"You're going this afternoon, Mark, after all?"
"If you've no objection, Sir Julian."
"My dear fellow, I'm always trying to persuade you that Saturday
afternoon and Sunday were not meant for work."
Mark laughed, not sounding very much amused.
"Report progress after you've got there and let me know when you're
likely to be back."
Mark nodded.
Sir Julian put his hand upon the younger man's shoulder with a gesture
of intimacy unusual to him.
"Don't hurry back."
"Thanks very much," said Mark, with equal brevity and sincerity.
As Mark Easter went into the estate office, whither Sir Julian had
driven him, he looked round with the smile that, after all, never
altogether failed him.
"I might get some good golf down there."
"Yes," Sir Julian assented gravely, after an instant's pause. "You
might get some good golf down there. I hope you will."
He did not go near the College that morning, but found himself
wondering very much whether or not Mark had done so.
Instinct, rather than conscious volition, took him that afternoon down
to the sea-wall, to find Miss Marchrose.
Mark had gone, and she herself would leave the College, probably before
his return, and Sir Julian thought that it would not matter very
much now if he offered her such solace as could be afforded by his
understanding, complete as he felt it to be, of their wordless drama.
It was an afternoon of west-country weather, and the very spray was
misty and soft as it curled upwards from a grey, still sea. This time
there was no high wind to contend with, as on the day when they had
walked the length of the sea-wall, and she had told him about her life
in London and the story of Clarence Isbister.
He could discern her slim figure braced against the wall as he crossed
the sand-dunes and came towards her.
When she turned her face to him, he saw with a shock, that was not
altogether surprise, that it was pale and blurred with crying and that
her eyes looked as though she had been weeping all night.
The faint elusive beauty, such as it was, had left her face altogether;
but her voice, veiled with exhaustion, retained all the quality that
gave it charm.
She said, with rather tremulous directness:
"I thought that perhaps you'd come. I was hoping you would."
"Then I'm glad I came," said Sir Julian. "Are you warm enough, sitting
here?"
"Yes, I think so. I don't want to walk, I'm tired."
It was obvious that she was very much tired indeed.
"I am very sorry," said Julian simply, and his tone implied a deeper
regret than the compassion that he felt for her evident fatigue.
"You are going to let me talk about it now, aren't you?" she asked,
with a sort of childish urgency in her voice.
"Anything you like, or that is of any use to you," he replied levelly.
The necessity of self-expression is singularly strong in human
nature. Sir Julian surmised that the only outlet in the case of Miss
Marchrose's vehement and highly-strung personality lay in the exercise
of a certain gift for elementary sincerity that made of her words
something more than self-analytical outpouring.
"He has gone away," she said tonelessly. "But even before he went away
I knew how it all was. I have been the most utter fool. You could
hardly believe what a fool I've been. You know I told you the other day
that I'd hardly ever been happier than I've been here?"
"I remember."
"Well, even then, I half knew that it was because of him. And very soon
afterwards I knew it quite. And it seemed to me that I couldn't stop
myself.... The thing I cared about was doing work for him, and being
with him, and just at first it didn't occur to me that it would ever be
anyone's business but mine. I mean, I never thought that anyone would
notice, or that it would matter if they did."
Sir Julian thought of his own crusade against the thing that he termed
officiousness.
"But of course," said Miss Marchrose, "I've had experience of business
life, and I knew that in any office, the--the sort of things that make
talk can never be tolerated for a minute. It's always stopped at once.
Generally they send the woman away. And I thought that very likely
that would happen to me, sooner or later."
"And you didn't mind? I understand," said Julian.
"No, I didn't mind," she repeated forlornly enough. "I seem to have got
to a place where I can't feel ashamed of anything--otherwise I suppose
that I shouldn't be telling you this."
"I think," said Julian slowly, "that you can put that idea of shame
quite out of your mind. It has always struck me as a very much
misapplied emotion. There is nothing to be ashamed of in anything that
is true. The only thing that is shameful is pretence. You are talking
to me now on a plane where pretence can have no possible existence, and
therefore, if it is of any help to you, go on speaking what is in your
mind. I can do nothing for you, but I am here, and I will listen to
you. And I shall never repeat to any living soul those of your thoughts
which you choose to speak aloud in my hearing."
He leant over the wall, gazing with absent eyes at the grey expanse of
sea that his soul loved, and remained immovable.
