‘Ready now.’
They ate in silence, avoided each other’s glances, wondering which would be the first to speak.
‘Did you arrange with Price to collect Mr Richards’s pension?’
‘I did,’ he said, and seemed to bend even lower over his plate.
‘You were out very early this morning, Margiad.’
‘I had things to do.’
What things?’
She looked him squarely in the face. ‘You make it sound like a criminal offence.’
‘I’m sorry, Margiad.’
‘And you have the right to be.’
‘Will you stop interfering with my life.’
‘I am only thinking of my own, Mervyn,’ she replied, and helped herself to tea, and then quietly added, ‘I thought of your life yesterday. Following this woman round like some little dog. You ought to be ashamed, at your age. Perfectly ridiculous.’
‘Has the machinery of misery started up again?’ he asked, and she thought he would get up and rush out of the room, but instead he went on eating, asked for more tea, and received it.
‘Thank you, Margiad,’ and later he said in a low voice, ‘cannot one be even sorry for a creature?’
‘Which creature?’
‘There you go again,’ he shouted.
‘Don’t shout at me, Mervyn,’ and he saw the colour high in her cheeks.
‘I am not shouting,’ he cried, and shouted. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘I will leave the house.’
‘Leave it then.’
He pushed his plate away, got up, and went to the fire and sat.
‘You have changed Mervyn,’ she said, and when he looked at her, he realised the deep hurt he had occasioned, and got up and went to her. ‘Margiad, forgive me, I am sorry. Look at me, now, I say look at me,’ and she looked, long and steadily, and then he said, ‘What harm do I do?’
‘That is a question I cannot answer.’
When the torrent came she drew away from him, but he gripped her arms, held her tight. ‘Yes. I am in love with Miss Vaughan, I am, I knew it that first night she came to the chapel, I know it now, yes,’ he continued through his teeth, ‘I knew it then, yes, I do follow her about like a dog, and she neither looks nor speaks, but I know, I say I know I can make her happy. Lonely she is, I know that, too. And you know nothing, I mean nothing.’
‘She is only in love with herself, Mervyn, I keep telling you that, and there’s something queer about her, she has no friends, I told you that, too, but you believe nothing I tell you. The days are being torn to shreds, you are never in this house, you are seen, you are laughed at, they think you’re mad, and that’s the truth of it. And from what I hear she hasn’t a penny, living in that awful room at Gandell’s place, and why. Because she couldn’t afford anything better.’
‘That, doesn’t matter to me.’
‘Perhaps she’s as mad as you are,’ she flung at him.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘She told that Mrs Gandell that her father went over a cliff at Tenby.’
His lips trembled, as he made to speak, but nothing came out.
‘Perhaps she threw him over,’ Margiad said. ‘How do we know? We know nothing about her.’
‘You went to Dr Hughes this morning, you went to talk about me, I expect you wagged your head off about your mad brother. Did you?’
She went into the hall, and searched about in her overcoat, came back with a small white box and handed it to him.
‘Take two each night, Mervyn. They’ll help you to sleep better. He said he might come and see you, though he seems to me such a very busy man that he might forget and not come at all.’
He looked at the box held out to him, and said, wildly, bewilderedly, ‘What on earth is this?’
‘Take it,’ she said, and pushed the box nearer to him.
He tore it from her, opened it, and flung its contents into the fire. ‘You’ve actually been spying on me, my own sister. It is I that am ashamed,’ and he grabbed her again, shook her, and shouted, ‘God Almighty. I am a grown man. I’ll leave this house, I’ll take lodgings in the town.’
‘Take them.’
‘I will stop preaching.’
‘Then stop.’
