THE ins and outs and general details of Gwen’s plan of campaign would in
no wise interest, much less edify the moral reader. It is enough that
the plan was a brilliant success, and its organization and execution
would have done credit to the Prince of Darkness himself. Her tactics
were by no means volcanic, they were resolute, gradual, and in a way
scriptural, line upon line, precept upon precept, first the seed, then
the blade, then the full corn in the ear. When the initial steps were
passed, just leaving the air well charged with vague apprehension and
the minds of men ripe for some new development, active measures set in,
in a careless unconscious sort of way, as if the divine order of things
had just received a passing jar, no more, but then this jar continued
and increased and grew in dimensions till the very bones of the jarred
shook in their skins, and it was as much as their souls could do to hold
themselves in their bodies.
Three months after the plan’s inception, the amazing goings-on of Dacre,
the wild originality of his pranks, the consistent sustained _diablerie_
of his outbursts, the terrible all-pervadingness of his personality, had
succeeded in completely upheaving the souls of his parents and filling
the entire household with a fearful sense of insecurity, as of a
community conscious of the presence amongst them of an invisible
infernal machine, that moves by some hidden power all over everywhere
and can neither be caught nor compassed.
Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes, who kept a close eye on the affairs of the Hall
children, had felt now for some time that there was too much subtlety in
this departure of Dacre’s to be all his own.
“The days of devil-possession are gone; I could swear it’s Gwen,” said
Mrs. Fellowes one day, smiting her small hands together and dropping a
child’s petticoat on which she was sewing a button.
“I’ve been thinking so for some time,” said her husband, “all the same,
I hardly see where the ‘swear’ mends matters.”
“Oh, never mind! When a woman’s perturbed, she often relapses into
original sin, it’s a full year since I ‘reckoned’—‘swear’ at least is
cosmopolitan. I’ll go up this minute and get to the truth of this, Gwen
hasn’t been near me for a fortnight, and I’ve been so busy, you see, I
couldn’t go near them.”
“I shall go too, I must get a subscription for those miserable Gows from
Waring, but, little woman, hadn’t you better lie down? After five nights
up with Jim Brown, even you must want rest!”
“Lie down! No, no; with this on my mind, why, I couldn’t rest a minute.”
After a rather ineffectual attempt to bring Mrs. Waring to a decent
flesh-and-blood consistency, Mrs. Fellowes retreated to the school-room.
“She grows worse and worse,” she muttered, as she let out some of her
feelings in a sharp rap on the door.
Mr. Gedge, the present instructor, was not her husband’s choice, he was
launched on the children by a well-meaning uncle of Mrs. Waring’s, who
from time to time swooped down on the family in a protective, if rather
hawk-like fashion, and invariably set some reform afloat among man or
beast.
In this last visit he had let Gedge loose in the school-room. The man
was as little fitted to deal with the plan’s ramifications as a babe
unborn.
When Mrs. Fellowes went in she got a howl of welcome from Dacre, Gwen
gave her only a quiet handshake, but the warm light that flashed into
her cold eyes told more than any howl. Mr. Gedge stood up wearily and
looked pleased.
“Do sit down,” said he casting a furtive, fearful glance on Dacre.
He was in constant horrid dread of a new sensation, they were so
diverse, so swift in succession, one never knew when one might not come
on, and it might be embarrassing if set going in the presence of a lady.
Dacre, however, his familiar being otherwise engaged, was quiescent, and
Gedge breathed freer.
“May I have Gwen for the afternoon?” asked Mrs. Fellowes.
She was amazed to see the hesitation on Gwen’s face and the actual look
of dismay on Dacre’s, but she speedily fathomed the reason.
“I knew it,” she said to herself, “Gwen is the mover in the whole
business.” Then aloud, “Gwen, you will come, dear, Mr. Gedge’s eyes have
said ‘yes’ already.”
