The activities of Lady Rossiter did not altogether cease at her
conversation with Alderman Bellew.
She spoke to Miss Farmer, at the back of her mind the conviction that
Miss Farmer would think it due to the other members of the College
staff to ascertain whether their attention had yet been focussed upon
the incipient scandal in their midst.
She made tentative beginning:
"You will reassure me, Miss Farmer, and I can't tell you how glad I
shall be. It _is_ my fancy, isn't it, that there is--what shall I call
it?--something that rather disturbs--in the atmosphere?"
"The--College, do you mean, Lady Rossiter?" Miss Farmer spoke
confusedly, evidently quite undecided in her mind as to Lady Rossiter's
meaning, and anxious not to commit herself until she had ascertained it.
"Ah, then you do know. I'm sorry," spoke Edna gravely. "One condemns
no one--that's understood, of course. But you, who are working there
all day and every day--you must know better than anyone how far it's
all gone. I mean nothing that can't be spoken--oh, yes, you know--after
all, we're both women. But there's the staff to think of--my staff that
I'm proud of, and care for. Tell me, do they talk about Miss Marchrose
and this insane infatuation of hers?"
"No--no, I don't think so--I hardly know...." hesitated Miss Farmer,
very red, and obviously feeling her way.
"Thank God for that!" Lady Rossiter piously interjected. "You
understand what I mean? It's not that I, of all people, who know
Mark Easter intimately, could ever underrate the fact that he is an
unusually attractive man. But then, you see--Mark is married. It's so
simple, isn't it, to those of us who can see straight? There is just
that choice--right or wrong--and one's chosen one's path long, long
ago. But this poor girl in whom we're interested, whom one longs, oh,
so pitifully and tenderly--to help. You see, I'm afraid that her ideals
are poor, dwarfed, stunted things. She is very foolish, undignified
and unwomanly, but I pray and I believe--I try with all my heart to
believe--that it is just _that_--because she knows no better. Only,
Miss Farmer--don't let them talk at the College. I know it's very
easy--a little staying on after hours, an excuse or two for going into
Mr. Easter's office, a hundred-and-one indiscretions of that kind--and
the mischief's done."
"Oh, Lady Rossiter! but really, excuse me if I say that I hardly
think----"
Edna swept on, sweeping with her the bewildered and embarrassed
protests trembling on Miss Farmer's lips.
"No one could ever fear harsh judgments from you, Miss Farmer. I know
that, and that's why I've spoken to you. And because I want you to try
and prevent others from judging and condemning unheard.... There'll be
talk--oh, I know human nature, and that it's impossible for things to
be otherwise--but at least I may count upon you for stemming the tide
a little, until the way is rather clearer. Believe me, there will be a
crisis--a solution of some sort will come. I _know_ that the present
state of tension can't last."
It may reasonably be conceded that Lady Rossiter had ample cause for
the assertion.
She sent Miss Farmer away, muddle and incoherency on her inarticulate
tongue, and in her starting eyes fears visible for all to see.
Edna thought of Mark Easter, and asked herself whether one word from
her might not save Mark from endless vexation and discomfort when the
inevitable _débâcle_ should come upon the impossible situation. She had
for too long been accustomed to look upon herself as the only feminine
element in Mark's mutilated life, to entertain on his behalf fears of a
more serious kind.
But Mark was thinking of his sister's wedding and of her many, and
essentially unreasonable, attempts to turn his small house into a scene
of extensive and prolonged hospitalities for which it was eminently
unfitted in every possible way.
Edna postponed the utterance of her one word.
She only offered, very gently and matter-of-factly, to enact the part
of mistress of the house when and whenever her services might be
acceptable. Mark Easter thanked her very warmly and thought that he
could "manage."
That the process of "managing" was not an easy one was descried shortly
before the wedding by Lady Rossiter and her husband, inadvertently
entering the villa and finding it a sea of frenzied preparation.
