VIII

After this gratifying announcement from her husband, it may be supposed

the more readily that Lady Rossiter, on the day following the General

Committee meeting, should elect to discover various small items of

business requiring her presence in London.

She left Culmhayes on Friday evening, and the following morning saw

Julian at Mark Easter's front door.

"Come out after wild duck, Mark?"

"Rather."

"The keeper tells me there are any amount out Salt Marsh way. Could we

raise another gun?"

"There's that fellow Garrett."

"Well, bring him along, if he cares to come. Start from here at two

o'clock?"

"That'll do. I have to be at the office this morning."

"Good Lord, Mark, you live at that office, I believe, when you aren't

at the College. What does your sister say to you?"

"She has other fish to fry," said Mark drily.

Julian admitted the truth in the implication when he presently

encountered Miss Easter loitering along the lane. Her golden head was

uncovered, and she wore a curious cockney medley of black fur, silk

_décolleté_ blouse, tweed skirt, silk stockings, and high-heeled shoes

of thin suède.

She said, "Oh, Sir Julian!" with great enthusiasm, and insisted upon

tripping along the hard, frozen lane beside him as far as his own gate.

Sir Julian, who thought her pretty, if absurd, was always able to

endure her society with equanimity for a short while, and made amiable

enquiry after "Why, Ben!"

"Oh, isn't it too, too wonderful?" said Iris, in slightly awe-stricken

tones. "The little tiny seed I tried to sow bearing such wonderful

fruit and shedding light in so many dark places!"

"Very wonderful," Julian agreed, mentally applying the epithet to the

phenomenon of any seed possessing the peculiar property of shedding

light in dark places.

"It's perfectly dear of you to say so," warmly responded the authoress.

"Douglas Garrett, you know, my great friend, he knows the most fearful

amount about books, and he says that 'Why, Ben!' has simply gone

straight back to earth."

"Sounds rather like a fox."

"I always think there's something so pure and strong and passionate

about the soil. That's why I gave Ben a rural setting. The peasantry

are so primitive. I'll tell you a secret. I'm really down here to study

the setting for my next book."

"Are you writing another one now?"

"Oh, no," said Iris, in rather shocked accents. "I'm simply absorbing

local colour in at every pore."

"You'd better come out on Salt Marsh this afternoon and see the wild

duck. I've asked Mark to bring Mr. Garrett and we're going to have a

shot at them."

Julian did not make the suggestion without first calculating the

chances to be in favour of Miss Easter's declining the proposed

arrangement. Nor did she fail to reply with the typical suburbanism:

"I can't bear seeing things killed, and I hate the noise of guns going

off. Besides, it's so cold. But we'll come and meet you at tea-time."

"We?"

"Oh, I'm going to take that girl that Mark likes so much for a walk. He

says she never has anyone to talk to."

"Miss Marchrose?"

"Yes, I think she's a perfect dear, and quite awfully pretty."

Julian mentally applauded her.

"It will be delightful if you'll come and meet us," he said cordially.

"You must come in and make tea for us at Culmhayes, if you will. We

ought to be at the cross-roads, just this side of Salt Marsh, soon

after four. It will depend on the light. I doubt if we shall be able to

go on much after half-past three."

Julian's prognostication was verified, but before the three men had

reached the cross-roads, they encountered Iris and Miss Marchrose,

silhouetted against the leaden sky of a rapidly-advancing winter

twilight.

"You've come a long way!" exclaimed Julian, with an involuntary thought

for the silk stockings and suède shoes which he felt convinced that

Iris was still wearing.

"It wasn't too far for you?" asked Mark of Miss Marchrose, with

friendly solicitude.

She only shook her head in reply, but Julian, with the odd intuition

of a man with whom the observation of humanity has always been of

prevailing interest, knew that she was inwardly responsive with

all the quick gratitude of femininity for a man's rarely-expressed

consideration for her physical limitations.

Iris said in a rather enfeebled voice:

"Oh, Douglas, have you been cruel and brutal and shot all those poor

dear birds? How many did you kill?"

Mr. Garrett made pretence of not having heard the enquiry, for reasons

which Julian was at no pains to guess, having watched his guest's

display of incompetence with some dismay throughout the afternoon.

"I want you to notice the strange, strong atmospheric smell of decay

in these lanes, Iris," said Mr. Garrett, taking control of the

conversation in a high-handed manner that precluded further idle

enquiries on the day's sport.

"The whole place is redolent of winter and the dying year. We realists

must take in deep draughts of atmosphere."

To which Iris rather inadequately responded by a high, squeaking

enquiry as to Douglas's dreadful, dreadful gun and the possibility of

its going off unexpectedly and killing her.

Miss Marchrose fell into step between Mark and Julian, her hands thrust

boyishly into the pockets of her coat.

"Iris is afraid of getting more atmosphere than she bargained for,"

said Mark, with a laugh. "A shooting accident would make first-rate

copy, I suppose."

