In the Year of Jubilee Part 85

Nancy stepped to the door, and threw it open.

'Leave the house,' she said, in an unsteady tone. 'You said you were unwelcome, and it was true. Take yourself out of my sight!'

Jessica put her head back, murmured some inaudible words, and with a smile of rancorous compa.s.sion went forth into the rain.

On recovering from the excitement of this scene, Nancy regretted her severity; the poor girl in the hideous bonnet had fallen very low, and her state of mind called for forbearance. The treachery for which Jessica sought pardon was easy to forgive; not so, however, the impertinent rebuke, which struck at a weak place in Nancy's conscience.

Just when the course of time and favour of circ.u.mstances seemed to have completely healed that old wound, Jessica, with her crazy malice grotesquely disguised, came to revive the half-forgotten pangs, the shame and the doubt that had seemed to be things gone by. It would have become her, Nancy felt, to treat her hapless friend of years ago in a spirit of gentle tolerance; that she could not do so proved her--and she recognised the fact--still immature, still a backward pupil in the school of life.--'And in the Jubilee year I thought myself a decidedly accomplished person!'

Never mind. Her husband would come this evening. Of him she could learn without humiliation.

His arrival was later than of wont. Only at eleven o'clock, when with disappointment she had laid aside her book to go to bed, did Tarrant's rap sound on the window.

'I had given you up,' said Nancy.

'Yet you are quite good-tempered.'

'Why not?'

'It is the pleasant custom of wives to make a husband uncomfortable if he comes late.'

'Then I am no true wife!' laughed Nancy.

'Something much better,' Tarrant muttered, as he threw off his overcoat.

He began to talk of ordinary affairs, and nearly half-an-hour elapsed before any mention was made of the event that had bettered their prospects. Nancy looked over a piece of his writing in an evening paper which he had brought; but she could not read it with attention. The paper fell to her lap, and she sat silent. Clearly, Tarrant would not be the first to speak of what was in both their minds. The clock ticked; the rain pattered without; the journalist smoked his pipe and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling.

'Are you sorry,' Nancy asked, 'that I am no longer penniless?'

'Ah--to be sure. We must speak of that. No, I'm not sorry. If I get run over, you and the boy--'

'Can make ourselves comfortable, and forget you; to be sure. But for the present, and until you do get run over?'

'You wish to make changes?'

'Don't you?'

'In one or two respects, perhaps. But leave me out of the question. You have an income of your own to dispose of; nothing oppressively splendid, I suppose. What do you think of doing?'

'What do you advise?'

'No, no. Make your own suggestion.

Nancy smiled, hesitated, and said at length:

'I think we ought to take a house.'

'In London?'

'That's as you wish.'

'Not at all. As _you_ wish. Do you want society?'

'In moderation. And first of all, yours.

Tarrant met her eyes.

'Of my society, you have quite as much as is good for you,' he answered amiably. 'That you should wish for acquaintances, is reasonable enough.

Take a house somewhere in the western suburbs. One or two men I know have decent wives, and you shall meet them.'

'But you? You won't live with me?'

'You know my view of that matter.'

Nancy kept her eyes down, and reflected.

'Will it be known to everybody that we don't live together?'

'Well,' answered Tarrant, with a laugh, 'by way of example, I should rather like it to be known; but as I know _you_ wouldn't like it, let the appearances be as ordinary as you please.'

Again Nancy reflected. She had a struggle with herself.

'Just one question,' she said at length. 'Look me in the face. Are you--ever so little--ashamed of me?'

He regarded her steadily, smiling.

'Not in the least.'

'You were--you used to be?'

'Before I knew you; and before I knew myself. When, in fact, _you_ were a notable young lady of Camberwell, and _I_--'

He paused to puff at his pipe.

'And you?'

'A notable young fool of nowhere at all.'