“Never speak to them again? Mamma, what do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I say; and what I say is intelligible even to you. Now, go.”
“But, mamma, I am going to dine with them, and going to the theatre with them afterwards.”
Mamma came a step nearer. She looked very angry indeed.
“Be careful, Norah, that you don’t go too far.”
“Too far! Mamma, what do you mean? You heard them ask me, press me even—especially Major Tibbet—and the arrangements which were made. They are coming here in a body at a quarter to seven;—and you, Eveleen, must have noticed how Mr Hammond begged and prayed I wouldn’t keep them waiting.”
“Norah, let me advise you not to force me to resort to measures which you will afterwards have serious cause to regret. Don’t defy me! You have not seemed to be a child of mine from the day that you were born. You have been a burden to me and your sisters all along. Your conduct this afternoon is a climax. The limits of my patience are nearly reached. Do as I tell you—leave this room.”
“I’ll leave this room with pleasure. After what you have said I’m hardly likely to be tempted to remain. But before I go I mean to have my say and it’s no use, mamma, your trying to stop me.”
I stood up, a bunch of roses in either hand; and though mamma looked as if she would have liked to annihilate me then and there, I fancy there was something in my appearance which persuaded even her that it might be advisable, just this once, to let me gang my own queer gait. I was so much larger than she was, in every way, that to attempt physical coercion would, obviously, be absurd. And it seemed that no other measures would avail; so I had my say.
“You have it that I have been a burden to you and to the girls. Does it not occur to you that there may be another side to that position, and that you and the girls have been a burden to me? I suggest it with no unfilial intention, or in any spirit of disrespect; but doesn’t it? So far back as I can remember you have never treated me as if I seemed to be your child. You have thwarted my every wish, tried to force me into grooves for which nature has unfitted me, trammelled me wherever I sought expansion. You have always held my sisters up to me as models of all the virtues—as I have not the slightest doubt they are—and you have taught them to regard me as half idiot, half monster. I readily admit that they have been willing pupils, so that I verily believe that you and they have come to look upon me as of different flesh and blood than yourselves—almost as something lower than the beasts that grovel. My life, so far, has been an arid waste. I do not think that during the whole of it I have known a week’s real happiness, which is scant measure when you consider what a good time the girls have always had. You must concede that my turn to have a good time is nearly due. If you do or don’t, it’s come. I present, my dear mamma and sisters, an, I am afraid, unpalatable fact—that my turn to have a good time has come. As Audrey puts it—I’m a witch. I’ve become one in the twinkling of an eye—just as it happens in the fairy tales. You have seen how I bewitched those five men whom you have all been so assiduously courting. Yes—courting; it’s no good any of you looking black—it’s the exact word. In your dexterous, delicate, dainty way you’ve all of you courted every man you’ve ever met. Now, I never courted any man.”