"I beg your pardon, Lady Rossiter, but it is too late to say that now.
The girl _has_ been accused, and she knows it, and everyone else knows
it. The whole thing is in the air. The place stinks of it," said Mr.
Fuller with reckless candour. "There was some talk of my being sent
off to Gloucester on business, but I don't leave this place until this
mess is cleared up. Why, the atmosphere is like a barrel of gunpowder,
simply waiting for a lighted match."
"Then why light it, Mr. Fuller?" sweetly enquired Lady Rossiter. "Why
insist upon having things put into words?"
"Because it's common justice," said Mr. Fuller doggedly. "We can't send
the girl away without giving her a reason, and there isn't a reason to
give, that I can see."
"That question will rest with the directors, surely," Lady Rossiter
reminded him. She looked straight at Alderman Bellew.
"She'll know fast enough what the reason is, without being told," the
Alderman gloomily supported the lady. "She's not a chicken. A girl with
any business experience knows very well that this sort of thing isn't
tolerated in any office. Nothing serious, of course, as Lady Rossiter
has just said, but it makes talk, and it won't do."
Fuller swung round and faced the Alderman.
"I'd like to have the sort of thing you've just alluded to, specified.
I'm Supervisor of this staff, and I've nothing against Miss Marchrose."
"As you have just been reminded," pointedly said the Alderman, also
becoming heated, "the question rests ultimately with the directors."
"Then my position here is a farce," the Supervisor retorted.
"Anything but that, Mr. Fuller," said Edna earnestly, and with the
evident intention of laying a soothing hand upon his arm.
Fuller almost backed into the wall in his avoidance of it.
"Indeed," said Lady Rossiter pleadingly, "no one minimises your
position here, nor the responsibility that rests upon you with regard
to the staff. But you force me to say something that I would much, much
rather leave unsaid."
Sir Julian wondered whether it would be of any use to ask her to do so,
and decided that it would not.
"I used to hear about this poor creature years before she ever came
here. It isn't the first time that there's been--trouble."
Sir Julian's eyes almost involuntarily met those of the Alderman as
this pregnant announcement fell upon the air. He interposed in a level
voice:
"My wife means nothing that is derogatory to Miss Marchrose, Mr.
Bellew. We are, however, in a position to know that a few years ago
she broke off an engagement of marriage under circumstances that were
certainly painful, but perfectly honourable to herself. That matter, of
course, concerns her private life, and has nothing whatever to do with
the point at issue."
"Excepting this, Julian," his wife said resolutely, "that a girl who
has once put herself into a false position of that kind is liable to do
the same sort of thing again."
"She may get engaged to the whole office one after another and chuck
them next day, for all I care, so long as she does her work properly,"
said Fuller, quite as resolutely as, and a good deal more vehemently
than, Lady Rossiter.
"It would scarcely be good for the office generally," replied Edna
drily.
"Now, my dear fellow," began the Alderman, "you must look at this
matter in the light of reason. The greater good of the greater number,
you know. This young woman mustn't be allowed to upset the office."
"She hasn't done so."
"On your own showing, Mr. Fuller," said Lady Rossiter, very much in
the tone of one endeavouring to reason with an idiot, "and to quote
your own words of a few moments ago, the whole thing is in the air.
Everybody is upset and disturbed, because it is impossible for anybody
to give out reckless and excited and undisciplined thoughts and
emotions without their having an effect upon his or her surroundings.
It is----"
"I've yet to learn," Mr. Fuller interrupted, without the slightest
ceremony, "that a first-class worker can be dismissed on account of
thinking."
"Fuller, Fuller, Fuller!" bleated the Alderman, in an expostulatory
tone.
"We can discuss this later on, Fuller," said Sir Julian wearily.
"Sir Julian, I prefer to make my attitude perfectly clear to you at
once----" began Mr. Fuller with great vehemence, when Mark Easter came
back into the room.
Although the inopportuneness of an abrupt silence striking through the
excited conversation that had raged a moment before was evident to the
point of blatancy, an immediate dumbness fell upon everyone as the
door opened before Mark.
To Sir Julian's perception, it was oddly significant that Mark, after
one quick glance from face to face, should remain silent and unsmiling,
asking no question.
