“Do you hold me absolutely innocent then?” I asked.
“Innocent of harm—yes,” she said. “Because there’s not the harm you seem to think. There’s social shipwreck, of course, but that’s nothing, because they’ll live abroad. There’s the Iceberg’s grief, but that doesn’t matter because he was never really in love. There’s little Rose—but she’s only five and will adjust herself. No, the only real sufferers will be the Captain’s father and mother, who, like all nouveaux riches, were thinking of a grand match for him. They’ll be very sore, and not unnaturally. But the world isn’t for fathers and mothers: it’s for sons and daughters.”
“You are a cynical old woman,” I said, “and I’m ashamed of you. I’m almost sorry I’ve kept you alive so long.”
“You didn’t,” she said. “If I’ve survived it’s been in spite of you.”
“But what of Rose herself?” I asked. “How can this be any but harm to her?”
“Because she’s happy,” she said. “She’s happy now—to-day—and she’s going to be happier once she’s on the sea, sailing away with her boy to make a new home together. She’s got something to squander herself on, and that’s happiness, even when the something isn’t worth it.”
“But her child?” I returned to the point.
“Her child will be all right, too. You—or some one else—will bring her up.”
“I don’t say that it is so in Rose’s case,” the ruthless old commentator added, “but lots of girls are better away from their mothers than with them, and lots of mothers better away from their girls. Children often enough would be the better if they were brought up by other people and not their parents. I’m sure I should have been. My mother and I were like Kilkenny cats most of the time.”
To my intense surprise, who should arrive the next day but Eustace, leading his little girl by the hand. I had expected to hear from him; but I had never thought to have him again under my roof. Vaguely I had guessed that he might associate me in some way with his wife’s action; unjustly, of course, but people are oftener unjust than not, and he was wounded to the quick and in no position to be too fair and reasonable. Besides, it was while Rose was visiting me that she had met Ronnie again, and it was the news of his return and illness in one of my letters to her that (I now saw) had determined her to come just at that time on a visit to her early home. I had touched an old chord and set it vibrating. All this Eustace, I thought, knew, and I was taking his resentfulness, however ill-founded, for granted.