"I wonder," said Julian. "The interest attaching to violent action

always appears to me to be rather a fictitious one."

"So it is," Miss Marchrose answered quickly. "Surely in real life the

majority of dramas are almost devoid of violent action, nowadays. I

mean that a crisis, off the stage, is not necessarily brought about by

a duel, or a murder, or an elopement."

"The world is more subtle than it used to be," Julian assented. "What

you call a crisis, after all is mostly an affair of the emotions. It is

generally led up to by an atmospheric tension and culminates in some

ultra violence of emotion, whether of anger or sorrow or resolution."

Miss Marchrose glanced up quickly at the last words, and although it

was too dark for him to see her expression, Sir Julian again felt with

certainty that some inexplicable telepathy had conveyed to him her

thought.

"She is remembering Clarence Isbister," he told himself in a flash.

She spoke quietly enough.

"Yes, I know what you mean by that atmospheric tension--a sort of

awful, unspoken sense of disaster and yet nothing happening. Only

everything is happening, inside, and everyone knows it without being

able to define it."

"Give me a good honest earthquake," said Mark Easter.

"I'm with you, Mark," Julian agreed.

"A tangible misfortune is nothing, compared to those perfectly

indefinable indications of disturbance on what I suppose we may call

the mental plane."

"A thing you can't lay hold of," said Mark, translating into his own

phraseology.

"Those are much the worst," Miss Marchrose repeated, with conviction.

"Sometimes I wonder if, years and years hence, when things are very

much more advanced, those weapons, belonging to what Sir Julian called

the mental plane, will come to be the only ones used."

"It would simplify war."

"I wonder," said Julian. "Atmosphere is a powerful weapon."

There was a silence as they trudged on steadily.

"On the whole," was Sir Julian's summing-up, "the big calamities,

such as battle, murder, and sudden death, are no longer essential to

constitute crisis. The same reactions in humanity's present stage of

development are produced without any visible action or events. Our

consciousness has shifted to a more complex level."

"A sign of the evolution of the race?"

"Well, yes. It implies a greater responsiveness to the invisible event."

"Certainly," said Miss Marchrose, "it is easier to cope with the

obvious, symbolised, let us say, by telegrams, or your good honest

earthquake."

Mark Easter laughed.

"Telegrams and earthquakes meet with more sympathy, and certainly with

more assistance, from one's neighbours, than any amount of atmospheric

pressure," said he.

Miss Marchrose laughed too, but the conviction remained with Julian

that she had inwardly recalled a connection between their discussion

and that story, whatever the rights of it might be, that linked her

name to that of Captain Clarence Isbister.

As they neared Culmhayes, traversing deeply sunken lanes and an

occasional wind-swept field, Iris and Mr. Garrett fell further and

further behind.

It was obvious that the creator of "Why, Ben!" preferred her reversions

to the soil in the figurative sense of the words.

Occasional encouragement from her escort floated disjointedly, and

rather with an effect of breathlessness, upon the cold air.

"... Should like to show you our own Highland peat bogs ... our native

heath ... us Kelts...."

It was evident that fatigue was playing havoc with the purity of Mr.

Garrett's English.

"Iris isn't used to walking," Mark observed rather apologetically, "and

you've come a long way."

"I hope she isn't too tired. It was my doing; I love getting out to

Salt Marsh."

"I know you do," said Mark gently. "I wish you could get away from

Culmouth more often."

Mark was always interested.

Therein, Julian reflected, lay the half of his charm.

"Did Iris come for you to the College this afternoon?"

"No, I called for her on my way out, but she's been up to the College

quite often, and wants to learn typewriting. I should like to teach her

myself if Mr. Fuller will let me."

"Fuller will let you arrange anything that you like, and think best,

only you've got enough to do already. I don't know how you get through

it all."

Miss Marchrose uttered neither the meaningless protestations nor the

pseudo-heroic acceptances habitually reserved for such intimations of

indispensability. She said, "I enjoy it thoroughly, you know. Miss

Easter brought your children to the College to-day, which created a

diversion."

Mark uttered a rather incoherent sound, not inexpressive of dismay.

"Dare I ask how my children comported themselves?"

"They were quite good."

"Poor things!" said Mark, with a half-laugh. "They are not often quite

good. The Rector's daughter is only with them for an hour or two in the

mornings, and she complains that Ruthie is very noisy and intractable,

and then Sarah has them more or less for the rest of the day; but she

has no proper control over them, and the boy is always in disgrace. I

don't quite know what he does."

The vastness of the field of conjecture thus opened up apparently held

Miss Marchrose silent.

"Iris is very kind to them, but she spoils Ruthie, on the whole. And

really, you know," said Mark apologetically, "I think Ruthie is the

more in need of being sat upon of the pair."

Miss Marchrose laughed, but she made no endearing pretence of a

tender-heartedness roused to rebellion at the idea of the requisite

discipline.