Aggressively new trunks stood in the small entrance, effectively
blocking the staircase, and from the drawing-room door, propped open
by a piano-stool, came the sound of voices raised in considerable
agitation.
The form taken by the _bouleversement_ of the five occupiers of the
drawing-room appeared to consist principally in their each and all
having taken a seat upon some pieces of furniture not primarily
intended to be sat upon.
Iris, very dishevelled, was perched upon the piano; her _fiancé_
bestrode a small table; Mark, looking harassed, sat on the corner
of the lowest bookcase in the room; and Ruthie and Ambrose, their
respective boots drumming a lively quartette against the wainscoting,
disfigured either end of the writing-table. Iris turned in instant
appeal to the entering visitors.
"We're simply fearfully worried," she declared penetratingly. "Do help
me to settle. Oh, do sit down, Lady Rossiter!"
Edna smilingly selected the corner of the sofa least encumbered by
cardboard boxes and crumpled tissue-paper.
"It's old Aunt Anne. We don't know what to do about having her at the
wedding. We never, never thought she'd want to come."
"She's seventy-nine," said Mark.
"And perfectly _awful_," moaned Iris.
"One had hoped, and meant, to avoid a conventional gathering of
relations altogether," mournfully interjected Mr. Garrett's deep tones.
"I myself have had to be extraordinarily careful. We, who are members
of the Clan, have to reckon with such immense feudal feeling and that
kind of thing--the sort of old-time loyalty one hardly sees on the
wrong side of the Border--and finally we decided to eliminate all but
the very nearest. The dear old pater is going to represent the family,
and the old pipers and gillies and--er--dependents generally."
"I am afraid he has a long, cold journey before him, then, in this
bitter weather," said Edna civilly.
"The pater is not actually in dear old Scotland at the moment," said
Mr. Garrett, in a tone of reserve.
"But Aunt Anne!" wailed Iris. "Will you believe it, she's written to
ask if we're expecting her here to-morrow--just two days before the
wedding. And, of course, we're not. We never thought of her coming at
all, did we, Mark, at her age?"
"And she's only sent you salt-cellars, at that," said Mark, with a
rueful grin.
"We should be delighted to receive anyone at Culmhayes if it's a
question of room," began Sir Julian, in voice wherein delight was not
the most prominent emotion discernible.
"Thank you, Sir Julian, it's most awfully good of you. But it's not
that. Douglas' father will insist on going to the hotel, with him, so
we shall have a spare bed. But Aunt Anne wants such a lot of looking
after; and then she'll be old-fashioned, and hate everything and
disapprove of my frock, and--I can't _bear_ it if she's to come and
spoil everything," said Miss Easter, in an outburst of passionate
resentment.
"My dear, what can it matter what other people think? One takes one's
own line, without hurting or vexing anyone--that, never--but just
quietly, without wondering what others may say----" But Lady Rossiter's
generalities proved of no avail in soothing Iris, although they gave
Douglas an opportunity for uttering a small effective Gaelicism.
"Dinna fash yersel', Iris, as we Kelts say at home."
"It's all very well, but how can I write and tell Aunt Anne not to
come--that we aren't expecting her? It would look as though we didn't
want her."
The truth of this implication appeared in such blatant obviousness to
at least three of Iris' listeners that none of them spoke a word.
At last Sir Julian said drily:
"In fact, it's one of those disconcerting situations that look exactly
what they really are."
"And one wishes they didn't," concluded Mark.
"The modern wedding," said Mr. Garrett suddenly, "I look upon as the
surviving relic of a barbarous age. It is iniquitous that a contract
between two private parties should be made the excuse for a public
display, an incontinent gathering together of incongruous multitudes,
for the mere purposes of gaping and staring. To my mind, there should
be no other ceremony than the verbal plighting of troth, given in the
presence of two witnesses, upon the bare, open heath----"
"We haven't any bare, open heaths round Culmouth," interposed Julian
hastily.
