Cary had kept to her room, the door locked against her
daughter, and had sobbed and wailed in a manner befitting the victim
of a hard and undeserved fate.
But in reality hers was the rage of a clumsy workman who has cut
himself with his own tools. Her own child, her partner and co-worker,
had upset the erection of years. She saw themselves cast out of Marut;
she saw the desolate wandering over the earth's surface, this time
without the consolation and protection of wealth. For she knew that
Beatrice's confession was to go further. Beatrice had made the
announcement of her plans quietly but firmly as they had driven home
from the club-house.
"To-morrow everybody shall know everything there is to know," she had
said, and had remained obdurate to all her mother's commands and
pleadings. "I do consider you. I consider you even now. I mean to save
you and myself. But this time it must be in another way. Your scheming
has only brought us into deeper trouble. We must start afresh."
"But how? But how?" her mother had said, wringing her hands in
uncontrolled despair. "Where are we to start? How are we ever going to
make people believe in us, now we have no money?"
"It does not matter what people believe," Beatrice had replied. "With
our money and our lies we have been building mud-hovels, and now we
are going to build palaces. That's all that matters."
Mrs. Cary had not understood. She thought Beatrice had gone mad, and
knowing that with madness, reasoning is in vain, she shut herself up
in her room, pulled down the blinds, and believed by this ostrich-like
proceeding that she could keep off the inevitable moment when they
would have to be pulled up again and the cold, pitiless reality faced.
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