A Little Treachery

23

‘She knows me? – she has spoken to me?’ Catherine cried in a tone of horror, and felt that peculiar stiffening of the face which means that one has gone pale.

‘So she said,’ returned Emmy, looking at her curiously. Then again the girl had an air of hesitating and choosing her words. ‘For one thing, she met you, she says, at the schoolmaster’s house, the headmaster of the school down in the town – where the little innocents come from. Is he a pal of yours? Never heard you say so. Truth is, I didn’t quite get the run of it.’

Catherine let her breath go in a sigh. ‘Why, of course,’ she replied calmly enough. ‘Emmy, you gave me a fright. Well, let me explain. No, he’s not a friend, I had never met him till I called at his house, not long before you came. I called to speak about the children, you know. It had got so bad that I really could hardly bear it any more. It was a persecution. So I screwed myself up to it. He was very decent and promised to do what he could, and he did make an impression on them somehow. Of course we don’t go on without incidents, do we? But at least it’s nothing like it was.’

‘More owing to me than him, I should say.’ And Emmy skilfully speared two pieces of bread on a three-pronged toasting-fork.

‘Well, he was very decent. But I felt quite ill. And perhaps looked it, for he very kindly asked me to stop for a cup of tea. Only, then, to my dismay, I found myself walking into quite a big gathering, nine or ten people. That confused me, I lost my head, and I couldn’t tell you two names. The worst of it was that they all started to discuss my business, and with an odd sort of interest, I thought, not really accountable, staring at me and talking across me, rather. Well, perhaps I fancied some of it – I was in such a state.’

But Emmy could hardly be expected to understand what a state it had been. ‘We never could understand why those children set upon our house so,’ Catherine said in a low, tremulous voice; for in her mind she had gone back to that lowering, suffocating winter and was overwhelmed by a memory of how, at the last, she had not been able to prevent Clem from running out, more than once, greatly agitated, to try to stop the culprits and plead with them.

She went on, abstractedly, with her eyes on the flames, ‘But after I was left alone – When I was alone, I ran out once or twice in a dreadful state to try to catch them.’

‘What I did myself the other day, and caught him, too, and half murdered him – and so I told Mrs S.,’ Emmy said cheerfully. ‘But you have to be nippy. And if you don’t catch them, it’s worse than useless. You didn’t? No, that’s what I thought – Ur! Why don’t they make them with four prongs?’

‘Never mind, it isn’t much burnt. Well, perhaps I said something pretty violent about the children. But I don’t remember. And I don’t remember this woman, though I must have spoken to her, I suppose, if she says so. I got away as soon as I could.’

But she could not be unconscious of the quality of Emmy’s listening, extremely intent, and of her eyes, curious and then evasive and kept occupied with the toast; and finally there was a pause.

‘Well, yes – it was what you said about the children,’ the girl answered at last, and again came out with her little qualifying phrase, ‘For one thing.’

‘Does she really think I threw a stone at them?’ Catherine asked dryly.

‘No, of course not. I could see she didn’t. But she’s unscrupulous, if you know what I mean.’

At this point, the door was pushed open and Simon stood on the threshold, with the back of his wrist pressed to his mouth. Over this, he stared at them, he glared, and Catherine was shocked at the hysteric fury expressed in the twist of the pencilled brows over the dark eyes, which glittered with tears.

‘You should have come up!’ the little boy said in a voice choked with rage. ‘You should have called up again! You should have come up and asked me! You should have asked me! I wanted you to come up and ask me again!’

Catherine trembled in sudden, barely controllable impatience, like a sick person. She was conscious of a fear that she would never be able to stand it, a realization that something within her was too much worn and shaken to bear any more strain, any at all. And what degree of subtlety was required to deal with this? What degree of perception, of intuition, and, above all, of experience – everything which she lacked, as she felt? She was shocked for the child’s sake at what she had done in taking him so lightly. But while she hesitated, Emmy, with her mouth full of biscuit, simply reached out, gave a twirl to one of the plates and shoved it across the table towards him. On this plate, Simon’s eyes fell and fixed; it held a cheap-looking but very showy sugar cake on which, with a careless, hasty hand, Emmy had traced out the word ‘Simon’ in chocolate, and a heart shot through. Catherine was astonished at the simplicity of them both – and, indeed, at her own.

‘But, even now,’ said Emmy, going on as if nothing had happened, ‘you haven’t heard the funny part of my adventures – what I call the funny part.’