Chapter Twenty Seven.
Honor’s Letter.
Bridgie was angry. It was rarely indeed that her placid nature was roused to wrath, but she did the thing thoroughly when she was about it. In a flow of eloquence, worthy of Esmeralda herself, she revived incidents in Pixie’s life, dating from babyhood onwards, to prove to the chairs and tables, and any odd pieces of furniture which might happen to be listening, the blameless and beautiful character of the maid who had even been spurned (“spurned” was the word used) by a recreant unworthy the name of scoundrel. She dived into the past, and pictured the feelings of those past and gone; she projected herself into the future, and bequeathed a Corsican legacy of revenge. She lavished blame on Joan, Geoffrey, herself, Jack and Sylvia, Pat and Miles, even the beloved Dick himself, and refused to hear a word in Honor’s defence. The only person who came unscathed through the ordeal was Stephen Glynn, whom, it would appear, had absorbed in himself the wisdom which every one else had so shamefully lacked.
When Bridgie ended Pat began. The news had had an unexpected effect, in rousing the invalid and restoring him to a feeling of health more powerfully than a hundred tonics could have done. For the first time for weeks past he forgot himself and his woes, and behold a new man, with a strength and vitality astounding to witness. Pat announced his intention of sallying forth and thrashing the beggar forthwith; he dealt bitterly with the squeamishness of the English law with regard to duels, declared in the same breath that he could never have believed in the possibility of such behaviour, and that he had prophesied it from the first. He adjured Pixie repeatedly, and with unction, to “Buck up!” and when the poor girl protested valiantly that she was bucking, immediately adjured her to be honest, for pity’s sake, and “let herself go!”
An ordinary person would have found such a form of comfort far from soothing, but Pixie was an O’Shaughnessy herself, and it did soothe her. She understood that Bridgie and Pat were relieving themselves by saying all that they felt, more than they felt, and that presently the storm would pass and the sun shine again. By to-morrow all bitterness would have passed. She sat in her chair and submitted meekly to be lectured and cajoled, wrapped in a shawl, provided with a footstool, ordered to bed, supplied with smelling-salts, and even—tentatively—with sal-volatile, but she made no attempt to still the storm. She knew that it would be useless!
Finally Pat stumped off to his bedroom, to draft a rough copy of a letter intended to be the most scathing communication which had ever passed through the post; and Bridgie, very white and shaken, seated herself on a chair by her sister’s side.
“Pixie, dear—I’m afraid we’ve not been helpful. ... I lost my head, but it was such a shock.—I flew into a passion without hearing what you had to say for yourself. ... Darling, tell me—tell me honestly—how do you feel?”
“I feel—” Pixie raised both hands, and moved them up and down above her shoulders, as though balancing a heavy load—“as though a great ton weight had been rolled off my shoulders. ... Bridgie! You are angry; I was angry too, but now I’ve had time to think. ... There have been two and a half years since he went away—that’s about nine hundred days. ... Bridgie! If you only knew it—there’s not been one day out of all that nine hundred when you hadn’t more cause to pity me than you have to-day!—”
Suddenly, passionately, she burst into tears.