“Mr. Lambert isn’t in, Sir Christopher,” she began at once, as if she had made up her mind whom he had come to see; “but won’t you come in?”
“Oh—thank you—I—I haven’t much time—I merely wanted to speak to your husband,” stammered Christopher.
“Oh, please come in,” she repeated, “I want to speak to you.” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears, and she turned quickly from him and walked towards the drawing-room.
Christopher followed her with the mien of a criminal. He felt that he would rather have been robbed twenty times over than see the eyes that, in his memory, had always been brilliant and undefeated, avoiding his as if they were afraid of him, and know that he was the autocrat before whom she trembled. She remained standing near the middle of the room, with one hand on the corner of the piano, whose gaudy draperies had, even at this juncture, a painful subeffect upon Christopher; her other hand fidgeted restlessly with a fold of the habit that she was holding up, and it was evident that whatever her motive had been in bringing him in, her courage was not equal to it. Christopher waited for her to speak, until the silence became unendurable.
“I intended to have been here earlier,” he said, saying anything rather than nothing, “but there was a great deal to be got through at the Bench to-day, and I’ve only just got away. You know I’m a magistrate now, and indifferently minister justice—”
“I’m glad I hadn’t gone out when you came,” she interrupted, as though, having found a beginning, she could not lose a moment in using it. “I wanted to say that if you—if you’ll only give Roddy a week’s time he’ll pay you. He only meant to borrow the money, like, and he thought he could pay you before; but, indeed, he says he’ll pay you in a week.” Her voice was low and full of bitterest humiliation, and Christopher wished that before he had arraigned his victim, and offered him up as an oblation to his half-hearted sense of duty, he had known that his infirmity of purpose would have brought him back three hours afterwards to offer the culprit a way out of his difficulties. It would have saved him from his present hateful position, and what it would have saved her was so evident, that he turned his head away as he spoke, rather than look at her.
“I came back to tell your husband that—that he could arrange things in—in some such way,” he said, as guiltily and awkwardly as a boy. “I’m sorry—more sorry than I can say—that he should have spoken to you about it. Of course, that was my fault. I should have told him then what I came to tell him now.”
“He’s gone out now to see about selling his horses and the furniture,” went on Francie, scarcely realising all of Christopher’s leniency in her desire to prove Lambert’s severe purity of action. Her mind was not capable of more than one idea—one, that is, in addition to the question that had monopolised it since yesterday afternoon, and Christopher’s method of expressing himself had never been easily understood by her.
“Oh, he mustn’t think of doing that!” exclaimed Christopher, horrified that she should think him a Shylock, demanding so extreme a measure of restitution; “it wasn’t the actual money question that—that we disagreed about; he can take as long as he likes about repaying me. In fact—in fact you can tell him from me that—he said something this morning about giving up the agency. Well, I—I should be glad if he would keep it.”
He had stultified himself now effectually; he knew that he had acted like a fool, and he felt quite sure that Mr. Lambert’s sense of gratitude would not prevent his holding the same opinion. He even foresaw Lambert’s complacent assumption that Francie had talked him over, but he could not help himself. The abstract justice of allowing the innocent to suffer with the guilty was beyond him; he forgot to theorise, and acted on instinct as simply as a savage. She also had acted on instinct. When she called him in she had nerved herself to ask for reprieve, but she never hoped for forgiveness, and as his intention penetrated the egotism of suffering, the thought leaped with it that, if Roddy were to be let off, everything would be on the same footing that it had been yesterday evening. A blush that was incomprehensible to Christopher swept over her face; the grasp of circumstances relaxed somewhat, and a jangle of unexplainable feelings confused what self-control she had left.