“I'm considerate of her good name!” he said hotly. “It seems to me that's about the first thing to be considerate of, in being considerate of a person! And look here: it strikes me you're taking a pretty different tack from what you did yesterday afternoon!”
Fanny wrung her hands. “I did a terrible thing!” she lamented. “Now that it's done and too late I know what it was! I didn't have sense enough just to let things go on. I didn't have any business to interfere, and I didn't mean to interfere—I only wanted to talk, and let out a little! I did think you already knew everything I told you. I did! And I'd rather have cut my hand off than stir you up to doing what you have done! I was just suffering so that I wanted to let out a little—I didn't mean any real harm. But now I see what's happened—oh, I was a fool! I hadn't any business interfering. Eugene never would have looked at me, anyhow, and, oh, why couldn't I have seen that before! He never came here a single time in his life except on her account, never! and I might have let them alone, because he wouldn't have looked at me even if he'd never seen Isabel. And they haven't done any harm: she made Wilbur happy, and she was a true wife to him as long as he lived. It wasn't a crime for her to care for Eugene all the time; she certainly never told him she did—and she gave me every chance in the world! She left us alone together every time she could—even since Wilbur died—but what was the use? And here I go, not doing myself a bit of good by it, and just”—Fanny wrung her hands again—“just ruining them!”
“I suppose you mean I'm doing that,” George said bitterly.
“Yes, I do!” she sobbed, and drooped upon the stairway railing, exhausted.
“On the contrary, I mean to save my mother from a calamity.”
Fanny looked at him wanly, in a tired despair; then she stepped by him and went slowly to her own door, where she paused and beckoned to him.
“What do you want?”
“Just come here a minute.”
“What for?” he asked impatiently.
“I just wanted to say something to you.”
“Well, for heaven's sake, say it! There's nobody to hear.” Nevertheless, after a moment, as she beckoned him again, he went to her, profoundly annoyed. “Well, what is it?”
“George,” she said in a low voice, “I think you ought to be told something. If I were you, I'd let my mother alone.”
“Oh, my Lord!” he groaned. “I'm doing these things for her, not against her!”
A mildness had come upon Fanny, and she had controlled her weeping. She shook her head gently. “No, I'd let her alone if I were you. I don't think she's very well, George.”
“She! I never saw a healthier person in my life.”
“No. She doesn't let anybody know, but she goes to the doctor regularly.”
“Women are always going to doctors regularly.”
“No. He told her to.”
George was not impressed. “It's nothing at all; she spoke of it to me years ago—some kind of family failing. She said grandfather had it, too; and look at him! Hasn't proved very serious with him! You act as if I'd done something wrong in sending that man about his business, and as if I were going to persecute my mother, instead of protecting her. By Jove, it's sickening! You told me how all the riffraff in town were busy with her name, and then the minute I lift my hand to protect her, you begin to attack me and—”
“Sh!” Fanny checked him, laying her hand on his arm. “Your uncle is going.”
The library doors were heard opening, and a moment later there came the sound of the front door closing.
George moved toward the head of the stairs, then stood listening; but the house was silent.
Fanny made a slight noise with her lips to attract his attention, and, when he glanced toward her, shook her head at him urgently. “Let her alone,” she whispered. “She's down there by herself. Don't go down. Let her alone.”
She moved a few steps toward him and halted, her face pallid and awestruck, and then both stood listening for anything that might break the silence downstairs. No sound came to them; that poignant silence was continued throughout long, long minutes, while the two listeners stood there under its mysterious spell; and in its plaintive eloquence—speaking, as it did, of the figure alone in the big, dark library, where dead Wilbur's new silver frame gleamed in the dimness—there was something that checked even George.
Above the aunt and nephew, as they kept this strange vigil, there was a triple window of stained glass, to illumine the landing and upper reaches of the stairway. Figures in blue and amber garments posed gracefully in panels, conceived by some craftsman of the Eighties to represent Love and Purity and Beauty, and these figures, leaded to unalterable attitudes, were little more motionless than the two human beings upon whom fell the mottled faint light of the window. The colours were growing dull; evening was coming on.
Fanny Minafer broke the long silence with a sound from her throat, a stilled gasp; and with that great companion of hers, her handkerchief, retired softly to the loneliness of her own chamber. After she had gone George looked about him bleakly, then on tiptoe crossed the hall and went into his own room, which was filled with twilight. Still tiptoeing, though he could not have said why, he went across the room and sat down heavily in a chair facing the window. Outside there was nothing but the darkening air and the wall of the nearest of the new houses. He had not slept at all, the night before, and he had eaten nothing since the preceding day at lunch, but he felt neither drowsiness nor hunger. His set determination filled him, kept him but too wide awake, and his gaze at the grayness beyond the window was wide-eyed and bitter.
Darkness had closed in when there was a step in the room behind him. Then someone knelt beside the chair, two arms went round him with infinite compassion, a gentle head rested against his shoulder, and there came the faint scent as of apple-blossoms far away.
“You mustn't be troubled, darling,” his mother whispered.
Chapter XXVI
George choked. For an instant he was on the point of breaking down, but he commanded himself, bravely dismissing the self-pity roused by her compassion. “How can I help but be?” he said.
“No, no.” She soothed him. “You mustn't. You mustn't be troubled, no matter what happens.”
“That's easy enough to say!” he protested; and he moved as if to rise.
“Just let's stay like this a little while, dear. Just a minute or two. I want to tell you: brother George has been here, and he told me everything about—about how unhappy you'd been—and how you went so gallantly to that old woman with the operaglasses.” Isabel gave a sad little laugh. “What a terrible old woman she is! What a really terrible thing a vulgar old woman can be!”
“Mother, I—” And again he moved to rise.
“Must you? It seemed to me such a comfortable way to talk. Well—” She yielded; he rose, helped her to her feet, and pressed the light into being.
As the room took life from the sudden lines of fire within the bulbs Isabel made a deprecatory gesture, and, with a faint laugh of apologetic protest, turned quickly away from George. What she meant was: “You mustn't see my face until I've made it nicer for you.” Then she turned again to him, her eyes downcast, but no sign of tears in them, and she contrived to show him that there was the semblance of a smile upon her lips. She still wore her hat, and in her unsteady fingers she held a white envelope, somewhat crumpled.
“Now, mother—”
“Wait, dearest,” she said; and though he stood stone cold, she lifted her arms, put them round him again, and pressed her cheek lightly to his. “Oh, you do look so troubled, poor dear! One thing you couldn't doubt, beloved boy: