Part 15 (2/2)
”It is bad form to SHOW that you are wild, you know, even if you feel so.”
”I am just wondering whether you feel so. You are not used to hiding your feelings--at any rate, from me. I expected to find you out of your mind almost.”
”What's the use? If I raved till doomsday I couldn't alter anything.
The mischief is done. It is no use crying over spilt milk, my dear.”
”You look as if you did not want to cry.” ”Do I?”
”As if it did not much matter to you whether it was spilt or not.” ”It doesn't matter to me, compared with what it matters to her.” ”Well, it matters to ME,” Claud Dalzell announced, in a high tone, the crust of his fine manners giving to the pressure of the volcano within. ”I can't stand the connection, if you can. Carey was bad enough, but he had some claim beside his coat to rank as a gentleman. This crawling a.s.s, who would lick your boots for sixpence, to have him patting me on the back and calling himself my brother--Good G.o.d! it's too sickening.”
”Not YOUR brother,” Deb gently corrected him.
”He is mine if he is yours.” ”Oh, not necessarily!”
”Deb,” said Claud, with an air of desperation, planting himself before her, ”what are you going to do?”
She looked up at him with narrowing eyes and stiffening lips.
”What IS there to do?” she returned. ”Are you going to put up with this--this outrage--to condone everything--to tolerate that fellow at Redford, taking the position of a son of the house, or are you going to show them both that they have forfeited their right ever to set foot upon the place again?”
”My sister too, you mean?”
”Certainly--if you can still bring yourself to call her your sister.
She belongs to him now, not to us. She has voluntarily cut herself off from her world. Let her go. Deb, if you love me--”
He paused, and Deb smiled into his handsome but disgusted face.
”Ah, is that to be a test of love?” she asked. ”I understand. I am to choose between you. Well”--she rose, towering, drawing the big diamond from her engagement finger--”I am going to her now. I ought to have been there hours ago, but waited back to receive you. Good-bye! And pray, don't come again to this contaminated house. We have too horribly gone down in the world. I know it, and I would not have you compromised on any account. We Pennycuicks, we don't abandon our belongings, especially when they may be dying; we sink or swim together.” She held the jewel out to him.
”What rot!” he blurted vulgarly, flus.h.i.+ng with anger that was not unmixed with shame. ”Why will you wilfully misunderstand me? Put it on, Deb--put it on, and don't be so childish.”
”I will not put it on,” said she, ”until you apologise for the things you have been saying to me, and the manner of your saying them.”
”My dear child, I do apologise humbly, if I have said what I shouldn't.
Perhaps I have; but I thought we were past the need for reserves and for weighing words, you and I. And really, Debbie, you know--”
”Hus.h.!.+” She stopped him from further arguing; but she did not stop him from taking her hand and cramming the diamond back into its old place.
”I must go. Father cannot--he is ill himself; and Miss Keene is too frightfully modest to nurse him alone, so that I must send Keziah back, and stay--”
”Can't Miss Keene go and send her back, and stay?”
”Oh, she would be no use in such an illness as Mary's. And I must see for myself how things are--whether they are taking proper care of the poor, unfortunate child--”
”Is she so very ill? I did not know that.”
There was commiseration in his tone, but in his heart he hoped that the deservedly sick woman would crown her escapades by dying as quickly as possible. Then, perhaps, he could forgive her.
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