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

mine till I felt as if my silent signal must have
penetrated it. But she said nothing, and at last I exclaimed: “You know well
enough the risk you’re running—”
                 Perhaps
I had better not have spoken. But that dumb dialogue was getting on my nerves.
If she wouldn’t see, it was time to make her— Ah , she
saw now—she saw fast enough! My words seemed to have cleared the last fumes
from her brain. She gave me back my look with one almost as steady; then she
laughed.
                 “The
risk I’m running? Oh, that’s it, is it? That’s the pull you thought you had
over me? Well, I’m glad to know—and I’m glad to tell you that I’ve known all
along that you knew. I’m sick and tired of all the humbug—if she won’t sign I’m
going to tell her everything myself. So now the cards are on the table, and you
can take your choice. It’s up to you. The risk’s on your side now!”
                 The
unaccountable woman—drunkenly incoherent a moment ago, and now hitting the nail on the head with such fiendish precision! I sat
silent, meditating her hideous challenge without knowing how to meet it. And
then I became aware that a quiver had passed over Mrs. Glenn’s face, which had
become smaller and more ivory-yellow than before. She leaned toward me as if
Mrs. Brown, who stood close above us, could not hear what we were saying.
                 “What
is it she means to tell me? I don’t care unless it’s something bad about
Stevie. And it couldn’t be that, could it? How does she know? No one can come
between a son and his mother.”
                 Mrs.
Brown gave one of her sudden laughs. “A son and his mother? I daresay not! Only I’m just about fed up with having you think you’re his
mother.”
                 It
was the one thing I had not foreseen—that she would possess herself of my
threat and turn it against me. The risk was too deadly; and so no doubt she
would have felt if she had been in a state to measure it. She was not; and
there lay the peril.
                 Mrs.
Glenn sat quite still after the other’s outcry, and I hoped it had blown past
her like some mere rag of rhetoric. Then I saw that the meaning of the words
had reached her, but without carrying conviction. She glanced at me with the
flicker of a smile. “Now she says I’m not his mother—!” It’s her last round of
ammunition; but don’t be afraid—it won’t make me sign, the smile seemed to
whisper to me.
                 Mrs.
Brown caught the unspoken whisper, and her exasperation rushed to meet it. “You
don’t believe me? I knew you wouldn’t! Well, ask your friend here; ask Mr. Norcutt;
you always believe everything he says. He’s known the truth for ever so
long—long before Stephen died he knew he wasn’t your son.”
                 I
jumped up, as if to put myself between my friend and some bodily harm: but she
held fast to my hand with her clinging twitching fingers. “As if she knew what
it is to have a son! All those long months when he’s
one with you … Mothers know,” she
said.
                 “Mothers, yes! I don’t say you didn’t have a son and desert
him. I say that son wasn’t Stephen. Don’t you suppose I know? Sometimes I’ve
wanted to laugh in your face at the way you went on about him … Sometimes I
used to have to rush out of the room, just to have my laugh out by myself…”
                 Mrs.
Brown stopped with a gasp, as if the fury of the outburst had shaken her back
to soberness, and she saw for the first time what she had done. Mrs. Glenn sat
with her head bowed; her hand had grown cold in mine. I looked at Mrs. Brown
and said: “Now won’t you leave us? I suppose there’s nothing left to say.”
                 She
blinked at me through her heavy lids; I saw she was wavering. But at the same
moment Mrs. Glenn’s clutch tightened; she