Edith Wharton - SSC 09 by Human Nature (v2.1)

it’s entirely between Mrs.
Glenn and me.
                 I
tightened my hold on Mrs. Glenn’s hand, and sat looking at Mrs. Brown in the
hope that a silent exchange of glances might lead farther than the vain
bandying of arguments. For a moment she seemed dominated; I began to think she
had read in my eyes the warning I had tried to put there. If there was any
money left I might be able to get it from Catherine after her own attempts had
failed; that was what I was trying to remind her of, and what she understood my
looks were saying. Once before I had done the trick; supposing she were to
trust me to try again? I saw that she wavered; but her brain was not alert, as
it had been on that other occasion. She continued to stare at me through a blur
of drink and anger; I could see her thoughts clutching uneasily at my
suggestion and then losing their hold on it. “Oh, we all know you think you’re
God Almighty!” she broke out with a contemptuous toss.
                 “I
think I could help you if I could have a quiet talk with Mrs. Glenn.”
                 “Well,
you can have your quiet talk.” She looked about her, and pulling up a chair
plumped down into it heavily. “I’d love to hear what you’ve got to say to each
other,” she declared.
                 Mrs.
Glenn’s hand began to shake again. She turned her head toward Mrs. Brown. “My
dear, I should like to see my friend alone.”
                 “‘I
should like! I should like!’ I daresay you would. It’s always been what you’d like—but now it’s going to be what
I choose. And I choose to assist at the conversation between Mrs. Glenn and Mr.
Norcutt, instead of letting them quietly say horrors about me behind my back.”
                 “Oh,
Chrissy—” my old friend murmured; then she turned to me and said: “You’d better
come back another day.”
                 Mrs.
Brown looked at me with a sort of feeble cunning. “Oh, you needn’t send him
away. I’ve told you my friend’s coming—he’ll be here in a minute. If you’ll
sign that letter I’ll take it to the bank with him, and Mr. Norcutt can stay
here and tell you all the news. Now wouldn’t that be nice and cosy?” she
concluded coaxingly.
                 Looking
into Mrs. Glenn’s pale frightened face I was on the point of saying: “Well,
sign it then, whatever it is—anything to get her to go.” But Mrs. Glenn
straightened her drooping shoulders and repeated softly: “I can’t sign it.”
                 A
flush rose to Mrs. Brown’s forehead. “You can’t? That’s final, is it?” She
turned to me. “It’s all money she owed us, mind you—money we’ve advanced to
her—in one way or another. Every penny of it. And now
she sits there and says she won’t pay us!”
                 Mrs.
Glenn, twisting her fingers into mine, gave a barely audible laugh. “Now he’s
here I’m safe,” she said.
                 The
crimson of Mrs. Brown’s face darkened to purple. Her lower lip trembled and I
saw she was struggling for words that her dimmed brain could not supply. “God
Almighty—you think he’s God Almighty!” She evidently felt the inadequacy of
this, for she stood up suddenly, and coming close to Mrs. Glenn’s armchair,
stood looking down on her in impotent anger. “Well, I’ll show you—” She turned
to me, moved by another impulse. “You know well enough you could make her sign
if you chose to.”
                 My
eyes and Mrs. Brown’s met again. Hers were saying: “It’s your last chance—it’s her last chance. I warn you—” and mine
replying: “Nonsense, you can’t frighten us; you can’t even frighten her while I’m here. And if she doesn’t
want to sign you shan’t force her to. I have something up my sleeve that would
shut you up in five seconds if you knew.”
                 She
kept her thick stare on