Again she gave a nod indicating William, and then brought her gaze back to Mr Graynor’s face. The sight of the pained humiliation of his look caused a softening in her voice and manner. She had not wanted to distress him; she was not vindictive. She only required that the father of her child should make provision for it. He was wealthy enough to do so.
“I am sorry to ’ave ’ad to come,” she said. “I didn’t mean no ’arm. If ’e ’adn’t treated me mean, I wouldn’t ’a come. But I’ve got a chance now to start fair. I want to place the child somewheres. Plenty would take ’im if I could get the money guaranteed. But ’e,” with another nod at William, “won’t do nothing. That’s why I came. I warned ’im all right.”
The red of William’s face deepened to purple. He looked at the woman as if he would have killed her had he dared; but he did not move, did not utter a word even in his own defence. His animus against this girl, who had been his mistress, arose from the fact that she had broken with him. Had the initiative been his he might have acted differently. He hated her while he listened to her scornful denunciation of himself, and the sordid story of his meanness which she mercilessly unfolded. Not a word of what she uttered but had the ring of truth in it, and not a word in the miserable recital reflected any credit upon himself. He shifted his feet uneasily, and turned his furtive eyes from the spectacle of her standing there in her dark and tragic beauty, with the boy clinging timidly to her skirt, hiding his tear-stained face in her dress in fear of the old man who sat and glared at him and spoke to his mother in harsh angry tones. They frightened him, these strange people. He wanted to go away from the big house, and this fierce old man, and the red-faced man, whom he knew slightly but did not like. The red-faced man so often made his mother cry. But the mother took no heed of the small hands tugging at her dress; her thoughts were intent on other matters than the child’s distress.
Mr Graynor, his face transformed with anger, turned to his son, and, in a voice broken with emotion, with shame for that son’s dishonourable conduct and most despicable meanness, bade him speak.
“You stand there and say nothing to these charges,” he cried. “Why don’t you speak? Have you nothing to say in answer to what this woman alleges?”
“What is there to say?” William returned. “No doubt the child is mine. But I don’t flatter myself that I have been more favoured than others. She is a loose woman; and she is lucky enough to have forced a claim on me.”
“You lie, William Graynor,” she said fiercely. “And you know that you lie. From the time you pursued me, when I worked in the factory, a girl of sixteen, to the moment when I met the man I am going to marry, I never looked at another man. You are a mean liar, that’s what you are.”
Mr Graynor, ignoring the speaker and still looking towards his son, struck the table violently with his hand in an access of indignant anger.
“You admit the paternity of this child, and, instead of sharing the responsibility, meanly try to shift it, and impugn the morality of a woman whose immorality you brought about! How dare you utter these things in my hearing?”
“I’ve paid her,” William excused himself, and fingered his collar nervously as though it were too tight. “I kept her so long as—” He broke off abruptly; and added in a savage voice: “She’s had money enough from me.”