“I do not think I would have minded so much,” she continued, “if Ethne had really cared for you. But she never cared more than as a friend cares, just a mere friend. And what’s friendship worth?” she asked scornfully.
“Something, surely,” said Durrance.
“It does not prevent Ethne from shrinking from her friend,” cried Mrs. Adair. “She shrinks from you. Shall I tell you why? Because you are blind. She is afraid. While I—I will tell you the truth—I am glad. When the news first came from Wadi Halfa that you were blind, I was glad; when I saw you in Hill Street, I was glad; ever since, I have been glad—quite glad. Because I saw that she shrank. From the beginning she shrank, thinking how her life would be hampered and fettered,” and the scorn of Mrs. Adair’s voice increased, though her voice itself was sunk to a whisper. “I am not afraid,” she said, and she repeated the words passionately again and again. “I am not afraid. I am not afraid.”
To Durrance it seemed that in all his experience nothing so horrible had ever occurred as this outburst by the woman who was Ethne’s friend, nothing so unforeseen.
“Ethne wrote to you at Wadi Halfa out of pity,” she went on, “that was all. She wrote out of pity; and, having written, she was afraid of what she had done; and being afraid, she had not courage to tell you she was afraid. You would not have blamed her, if she had frankly admitted it; you would have remained her friend. But she had not the courage.”
Durrance knew that there was another explanation of Ethne’s hesitations and timidities. He knew, too, that the other explanation was the true one. But tomorrow he himself would be gone from the Salcombe estuary, and Ethne would be on her way to the Irish Channel and Donegal. It was not worth while to argue against Mrs. Adair’s slanders. Besides, he was close upon the stile which separated the garden of The Pool from the fields. Once across that stile, he would be free of Mrs. Adair. He contented himself with saying quietly:—
“You are not just to Ethne.”
At that simple utterance the madness of Mrs. Adair went from her. She recognised the futility of all that she had said, of her boastings of courage, of her detractions of Ethne. Her words might be true or not, they could achieve nothing. Durrance was always in the room with Ethne, never upon the terrace with Mrs. Adair. She became conscious of her degradation, and she fell to excuses.
“I am a bad woman, I suppose. But after all, I have not had the happiest of lives. Perhaps there is something to be said for me.” It sounded pitiful and weak, even in her ears; but they had reached the stile, and Durrance had turned towards her. She saw that his face lost something of its sternness. He was standing quietly, prepared now to listen to what she might wish to say. He remembered that in the old days when he could see, he had always associated her with a dignity of carriage and a reticence of speech. It seemed hardly possible that it was the same woman who spoke to him now, and the violence of the contrast made him ready to believe that there must be perhaps something to be said on her behalf.
“Will you tell me?” he said gently.
“I was married almost straight from school. I was the merest girl. I knew nothing, and I was married to a man of whom I knew nothing. It was my mother’s doing, and no doubt she thought that she was acting for the very best. She was securing for me a position of a kind, and comfort and release from any danger of poverty. I accepted what she said blindly, ignorantly. I could hardly have refused, indeed, for my mother was an imperious woman, and I was accustomed to obedience. I did as she told me and married dutifully the man whom she chose. The case is common enough, no doubt, but its frequency does not make it easier of endurance.”
“But Mr. Adair!” said Durrance. “After all, I knew him. He was older, no doubt, than you, but he was kind. I think, too, he cared for you.”
“Yes. He was kindness itself, and he cared for me. Both things are true. The knowledge that he did care for me was the one link, if you understand. At the beginning I was contented, I suppose. I had a house in town and another here. But it was dull,” and she stretched out her arms. “Oh, how dull it was! Do you know the little back streets in a manufacturing town? Rows of small houses, side by side, with nothing to relieve them of their ugly regularity, each with the selfsame windows, the selfsame door, the selfsame doorstep. Overhead a drift of smoke, and every little green thing down to the plants in the window dirty and black. The sort of street whence any crazy religious charlatan who can promise a little colour to their grey lives can get as many votaries as he wants. Well, when I thought over my life, one of those little streets always came into my mind. There are women, heaps
