If you had known that I was meeting him, this scene would have come the sooner, and you would have been ill in consequence.
Oh, God—must I go through this all again?
First with Ambrose, and now with you?”
Her face was white and strained, but whether from fear or anger was hard to tell.
I stood with my back against the door and watched her.
“Yes,” I said,
“I hate Rainaldi, as did Ambrose.
And with reason.”
“What reason, for pity’s sake?”
“He is in love with you.
And has been, now, for years.”
“What utter nonsense…” She paced up and down the little room, from the fireplace to the window, her hands clasped in front of her.
“Here is a man who has stood beside me through every trial and trouble.
Who has never misjudged me, or tried to see me as other than I am.
He knows my faults, my weaknesses, and does not condemn them, but accepts me at my own value.
Without his help, through all the years that I have known him—years of which you know nothing—I would have been lost indeed.
Rainaldi is my friend.
My only friend.”
She paused, and looked at me.
No doubt it was the truth, or so distorted in her mind that, to her, it became so.
It made no difference to my judging of Rainaldi.
Some of his reward he held already.
The years of which, so she just told me, I knew nothing.
The rest would come in time.
Next month, perhaps, next year—but finally.
He had a wealth of patience.
But not I, nor Ambrose.
“Send him away, back where he belongs,” I said.
“He will go, when he is ready,” she replied, “but if I need him he will stay.
Indeed, if you try and threaten me again I will have him in this house, as my protector.”
“You would not dare,” I said.
“Dare?
Why not?
The house is mine.”
So we had come to battle.
Her words were a challenge that I could not meet.
Her woman’s brain worked differently from mine.
All argument was fair, all blows were foul.
Physical strength alone disarmed a woman.
I made one step towards her, but she was at the fireplace, with her hand upon the bell-rope.
“Stay where you are,” she cried, “or I shall ring for Seecombe.
Do you want to be shamed in front of him, when I tell him that you tried to strike me?”
“I was not going to strike you,” I replied. I turned, and opened wide the door.
“All right,” I said, “call for Seecombe, if you wish.
Tell him all that has happened here, between us.
If we must have violence and shame, let us have it in full measure.”
She stood by the bell-rope, I by the open door.
She let the bell-rope fall.
I did not move.
Then, tears coming to her eyes, she looked at me and said,