Sir Julian reflected that, however thoroughly she might be aware of the

peculiar circumstances governing Mark's domestic arrangements, she had

at all events no intention of making capital out of them by a display

of sentimental interest in Mark's singularly unattractive progeny.

Edna's Cassandra-like prophecies of the danger threatening Mark

Easter's peace of mind recurred to him, and he felt vaguely uneasy. The

two beside him were talking with a complete ease that denoted at least

a very secure sense of sympathy, although Julian's perceptions could

detect no undercurrent of deeper emotion.

At Culmhayes, the light streaming from the open door revealed Miss

Marchrose with a fresh, vivid colour that became her infinitely, and

eyes full of gaiety and animation.

Julian ordered tea and was conscious of a perfectly distinct relief at

the absence of Edna's habitual kind, pervasive welcome. He was aware

that, had his wife been present, the tea-party would not have prolonged

itself as it did over the fire in the library; still less would Iris's

small piping soprano have largely monopolised the conversation with

anecdotal gush relative to the inspiration, production, and reception

of "Why, Ben!"

And yet Julian, in despite of his almost unlimited disesteem for

the masterpiece in question, listened to its creator's artless

self-advertisement altogether contentedly, idly watching, as he did so,

the firelight play on the rather saturnine face of Mr. Douglas Garrett,

punctuating with portentous movements of the head and assenting

monosyllables the discourse of his prettily idiotic disciple in the

realms of idealism. Watching also the almost motionless gaze which Mark

Easter's blue eyes kept turned towards the shadow in which stood the

great armchair, beside which he had drawn his own.

Miss Marchrose was leaning back, almost invisible in the flickering

firelight that supplemented the distant electricity over the deserted

tea equipage. Sir Julian could hardly see her, but from time to time he

heard her speak, and thought again that her voice, with vibrations and

intonations full of harmony, was sufficiently arresting to constitute

a charm superior to that of physical beauty.

Iris, fluffy and brilliant both at once, actually failed to rouse in

him that irritated scorn for her absurdity which almost invariably

overpowered his pleasure in her extreme prettiness. Even her literary

pretensions sounded less outrageous than usual in that assembly of

which the peace and friendly well-being seemed to Julian's acute

sensitiveness to be almost tangible entities. He did not seek to define

to himself the most unwonted kindliness with which Iris Easter actually

caused him to regard her when she suddenly spoke in praise of Miss

Marchrose's singing, and said that she would like to hear her again.

"'Maxwelton's braes are bonny,'" Mark hummed under his breath.

"I'll sing it for you again, some day," said Miss Marchrose. And

although she spoke quite lazily, without turning her head, in that

moment Sir Julian realised that his latent compassion for the possible

victim of a misplaced attraction was not destined to be called forth

by his friend, by light-hearted, easy-going Mark Easter, but by Miss

Marchrose, whom Fairfax Fuller had called "as hard as nails."

If was seven o'clock before they left Culmhayes.

"Mark, we shall be late for dinner," said his sister. "Not that it

matters very much, since Douglas is coming to dinner, and he'll be just

as late as we are. We're not dressing."

Mr. Garrett raised himself rather reluctantly out of his armchair.

"Oh," said Iris, on a sudden piercing note of inspiration, to Miss

Marchrose, "do come too. I'm sure you'll be too late for anything at

that awful farm place, and we should so like to have you. Then you

could sing 'Annie Laurie' for Mark."

Miss Marchrose declined the invitation in spite of the one-sided angle

of solicitation to which Iris inclined her golden head, but Julian

thought that she seemed pleased at the younger girl's very evident

cordiality.

He listened next moment with a surprise half-shadowed by a vague

unformulated suspicion, as Iris suddenly urged upon her brother the

necessity for his escorting Miss Marchrose to her lodgings.

Extravagant solicitude for the welfare of a member of her own sex was

no habitual foible of Miss Easter's, and for a moment Julian wondered

whether she thought herself to be doing her brother a service.

Miss Marchrose, however, very decidedly declined all companionship on

her short walk, and Mark showed no disposition to force the point.

Sir Julian said nothing at all, but went with the guests to the gates

of the drive.

"Ta-ta!" said Miss Easter in preposterous valediction, raising herself

on tiptoes, and clinging in an engaging manner to Mr. Garrett's elbow.

"Good night," said Miss Marchrose generally, and turned upon her way.

Sir Julian accompanied her to the farm without evoking any protestation

but a laughing one, and she told him how much she had enjoyed the

afternoon.

"I'm glad," said Sir Julian.

Walking back alone to Culmhayes, he wondered whether he had spoken the

truth.

His gladness, at all events, was considerably modified by the

recollection of that odd flash of illumination which had come to him.

"It is no business of mine," Julian told himself, shrugging his

shoulders with a timely recollection of his favourite bugbear,

officiousness. And all through the solitary evening, and his exceeding

appreciation of such solitude, he thought about the business which was

none of his.