The Paying Guest

‘Of course there’ll be no expense for you, Mrs. Mumford—not a farthing. I’ll provide everything, and all I ask of you is just to sit in your own drawing-room—’

‘Mrs. Higgins, be so kind as to listen to me. This is quite impossible. I can’t dream of allowing any such thing.’

The other glared in astonishment, which tended to wrath.

‘But can’t you see, Mrs. Mumford, that it’s for your own good as well as ours? Do you want people to be using your name—’

‘What can it matter to me how such people think or speak of me?’ cried Emmeline, trembling with exasperation.

‘Such people! I don’t think you know who you’re talking about, Mrs. Mumford. You’ll let me tell you that my friends are as respectable as yours—’

‘I shall not argue about it,’ said Emmeline, standing up. ‘You will please to remember that already I’ve had a great deal of trouble and annoyance, and what you propose would be quite intolerable. Once for all, I can’t dream of such a thing.’

‘Then all I can say is, Mrs. Mumford’—the speaker rose with heavy dignity—’that you’re not behaving in a very ladylike way. I’m not a quarrelsome person, as you well know, and I don’t say nasty things if I can help it. But there’s one thing I must say and will say, and that is, that when we first came here you gave a very different account of yourself to what it’s turned out. You told me and my daughter distinctly that you had a great deal of the very best society, and that was what Lou came here for, and you knew it, and you can’t deny that you did. And I should like to know how much society she’s seen all the time she’s been here—that’s the question I ask you. I don’t believe she’s seen more than three or four people altogether. They may have been respectable enough, and I’m not the one to say they weren’t, but I do say it isn’t what we was led to expect, and that you can’t deny, Mrs. Mumford.’

She paused for breath. Emmeline had moved towards the door, and stood struggling with the feminine rage which impelled her to undignified altercation. To withdraw in silence would be like a shamed confession of the charge brought against her, and she suffered not a little from her consciousness of the modicum of truth therein.

‘It was a most unfortunate thing, Mrs. Higgins,’ burst from her lips, ‘that I ever consented to receive your daughter, knowing as I did that she wasn’t our social equal.’

‘Wasn’t what?’ exclaimed the other, as though the suggestion startled her by its novelty. ‘You think yourself superior to us? You did us a favour—’

Whilst Mrs. Higgins was uttering these words the door opened, and there entered a figure which startled her into silence. It was that of Louise, in a dressing-gown and slippers, with a shawl wrapped about the upper part of her body.

‘I heard you quarrelling,’ she began. (Her bedroom was immediately above, and at this silent hour the voices of the angry ladies had been quite audible to her as she lay in bed.) ‘What is it all about? It’s too bad of you, mother—’

‘The idea, Louise, of coming down like that!’ cried her parent indignantly. ‘How did you know Mr. Mumford wasn’t here? For shame! Go up again this moment.’

‘I don’t see any harm if Mr. Mumford had been here,’ replied the girl calmly.

‘I’m sure it’s most unwise of you to leave your bed,’ began Emmeline, with anxious thought for Louise’s health, due probably to her dread of having the girl in the house for an indefinite period.

‘Oh, I’ve wrapped up. I feel shaky, that’s all, and I shall have to sit down.’ She did so, on the nearest chair, with a little laugh at her strange feebleness.

‘Now please don’t quarrel, you two. Mrs. Mumford, don’t mind anything that mother says.’

Thereupon Louise’s mother burst into a vehement exposition of the reasons of discord, beginning with the calumnious stories she had heard at Mrs. Jolliffe’s, and ending with the outrageous arrogance of Mrs. Mumford’s latest remark. Louise listened with a smile.

‘Now look here, mother,’ she said, when silence came for a moment, ‘you can’t expect Mrs. Mumford to have a lot of strangers coming to the house just on my account. She’s sick and tired of us all, and wants to see our backs as soon as ever she can. I don’t say it to offend you, Mrs. Mumford, but you know it’s true. And I tell you what it is: Tomorrow morning I’m going back home. Yes, I am. You can’t stay here, mother, after this, and I’m not going to have anyone new to wait on me. I shall go home in a cab, straight from this house to the other, and I’m quite sure I shan’t take any harm.’

‘You won’t do it till the doctor’s given you leave,’ said Mrs. Higgins with concern.

‘He’ll be here at ten in the morning, and I know he will give me leave. So there’s an end of it. And you can go to bed and sleep in peace, Mrs. Mumford.’

It was not at all unamiably said. But for Mrs. Higgins’s presence, Emmeline would have responded with a certain kindness. Still smarting under the stout lady’s accusations, which continued to sound in sniffs and snorts, she answered as austerely as possible.

‘I must leave you to judge, Miss Derrick, how soon you feel able to go. I don’t wish you to do anything imprudent. But it will be much better if Mrs. Higgins regards me as a stranger during the rest of her stay here. Any communication she wishes to make to me must be made through a servant.’

Having thus delivered herself; Emmeline quitted the room. From the library, of which the door was left ajar, she heard Louise and her mother pass upstairs, both silent. Mumford, too well aware that yet another disturbance had come upon his unhappy household, affected to read, and it was only when the door of Louise’s room had closed that Emmeline spoke to him.

‘Mrs. Higgins will breakfast by herself tomorrow,’ she said severely. ‘She may perhaps go before lunch; but in any case we shall not sit down at table with her again.’

‘All right,’ Mumford replied, studiously refraining from any hint of curiosity.