppose she is satisfied now.”