There had been one interview, indeed, which had tried her very much, and that had taken place a day or two after her arrival at the Warren, when she had met Lizzie Hampson on the road. Lizzie had shrunk from the young lady in whose life she had interfered with such extraordinary effect, but Chatty had insisted on speaking to her, and had called her almost imperiously. “Why do you run away? Do you think I am angry with you?” she said.
“Oh, Miss Chatty!” The girl had no breath or courage to say more.
“You did right, I believe,” Chatty said. “It would have been better if you had come and told me quietly at home, before—anything had happened. But I do not blame you. I think you did right.”
“I never knew till the last minute that it would hurt you so!” Lizzie cried. “I knew it might be bad for the gentleman, and that he could be tried and put in prison; but she would never, never have done that. She wanted him to be free. It was only when I knew, Miss Chatty, what it would do to you—and then it was too late. I went to Highcombe, but you had gone from there; and then when I got to London—”
A flush came over Chatty’s face, as all the extraordinary scene came back to her. “It seems strange that it should be you who were mixed up with all,” she said. “Things happen very strangely, I think, in life; one can never tell—If you have no objection, I should like you to tell me something of—. I saw her—do you remember? here, on this very road: and you told me—ah! that to put such people in penitentiaries would not do; that they wanted to enjoy themselves. Do you remember? It seemed very strange to me then. And to think that—” This moved Chatty more than all the rest had done. Her soft face grew crimson, her eyes filled with tears.
“To think that she—oh, Miss Chatty, I feel as if I ought to go down on my knees and ask you to forgive me for ever having anything to do with her.”
“That was no fault of yours, I think,” said Chatty very softly. “It can have been nobody’s fault. It is just because—it has happened so: that makes it harder and harder: none of us meant any harm—except perhaps—”
“Miss Chatty, she didn’t mean any harm to you. She meant no harm to anyone. She was never brought up to care for what was good. She was brought up just to please her fancy. Oh, the like of you can’t understand, if you were to be told ever so: nor should I if I hadn’t seen it. They make a sort of principle of that, just to please their fancy. We’re taught here that to please ourselves is mostly wrong: but not there. It’s their religion in a kind of a way, out in these wild places, just to do whatever they like; and then when you come to grief, if you are plucky and take it cheerful—The very words sound dreadful, here where everything is so different,” Lizzie said, with a shudder, looking round her, as if there might be ears in the trees.
Chatty did not ask any further questions. She walked along very gravely, with her head bent. “It makes one’s heart ache,” she said. There was an ease in speaking to this girl who had played so strange a part in her life, who knew her trouble as no one else did. “It makes one’s heart ache,” she repeated. She was not thinking of herself. “And where is she now? Do you hear of her? Do you know what has become of her?”
“Only one thing can become of her,” said Lizzie. “She’ll fall lower and lower. Oh, you don’t think a poor creature can fall any lower, I know,” for Chatty had looked at her with wonder, shaking her head; “but lower and lower in her dreadful way. One day there,” said Lizzie philosophically, but sadly, pointing to the high wall of the Elms, “with her fine dresses and her horses and carriages: and the next in dirt and misery. And then she’ll die, perhaps in the hospital. Oh, she’ll not be long in anybody’s way. They die soon, and then they are done with, and everybody is glad of it—” the girl cried, with a burst of sudden tears.
Chatty stopped suddenly upon the road. They were opposite to the gate from which so often the woman they were discussing had driven forth in her short-lived finery; a stillness as of death had fallen on the uninhabited house, and all was tranquil on the country road, stretching on one side across the tranquil fields, on the other towards the clustering houses of the village and the low spire which pointed to heaven. “Lizzie,” she said, “if it is never put right—and perhaps it will never be put right, for who can tell?—if you will come with me who know so much about it, we will go and be missionaries to these poor girls. I will tell them my story, and how I am married but have no husband, and how three lives are all ruined—all ruined forever. And we will tell them that love is not like that; that it is
