“Dear me, I hope I don’t set up for being holy. I should almost prefer the title of smuggler. Still, in my position, it might look awkward. However, I’ve always been a pliant fool in a woman’s hands, and I haven’t the backbone to rise up and protest. If you are determined to smuggle, I suppose you must, but don’t tell me about it.”
“How you politicians do juggle with your consciences,” she retorted. “You would have liked me so much better if I hadn’t told you. You would have known, but you could have pretended not to.” She glanced up in time to catch a flicker of distaste in Miss Ponsonby’s eyes, as that lady hastily withdrew them after a covert scrutiny of the Judge. “But how I run on!” she declared flippantly. “I am afraid we are shocking your good nurse.”
If Miss Ponsonby took note of the condescension in Mrs. Badgerly’s choice of adjectives, she did not betray the fact. She quite repudiated any inclination to be shocked. “You could not do it,” she declared ambiguously, planting the last spray.
Mrs. Badgerly took Miss Ponsonby’s measure deliberately. She had long before admitted the personality. She now divined the quarrel. It gave her a rapturous moment of triumph to realize that there was a woman pulled down by the weight of material circumstances which buoyed her up. The full flavor of her insolence rioted in her blood. What was character, what was personality, to power?
She carried a swagger stick of Philippine camagon wood, tipped with a rare piece of Chinese ivory carving. She swung one knee over the other, revealing a mass of dainty petticoats, and silken hose, and a pair of high-heeled slippers. She lolled back, her keen face supported by one slender gloved hand, while she swished her voluminous draperies with the swagger stick. Even Judge Barton, who knew her so well, was stunned by her audacity. He felt as if each blow were a lash on the shoulders of the woman facing her, who had turned to leave them. He felt that Mrs. Badgerly wanted them so interpreted.
“So glad you are not narrow,” said Mrs. Badgerly suavely, “I hate cats, old feminine cats. I lunched with six of them yesterday. I tried to propitiate them. ‘I’ve been just as bad as bad can be,’ I said, ‘but I am not going to be so any more. I’m going to be good as gold from now on. I’ve even told my husband so.’”
She paused to let the full audacity of her remarks sink into her auditors’ minds. Judge Barton held his breath. It was a masterly inspiration to flaunt her impudence in the other’s face. “What is your purity worth? your delicacy? your refinement? your fastidiousness?” she seemed to exult. “Will they win you notice or consideration? You are not the companion, the friend of this man; I am that. You are his menial. What does his secret opinion of either of us matter? His deference is for me.”
“Yes,” went on Mrs. Badgerly, still blocking Miss Ponsonby’s way with her theatrically shod feet. “I made my little confession—wasn’t it dear of me?—in public, and they looked shocked. Nothing is more vulgar than to be shocked. They sat and stared at one another in helpless bewilderment. They had not a word to say.”
If Mrs. Badgerly felt that the helpless indignation of six ladies whose commercial and official relations with her husband through the medium of their husbands had to be supported by civility to his wife; if she felt that their action formed any precedent for the young woman in a nurse’s cap and apron, she made her first error then and there. The very faintest suggestion of contempt swept across Miss Ponsonby’s aristocratic features. She made a little forward movement, just sufficient to force Mrs. Badgerly to draw back her French slipper.
“Probably they did not believe you,” she said gently; “and, as they could not possibly say so, there was nothing else to be said.”