"You're quite right," she said, "I want to speak about it. I do want
to speak about it. Rather like that day when I wanted to talk about
Clarence Isbister, and you let me.
"You do understand, don't you? I knew that Mr. Easter was married. He
told me so himself, quite soon. And I heard about his wife, a little,
you know--from other people at the College as well. At the very
beginning I was only just sorry, and then I minded very much, and then,
after a little while, I thought it wasn't going to matter. To him, you
know."
"Tell me what you mean," said Julian gently.
"I suppose I mean that, anyway, it wouldn't have mattered much to me.
I know that there are these standards of right and wrong. I was taught
things--but I know quite well really that they wouldn't have weighed
in the balance against happiness. I suppose that's what is meant by an
unprincipled person. Somehow I thought that he was going to feel like
that too. I daresay," said Miss Marchrose, simply enough, "that it is
because I have never been loved by anyone (except poor Clarence, whom
you can hardly count) that I thought that. Such little things seemed to
me to mean a great deal. I read indications into things--you know--and
all the time they must have meant nothing at all."
"I don't think that altogether," Julian said, entirely against his
saner judgment.
"What _do_ you think?" she asked with a kind of listless curiosity.
"I can only give you conjecture. I know nothing at all, and you see,
men don't talk to one another, much. In this case especially, of
course, I have nothing whatever to guide me but my own conjectures."
"Tell me," she said.
"I think he was very much attracted by you," said Sir Julian, with
perfect directness, and noted against his will the instant flush of
brilliant colour that the words brought to her face.
"But Mark has ideals too, you know, as well as principles. If he
ever contemplated eventualities, he knew that he had no right to ask
you--to----"
"To ask of me what I was prepared to give;" she finished the sentence
calmly.
"Do you know what that would have involved, altogether?"
"Perhaps I do and perhaps I don't," she said indifferently. "The point
is, that I was prepared to take my risks."
"In any direction?"
"In any direction," she assented, without vehemence.
"I see."
Hers might indeed be the daring of ignorance, but Sir Julian felt very
little doubt that she had spoken in perfect accordance with fact, as
regarded her own capabilities. One by one there filtered through his
mind, and were rejected, the arguments that he knew himself entitled to
use. What of morality, of Mark Easter's work, of his two children, of a
future grey with unspoken possibilities for themselves and for others?
Her reckless impulse had not been put to the test; would never be put
to the test.
Sir Julian let the rest alone.
"I don't know, quite, when I first realised that I--I had been making
the people at the College talk," she said, and again she coloured. "It
was only a few days ago that it began, and then I had that horrible
feeling that everything was soundlessly working up to a crisis, and
that sooner or later something must snap. You know?"
"Yes, I know."
"It was after Iris Easter's wedding, I think. And at first I was glad
that it had come. Oh, you don't know, you can't imagine, what _fools_
girls can be. How they can imagine and fancy and plan things, till it
all seems true, and they try to go on into real life with the romance
that they've been living in their dreams and fancies. And it doesn't
come true. Mine didn't come true. Even if I was wrong and absolutely
wicked even to let myself imagine what I did imagine, it was just as
real to me as if things had been all right. It meant just as much to me
as it does to a girl like Iris Easter, who knows that the man she cares
for can ask her to marry him."
"Perhaps it meant more," said Sir Julian.
She gave him a glance of gratitude out of her shadow-encircled eyes.
"But when the people at the College suddenly began to watch--and
talk--and look at me--then I thought that it was going to--to--well,"
said Miss Marchrose desperately, "to give me my chance."
"Tell me what happened."
"Nothing happened. Only, you see, at the end of twenty-four hours I
saw that he was--well, just frightened. He didn't want there to be a
crisis. He never had wanted it."
Sir Julian, who was Mark's friend, involuntarily paid tribute to the
truth of her description. Mark had been afraid.
No wonder that Miss Marchrose had capitulated, after all. The citadel
for which she had been prepared to stand siege had been only the
flimsiest of castles in the air. The cause for which she had held that
no casualties could be too heavy had no existence outside her own
imagination.
She spoke again.
"So, though I know I've been crying, in a little while I shall be glad
that he's gone. Nothing can ever be worse than the last few days.
They're over now."
"They're over now," repeated Sir Julian. "Do you want to stay on at the
College next week, or had you better not go back on Monday at all?"