"I was thinking of the customs in my ain countree," said Mr. Garrett
morosely.
A rather blighted silence fell upon the room.
It was broken by the wailing voice of Ambrose, whom everyone had
forgotten.
"Aren't we _ever_ going to have tea?"
"Good gracious, I'd forgotten all about it!" cried Iris, exaggeratedly
aghast. "Ruthie darling, do go and see if Sarah can let us have tea at
once. We shall be seven."
Sir Julian made earnest attempts and Lady Rossiter polite feints, at
leaving the villa on the instant.
"You must stay," said Iris piteously, "because everything is so awful
that I know I'm going to scream presently."
On this inducement or another, the visitors remained throughout a
strange, Passover meal, in the course of which Iris leapt up and wrote
and destroyed three successive telegrams alternately telling Aunt Anne
that she was or was not expected on the following day, and Mr. Garrett
discoursed further on the marriage laws of England, regarded by him
with the extreme of disfavour, and the children took advantage of their
father's usual leniency and their aunt's roving attention, to dispose
of immense quantities of cake previously smeared with jam.
Edna, remembering the quasi-maternal rôle adopted by herself towards
Ruthie, fixed a look of grave surprise upon the child from the other
side of the table.
Ruthie ate on.
Lady Rossiter deepened the look and sought to convey its full inner
meaning by dropping a pained glance at the jam-laden slab in Ruthie's
hand and then raising her eyebrows and slightly contracting the corners
of her mouth.
These signals being stolidly disregarded, there only remained to say,
in very gentle accents:
"Are you always allowed cake and jam together, dear?"
"_Always_," said Ruthie, with a face of brass, and in her voice an
intensity of assurance that conveyed with certainty, to anyone as
well conversant as was Lady Rossiter with the extremely low standard
of truth prevailing in the Easter nursery establishment, that she was
lying.
Edna turned her gaze upon Ambrose.
His face already bore the peculiarly glazed and pallid look that
characterises over-eating, but on meeting Lady Rossiter's eye he made a
mighty effort to cram his remaining cake into an already bulging cheek.
"You'll choke, Peekaboo," warned Ruthie, with only too much reason.
Thereafter the conversation was adjusted to the accompaniment of the
exceedingly distressing sounds proceeding intermittently from Ambrose.
"Dear, dear--a crumb gone the wrong way?" said the unobservant Iris.
"You'll be better in a minute, dear."
"I choked----" began Ambrose wheezingly, obedient to the unwritten law
which decrees that the victim of a choking fit should add to his own
discomfort and that of other people by entering into a gasping analysis
of the phenomenon.
"Look at the ceiling, Ambrose," advised Mark.
Everyone in the room immediately set this desirable example by a sort
of mysterious instinct, while the unfortunate Ambrose kept his head
well down over his plate and continued to emit hysterical crows.
"Look at _me_, Peekaboo!" shouted Ruthie. "_I'm_ looking at the
ceiling!"
She hung backwards over her chair, glaring upwards with starting
eyeballs.
"Don't do that, Ruthie," said Mark, Iris and Lady Rossiter
simultaneously.
"Try and get your breath, laddie," advised Mr. Garrett kindly, if with
some superfluity.
"He'll be better in a moment. Go on talking," was Lady Rossiter's
tactful suggestion, which had the immediate effect of paralysing the
assembly into a silence upon which the paroxysms of Ambrose struck with
greatly enhanced violence.
Sir Julian threw himself into the breach, addressing himself to Mark
Easter with an air of unconcern which he felt to be overdone.
"Have you talked to Walters about the car for Tuesday? I told him you
would let him know what time----"
"Let's pat Peekaboo on the back," cried Ruthie hilariously.
"Gently, then. Yes, Sir Julian, thanks very much, I ... No, no,
Ruthie--stop that--can't you see you're making him worse?"
