Fennel and Rue Part 15

"And I don't believe now that the hypothetical case brought any intolerable stress of conscience upon Miss Shirley, or that she fainted from any cause but exhaustion from the general ordeal. She was still weak from the sickness she had been through--too weak to bear the strain of the work she had taken up. Of course, the catastrophe gave the whole surface situation away, and I must say that those rather ba.n.a.l young people behaved very humanely about it. There was nothing but interest of the nicest kind, and, if she is going on with her career, it will be easy enough for her to find engagements after this."

"Why shouldn't she go on?" his mother asked, with a suspicion which she kept well out of sight.

"Well, as well as she could explain afterwards, the catastrophe took her work out of the category of business and made her acceptance in it a matter of sentiment."

"She explained it to you herself?"

"Yes, the general sympathy had penetrated to Mrs. Westangle, though I don't say that she had been more than negatively indifferent to Miss Shirley's claim on her before. As it was, she sent for me to her room the next morning, and I found Miss Shirley alone there. She said Mrs.

Westangle would be down in a moment."

Now, indeed, Mrs. Verrian could not govern herself from saying, "I don't like it, Philip."

"I knew you wouldn't. It was what I said to myself at the time. You were so present with me that I seemed to have you there chaperoning the interview." His mother shrugged, and he went on: "She said she wished to tell me something first, and then she said, 'I want to do it while I have the courage, if it's courage; perhaps it's just desperation. I am Jerusha Brown.'"

His mother began, "But you said--" and then stopped herself.

"I know that I said she wasn't, but she explained, while I sat there rather mum, that there was really another girl, and that the other girl's name was really Jerusha Brown. She was the daughter of the postmaster in the village where Miss Shirley was pa.s.sing the summer.

In fact, Miss Shirley was boarding in the postmaster's family, and the girls had become very friendly. They were reading my story together, and talking about it, and trying to guess how it would come out, just as the letter said, and they simultaneously hit upon the notion of writing to me. It seemed to them that it would be a good joke--I'm not defending it, mother, and I must say Miss Shirley didn't defend it, either--to work upon my feelings in the way they tried, and they didn't realize what they had done till Armiger's letter came. It almost drove them wild, she said; but they had a lucid interval, and they took the letter to the girl's father and told him what they had done. He was awfully severe with them for their foolishness, and said they must write to Armiger at once and confess the fact. Then they said they had written already, and showed him the second letter, and explained they had decided to let Miss Brawn write it in her person alone for the reason she gave in it. But Miss Shirley told him she was ready to take her full share of the blame, and, if anything came of it, she authorized him to put the whole blame on her."

Verrian made a pause which his mother took for invitation or permission to ask, "And was he satisfied with that?"

"I don't know. I wasn't, and it's only just to Miss Shirley to say that she wasn't, either. She didn't try to justify it to me; she merely said she was so frightened that she couldn't have done anything. She may have realized more than the Brown girl what they had done."

"The postmaster, did he regard it as anything worse than foolishness?"

"I don't believe he did. At any rate, he was satisfied with what his daughter had done in owning up."

"Well, I always liked that girl's letter. And did they show him your letter?"

"It seems that they did."

"And what did he say about that?"

"I suppose, what I deserved. Miss Shirley wouldn't say, explicitly.

He wanted to answer it, but they wouldn't let him. I don't know but I should feel better if he had. I haven't been proud of that letter of mine as time has gone on, mother; I think I behaved very narrow-mindedly, very personally in it."

"You behaved justly."

"Justly? I thought you had your doubts of that. At any rate, I had when it came to hearing the girl accusing herself as if she had been guilty of some monstrous wickedness, and I realized that I had made her feel so."

"She threw herself on your pity!"

"No, she didn't, mother. Don't make it impossible for me to tell you just how it was."

"I won't. Go on."

"I don't say she was manly about it; that couldn't be, but she was certainly not throwing herself on my pity, unless--unless--"

"What?"

"Unless you call it so for her to say that she wanted to own up to me, because she could have no rest till she had done so; she couldn't put it behind her till she had acknowledged it; she couldn't work; she couldn't get well."

He saw his mother trying to consider it fairly, and in response he renewed his own resolution not to make himself the girl's advocate with her, but to continue the dispa.s.sionate historian of the case. At the same time his memory was filled with the vision of how she had done and said the things he was telling, with what pathos, with what grace, with what beauty in her appeal. He saw the tears that came into her eyes at times and that she indignantly repressed as she hurried on in the confession which she was voluntarily making, for there was no outward stress upon her to say anything. He felt again the charm of the situation, the sort of warmth and intimacy, but he resolved not to let that feeling offset the impartiality of his story.

"No, I don't say she threw herself on your mercy," his mother said, finally. "She needn't have told you anything."

"Except for the reason she gave--that she couldn't make a start for herself till she had done so. And she has got her own way to make; she is poor. Of course, you may say her motive was an obsession, and not a reason."

"There's reality in it, whatever it is; it's a genuine motive," Mrs.

Verrian conceded.

"I think so," Verrian said, in a voice which he tried to keep from sounding too grateful.

Apparently his mother did not find it so. She asked, "What had been the matter with her, did she say?"

"In her long sickness? Oh! A nervous fever of some sort."

"From worrying about that experience?"

Verrian reluctantly admitted, "She said it made her want to die. I don't suppose we can quite realize--"

"We needn't believe everything she said to realize that she suffered.

But girls exaggerate their sufferings. I suppose you told her not to think of it any more?"

Verrian gave an odd laugh. "Well, not unconditionally. I tried to give her my point of view. And I stipulated that she should tell Jerusha Brown all about it, and keep her from having a nervous fever, too."

"That was right. You must see that even cowardice couldn't excuse her selfishness in letting that girl take all the chances."

"And I'm afraid I was not very unselfish myself in my stipulations,"

Verrian said, with another laugh. "I think that I wanted to stand well with the postmaster."

There was a note of cynical ease in this which Mrs. Verrian found morally some octaves lower than the pitch of her son's habitual seriousness in what concerned himself, but she could not make it a censure to him. "And you were able to rea.s.sure her, so that she needn't think of it any more?"

"What would you have wished me to do?" he returned, dryly. "Don't you think she had suffered enough?"

"Oh, in this sort of thing it doesn't seem the question of suffering. If there's wrong done the penalty doesn't right it."

The notion struck Verrian's artistic sense. "That's true. That would make the 'donnee' of a strong story. Or a play. It's a drama of fate.

It's Greek. But I thought we lived under another dispensation."

"Will she try to get more of the kind of thing she was doing for Mrs.

Westangle at once? Or has she some people?"

"No; only friends, as I understand."

"Where is she from? Up country?"

"No, she's from the South."