"You think it's as improper as the other thing, do you?"

He addressed his uncle.

"What other thing?" said Mr. Randall. It had made him wince even while he pretended not to see it. It had brought him so near.

"What my wife's done."

"Well, Randall, since you ask me, to all appearances--appearances, mind you--it is."

"Appearances?"

"Well, you must save appearances, and you must save 'em while you can."

"How am I to save them, I should like to know?"

"By actin' at once. By stoppin' it all before it gets about. You can't have your wife over there in Paris carryin' on. You must just start--soon as you can--to-morrow--and bring her back."

"Not much!"

"It's what you got to do, Randall. She's been unfortunate, I know; but she's young, and you don't know how she may have been led on. 'S likely's not you haven't looked after her enough. You don't know but what you may have been responsible. You got to take her back."

"What should I take her back for?" said Ranny, with false suavity.

"To save scandal. To save trouble and misery and disgrace all round. You got to think of your family."

"What do you mean by my family? Me and my children?"

"I mean the family name, my boy."

A frightful lucidity had come upon Ranny, born of the calamity itself.

It was not for nothing that he had attained that sudden violent maturity of his. He saw things as they were.

"You mean yourself," he said. "Jolly lot you think of me and my children if you ask me to take her back. Not me! I'll be d.a.m.ned first."

"You married her, Randall, against the wishes of your family; and you're responsible to your family for the way she conducts herself."

"I should rather think I _was_ responsible! If I wasn't--if I was a bletherin' idiot--I might take her back--"

"I don't say if she leaves you again you'll take her back a second time.

But you got to give her a chance. After all, she's the mother of your children. You married her."

"Yes. That's where I went wrong. That's what made her do it, if you want to know. _That's_ the provocation I gave her. It's what she always had against me--the children, and my marrying her. And she was right. She never ought to have had children. I never ought to have married her--against her will."

"Well, I can't think what you did it for--in such haste."

"I did it," said Ranny, in his maturity, his lucidity, "because it was the way I was brought up. I suppose, come to that, I did it for all you."

He saw everything now as it was.

"How d'you make that out? Did it for us!"

Then Ranny delivered his soul, and the escape, the outburst was tremendous, cataclysmic.

"For you and your rotten respectability! What you brought me up on. What you've rammed down my throat all along. What you're thinking of now.

You're not thinking of me; you're thinking of yourself, and how respectable you are, and how I've dished you. You don't want me to take my wife back because you care a rap about me and my children. It's because you're afraid. That's what it is, you're afraid. You're afraid of the rotten scandal; you're afraid of what people'll say; you're afraid of not looking respectable any more. You know what my wife's done--you know what she _is_--"

"She's a woman, Randall, she's a woman."

"She's a--Well, she _is_, and you know it. You know what she is, and you want me to take her back so as you can lie about it and hush it all up and pretend it isn't there. Same as you've done with my father. He's a drunkard--"

"For shame, Randall," said his uncle.

"He is, and you know it, and he knows it, and my mother knows it. And yet you go on lying about him and pretending. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of hearing about how good he is, and his Headaches--Headaches!"

"Oh! Ranny, dear," his mother wailed, piteously.

"I'm not blaming him, Mother. Poor old Humming-bird, he can't help it.

It's the way he's made. I'm not blaming Virelet. She can't help it, either. It's my fault. If I'd wanted her to stick to me I oughtn't to have married her."

"What ought you to have done then?" his uncle inquired, sternly.

"Anything but that. That's what started her. She couldn't stand it.

She'll stick to Mercier all right, you'll see, because she isn't married to the swine; whereas if I took her back to-night she'd chuck me to-morrow. Can't you see that she's like that? She's done the best day's work she ever did for herself and me, too."

"Well, how you can speak about it so, Ranny," said his mother.

"There you're at it again, you know--pretendin'. You go on as if it was the most horrible thing that could happen to any one, her boltin', when you know the most horrible thing would be her comin' back again. To look at you and Uncle and Aunt there, any one would think that Virelet was the best wife and mother that ever lived, and that she'd only left me to go to heaven."

"Well, there's no good my saying any more, I can see," said Mr. Randall.

And he rose, b.u.t.toning his coat with dignity that struggled in vain against his deep depression. He was profoundly troubled by his nephew's outburst. It was as if peace and honesty and honor, the solid, steadfast tradition by which he lived, had been first outraged, then destroyed in sheer brutality. He didn't know himself. He had been charged with untruthfulness and dishonesty; he, who had been held the soul of honesty and truth; who had always held himself at least sincere.

And he didn't know his nephew Randall. He had always supposed that Randall was refined and that he had a good heart. And to think that he could break out like this, and be coa.r.s.e and cruel, and say things before ladies that were downright immoral--

"Well," he said, as he shook hands with him, "I can't understand you, my boy."

"Sorry, Uncle."

"There--leave it alone. I don't ask you to apologize to me. But there's your mother. You've done your best to hurt her. Good-by."

"He's upset, John," said Ranny's mother, "and no wonder. You should have let him be."

"I'm not upset," said Ranny, wearily. "What beats me is the rotten humbug of it all."

And no sooner did Mr. Randall find himself in the High Street with his wife than he took her by the arm in confidence.

"He was quite right about that wife of his. Only I thought--if he could have patched it up--"

"Ah, I dare say he knows more than we do. What I can't get over is the way he spoke about his poor father."