“And your mother! would any but a child have taken that soft-tongued wanton to her bosom, and not have seen through acting so transparent? Would any but the veriest child that never ought to have been let out into the world by itself have thought to dree her weird in such folly? Children! poor babies they were, both of them.”
“Tell me,” I say—for at such times all my stock of common sense is not sufficient to convince me that the old House is but clay. From its walls so full of voices, from its floors so thick with footsteps, surely it has learned to live; as a violin, long played on, comes to learn at last a music of its own. “Tell me, I was but a child to whom life speaks in a strange tongue, was there any truth in the story?”
“Truth!” snaps out the old House; “just truth enough to plant a lie upon; and Lord knows not much ground is needed for that weed. I saw what I saw, and I know what I know. Your mother had a good man, and your father a true wife, but it was the old story: a man's way is not a woman's way, and a woman's way is not a man's way, so there lives ever doubt between them.”
“But they came together in the end,” I say, remembering.
“Aye, in the end,” answers the House. “That is when you begin to understand, you men and women, when you come to the end.”
The grave face of a not too recently washed angel peeps shyly at me through the railings, then, as I turn my head, darts back and disappears.
“What has become of her?” I ask.
“She? Oh, she is well enough,” replies the House. “She lives close here. You must have passed the shop. You might have seen her had you looked in. She weighs fourteen stone, about; and has nine children living. She would be pleased to see you.”
“Thank you,” I say, with a laugh that is not wholly a laugh; “I do not think I will call.” But I still hear the pit-pat of her tiny feet, dying down the long street.
The faces thicken round me. A large looming, rubicund visage smiles kindly on me, bringing back into my heart the old, odd mingling of instinctive liking held in check by conscientious disapproval. I turn from it, and see a massive, clean-shaven face, with the ugliest mouth and the loveliest eyes I ever have known in a man.