Mr. Gedge had a lively though bashful admiration for the little
American, he beamed his assent in quite a sprightly way. “It will be one
less to cope with,” he reflected, “and I can perhaps get my poor Amy’s
letter finished.”
The devil, in a specially evil moment, had revealed to Mr. Gedge’s
pupils the existence of this sweet young woman, and had thereby added
another hundredweight to the millstone already encircling the neck of
her affianced.
Mrs. Fellowes looked with sudden sympathy at the young man, then with
twinkling eyes at his charges, he seemed so ludicrously out of
proportion to his task.
“Poor thing!” She thought it with such amused vehemence it almost got
spoken aloud. “Poor thing, you shall have a peaceful afternoon for
once!”
“Mr. Gedge, do give me Dacre too, do, just for one day! He shall go for
a ride with Mr. Fellowes.”
“Oh golly!” muttered Dacre, dancing in his glee.
Gwen’s face grew brilliant with joy, she could now go with an easy
conscience, she couldn’t by any possibility have left Dacre alone, he
was too utterly “an ass”. She could now have a whole long afternoon to
be happy in; she needn’t think once all the time, only just laugh and
play and let herself be kissed—she never by any chance ventured a kiss
on her own account—and she would feel Mrs. Fellowes’ soft hands on her
head—she always brushed her hair for tea—and hear her soft voice, and it
would stay in her ears making little tunes; and the Rector, he would be
good too, and remain in the drawing-room after tea—he always did when
they came—he was always kind and he told such funny stories.
Gwen’s contained joy broke out in a prolonged “Oh!”
Mrs. Fellowes looked rapidly round the handsome room and out into the
Park, the finest in the county, and back to the child’s face.
“It is abominable, abominable,” she thought angrily, “just to be away
from the place for a few hours transforms the child, she is simply
beautiful this minute with that look—oh, it is brutal! Gwen, love, run
at once and put on your things, and, Dacre, run down in the porch, I’ll
tell Mr. Fellowes you are going with him.”
As soon as the children were gone she said kindly,
“Mr. Gedge, you’ll have a respite anyway.”
“Mrs. Fellowes,” he burst out, “I am coming to see the Rector, I have
endeavoured, and I truly hope conscientiously, to do my duty, but I find
my present position altogether untenable. I am not a very strong man,
Mrs. Fellowes, and I find this life is fast undermining my
constitution.”
He paused for a moment; then he went on hurriedly, in a sudden impulse
of confidence,
“Mrs. Fellowes, forgive my troubling you with my affairs but you are so
very kind,—I have hopes, very dear hopes, and from various strange
sensations in the region of my heart when my struggles with Dacre have
been specially trying and prolonged, I have reason to fear some
fundamental lesion of the organ.”
Mr. Gedge had just been reading up the heart in some medical journal, he
had also lately ascertained that his maternal aunt had died of
_Angina-pectoris_, so he was naturally upset in his mind.
“If one has hopes, Mrs. Fellowes,” he went on sadly, “one’s duty seems
to be to guard against anything that must interfere with such hopes,
always supposing them to be lawful and right.”
“Indeed, I quite agree with you,” said Mrs. Fellowes with much
heartiness, and with an unholy tendency to laughter, “I agree with you,
and no doubt, as is the way of such things, your hopes are bound up in
the hopes and happiness of another. For her sake alone you must consider
your position seriously.”
“Yes, I will turn my thoughts to some other sphere of action, but before
I leave here,” he added with solemn resolve, “I deem it my duty to my
employers to represent to them the urgent advisability of sending my
elder pupil to a public school—I know you agree with me in this, Mrs.
Fellowes?”
“Agree with you! why, we have been fighting for it for years.”
“Then I may rely on your and your husband’s help in this matter?” he
asked, looking rather askew admiration at her through his eyeglasses.
He had received a slight injury to one eye in his youth, and according
to Dacre it was now “a game one”.
By these suggestions of Mr. Gedge it will be seen that Gwen’s leaven was
working.