"A very cold north wind," said Sir Julian, entering the room set ready
for a General Committee meeting.
"Damnably cold," said Mark Easter, who never swore.
Sir Julian made an elaborate rearrangement of the pencils and
blotting-paper on the table in front of him and then looked at Mark.
They were the first arrivals.
Mark's gaze met Sir Julian's, but it was unusually clouded.
"I don't know what's the matter with the place," he said irritably.
"What's happened?"
"Nothing at all, that I know of. It's just in the air. Fuller's
like a bear with a sore head, and those two women--Farmer and
Sandiloe--whispering together in corners and exchanging glances like
conspirators in a gunpowder plot. What on earth is the matter with them
all?"
There was silence, and then Mark said, still in the same irritable
voice:
"I suppose they think one's a perfect fool. If I've had one of them
into my office this morning, I've had half a dozen--on the flimsiest
excuses you ever heard of in your life. I don't know what they expected
to find there, I'm sure."
If Sir Julian could have enlightened his agent on the point, he did not
do so.
But he became himself very acutely aware of the state of tension
pervading the College during the course of the committee meeting. Mark,
contrary to his usual habit, scarcely spoke at all; Mr. Fuller sat with
a face like a thundercloud, and, looking up occasionally under his
closely-knitted eyebrows, fixed inscrutable eyes upon Miss Marchrose
opposite.
She looked tired and nervous, and Sir Julian remembered that it was
less than a week since he had thought her looking beautiful at Iris
Easter's wedding.
Edna, he noticed, did not glance at Miss Marchrose, but from time to
time her eyes rested thoughtfully upon Mark Easter.
Even Alderman Bellew, far from susceptible to shades of atmosphere,
struck Sir Julian as being vaguely and uneasily watchful.
The meeting was poorly attended, and when it was over Mark said rather
doubtfully to Lady Rossiter:
"You'll have some tea before you go, won't you?"
"Thank you," she said graciously. "Only if you're quite sure that it
wouldn't put anyone out, give any extra trouble."
"I can find out the state of the commissariat first, if you like," he
rejoined, and left the room.
Miss Marchrose had gone already.
Edna's manner altered to one of businesslike determination on the
instant.
"I'm going to make a little suggestion," she said clearly.
The Alderman looked up, and at the same instant Fairfax Fuller took two
steps forward.
"It isn't, perhaps, a very easy thing for me to say," Lady Rossiter
said unfalteringly, "but we all know one another here. And I
believe--oh, so intensely!--in having courage. But never mind that. I
needn't go into any details, but it's this--I think the general feeling
amongst the staff is that there might be some slight alteration in
the duties of the Lady Superintendent. They don't altogether like her
doing so much. It's natural enough, isn't it? Perhaps they feel that
inordinately long hours kept by one person cast a slur upon the others,
who don't seem to be quite so devoted. Perhaps she hasn't been very
tactful about it. I don't know about that. But at all events, couldn't
we give her a holiday from evening work for the present? Let her go at
about four o'clock?"
The Alderman's prawn-like eyes were fixed admiringly upon Lady
Rossiter, but he said nothing.
Sir Julian spoke.
"You can't make an invidious distinction of that sort, Edna. It would
be impossible."
"But she looks very tired," said Edna smoothly. "She has certainly been
doing too much. We can put it on that score."
"Who has been objecting to the hours that Miss Marchrose puts in?"
demanded Fairfax Fuller bluntly.
Edna's little smile admirably blended a protest at the question and a
quiet determination to leave it unanswered.
"Because," said Fuller, "if you'll be good enough to tell that person
to address his or her complaint to _me_, Lady Rossiter, I will deal
with it in the proper way. I never yet heard of a good worker being
sent off duty early because a slack one didn't like the sight of
over-work."
"Come, come, Fuller," said the Alderman uncertainly.
Fairfax Fuller turned a black gaze upon him that actually caused the
old man to move his chair backwards.
"Leave it alone, Edna," said her husband. "If there's jealousy amongst
the staff, Fuller is quite right in saying that he's the person to
adjust it. They had no business to appeal to you."
"You force me to speak plainly," said Lady Rossiter. "It isn't only
a little jealousy, though there is that as well. But--to put things
exactly as they are--the staff doesn't like the habit that Miss
Marchrose has fallen into of staying on overtime till all hours, and
then being taken home. And, frankly, I don't think you can blame them.
That sort of thing isn't done. It makes talk at once."
"Evidently."
The fury in Fuller's voice was hardly suppressed.
"I believe that I am not censorious," said Lady Rossiter. "It is
utterly foreign to my nature, and I would sooner blind myself to evil
than look out for it--yet there are things which go against one's every
instinct. This is a very little community and has always been a very
peaceful and happy one. It hurts me very much, somehow, that there
should be talk of the kind that I know has been going on lately."
"Mischief-making----" muttered Fuller fiercely and without completing
his sentence.
"Officiousness is the curse of the age!" exclaimed Sir Julian, neither
for the first nor the second time. "Why can't people mind their own
business? What has it to do with them?" As he spoke, some part of his
mind commented upon the futility of these disjointed exclamations, and
the irrationality of the desire to gain time that had caused him to
utter them.
The three men gazed at Lady Rossiter.
"Oh, how I hate saying it!" she cried in an impulsive manner. "It
isn't that I think there's any harm in it all--indeed, I don't. But I
myself have seen little things--tiny, infinitesimal incidents, if you
like--that somehow seem to carry significance by repetition. That sort
of thing _doesn't_ do."
She looked at her listeners for an instant, and made inevitable
selection amongst them.
She turned to the Alderman appealingly.
"I'm only a woman, but I know that sort of thing doesn't do in business
offices. Isn't it true?"
"Quite true, Lady Rossiter," said the Alderman instantly. "It's
an undesirable sort of element altogether. And once people start
talking--especially a lot of girls, if you'll excuse my saying so--it's
hopeless. It ought to be got rid of."
Edna hesitated a moment. Then she said:
"Shall I--shall I speak to poor Miss Marchrose? It might be easier for
another woman to do it, and I don't think she would resent it from me."
Two, at least, of those present might reasonably have received this
assertion with a considerable amount of surprise, in view of certain
past incidents apparently shrouded in complete oblivion by the
forgiving Lady Rossiter.
The Alderman was less responsive this time.
"It's very good of you, Lady Rossiter--very good indeed. I'm sure we
all appreciate your keen interest in the welfare of the College and
the staff. But at the same time--I don't know----" He stopped rather
helplessly.
"You mustn't think of me," gently said Edna. "Just speak out, quite
frankly, and tell me what would be best for everyone. Anything I can
do, you know----"
"The fact is, it's least said soonest mended, in these cases," blurted
out the Alderman. "The girl had better go. Don't you agree with me, Sir
Julian?"
"It will probably end in that."
There was a certain surprise visible on Lady Rossiter's face as she
heard her husband's reply.
"It's her livelihood," she reminded them; "we mustn't forget that. But
at the same time, the College interests come first, and the one thing
to be avoided, at any cost, is a crisis. So much can be done by staving
things off."
"The doctrine of expediency," inaudibly muttered Julian through his
teeth.
It was a doctrine that had never failed to rouse him to wrath.
Fairfax Fuller's deep, angry voice broke out suddenly:
"I should like to know what the girl is being accused of, that we
should send away the best worker we've ever struck."