The Law and the Lady

I could endure it no longer. I stopped her there.

"I understand," I said, "that you wish to give us notice to quit your lodgings. When do you want us to go?"

The landlady held up a long, lean, red hand, in a sorrowful and sisterly protest.

"No," she said. "Not that tone; not those looks. It's natural you should be annoyed; it's natural you should be angry. But do--now do please try and control yourself. I put it to your own common-sense (we will say a week for the notice to quit)--why not treat me like a friend? You don't know what a sacrifice, what a cruel sacrifice, I have made--entirely for your sake.

"You?" I exclaimed. "What sacrifice?"

"What sacrifice?" repeated the landlady. "I have degraded myself as a gentlewoman. I have forfeited my own self-respect." She paused for a moment, and suddenly seized my hand in a perfect frenzy of friendship. "Oh, my poor dear!" cried this intolerable person. "I have discovered everything. A villain has deceived you. You are no more married than I am!"

I snatched my hand out of hers, and rose angrily from my chair.

"Are you mad?" I asked.

The landlady raised her eyes to the ceiling with the air of a person who had deserved martyrdom, and who submitted to it cheerfully.

"Yes," she said. "I begin to think I am mad--mad to have devoted myself to an ungrateful woman, to a person who doesn't appreciate a sisterly and Christian sacrifice of self. Well, I won't do it again. Heaven forgive me--I won't do it again!"

"Do what again?" I asked.

"Follow your mother-in-law," cried the landlady, suddenly dropping the character of a martyr, and assuming the character of a vixen in its place. "I blush when I think of it. I followed that most respectable person every step of the way to her own door."

Thus far my pride had held me up. It sustained me no longer. I dropped back again into my chair, in undisguised dread of what was coming next.

"I gave you a look when I left you on the beach," pursued the landlady, growing louder and louder and redder and redder as she went on. "A grateful woman would have understood that look. Never mind! I won't do it again I overtook your mother-in-law at the gap in the cliff. I followed her--oh, how I feel the disgrace of it now!--I followed her to the station at Broadstairs. She went back by train to Ramsgate. I went back by train to Ramsgate. She walked to her lodgings. I walked to her lodgings. Behind her. Like a dog. Oh, the disgrace of it! Providentially, as I then thought--I don't know what to think of it now--the landlord of the house happened to be a friend of mine, and happened to be at home. We have no secrets from each other where lodgers are concerned. I am in a position to tell you, madam, what your mother-in-law's name really is. She knows nothing about any such person as Mrs. Woodville, for an excellent reason. Her name is not Woodville. Her name (and consequently her son's name) is Macallan--Mrs. Macallan, widow of the late General Macallan. Yes! your husband is not your husband. You are neither maid, wife, nor widow. You are worse than nothing, madam, and you leave my house!"