He looked at her; an eloquent glance. There were two feelings warring in his breast, indignation against his sister for her callousness and lack of consideration, and a rush of protective tenderness towards the sweet martyr so abused, for it is one of the injustices of life that the woman who smiles and looks beautiful will always take precedence in a man’s heart over the assiduous purchaser of cabbages. For a moment sympathy engrossed Martin’s mind, then he smiled; a somewhat difficult smile.
“It is hardly your métier! Still, if it happened that you were in Katrine’s position; if it came in your day’s work—”
“If the garden were properly managed you would not need to buy cabbages! I’d dismiss the gardener!” pronounced Grizel briskly, and once again a dangerous moment had come, and gone. She cowered over the fire, holding out her hands, hitching her shoulders to her ears. Her nose was still red; if Katrine had been present she would have told herself that no man could possibly admire a woman with a red nose, but Martin had not so much as noticed the fact, and if he had, would have felt it to be a wonderful and beautiful thing that Grizel’s nose could be red, like that of an ordinary mortal. It would have appeared to him the most endearing of traits.
“I wonder,” he said thoughtfully. “I wonder Grizel, how you would stand poverty! Comparative poverty, I mean, of course. You have never realised the meaning of money. You have wanted a thing, and it has been yours. You have not adapted yourself to circumstances, circumstances have been made to adapt themselves to you. It is the fashion to decry the power of riches, but in the case of a woman like yourself, young, and strong, and beautiful, and sane, it is folly to pretend that they are not a valuable asset. You have been happy—”
“Yes!” assented Grizel thoughtfully. “Yes!” She stared into the fire, her small face very grave. “I like money; so much money that one need not have the thought of it always before one. It would seem to me debasing to be always considering costs, planning and contriving. It would hold one’s thoughts down. And I have never felt burdened by responsibility. That’s what they say, you know,—the dear, serious folks,—they call wealth a burden and responsibility, but I’ve loved to be able to give and to help. I’ve my own little way about giving...” (The listener smiled. When had Grizel not her own way!) “The public charities must be supported, of course, that’s mechanical; a mere signing of cheques, but the interesting part is to get hold of private cases, and see them through! Will you be shocked, Martin, when I tell you that my particular forte is helping people who have failed through—their own fault! Not misfortune, but drink, gambling, other things, of which they might have kept free, but—didn’t! It’s a kind old world; every one is ready to help the unfortunate, but when a man has had a chance, and thrown it away, when it’s ‘nobody’s fault but his own,’ then,” she shrugged her slight shoulders, “he goes into outer darkness! People have ‘enough to do’ helping those who ‘deserve it,’ and so I do the other thing! My old Buddy has never limited me as to money; the only time when she is annoyed, is when I’ve not spent enough. I have quite a battalion of lost causes dependent on me now. It would hurt to give them up.”
There was a moment’s silence, then:
“And have you no idea?” asked Martin tentatively. “None at all, whether in the end—?”
Grizel laughed. It was rare indeed that she was serious for more than a minute at a time.
“Not—one! Isn’t it odd? Like a position in a feuilleton. Never once has the subject been mentioned between us. I have had, as I said, command of unlimited money since I left school, but she dreads the idea of death; it must never be mentioned in her presence, or anything approximately suggesting it. For the last few years she has been, of course, increasingly irresponsible, but before that we lived always as if the present would last for ever... She has never even alluded to the time when I should be alone.”
“But surely there must have been,—I know, Grizel, that there have been men,—many men!”