"I don't know," she said, in a bewildered way. "Mr. Fuller has been
extraordinarily kind to me. And, anyhow, I shall be gone before Mr.
Easter comes back. I told him that yesterday."
"You saw him, then?"
"He came to my office to say good-bye to me."
She waited a little and then said, with something that was half a laugh
in her voice, although the tears had welled into her eyes again:
"He said, 'Good-bye, Annie Laurie.'"
"Poor Mark!" said Julian in a low tone.
Presently he made her walk, afraid of the sunless spring afternoon for
her.
"Where are you going to, when you leave?" he asked her.
"London, I suppose. I can get another post there and this won't affect
my references," she answered, unconsciously using Alderman Bellew's
phrase.
"Let me know if there is anything that I can do for you," said Sir
Julian rather hopelessly, neither thinking that there was likely to be
anything that he could do, nor that there was much probability of her
applying to him.
She made reply with candour.
"I think you've done everything that you can do, Sir Julian. I'm--I'm
not trying to thank you. Will you leave me here, when you go back?"
"I can take you to the farm, or wherever you want to go."
"I would rather stay here a little while longer, by myself. Then I
shall be all right," she said, like a child.
He left her.
"Perhaps," said Sir Julian to himself, as he climbed the sand slopes
with long strides, "perhaps I ought to have said 'Good-bye,' or
'Remember' or 'God bless you,' or something like that to her. But
whatever the rights or the wrongs of her point of view, her sincerity
is worthy of respect. And I will mock her unhappiness with no
catchwords, poor child."
As he went towards Culmhayes in the gathering dusk, he met a
frantically-bicycling figure violently urging forward a machine that
was devoid of lights.
"Fuller!"
"Sir Julian?"
Fairfax Fuller came to attention, as it were, with a promptitude that
nearly sent him over his handle-bars head foremost.
"You had better not go through Culmouth at that rate and without a
light, surely?" said Sir Julian mildly. "Can I give you a match?"
"Are my lamps out?" enquired Mr. Fuller negligently.
Sir Julian felt convinced that they had never been lit, but he handed
the Supervisor a box of matches without observation.
"Thank you, Sir Julian. The fact is," said Fuller, with an air of
candour, "that I'm upset and I hardly know what I'm doing."
"What's wrong?"
"This resignation," elliptically said the Supervisor.
"My dear chap, I'm very sorry about it, but we've got to make the best
of it. I've told Miss Marchrose that we accept her resignation from a
week yesterday."
Mr. Fuller groaned.
"May I ask, Sir Julian, whether you have any idea where the girl is
now?"
"Isn't it Saturday afternoon?" was Sir Julian's rather pointed reply.
Mr. Fuller brushed aside this suggestion of the liberty of the
individual.
"I'm uneasy about her. I tell you quite frankly, Sir Julian, that I
didn't like her looks this morning. One never knows."
"She strikes me as level-headed enough, you know, Fuller."
Mr. Fuller bent down and examined his rear light, but Sir Julian knew
very well by the mere set of his shoulders that he remained, and would
continue to remain, entirely of his own opinion.
"I think that's all right now. Just as well not to run any risks,
perhaps," easily observed Mr. Fuller, once more preparing himself to
bestride his machine.
"Good evening, Sir Julian."
"Good evening."
He watched the red glimmer of Fuller's rear light shoot away into the
dusk, and then descry a sudden curve.
"By Jove!" said Sir Julian.
Mr. Fairfax Fuller, guided by some unexplained instinct, had swept away
from the road and taken the path that led down to the sea-wall. The
incident, for reasons which he did not seek to analyse, rather amused
Sir Julian as he went on his way.
His thoughts remained occupied round the subject until he entered his
own house, to find it in possession of the two most unwelcome guests
possible, in the persons of Miss and Master Easter.
"Daddy went away at lunch-time and we're all alone," proclaimed Ruthie
with pathos. "And Sarah said, she said--Sarah said, to come and see if
Lady Rossiter wouldn't like to invite us to tea."
Sir Julian had his own opinion to the amount of liking bestowed by
his wife upon the suggested festivity, but evidently she had fallen a
prey to Sarah's unblushing design for dispensing for a while with the
society of her charges.
"We'll all sit round the table and have nursery tea," said Lady
Rossiter, brightly endeavouring to make the best of a situation that,
from the Rossiters' point of view, left much to be desired.