It was the woman present who haltingly broke through the awkward pause.
"We were just wondering if--if there was to be any tea for us. A
Committee meeting in the afternoon is so unusual for the College, isn't
it? We hardly know ourselves, when it isn't the ordinary eleven o'clock
meeting."
"There is tea in Miss Marchrose's room," said Mark.
He spoke without expression.
"Oh, thank you," said Edna, from pure nervousness, and walked out of
the room.
Sir Julian followed her, partly from sheer desire not to be confronted
with his infuriated Supervisor, and partly from a wish to see Miss
Marchrose herself.
She passed them in the passage, and Edna inclined her head without
speaking, and walked on.
Sir Julian stopped.
"Are you coming to give us some tea?" he asked her.
"Yes--No. No--I don't think so," she said confusedly, her pale face
colouring unmistakably.
Sir Julian felt vaguely disappointed. He had expected that the
consciousness of antagonism in the air would have roused in her a
certain latent defiance already dimly foreshadowed in her erect bearing
and abrupt, defensive phraseology. But she was looking tired already,
and frightened, as though she realised herself to be very much alone.
"Are you busy?" he asked.
"I am, rather."
She looked at him doubtfully, and once more he saw the shadow of fear,
unmistakable, in her dark-circled eyes.
He did not know what else to say, although he felt very sorry for her,
and he thought that for a moment she seemed about to say something
further.
But she only opened her lips for an instant and then turned away
without speaking.
"Good-bye," said Sir Julian lamely.
"Good-bye."
He waited thoughtfully outside the College for Lady Rossiter, nor did
the entertainment of afternoon tea prolong itself.
She came out, followed by Mark Easter.
"Will you have a lift, Mark?"
"Thank you, I've got one or two things to finish here."
Julian, being well aware that at this Edna was endeavouring to exchange
with him a sudden, meaning glance, became instantly absorbed in the
mechanism of the car.
"Mark, don't do that. Do come back with us now," said Lady Rossiter
earnestly, and irresistibly and quite involuntarily reminding Sir
Julian of the heroine of a certain type of fiction, pleading at the
door of the public-house, "_Bill, come home with me now_."
He stifled the ribald association and started the engine.
"You'll walk back then, later?"
"Come back with us, Mark," repeated Lady Rossiter.
Sir Julian opened the door of the car.
"Why are you in such a hurry?" demanded Lady Rossiter resentfully, in
an undertone.
"Perhaps we could wait for you, Mark, if you're only going to be a
little while."
"I'm afraid I shall be longer than that," said Mark, looking harassed.
"That's all right," said Sir Julian firmly, and took his seat in the
driver's place.
Lady Rossiter reluctantly stepped into the car beside him.
They saw Mark turn into the College again as the car moved from the
door.
"I am utterly exhausted," said Edna.
Her husband, according to his wont, made no response, and she presently
spoke again.
"Couldn't you _feel_ the tension in that place, Julian?"
"Yes."
"You are not a fanciful person, perhaps not even a very perceptive one,
and certainly Mr. Fuller is neither. Yet both you and he were on edge.
I could see it and feel it."
"And hear it too, I imagine, so far as Fuller was concerned," said Sir
Julian, not without reason.
"One does not expect very great self-command from a man of his
type. But I'm frightened, Julian, I tell you honestly. You know how
extraordinarily susceptible I am to the influence of a thought-form?"
"Of a _what_?" said Sir Julian, having heard her perfectly, but being
desirous of venting his own sense of uneasiness in ill-temper.
"Perhaps I used an out-of-the-way expression. But you know what I
mean, surely. On another plane--one that is perhaps not so far removed
from our own as we sometimes think--these things are classified.
I have no psychic gifts myself," said Edna, in a modest way that
positively seemed to imply a certain distinction in the absence of
those attributes, "but undoubtedly there are those amongst us who can
absolutely _see_ and translate into terms of colour and shape for the
rest of us."
"I feel sure that the colour and shape of any thought-form belonging to
Fuller at the present moment would repay inspection," said Sir Julian
grimly.
