Fennel and Rue | Page 9

do this in the hope
that a serious study of them will enable you to share my surprise at the
moral and social conditions in which the business could originate. I
willingly leave with you the question which is the more trustworthy,
your letter to me or your letter to him, or which the more truly
represents the interesting diversity of your nature. I confess that the
first moved me more than the second, and I do not see why I should not
tell you that as soon as I had your request I went with it to Mr. Armiger
and did what I could to prompt his compliance with it. In putting these
papers out of my hands, I ought to acknowledge that they have formed
a temptation to make literary use of the affair which I shall now be the
better fitted to resist. You will, of course, be amused by the ease with
which you could abuse my reliance on your good faith, and I am sure
you will not allow any shame for your trick to qualify your pleasure in
its success.
"It will not be necessary for you to acknowledge this letter and its
enclosures. I will register the package, so that it will not fail to reach
you, and I will return any answer of yours unopened, or, if not
recognizably addressed, then unread.
"Yours sincerely,
"P. S. VERRIAN."
He read and read again these lines, with only the sense of their
insufficiency in doing the effect of the bitterness in his heart. If the
letter was insulting, it was by no means as insulting as he would have
liked to make it. Whether it would be wounding enough was something
that depended upon the person whom he wished to wound. All that was
proud and vain and cruel in him surged up at the thought of the trick
that had been played upon him, and all that was sweet and kind and

gentle in him, when he believed the trick was a genuine appeal, turned
to their counter qualities. Yet, feeble and inadequate as his letter was,
he knew that he could not do more or worse by trying, and he so much
feared that by waiting he might do less and better that he hurried it into
the post at once. If his mother had been at hand he would have shown it
her, though he might not have been ruled by her judgment of it. He was
glad that she was not with him, for either she would have had her
opinion of what would be more telling, or she would have insisted upon
his delaying any sort of reply, and he could not endure the thought of
difference or delay.
He asked himself whether he should let her see the rough first draft of
his letter or not, and he decided that he would not. But when she came
into his study on her return he showed it her.
She read it in silence, and then she seemed to temporize in asking,
"Where are her two letters?"
"I've sent them back with the answer."
His mother let the paper drop from her hands. "Philip! You haven't sent
this!"
"Yes, I have. It wasn't what I wanted to make it, but I wished to get the
detestable experience out of my mind, and it was the best I could do at
the moment. Don't you like it?"
"Oh--" She seemed beginning to say something, but without saying
anything she took the fallen leaf up and read it again.
"Well!" he demanded, with impatience.
"Oh, you may have been right. I hope you've not been wrong."
"Mother!"
"She deserved the severest things you could say; and yet--"
"Well?"
"Perhaps she was punished enough already."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't like your being-vindictive."
"Vindictive?"
"Being so terribly just, then." She added, at his blank stare, "This is
killing, Philip."
He gave a bitter laugh. "I don't think it will kill her. She isn't that kind."
"She's a girl," his mother said, with a kind of sad absence.
"But not a single-minded girl, you warned me. I wish I could have

taken your warning. It would have saved me from playing the fool
before myself and giving myself away to Armiger, and letting him give
himself away. I don't think Miss Brown will suffer much before she
dies. She will 'get together,' as she calls it, with that other girl and have
'a real good time' over it. You know the village type and the village
conditions, where the vulgar ignorance of any larger world is so thick
you could cut it with a knife. Don't be troubled by my vindictiveness or
my justice, mother! I begin to think I have done justice and not