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"Miss Pennycuick," he continued, as she kept silence, "I want to get
the hang of this thing. Will you tell me straight--yes or no--have
you been giving it out that I left Redford two years ago engaged to
you?"
Her first impulse was to cry out: "Oh, no, no! Not quite so bad as
that!" But on second thoughts she said:
"Yes--practically."
Sudden rage seemed to seize him. He sat up, he crossed his knees, he
uncrossed them, he twisted this way and that, he muttered "Good God!"
as if the pious ejaculation had referred to the Other Person, and his
stare at her was cruel.
"But--but--I have been racking my brains to remember anything--
surely I never gave you--I am perfectly convinced, I have the best
reason for being absolutely certain, that I could not have given you--
"
"Never!" she broke in. "Of course not. It was all my own invention."
"You admit it? Thank you. You formally relieve me of the imputation I
have so long lain under without knowing it, of having run away from my
duty?"
She said lifelessly: "We thought you were dead."
"Hah! I see. You thought it didn't matter what you said of a
dead man? But dead men's characters should be all the more sacred
because they cannot defend them. I should be sorry indeed to leave
behind me such a reputation as I seem to have hereabouts--though,
indeed, a man is very helpless in these cases. He is at a hopeless
disadvantage when a woman is his traducer. I can see that Jim Urquhart
will never be a friend of mine again, whatever happens."
"He shall know the truth. Everybody shall know the truth," said Mary.
"How can everybody know the truth? Only by my own affidavit, and that
would not be believed. Besides, it is not for me to deny--at the cost
of branding a lady a liar."
It was the straight word, regardless of manners, with this sea-bred
man.
"You need not. I know how to do it so that people will believe. I am
going to write a letter to the newspaper--a plain statement, that will
fully exonerate you."
He nearly jumped out of his chair with the fright she gave him.
"You will do nothing so ridiculous!" he exclaimed angrily.
"It is the only way," said she--"the only way to make sure."
"If you do," he menaced her, "I shall simply write another for the next
issue to flatly contradict you."
"Then you would be a liar."
"That doesn't matter in the least. I must be a man first. I am not
going to let you ruin yourself."
"Ah, that is done already! Nothing can make it worse--for me."
He looked at her, taking in the words, in some sort
understanding them. She lifted her eyes to look at him, and what he saw
behind the look went to his kindly heart. He "felt" for her for the
first time.
"May I go now?" she whispered.
His answer was to move to a seat beside her.
"I wish you would tell me," he said, in more humane tones, "how you
came to do it. I would like to understand, and I can't, for the life of
me. You must have had some reason. DID I do anything, unknowing--"
She shook her head hopelessly.
"No. You were only kind and good, as you would have been to anyone."
"Kind and good? Rubbish! It was you--all of you--who were kind and
good. Oh, I don't forget what you did for me, and never shall. I feel"
--it was the very feeling that had so oppressed him in the case of the
lady at Sandridge--"under a load of obligation to you that I can never
hope to discharge. But still--but still--though I trust I showed some
of the gratitude I felt--I cannot remember how I came to give you the
idea--I must have done something, I suppose; one is a blundering fool
without knowing it--"
"No," she protested--"no, no! It was my own idea entirely."
"But I can't reconcile that with your character, Miss Pennycuick."
"Nor can I," she laughed bitterly.
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Cambridge, Ada, 1844-1926 - Sisters