Mrs. Dallow came up to London soon after the meeting of Parliament; she
made no secret of the fact that she was fond of "town" and that in
present conditions it would of course not have become less attractive to
her. But she prepared to retreat again for the Easter vacation, not to
go back to Harsh, but to pay a couple of country visits. She did not,
however, depart with the crowd--she never did anything with the
crowd--but waited till the Monday after Parliament rose; facing with
composure, in Great Stanhope Street, the horrors, as she had been taught
to consider them, of a Sunday out of the session. She had done what she
could to mitigate them by asking a handful of "stray men" to dine with
her that evening. Several members of this disconsolate class sought
comfort in Great Stanhope Street in the afternoon, and them for the most
part she also invited to return at eight o'clock. There were accordingly
almost too many people at dinner; there were even a couple of wives.
Nick Dormer was then present, though he had not been in the afternoon.
Each of the other persons had said on coming in, "So you've not
gone--I'm awfully glad." Mrs. Dallow had replied, "No, I've not gone,"
but she had in no case added that she was glad, nor had she offered an
explanation. She never offered explanations; she always assumed that no
one could invent them so well as those who had the florid taste to
desire them.
And in this case she was right, since it is probable that few of her
visitors failed to say to themselves that her not having gone would have
had something to do with Dormer. That could pass for an explanation with
many of Mrs. Dallow's friends, who as a general thing were not morbidly
analytic; especially with those who met Nick as a matter of course at
dinner. His figuring at this lady's entertainments, being in her house
whenever a candle was lighted, was taken as a sign that there was
something rather particular between them. Nick had said to her more than
once that people would wonder why they didn't marry; but he was wrong in
this, inasmuch as there were many of their friends to whom it wouldn't
have occurred that his position could be improved. That they were
cousins was a fact not so evident to others as to themselves, in
consequence of which they appeared remarkably intimate. The person
seeing clearest in the matter was Mrs. Gresham, who lived so much in the
world that being left now and then to one's own company had become her
idea of true sociability. She knew very well that if she had been
privately engaged to a young man as amiable as Nick Dormer she would
have managed that publicity shouldn't play such a part in their
intercourse; and she had her secret scorn for the stupidity of people
whose conception of Nick's relation to Julia rested on the fact that he
was always included in her parties. "If he never was there they might
talk," she said to herself. But Mrs. Gresham was supersubtle. To her it
would have appeared natural that her friend should celebrate the
parliamentary recess by going down to Harsh and securing the young man's
presence there for a fortnight; she recognised Mrs. Dallow's actual plan
as a comparatively poor substitute--the project of spending the
holidays in other people's houses, to which Nick had also promised to
come. Mrs. Gresham was romantic; she wondered what was the good of mere
snippets and snatches, the chances that any one might have, when large,
still days _a deux_ were open to you--chances of which half the sanctity
was in what they excluded. However, there were more unsettled matters
between Mrs. Dallow and her queer kinsman than even Mrs. Gresham's fine
insight could embrace. She was not on the Sunday evening before Easter
among the guests in Great Stanhope Street; but if she had been Julia's
singular indifference to observation would have stopped short of
encouraging her to remain in the drawing-room, along with Nick, after
the others had gone. I may add that Mrs. Gresham's extreme curiosity
would have emboldened her as little to do so. She would have taken for
granted that the pair wished to be alone together, though she would have
regarded this only as a snippet. The company had at all events stayed
late, and it was nearly twelve o'clock when the last of them, standing
before the fire in the room they had quitted, broke out to his
companion:
"See here, Julia, how long do you really expect me to endure this kind
of thing?" Julia made him no answer; she only leaned back in her chair
with her eyes upon his. He met her gaze a moment; then he turned round
to the fire and for another moment looked into it. After this he faced
his hostess again with the exclamation: "It's so foolish--it's so
damnably foolish!"
She still said nothing, but at the end of a minute she spoke without
answering him. "I shall expect you on Tuesday, and I hope you'll come by
a decent train."
"What do you mean by a decent train?"
"I mean I hope you'll not leave it till the last thing before dinner, so
that we can have a little walk or something."
"What's a little walk or something? Why, if you make such a point of my
coming to Griffin, do you want me to come at all?"