The Derelict (Bottome, Century Magazine, 1917)/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
Geoffrey took Marcel's note to "The Nest." It was all he could do, but he did n't want to do it.
There was a high wind blowing; the scarlet tulips were over, and there was nothing left of their glory but their rather unsightly sticks. The sweet-peas and the roses had n't yet come out.
It was early in the morning, and Geoffrey refused to go in. He did n't want to see them all sitting round the breakfast-table being shocked at Fanny.
He was n't shocked himself; he was completely bewildered and stunned. He did n't see the point of it, but it had already occurred to him that the point of it was n't being shocked. It seemed to him that to see Emily in the garden alone would be quite enough.
There are some women whom high winds suit; they look their best with their hair blown about their eyes, their clothes flowing, and their color heightened. Geoffrey had thought that Fanny in a wind was like the figure in the Naples Museum called "A Girl Hastening." But Emily was not slim enough to hasten, and moral indignation and a high wind proved very unbecoming to her. She came down the garden path as if she were being pushed from behind. Geoffrey saw that she had already heard from Fanny.
"Look," Emily said, "at this!" She held between her finger and thumb, at some little distance from her, a note from Fanny. Fanny had written:
Dear Miss Emily: I know you won't like and I'm very sorry, but I had to get away. I have gone with Monsieur Dupin to Paris. It was n't his fault. I made him take me.
"Is n't it incredible! Is n't it utterly loathsome and base!" Emily almost shrieked at Geoffrey as they entered a small summer-house together. They had to get somewhere out of the wind.
"I can't understand it," Geoffrey muttered helplessly.
"Understand it!" cried Emily. "What is there to understand? The man is a cad, simply an unscrupulous French roué; and Fanny—I see that now; I trusted her too much—Fanny is really bad. I never knew human nature could be so utterly vile. Think, Geoffrey, think what I 've done for her!"
Geoffrey thought. Emily had spent very nearly twenty pounds on Fanny. She had lent her her cottage for a fortnight, she had given her some old clothes and a great deal of good advice. He remembered what Fanny had wanted to do for Emily, and he looked away from the flushed, indignant face before him.
Fanny would n't have got angry if Emily had done something wrong; she would have wanted to cover it up. Emily was uncovering Fanny.
"I had safeguarded everything as far as I could," she went on. "I never gave her money. I always managed to have it paid for her. It is always safer not to let a person like that deal with money direct. She could n't have paid for her railway-ticket if that wretched man had n't taken her."
"Good God!" cried Geoffrey, "what on earth became of that check I gave you for her, for the sittings?"
"Oh. I never gave her that," said Emily, calmly. "I arranged with her that it was to help with her expenses. I thought it better not. Why do you look as if you were angry, Geoffrey? Surely I had a right to do what I thought best for her?"
"I don't see that you had any right," said Geoffrey, hotly, "to keep money from her that she had earned. If I had dreamed of such a thing, I should have insisted upon her being paid. Can't you see that she could n't get away without taking his money? You forced her to go with Dupin!"
"What perfect nonsense, Geoffrey!" said Emily, impatiently. "Besides, why on earth should she want to go away unless she was thoroughly bad? If she did, she could have said so. Do be sensible about it. I think you are forgetting how I found Fanny and what I have done for her. I have spent a great deal more than that on her, and I would have gladly spent twice as much to save her; but I don't know why we are talking about money. This is n't a question of money; it is simply a question of moral evil. How could they be so base?"
"How do you know they are base?" asked Geoffrey. "Everything one can't understand is n't necessarily base."
Emily had never heard Geoffrey speak like this before. His voice had a hard, cutting quality, and he eyed her completely without adoration; besides, he spoke as if he was on the side of Fanny and Marcel.
"Surely, surely," said Emily, "you don't condone what they have done?"
"My dear girl," said Geoffrey, "I don't condone or condemn anything that I can't make head or tail of. Here is Marcel's letter. Read it for yourself. You will see there they had some extraordinary reason for what they did. That's what bothers me; I can't make it out."
Emily hurled back her hair, and read what Marcel had written. Of course she did n't believe a word of it.
"Do you mean seriously to tell me," she asked, "that you 're taken in by this stuff? My dear Geoffrey, a child would see that Monsieur Dupin has just concocted this to get out of an awkward situation. All that about respecting Fanny is simply the most disgusting hypocrisy. You don't take girls whom you respect to Paris."
"You might," said Geoffrey, perversely; "you might take people anywhere if you respected them."
Emily saw for the first time what the Amberleys meant about Geoffrey. He was incalculable. He might get under the ten commandments or do something silly. She took a deep breath before she answered him; then she said with kindly patience:
"Come, Geoffrey, do you really mean to say that you think Monsieur Dupin has taken Fanny to Paris to treat her like a sister?"
Geoffrey swore under his breath. She had him there. He knew quite well Marcel would not treat Fanny like a sister.
He felt as if the summer-house was extremely small and as if he could n't get out of it. Emily filled it; she filled everything, and she was being more sensible than she was adorable.
"Men always stick up for each other in the most absurd way," she said after a pause. "Now, I was really fond of Fanny, and yet I don't pretend to make excuses for her."
"I think you ought to," said Geoffrey, stiffly. "I mean—I don't see why you say you were fond of Fanny. Why don't you say you are? She's the same Fanny."