"Ah, poor Mr. Fuller! It hurt one, didn't it? Prejudice and violence
and ignorance--the three foes that we, who can see a little further
into the great, wonderful Heart of Life, have to fight against all the
time. But sometimes it does feel as though all one's love and pity
were being flung back upon oneself again, as though a hard wall of
resistance were opposing everything."
Edna gasped a little.
Her husband wondered so much whom she supposed herself to have been
loving and pitying that afternoon, that he felt constrained to ask the
question aloud.
"But all--all of them!"
Edna, usually undemonstrative, flung apart her hands in an expressive
gesture.
"How can you ask, even? The pity of it all, Julian! That was what wrung
my heart.... Oh, Julian! be careful."
Sir Julian, most skilful of drivers, had sent the car swerving
recklessly round the sharp corner of Culmhayes drive.
"I beg your pardon, Edna."
Both were silent till the house was reached. The topic that occupied
them both, however, was revived that evening.
This time Edna approached it from a less exalted point of view.
"It's very curious how much these people absorb one's thoughts. And
yet, of course, it's not curious at all. They're fellow-creatures,
after all. Sometimes I think the old Alderman is quite right. The best
thing would be for Miss Marchrose to go. I wish she would resign of her
own accord."
"I think," said Sir Julian, "that there is every chance of your wish
being realised."
"Why?"
"It's a question," said Sir Julian, very distinctly, "of exactly how
long she can stand her ground. She is a very intelligent person, and,
unless I am greatly mistaken, a very sensitive one, and my own opinion
is that she will be defeated early in the day by the mere atmospheric
pressure against her."
"You mean that she will _feel_, without having it put into words, that
things can't go on as they are at present?"
"It wouldn't need very keen perceptions to have come to that conclusion
already."
"Perhaps not." Lady Rossiter spoke thoughtfully. "You see, the one
thing one doesn't want, is to have things put into words."
Sir Julian, disagreeing with her even more completely than he usually
did, answered nothing.
"It's Mark I'm thinking of principally. At the present moment I
honestly believe that Mark, who is exceptionally simple, hardly
realises that anything has upset the College. Certainly he won't
attribute it--yet--to the way in which that unfortunate young woman has
been behaving."
"Why should he attribute it to her behaviour any more than to his own?"
Sir Julian reasonably enquired. "It usually requires the behaviour of
two people to start this sort of idiotic gossiping."
"Mark has been foolish, I daresay," coldly said Lady Rossiter. "All men
are alike in these matters, and when a woman hurls herself at a man's
head you can't expect him not to take a certain amount of advantage."
"Of what, exactly, has this hurling consisted?" demanded Sir Julian,
with an air of judicial impartiality.
"You have seen quite as much as I have," Lady Rossiter mistakenly
informed him; "she never has a civil word for anyone else, and she is
perfectly brazen in boasting of the amount of extra work she does for
him. She haunted the estate office when that other girl was ill, and
took over her typewriting work in the calmest way. Of course, it was
practically impossible for Mark to refuse, when she insisted. And, of
course, there's her fashion of getting him to walk home with her after
dark every night."
"And all this would be perfectly legitimate and desirable if only
Mark's dipsomaniac was in a better world instead of in this one," was
the thoughtful _résumé_ of Sir Julian--a _résumé_ of which the wording,
if not the substance, found so little favour in his wife's hearing
that she had instant resort to the inevitable Roland with which it was
her custom to counter his time-honoured Oliver.
"If you remember anything at all of that miserable affair that went
so near to wrecking poor Clarence Isbister's life, you can hardly say
that."
Sir Julian wished for no recapitulation of the oft-told tragedy alluded
to.
"I remember perfectly. He battered his head against the walls of his
nursing-home, and I think any girl was well rid of him on that account
alone."
Lady Rossiter rose with great quiet.
"I am going to bed. It has been a strain, altogether. But, after all, I
shall feel it's been worth anything--whatever it may cost me--if only
one can stave off any sort of disastrous crisis. It seems to me that,
at the moment, the one thing to be avoided is definitely putting things
into words."
"Plain speaking?" enquired Sir Julian. "It is, on the contrary, the one
thing that I should really like. But don't be afraid, Edna. We shan't
get it--unless it's from Fuller."