t
he did not see Emily. There were two chairs on the porch, and, to the
enormous surprise of the neighborhood, which had not seen Mrs. Drainger
for years, she occupied one of those chairs and Charlie the other, and,
after a fashion, they conversed. I could not hear what they said, but
there was in Mrs. Drainger's calm, in her placid acceptance of the
situation, a quality of danger. I had an impulse to cry out. She made me
think of a steel instrument ready to close. And, as Charlie had an
obstinate streak in him, it became fairly evident that we were
witnessing a duel--a duel for the possession of Emily Drainger. Mute
obstinacy was pitted against will, and Emily, enchained and chafing, was
permitted only to stand by.

"Considered from Mrs. Drainger's point of view, she was not, I suppose,
so hideously unfair. One doesn't shut off the last ray of light from the
prisoner's dungeon or grudge clothing to a naked man. And her daughter
was, as I have intimated, her only link with the living. Hers was the
selfishness of narrow hunger, if you will, of an almost literal
nakedness. And yet one cannot live alone with the dead for twenty years
and remain sane. Since Mrs. Drainger's life was to Mrs. Drainger
entirely normal, she could not, in the nature of the case, imagine what
she was condemning Emily to. The mother thought of Brede, I fancy, as of
some spiritual calamity that would rob her of half her soul, and she
brought to the issue her one power--her power of breaking people's
wills, and fought him as fiercely as she would have fought the devil.

"Charlie called again Friday and had again the pleasure of Mrs.
Drainger's society. He called again next week; this time both Emily and
Mrs. Drainger entertained him. The result was, I imagine, even more
unsatisfactory--what Mrs. Drainger wanted. If it had not been so
terrific, it would have been funny. Some of us, indeed, took to making
wagers on the contest. He called repeatedly. Whether he saw Emily or
not, there was always Mrs. Drainger.

"It is not her mere presence, mind, that was disconcerting. The old lady
was somehow sinister in her silent intensity, in her subtle power of
infiltration. Emily seemed, so far as I could see, thoroughly cowed.
Strain as she would at her leash, the keeper held her, and the tedious
pattern of their struggling conversation concealed bright chains. This,
Mrs. Drainger seemed to say, is what you are coming to. And Charlie
would look appealingly at