"Daddy, I just choked--a crumb----"
"For goodness' sake don't talk, Ambrose. You'd better go upstairs."
"I'm sure the child will have convulsions in another minute. Do look at
his face! Douglas, don't you think he's turning black?"
This last contribution of his Auntie Iris' to the sum of calamities
already overwhelming the distressed Ambrose caused him to burst into
tears.
"_Do_ drink some tea, dear," urged Lady Rossiter.
"Take him upstairs, Ruthie," said her parent wearily.
The victim was removed, protesting inarticulately at the mirthful
ministrations still insisted upon by his sister.
Everyone was conscious of relief, and Lady Rossiter said tolerantly,
"Poor little boy!"
"He feels the wedding _dreadfully_," Iris observed.
"Feels the wedding?"
"Yes, you know, he's afraid that it means losing me. I've always been
so much with the dear kiddie-widdies."
"You've always been very fond of them, my dear, and they of you," said
Mark gratefully.
"I should have liked little Peekaboo for a page," said Iris
sentimentally, "but he's just the wrong size. And besides, poor
darling, he hasn't got his front teeth. Ruthie's bridesmaid frock has
come, Lady Rossiter."
Under cover of the polite interest evinced by Edna at the information,
her husband made his escape from the room.
He and Mark, smoking in the garden, turned with undisguised relief from
the topic of the hour, and discussed instead the affairs of Culmouth
College.
"What about this Gloucester business? Old Bellew is patting himself
on the back all right. He thinks there's likely to be an opening in
Cardiff, too."
"All the better. We always hoped the scheme would spread, Sir Julian."
"I know. Who could have guessed it would come so quickly, though? Look
here, Mark, have you thought who ought to go and see these Gloucester
fellows and start them off in their new premises?"
"Well--I left that to you," said Mark hesitatingly.
"Of course, you're the man to send, but I don't know that we can spare
you at the minute."
"I'm quite at your disposal for anything," said Mark cheerfully.
"Would you go? After all, it could only be a matter of two or three
days."
"That's all. But the only thing I'm thinking is, whether it wouldn't be
a good thing to take one of the actual staff--someone who's really been
working the thing from the inside."
For an insane moment, a surmise worthy of Iris herself crossed Sir
Julian's mind. Could Mark Easter be about to adjudicate to himself Miss
Marchrose as a travelling companion?
"What about Fuller?" said Mark. "He's a good man of business, and got
all the facts and figures at his finger-ends."
"He could be spared, I suppose?"
"I think so. Miss Marchrose could quite well take on for a day or two.
She's won golden opinions from Fuller."
"H'm. The misogynist," said Sir Julian reflectively.
Interruption came only too soon.
Sir Julian heartily wished that he had taken the more drastic measure
of returning outright to Culmhayes when the garden was invaded not only
by the lovers themselves, Edna walking slightly behind them with a
rather consciously unconscious expression, but also by a triumphantly
whooping Ambrose, glorying in his restored ability to render the day
hideous with sound.
Ruthie was for the moment, unwontedly enough, both invisible and
inaudible.
Iris instantly attached herself to Sir Julian. He had been regretfully
compelled to realise that ever since the day, regarded by him with
horror, of their conversation in his study, Miss Easter had assumed the
existence of some intimate understanding between them, such as caused
her to make him the recipient of many small personal confidences that
filled him with embarrassment.
"You know I wanted Douglas to be married in a kilt?"
"Did you?"
"But he's so ridiculously shy. And what's that other thing they wear?"
Sir Julian looked unintelligent and Mr. Garrett's deep voice behind him
made suggestion.
"Is the lassie thinking of the tartan?"
"Ye-es," said Iris doubtfully. "Or do I mean a plaid?"
Sir Julian felt quite unequal to enlightening her.
"I see that I shall have to teach you many things," said Mr. Garrett
gloomily.
