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We had nothing to say to one another after they left, and began soberly to disperse to our respective vehicles. But as I was getting into our car a new thought suddenly struck me. "Why," I cried, "I never thought of it before! However in the world did old Mrs. Purdon know about Ev'leen Ann that night?" Horace was pulling at the door, which was badly adjusted and shut hard.
Half hidden by his burden, Paul rolled wildly inquiring eyes at me; but he obediently staggered up the broad old staircase, and, waiting till I had opened the first door to the right, stepped into the big bedroom. "Put me down on the bed, and open them shutters," Mrs. Purdon commanded.
"No, no! Never mind!" I said hastily. "I'll take the tray in when I go." Without salutation or farewell 'Niram Purdon turned and went back to his work. The porch was an enchanted place, walled around with starlit darkness, visited by wisps of breezes shaking down from their wings the breath of lilac and syringa, flowering wild grapes, and plowed fields.
Mrs. Purdon looked at nothing, said nothing, seemed to be aware of nothing but the purpose in her heart, whatever that might be. Paul and I, taking a leaf from our neighbors' book, held, with a courage like theirs, to their excellent habit of saying nothing when there is nothing to say. We arrived at the fine old Hulett place without the exchange of a single word. "Now carry me in," said Mrs.
"'Niram Purdon tells me his stepmother is no better," I said. "Isn't it too bad?" I thought it well for Ev'leen Ann to be dragged out of her black cave of silence once in a while, even if it could be done only by force. As she made no answer, I went on. "Everybody who knows Niram thinks it splendid of him to do so much for his stepmother."
Purdon briefly, evidently hoarding her strength. "Wouldn't I better go and see if Miss Hulett is at home?" I asked. Mrs. Purdon shook her head impatiently and turned her compelling eyes on my husband, I went up the path before them to knock at the door, wondering what the people in the house would possibly be thinking of us There was no answer to my knock. "Open the door and go in," commanded Mrs.
Then he said: "For the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. Wherefore make unto yourselves friends out of the mammon of iniquity so that when you die they may receive you into everlasting dwellings." Father Purdon developed the text with resonant assurance. It was one of the most difficult texts in all the Scriptures, he said, to interpret properly.
THE WHORES: Are you going far, queer fellow? How's your middle leg? Got a match on you? Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you. From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered brazen trunk. THE SHEBEENKEEPER: Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable woman. You ask for Carr. Just Carr. We are the boys. Of Wexford. PRIVATE COMPTON: Say! What price the sergeantmajor?
It was to hare preceded a translation of the Henriade, by Ned Purdon, Goldsmith's old schoolmate, now a Grub Street writer, who starved rather than lived by the exercise of his pen, and often tasked Goldsmith's scanty means to relieve his hunger.
Purdon put me on one side, and although she was physically incapable of moving her body by a hair's breadth, she gave the effect of having risen to meet the newcomer. "Well, Emma, here I am," she said in a queer voice, with involuntary quavers in it. As she went on she had it more under control, although in the course of her extraordinarily succinct speech it broke and failed her occasionally.
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