I had my hand on the knocker for the second time, when Puss appeared in the doorway.
For a moment we remained staring at one another without speaking. Her hair was disheveled, her face dirty, tear-stained, and irregularly red. Her expression at the sight of me was pure astonishment. I thought she was about to say something, and then she had darted away out of the house again.
“I say, Puss!” I said. “Puss!”
I followed her out of the door. “Puss! What’s the matter? Where’s
Nettie?”
She vanished round the corner of the house.
I hesitated, perplexed whether I should pursue her. What did it all mean? Then I heard some one upstairs.
“Willie!” cried the voice of Mrs. Stuart. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Where’s every one? Where’s Nettie? I want to have a talk with her.”
She did not answer, but I heard her dress rustle as she moved. I
Judged she was upon the landing overhead.
I paused at the foot of the stairs, expecting her to appear and come down.
Suddenly came a strange sound, a rush of sounds, words jumbled and hurrying, confused and shapeless, borne along upon a note of throaty distress that at last submerged the words altogether and ended in a wail. Except that it came from a woman’s throat it was exactly the babbling sound of a weeping child with a grievance. “I can’t,” she said, “I can’t,” and that was all I could distinguish. It was to my young ears the strangest sound conceivable from a kindly motherly little woman, whom I had always thought of chiefly as an unparalleled maker of cakes. It frightened me. I went upstairs at once in a state of infinite alarm, and there she was upon the landing, leaning forward over the top of the chest of drawers beside her open bedroom door, and weeping. I never saw such weeping. One thick strand of black hair had escaped, and hung with a spiral twist down her back; never before had I noticed that she had gray hairs.
As I came up upon the landing her voice rose again. “Oh that I should have to tell you, Willie! Oh that I should have to tell you!” She dropped her head again, and a fresh gust of tears swept all further words away.
I said nothing, I was too astonished; but I drew nearer to her, and waited… .
I never saw such weeping; the extraordinary wetness of her dripping handkerchief abides with me to this day.
“That I should have lived to see this day!” she wailed. “I had rather a thousand times she was struck dead at my feet.”
I began to understand.
“Mrs. Stuart,” I said, clearing my throat; “what has become of
Nettie?”
“That I should have lived to see this day!” she said by way of reply.
I waited till her passion abated.
There came a lull. I forgot the weapon in my pocket. I said nothing, and suddenly she stood erect before me, wiping her swollen eyes. “Willie,” she gulped, “she’s gone!”
“Nettie?”
“Gone! … Run away… . Run away from her home. Oh, Willie,
Willie! The shame of it! The sin and shame of it!”
She flung herself upon my shoulder, and clung to me, and began again to wish her daughter lying dead at our feet.
“There, there,” said I, and all my being was atremble. “Where has she gone?” I said as softly as I could.
But for the time she was preoccupied with her own sorrow, and I had to hold her there, and comfort her with the blackness of finality spreading over my soul.
“Where has she gone?” I asked for the fourth time.
“I don’t know — we don’t know. And oh, Willie, she went out yesterday morning! I said to her, ‘Nettie,’ I said to her, ‘you’re mighty fine for a morning call.’ ‘Fine clo’s for a fine day,’ she said, and that was her last words to me! — Willie! — the child I suckled at my breast!”
“Yes, yes. But where has she gone?” I said.
She went on with sobs, and now telling her story with a sort of fragmentary hurry: “She went out bright and shining, out of this house for ever. She was smiling, Willie — as if she was glad to be going. (“Glad to be going,” I echoed with soundless lips.) ‘You’re mighty fine for the morning,’ I says; ‘mighty fine.’ ‘Let the girl be pretty,’ says her father, ‘while she’s young!’ And somewhere she’d got a parcel of her things hidden to pick up, and she was going off — out of this house for ever!”
She became quiet.
“Let the girl be pretty,” she repeated; “let the girl be pretty while she’s young… . Oh! how can we go on LIVING, Willie? He doesn’t show it, but he’s like a stricken beast. He’s wounded to the heart. She was always his favorite. He never seemed to care for Puss like he did for her. And she’s wounded him — “
“Where has she gone?” I reverted at last to that.
“We don’t know. She leaves her own blood, she trusts herself — Oh, Willie, it’ll kill me! I wish she and me together were lying in our graves.”
“But” — I moistened my lips and spoke slowly — “she may have gone to marry.”
“If that was so! I’ve prayed to God it might be so, Willie. I’ve prayed that he’d take pity on her — him, I mean, she’s with.”
I jerked out: “Who’s that?”
“In her letter, she said he was a gentleman. She did say he was a gentleman.”
“In her letter. Has she written? Can I see her letter?”
“Her father took it.”
“But if she writes — When did she write?”
“It came this morning.”
“But where did it come from? You can tell — “
“She didn’t say. She said she was happy. She said love took one like a storm — “
“Curse that! Where is her letter? Let me see it. And as for this gentleman — “
She stared at me.
“You know who it is.”
“Willie!” she protested.
“You know who it is, whether she said or not?” Her eyes made a mute unconfident denial.
“Young Verrall?”
She made no answer. “All I could do for you, Willie,” she began presently.
“Was it young Verrall?” I insisted.
For a second, perhaps, we faced one another in stark understanding… . Then she plumped back to the chest of drawers, and her wet pocket-handkerchief, and I knew she sought refuge from my relentless eyes.
My pity for her vanished. She knew it was her mistress’s son as well as I! And for some time she had known, she had felt.
I hovered over her for a moment, sick with amazed disgust. I suddenly bethought me of old Stuart, out in the greenhouse, and turned and went downstairs. As I did so, I looked up to see Mrs. Stuart moving droopingly and lamely back into her own room.
Section 6
Old Stuart was pitiful.
I