"Do you expect ever to live in Scotland?" Sir Julian enquired.
"We toilers and sowers gravitate to London instinctively. I always
say," Mr. Garrett observed, in tones of great interest, "I always say
that London is the modern Mecca. Pilgrims come there from all parts.
It is, in many ways, a city of freedom. London, someone has said--the
name of the writer has escaped my memory--is the only capital in the
world where a man can eat a penny bun in the streets without exciting
comment. Now, that seems to me quite extraordinarily descriptive."
It seemed to Sir Julian, on the contrary, quite extraordinarily futile,
and he wished, not for the first time, that Iris would make her
appeals to some other source, when she murmured in a trustful way:
"Isn't Douglas rather wonderful? You know what I mean--I think he's
wonderful, sometimes. The things he says, I mean."
"We shall live in London for a time," Mr. Garrett pursued. "My
journalistic work will keep me there, and then we have to think of
Iris' literary career. I immensely want her to meet some of the great
thinkers of the day."
Iris looked awe-stricken, clasped her hand, and said in a small, hushed
voice:
"Just think of the vistas and vistas and _vistas_ that it opens up!"
Sir Julian did so, and barely suppressed a visible shudder at the
phalanx of journalistic luminaries, of whom he felt certain that the
great thinkers of the day, as known to Mr. Garrett, consisted.
"How is your book going?"
"The sales haven't been very large, but it's been tremendously
_noticed_, for a first novel," said Iris hopefully.
"You must help me to persuade Iris," said Mr. Garrett, also adding his
mite to the quota of appeal so ill responded to by the unfortunate
Julian. "You must help me to persuade this little woman, that big sales
matter very little in comparison with the meed of recognition that
'Ben' has received from the _thinking_ section of the reading world."
"Ruthie is up that tree," announced Ambrose loudly and suddenly,
thereby for the first time becoming the unconscious object of Sir
Julian's brief and passionate gratitude.
Iris, Douglas and Sir Julian all gazed upwards and became aware of Miss
Easter, perilously grappling the bare limb of a leafless tree.
Followed Ruthie's inevitable discovery that the position so recklessly
attained was both uncomfortable and insecure, her proclamation of
immediate and excessive peril, and the issuing of annoyed ejaculations
and peremptory advice from the upgazers gathered below.
"Better fetch a step-ladder at once. She'll only fall and hurt
herself," said Iris.
"Where?"
"Oh," said Iris distractedly, "I don't think we've got one anywhere."
"Better abandon the project, then," Mark observed mildly. "I'll go up
after her."
"The tree will break," wailed Iris.
"Not it! Wish it would, and give the kid a lesson. Sorry to treat you
to such a series of domestic calamities, Lady Rossiter."
"No, no," said Edna, smiling. "You know I take things as I find them."
They waited to see the rescue effected, and left Mr. Garrett serenely
observing, "You should remember to look up, and not down, when you
climb, lassie."
"What a household!" said Julian.
"One wonders what those unfortunate, motherless children will grow up
into," his wife responded thoughtfully.
"It doesn't seem to me that there's much room for wonder."
"When this wedding is over I shall talk to Mark again about sending
Ruthie to school. It would really be a great mercy if the boy could go
too."
"Why shouldn't he?"
"He's really not at all strong, I believe. But I'll talk to Mark,"
repeated Edna.
Some subtle hint of complacency in her voice kept Sir Julian
obstinately silent. He really did not know whether or not his wife's
influence with Mark Easter was as strong as she assumed it to be.
Mark was of all things easy-going, and Julian did not know that the
question of his children preoccupied him very deeply. Not improbable
that he might even sacrifice Ambrose and his problematical delicacy
of constitution for the sake of peace, and the satisfaction of Lady
Rossiter.
It remained to be seen, Julian thought, whether there were anything to
which Mark attached sufficient importance to fight for it. Julian was
oddly obsessed by the conviction that contest was in the air.