"Oh, no, dear, she is not," said Emily, inexorably. "She deceived me. I went at once to Miss Loomis before breakfast this morning and to Fanny's landlady. Neither of them had the slightest suspicion. Mrs. Cadge said no gentleman had ever been near the place, or she would have seen him. They must have met secretly."
Geoffrey winced. He wondered why privacy should be called secrecy.
"And Miss Loomis," Emily went on, "declared that at my special request she had made a point of being present at all Monsieur Dupin's sittings. She says she was never out of the room and that nothing passed between them whatever. Sometimes Monsieur Dupin spoke to Fanny, the simplest civilities, but generally he talked to Miss Loomis herself. Fanny never looked at him. Think how sly she must have been! The whole thing makes me perfectly sick."
"I do wish," said Geoffrey, fiercely, "that you would stop talking as if they were a couple of deceitful conspirators. Even if they did go off together to be as immoral as you like, as far as I can see they are under no obligation to either of us to advertise the fact. There was no reason why they should consult us. I admit it's disappointing for you about Fanny, but nothing you did for her gave you the slightest right to dictate her course of action. She did n't hoodwink you. As long as she could live the kind of life you had urged upon her she did it, and when for some reason best known to herself she decided against it, she gives you the straight tip and walks off. I'm hanged if I can see what you want to tear the roof off for about Fanny. As for Marcel, I know him like the back of my hand. He's absolutely truthful. If he'd carried Fanny off for the fun of the thing, he'd have said so. If he says he did n't, I'm willing to take his word for it. I came up here prepared to apologize for him, but you 've taken the wind out of my sails. You accuse him of too much."
"Geoffrey," said Emily, quietly, "I do not think you are quite yourself this morning. Don't you see, can't you understand, that something really dreadful has happened? It can't even be hushed up. People know all about it. It's been most disagreeable for mother and father! Oh, I never dreamed I should have to urge you to see how horrible it all is! It's immoral; it's impossible to accept such things as the end of civilization."
"As far as I am concerned," said Geoffrey, bitterly, "civilization can end to-morrow."
He was thinking of what civilization had contributed toward Fanny. Perhaps Emily had done rather better out of it; at any rate she sat down and covered her face with her hands.
Geoffrey stood with his back to her at the door of the summer-house. Every now and then his eyes wandered over "The Nest." It was an extremely comfortable, well-built house.
"Geoffrey," she said at last. He turned at the sound of her voice and looked at her.
"I was n't going to tell you," said Emily, slowly, "but I think I must now. What do you suppose Miss Loomis said when I told her about Fanny?"
"I don't know," said Geoffrey in a bored voice. "I don't see why you told her anything."
"She said," Emily went on, fixing him with strange, watchful eyes, "'Well, if Fanny had a fancy, I should have thought it was for your Mr. Amberley.'"
Geoffrey walked down the steps of the summer-house and began kicking at the gravel.
"I hate American women," he said shortly, without looking up.
"Of course," said Emily, steadily, "I told her there had never been anything, not the least little thing to make us think that. There never has been, has there, Geoffrey?"
"I suppose," said Geoffrey, "you think you have a right to ask me a question like that? Well, you have n't. You have a right to ask me if I cared about her, and I 'll answer you. I'm hanged if I know whether I did or not."
He ought n't to have put it like that; he knew he ought n't. What had upset him, what had made him angrier and angrier and less and less a lover, was that Emily only seemed sorry for herself. He kept waiting and hoping that she'd say, "Don't you see it's because I mind so horribly about Fanny?" But she did n't seem to mind it for Fanny. She never seemed to have seen the real Fanny at all, either the Fanny who could do it or the Fanny who would mind it. Geoffrey had seen them both, and stronger than his sense of bewilderment was the sense of how Fanny did n't like it, did n't like this life to which she had suddenly turned back without a reason, without a farewell.
He heard Emily's voice behind him, a little faint as to tone, but quite steady and rather like a gimlet.
"I suppose you know what this means, Geoffrey?" she said. "It means the end of our engagement."
Geoffrey pulled himself together with difficulty.
"That's for you to decide, Emily," he said. "I am at your service. I will do whatever you like, but I can't give up caring for Marcel and Fanny."
Emily rose slowly and came out of the summer-house.
"If you care for what is bad," she asked, standing beside him, "how am I to believe you really have cared for what is good?"
She separated the two quite easily, and he saw that in her own eyes she stood for what was good. The Amberleys, of course, would have agreed with her.
"My dear," said Geoffrey, "is n't the good—what there is of it—big enough for all of us? Have we got to be always picking and choosing in other people's lives?"
"Ah," said Emily, bitterly, "you make it worse. You do condone it. I know why now: it's simply because you like her."
She hesitated for a moment, but Geoffrey said nothing more. He was n't, at this time of day, going to deny that he liked Fanny.
He did not watch Emily leave him, blown between the tattered tulips toward the house. He was still wondering what on earth Fanny had done it for? Could it have been just to avoid what had already taken place, the breaking of their engagement? If she had, how sickening to have had to let her sacrifice be wasted! And yet, was it wasted? For he knew now that if it had n't been broken, things more sickening would have happened still. Fanny had broken their happiness, but could she have broken anything that was n't so fragile as to be a standing danger to life?
It was n't Fanny's fault or Fanny's flight; it was the way that Emily had taken it that had torn the heart out of his devotion for her.
Still, it was rather hard on Emily. Geoffrey continued to think it was rather hard on Emily, and everybody else agreed with him. The Amberleys were furious. They were furious for two years, at the end of which time civilization recuperated, and Emily married Tom.
FINIS