"Have you any of you heard from Auntie Iris?" enquired Julian.
"She wrote to Daddy, and she sent her love to us. She didn't say
anything about that baby," remarked Ruthie in a tone of regret.
Sir Julian felt that Edna could have dealt with Miss Easter's tendency
to call a spade a spade a good deal more fully had he not been present.
He could almost hear the few strong, tender phrases in which she would
have bade the child refrain from the public consideration of such
matters of eugenics as now appeared to be engaging her attention.
Proceedings varied but little when Mark Easter's children were
entertained at Culmhayes. Sir Julian began by indifference, proceeded
to annoyance, and ended in a mood but little removed from infanticide.
Edna remained forbearing throughout, but became less maternal and more
repressive as the necessity for repressment increased.
Ruthie monopolised the conversation with as much determination as ever;
Ambrose whined quite as much as usual, and surpassed himself in the
degree of stickiness to which he attained; and the _séance_ ended with
the usual violent quarrel between the two and their eventual expulsion
from the room and from the house--Ruthie rampant and Ambrose in
tears--and the inevitable valedictory wish expressed by the host that
they should never be permitted to return.
Edna said, "Poor motherless children," in a tone that sounded rather
more evidently exasperated and less compassionate than she had intended
it to sound, and Sir Julian retired to the smoking-room.
He remembered presently that Edna probably knew nothing of the complete
victory signalised by Miss Marchrose's resignation from the College
staff; but he realised that the episode, in all essentials, was already
past.
That which he termed "atmosphere" was dissipated, and he knew that
it was almost as an afterthought that Edna, that evening, asked him
whether Miss Marchrose was going.
"Yes, she is."
"At once?"
"I don't know. I've left her to settle that with Fuller."
"She must go before Mark comes back. It's far better so."
"I think probably she will."
"Julian, I've been thinking about her. And it seems to me," said Edna,
"that we must help her. God knows, I can judge no one, least of all to
condemn, but I think that her weakness and recklessness are going to
make life terribly, terribly hard for her. And I, for one, can't see
her drift away like that without one effort to help."
The depth of Sir Julian's disapproval for the suggested scheme of
philanthropy left him bereft of speech. Finally he observed:
"In my opinion, Edna, you have done rather too much already. Leave her
alone."
"What do you mean? Julian, you carry your mania against officiousness
too far. Indeed you do. What are we here for, unless it is to help one
another?"
Sir Julian shrugged his shoulders.
"I knew the character of this woman before she ever came here--I
couldn't help knowing it--I saw her trying to wreck Mark, as she nearly
wrecked poor Clarence. I believe that I have saved Mark--and I thank
God for it, very humbly, and very proudly. As for her, I hold no brief
against her. I condemn no one, and I seek only to help her.... If she
cares to turn to me now, all the love that I _can_ give that poor,
struggling, feeble soul is waiting for her."
"I don't think she will ask you for it, Edna."
Sir Julian thought of many things. For a moment he wondered whether he
should say them aloud. Then the habit of apathy that had possessed him
for a number of years asserted itself anew, and he did as he had almost
always done--he left things alone.
The episode was past.
He told himself so again, with a faint sense of surprise that already
it should rank as an episode merely.
There had been no calamity, and, as Edna had said, nothing had been put
into words.
He revised the collection of infinitesimal ripples that had momentarily
disturbed the atmosphere common to the little groups of people with
whom he was concerned.
Almost each one had contributed vibrations in a greater or lesser
degree.
Miss Farmer, Miss Sandiloe, young Cooper--each and all of them had
tittered a little, wondered a little, talked foolishly.
Auntie Iris--for the life of him, Julian could not feel as angry with
pretty, ridiculous Iris as he thought that her folly deserved--Iris,
too, had played out her little comedies, her childish attempts at
directing the hand of fate.
Old Alderman Bellew--Julian gave only an instant's half-amused
recollection to the dogmatic condemnations and assertions of old
Alderman Bellew. He had merely found it easy to follow the lead given
him, after all.
On the thought of Edna's many activities Sir Julian dwelt not at all.
Somewhere at the back of his mind lingered the echo of her specious
gospel, her creed of "giving out."
For himself, he preferred to think that the trend of events had been in
no way deflected by all that Edna had done and said.
The whole had been fated to remain an episode, devoid of climax.