第24章

He never, in whatever situation, rose till all other risings were over, and his breakfasts, at Wimbledon, had always been the principal reason mentioned by departing cooks.The coast was therefore clear for me to receive her when, early the next morning, to my surprise, it was announced to me his wife had called.Ihesitated, after she had come up, about telling her Saltram was in the house, but she herself settled the question, kept me reticent by drawing forth a sealed letter which, looking at me very hard in the eyes, she placed, with a pregnant absence of comment, in my hand.For a single moment there glimmered before me the fond hope that Mrs.Saltram had tendered me, as it were, her resignation and desired to embody the act in an unsparing form.To bring this about I would have feigned any humiliation; but after my eyes had caught the superscription I heard myself say with a flatness that betrayed a sense of something very different from relief: "Oh the Pudneys!" I knew their envelopes though they didn't know mine.

They always used the kind sold at post-offices with the stamp affixed, and as this letter hadn't been posted they had wasted a penny on me.I had seen their horrid missives to the Mulvilles, but hadn't been in direct correspondence with them.

"They enclosed it to me, to be delivered.They doubtless explain to you that they hadn't your address."I turned the thing over without opening it."Why in the world should they write to me?""Because they've something to tell you.The worst," Mrs.Saltram dryly added.

It was another chapter, I felt, of the history of their lamentable quarrel with her husband, the episode in which, vindictively, disingenuously as they themselves had behaved, one had to admit that he had put himself more grossly in the wrong than at any moment of his life.He had begun by insulting the matchless Mulvilles for these more specious protectors, and then, according to his wont at the end of a few months, had dug a still deeper ditch for his aberration than the chasm left yawning behind.The chasm at Wimbledon was now blessedly closed; but the Pudneys, across their persistent gulf, kept up the nastiest fire.I never doubted they had a strong case, and I had been from the first for not defending him--reasoning that if they weren't contradicted they'd perhaps subside.This was above all what I wanted, and I so far prevailed that I did arrest the correspondence in time to save our little circle an infliction heavier than it perhaps would have borne.I knew, that is I divined, that their allegations had gone as yet only as far as their courage, conscious as they were in their own virtue of an exposed place in which Saltram could have planted a blow.It was a question with them whether a man who had himself so much to cover up would dare his blow; so that these vessels of rancour were in a manner afraid of each other.I judged that on the day the Pudneys should cease for some reason or other to be afraid they would treat us to some revelation more disconcerting than any of its predecessors.As I held Mrs.

Saltram's letter in my hand it was distinctly communicated to me that the day had come--they had ceased to be afraid."I don't want to know the worst," I presently declared.

"You'll have to open the letter.It also contains an enclosure."I felt it--it was fat and uncanny."Wheels within wheels!" Iexclaimed."There's something for me too to deliver.""So they tell me--to Miss Anvoy."