I took a chair at a respectful distance from the sofa on which Mrs. Macallan seated herself. The old lady smiled, and beckoned to me to take my place by her side. Judging by appearances, she had certainly not come to see me in the character of an enemy. It remained to be discovered I whether she were really disposed to be my friend.
"I have received a letter from your uncle the vicar," she began. "He asks me to visit you, and I am happy--for reasons which you shall presently hear--to comply with his request. Under other circumstances I doubt very much, my dear child--strange as the confession may appear--whether I should have ventured into your presence. My son has behaved to you so weakly, and (in my opinion) so inexcusably, that I am really, speaking as his mother, almost ashamed to face you."
Was she in earnest? I listened to her and looked at her in amazement.
"Your uncle's letter," pursued Mrs. Macallan, "tells me how you have behaved under your hard trial, and what you propose to do now Eustace has left you. Doctor Starkweather, poor man, seems to be inexpressibly shocked by what you said to him when he was in London. He begs me to use my influence to induce you to abandon your present ideas, and to make you return to your old home at the Vicarage. I don't in the least agree with your uncle, my dear. Wild as I believe your plans to be--you have not the slightest chance of succeeding in carrying them out--I admire your courage, your fidelity, your unshaken faith in my unhappy son, after his unpardonable behavior to you. You are a fine creature, Valeria, and I have come here to tell you so in plain words. Give me a kiss, child. You deserve to be the wife of a hero, and you have married one of the weakest of living mortals. God forgive me for speaking so of my own son; but it's in my mind, and it must come out!"
This way of speaking of Eustace was more than I could suffer, even from his mother. I recovered the use of my tongue in my husband's defense.
"I am sincerely proud of your good opinion, dear Mrs. Macallan," I said. "But you distress me--forgive me if I own it plainly--when I hear you speak so disparagingly of Eustace. I cannot agree with you that my husband is the weakest of living mortals."
"Of course not!" retorted the old lady. "You are like all good women--you make a hero of the man you love,--whether he deserve it or not. Your husband has hosts of good qualities, child--and perhaps I know them better than you do. But his whole conduct, from the moment when he first entered your uncle's house to the present time, has been, I say again, the conduct of an essentially weak man. What do you think he has done now by way of climax? He has joined a charitable brotherhood; and he is off to the war in Spain with a red cross on his arm, when he ought to be here on his knees, asking his wife to forgive him. I say that is the conduct of a weak man. Some people might call it by a harder name."