Fennel and Rue Part 16

"I don't like Southerners!"

"I know you don't, mother. But you must honor the way they work and get on when they come North and begin doing for themselves. Besides, Miss Shirley's family went South after the war--"

"Oh, not even a REAL Southerner!"

"Mother!"

"I know! I'm not fair. I ought to beg her pardon. And I ought to be glad it's all over. Shall you see her again?"

"It might happen. But I don't know how or when. We parted friends, but we parted strangers, so far as any prevision of the future is concerned," Verrian said.

His mother drew a long breath, which she tried to render inaudible. "And the girl that asked her the strange questions, did you see her again?"

"Oh yes. She had a curious fascination. I should like to tell you about her. Do you think there's such a thing as a girl's being too innocent?"

"It isn't so common as not being innocent enough."

"But it's more difficult?"

"I hope you'll never find it so, my son," Mrs. Verrian said. And for the first time she was intentionally personal. "Go on."

"About Miss Andrews?"

"Whichever you please."

"She waylaid me in the afternoon, as I was coming home from a walk, and wanted to talk with me about Miss Shirley."

"I suppose Miss Shirley was the day's heroine after what had happened?"

"The half-day's, or quarter-day's heroine, perhaps. She left on the church train for town yesterday morning soon after I saw her. Miss Andrews seemed to think I was an authority on the subject, and she approached me with a large-eyed awe that was very amusing, though it was affecting, too. I suppose that girls must have many worships for other girls before they have any worship for a man. This girl couldn't separate Miss Shirley, on the lookout for another engagement, from the psychical part she had played. She raved about her; she thought she was beautiful, and she wanted to know all about her and how she could help her. Miss Andrews's parents are rich but respectable, I understand, and she's an only child. I came in for a share of her awe; she had found out that I was not only not Verrian the actor, but an author of the same name, and she had read my story with pa.s.sionate interest, but apparently in that unliterary way of many people without noticing who wrote it; she seemed to have thought it was Harding Davis or Henry James; she wasn't clear which. But it was a good deal to have had her read it at all in that house; I don't believe anybody else had, except Miss Shirley and Miss Macroyd."

Mrs. Verrian deferred a matter that would ordinarily have interested her supremely to an immediate curiosity. "And how came she to think you would know so much about Miss Shirley?"

Verrian frowned. "I think from Miss Macroyd. Miss Macroyd seems to have taken a grandmotherly concern in my affairs through the whole week.

Perhaps she resented having behaved so piggishly at the station the day we came, and meant to take it out of Miss Shirley and myself. She had seen us together in the woods, one day, and she must have told it about.

Mrs. Westangle wouldn't have spoken of us together, because she never speaks of anything unless it is going to count; and there was no one else who knew of our acquaintance."

"Why, my son, if you went walking in the woods with the girl, any one might have seen you."

"I didn't. It was quite by accident that we met there. Miss Shirley was anxious to keep her presence in the house a secret from everybody."

Mrs. Verrian would not take any but the open way, with this. She would not deal indirectly, with it, or in any wise covertly or surrept.i.tiously. "It seems to me that Miss Shirley has rather a fondness for secrecy," she said.

"I think she has," Verrian admitted. "Though, in this case, it was essential to the success of her final scheme. But she is a curious study. I suppose that timidity is at the bottom of all fondness for secrecy, isn't it?"

"I don't know. She doesn't seem to be timid in everything."

"Say it out, mother!" Verrian challenged her with a smile. "You're not timid, anyway!"

"She had the courage to join in that letter, but not the courage to own her part in it. She was brave enough to confess that she had been sick of a nervous fever from the answer you wrote to the Brown girl, but she wouldn't have been brave enough to confess anything at all if she had believed she would be physically or morally strong enough to keep it."

"Perhaps n.o.body--n.o.body but you, mother--is brave in the right time and place."

She knew that this was not meant in irony. "I am glad you say that, Philip."

"It's only your due. But aren't you a little too hard upon cowards, at times? For the sort of person she is, if you infer the sort from the worst appearance she has made in the whole business, I think she has done pretty well."

"Why had she left the Brown girl to take all your resentment alone for the last six or eight months?"

"She may have thought that she was getting her share of the punishment in the fever my resentment brought on?"

"Philip, do you really believe that her fever, if she had one, came from that?"

"I think she believes it, and there's no doubt but she was badly scared."

"Oh, there's no doubt of that!"

"But come, mother, why should we take her at the worst? Of course, she has a complex nature. I see that as clearly as you do. I don't believe we look at her diversely, in the smallest particular. But why shouldn't a complex nature be credited with the same impulses towards the truth as a single nature? Why shouldn't we allow that Miss Shirley had the same wish to set herself right with me as Miss Andrews would have had in her place?"

"I dare say she wished to set herself right with you, but not from the same wish that Miss Andrews would have had. Miss Andrews would not have wished you to know the truth for her own sake. Her motive would have been direct-straight."

"Yes; and we will describe her as a straight line, and Miss Shirley as a waving line. Why shouldn't the waving line, at its highest points, touch the same alt.i.tude as the straight line?"

"It wouldn't touch it all the time, and in character, or nature, as you call it, that is the great thing. It's at the lowest points that the waving line is dangerous."

"Well, I don't deny that. But I'm anxious to be just to a person who hasn't experienced a great deal of mercy for what, after all, wasn't such a very heinous thing as I used to think it. You must allow that she wasn't obliged to tell me anything about herself."

"Yes, she was, Philip. As I said before, she hadn't the physical or moral strength to keep it from you when she was brought face to face with you. Besides--" Mrs. Verrian hesitated.

"Out with it, mother! We, at least, won't have any concealments."

"She may have thought, she could clinch it in that way."

"Clinch what?"

"You know. Is she pretty?"

"She's--interesting."

"That can always be managed. Is she tall?"

"NO, I think she's rather out of style there; she's rather pet.i.te."

"And what's her face like?"

"Well, she has no particular complexion, but it's not thick. Her eyes are the best of her, though there isn't much of them. They're the 'waters on a starry night' sort, very sweet and glimmering. She has a kind of ground-colored hair and a nice little chin. Her mouth helps her eyes out; it looks best when she speaks; it's pathetic in the play of the lips."

"I see," Mrs. Verrian said.