"Something to do with me? Mr. Kempster! What do you mean? Who can possibly be coming here who has anything to do with me?"
"May, can"t you guess?"
"Guess! How can I guess? What do you mean?"
"It"s your mother."
"My--mother!"
I had expected that the thing would be rather a blow to her, but I had never expected that it would be anything like the blow it seemed. She sprang to her feet. The book fell from her hands, unnoticed, on to the floor. She stood facing me, with clenched fists and staring eyes.
"My--mother!" she repeated, "Mr. Kempster, tell me what you mean."
I told myself that Mrs. Riddle must be more, or less, of a mother even than my fancy painted her, if the mere suggestion of her coming could send her daughter into such a state of mind as this. Miss Riddle had always struck me as being about as cool a hand as you would be likely to meet. Now all at once, she seemed to be half beside herself with agitation. As she glared at me, she made me almost feel as if I had been behaving to her like a brute.
"My aunt has only just now told me."
"Told you what?"
"That Mrs. Riddle arrived----"
She interrupted me.
"Mrs. Riddle? My mother? Well, go on?"
She stamped on the floor. I almost felt as if she had stamped on me. I went on, disposed to feel that my back was beginning to rise.
"My aunt has just told me that Mrs. Riddle arrived in England yesterday. She has written this morning to say that she is coming on at once."
"But I don"t understand!" She really looked as if she did not understand. "I thought--I was told that--she was going to remain abroad for months."
"It seems that she has changed her mind."
"Changed her mind!" Miss Riddle stared at me as if she thought that such a thing was inconceivable. "When did you say that she was coming?"
"Aunt tells me that she is expecting her every moment."
"Mr. Kempster, what am I to do?"
She appealed to me, with outstretched hands, actually trembling, as it seemed to me with pa.s.sion, as if I knew--or understood her either.
"I am afraid, May, that Mrs. Riddle has not been to you all that a mother ought to be. I have heard something of this before. But I did not think that it was so bad as it seems."
"You have heard? You have heard! My good sir, you don"t know what you"re talking about in the very least. There is one thing very certain, that I must go at once."
"Go? May!"
She moved forward. I believe she would have gone if I had not stepped between her and the door. I was beginning to feel slightly bewildered.
It struck me that, perhaps, I had not broken the news so delicately as I might have done. I had blundered somehow, somewhere. Something must be wrong, if, after having been parted from her, for all I knew, for years, immediately on hearing of her mother"s return, her first impulse was towards flight.
"Well?" she cried, looking up at me like a small, wild thing.
"My dear May, what do you mean? Where are you going? To your room?"
"To my room? No! I am going away! away! Right out of this, as quickly as I can!"
"But, after all, your mother is your mother. Surely she cannot have made herself so objectionable that, at the mere thought of her arrival, you should wish to run away from her, goodness alone knows where. So far as I understand she has disarranged her plans, and hurried across the Atlantic, for the sole purpose of seeing you."
She looked at me in silence for a moment. As she looked, outwardly, she froze.
"Mr. Kempster, I am at a loss to understand your connection with my affairs. Still less do I understand the grounds on which you would endeavour to regulate my movements. It is true that you are a man, and I am a woman; that you are big and I am little; but--are those the only grounds?"
"Of course, if you look at it like that----"
Shrugging my shoulders, I moved aside. As I did so, some one entered the room. Turning, I saw it was my aunt. She was closely followed by another woman.
"My dear May," said my aunt, and unless I am mistaken, her voice was trembling, "here is your mother."
The woman who was with my aunt was a tall, loosely-built person, with iron-grey hair, a square determined jaw, and eyes which looked as if they could have stared the Sphinx right out of countenance. She was holding a pair of pince-nez in position on the bridge of her nose.
Through them she was fixedly regarding May. But she made no forward movement. The rigidity of her countenance, of the cold sternness which was in her eyes, of the hard lines which were about her mouth, did not relax in the least degree. Nor did she accord her any sign of greeting.
I thought that this was a comfortable way in which to meet one"s daughter, and such a daughter, after a lengthened separation. With a feeling of the pity of it, I turned again to May. As I did so, a sort of creepy-crawly sensation went all up my back. The little girl really struck me as being frightened half out of her life. Her face was white and drawn; her lips were quivering; her big eyes were dilated in a manner which uncomfortably recalled a wild creature which has suddenly gone stark mad with fear.
It was a painful silence. I have no doubt that my aunt was as conscious of it as any one. I expect that she felt May"s position as keenly as if it had been her own. She probably could not understand the woman"s cold-bloodedness, the girl"s too obvious shrinking from her mother. In what, I am afraid, was awkward, blundering fashion, she tried to smooth things over.
"May, dear, don"t you see it is your mother?"
Then Mrs. Riddle spoke. She turned to my aunt.
"I don"t understand you. Who is this person?"
I distinctly saw my aunt give a gasp. I knew she was trembling.
"Don"t you see that it is May?"
"May? Who? This girl?"
Again Mrs. Riddle looked at the girl who was standing close beside me.
Such a look! And again there was silence. I do not know what my aunt felt. But from what I felt, I can guess. I felt as if a stroke of lightning, as it were, had suddenly laid bare an act of mine, the discovery of which would cover me with undying shame. The discovery had come with such blinding suddenness, "a bolt out of the blue," that, as yet, I was unable to realise all that it meant. As I looked at the girl, who seemed all at once to have become smaller even that she usually was, I was conscious that, if I did not keep myself well in hand, I was in danger of collapsing at the knees. Bather than have suffered what I suffered then, I would sooner have had a good sound thrashing any day, and half my bones well broken.
I saw the little girl"s body swaying in the air. For a moment I thought that she was going to faint. But she caught herself at it just in time.
As she pulled herself together, a shudder went all over her face. With her fists clenched at her side, she stood quite still. Then she turned to my aunt.
"I am not May Riddle," she said, in a voice which was at one and the same time strained, eager, and defiant, and as unlike her ordinary voice as chalk is different from cheese. Raising her hands, she covered her face. "Oh, I wish I had never said I was!"
She burst out crying; into such wild grief that one might have been excused for fearing that she would hurt herself by the violence of her own emotion. Aunt and I were dumb. As for Mrs. Riddle--and, if you come to think of it, it was only natural--she did not seem to understand the situation in the least. Turning to my aunt, she caught her by the arm.
"Will you be so good as to tell me what is the meaning of these extraordinary proceedings?"