Round the corner now came the elder Miss Firs-Robinson, with
Elfrida in her train, and Mr. Blount, the curate, in Elfrida's.
And after them a young man--rather short and stout, with
clothes that suggested London, and an unfathomable air. It was
Mr. Browne, who, when anything was on, could never keep his
finger out of the pie.
Mrs. Greatorex turned quickly to Agatha.
"Not a word about that wretched idiot," she said in a low tone.
"And stay for awhile; the servants will be sure to talk, and I
should like these people, who"--with a contemptuous shrug--
"are inveterate gossips, to see that nothing really has
happened."
"But your niece---" protested Dillwyn, seeing Agatha's exhausted
air.
"My aunt is right," said Agatha quickly, fearing a collision
between the two--the young doctor's eyes, indeed, were burning
fiercely. She moved forward at once to meet the coming guests,
greeted old Miss Firs-Robinson with calm courtesy, and kissed
Elfrida--Elfrida, who looked back at her keenly for a moment,
then pressed her into a seat beside her, and pulled up a cushion
behind her back. It occurred to Dillwyn that he rather liked
Elfrida. He bade good-bye to Mrs. Greatorex, who seemed delighted
to say good-bye to him. And another good-bye to Agatha, holding
her hand until he met her eyes.
As he went another guest came--Lord Ambert.
Mrs. Greatorex received him with effusion, and gave him a chair
near herself.
"A frightful thing, dear Mrs. Greatorex!" said Miss
Firs-Robinson. She sank into a wicker seat upon the balcony with
tremendous effect. Every one thought the balcony was going down.
Providentially, it rebounded from the shock, and was itself
again.
"A frightful thing, indeed!" said Mr. Browne, who had subsided
near Agatha and Elfrida. "It has been a most merciful
deliverance. I thought we were all going to the lower regions,
didn't you?"
"After all, it wouldn't be far!" said Agatha, thinking of the
depth of the small balcony--one so near the ground.
"My dear girl, consider! Even the very doughtiest scientists have
failed to find the number of descending acres that divide our
comparatively pleasant home from---"
"From what?"
"Well," said Mr. Browne, "really I hardly like to name it in a
select assembly like this. But I believe nasty people call it--
hell!"
"Oh, Dicky!" said Agatha.
He was an old friend of hers. He was an old friend of a lot of
people. One had only to know Dicky Browne for ten days to be
quite a century-old friend of his. At this moment Lord Ambert
strolled towards them and up to Elfrida.
"I knew it would startle you, but you insisted," said Dicky
Browne reproachfully.
"What nonsense!" said Elfrida. "You know auntie was talking of
this sad affair about Mrs. Darkham."
"Yes," said the curate gravely. "She is dying, I hear, poor
soul!"
"Oh no!" from all, which did not mean a contradiction.
"I am sorry to say it is true. I heard this morning there was no
hope."
"After all, she is no great loss," said Elfrida, with a sort of
determination in her tone.
"She _is_ a loss," said the curate, defying her valiantly,
openly, and to her face. "She will be a loss to that poor son of
hers, whom Heaven, in a wisdom unknown to us, has afflicted."
"Oh, _you_ know everything," said Elfrida, with a shrug of her
dainty shoulders. She almost turned her back on him. Lord Ambert
came forward and whispered a word or two in her ear. She
laughed. The curate fell back. Dicky, laying a hand upon his arm,
drew him away from the group and into the shadow of some large
tubs filled with shrubs.
Miss Firs-Robinson had been gaining a loose rein to her
sympathetic tendencies. And to Mrs. Greatorex!
"A shocking affair! Poor dear creature! Rather--er--
behindhand in some little ways; but such an end! Of course, Dr.
Dillwyn has told you all the facts of the case, but the details,
they are so interesting; but no doubt you've heard 'em."
Mrs. Greatorex, who would have given worlds to say she had, was
so carried away by her desire to learn the smallest minutiae of
the tragedy upon the _spot_ that she gave way, and confessed that
she knew little or nothing of the terrible affair. She made the
handsome admission with quite an air, however. She did it
admirably, but she played rather above the head of her companion,
who did not understand her in the least.
"Law, my dear, how out of the world you are!" said that worthy,
with a patronising smile that filled the soul of Mrs. Greatorex
with wrath. "Well, I keep my eyes open and my ears too, and now
I'll tell you."
Mrs. Greatorex made a movement as if to crush her with a
well-applied word or two, but she checked herself. If she
offended old Miss Firs-Robinson, she would learn nothing about
Mrs. Darkham's accident. If she endured her in silence, all the
gossip of the neighbourhood would be hers in five minutes. And
five minutes was not long to endure any one. Dr. Dillwyn had been
vague, and too much taken up with Agatha (she would have to put
an end to that presently) to tell her anything worth hearing, and
so she had heard nothing beyond the mere fact of the fall.
"Yes?" said she carefully.
Tea had been brought out by one of the small maids, who had now
ceased from her trembling, and Mrs. Greatorex stood up to pour it
out.
"She's dying," said Miss Firs-Robinson; "not a doubt of it! She's
heavy, you know; and her head came with an awful thud on the
ground. Concussion, that's what it is. They say the boy--that
unfortunate creature, you know--was in a frightful state; but
they do say that the husband bore it wonderfully."
"Scandalous gossip!" said Mrs. Greatorex, drawing back and
letting the tea overflow in the cup.
"Why?" asked Miss Firs-Robinson, who, if a gossip, was, at all
events, not a hypocrite. "I should think he'd be glad enough to
get rid of her--decently, you know--decently."
"Dear Miss Firs-Robinson, surely you don't quite mean what you
say!"
"Indeed I do, my dear. If people are tied together, and don't
like each other, they had better be separated."
"Good heavens, this is heresy!" said Mr. Browne. "You'll get
taken up, Miss Robinson, if you don't look out."
"Not me!" said the old maid, with her loud, hearty laugh. "No
such luck. Nobody ever wanted me in all my born days, except
'Frida. And I stick to what I say. It's my opinion that poor Mrs.
Darkham didn't have altogether a good time with her husband."
"Ah, you are evidently prejudiced!" said Mrs. Greatorex sweetly.
"And prejudiced people, you know, have no opinions."
"I don't agree with you there."
"It is true, nevertheless. They merely adopt the thoughts of
those who think as they do, and suit their opinions to their
likes and dislikes. Unbiased judgement is beyond them."
"Then I'm not prejudiced," said old Miss Firs-Robinson, with
another laugh. "Your words prove it, because I beg you to
understand I have as sound an opinion as any one I know on most
matters. And I don't suit it to my likes or dislikes either,
because I never could bear Mrs. Darkham; yet I think there is
some good in her."
"Who is Mrs. Darkham?" asked Mr. Browne. "That big red woman with
the voice of a costermonger I met here last year?"
"Yes. She slipped on an orange-peel yesterday, and is now hardly
expected to recover."
"After all, there is something in orange-peel," said Mr. Browne
thoughtfully.
"You think her death will be welcomed by some people?" asked Miss
Firs-Robinson, pushing up her pince-nez into better position for
battle. She had always suspected Mrs. Darkham's relations with
her husband; though, evidently, Mrs. Greatorex had not.
"By herself! Herself!" said Mr. Browne severely. "Just think of
the burden she has had to carry about with her for all these past
years."
"There, you see!" cried Miss Firs-Robinson triumphantly to Mrs.
Greatorex. "Dicky has noticed it too."
It was delightful for her to know that somebody besides herself
had seen that the poor woman now lying low had not been
altogether kindly treated by her husband.
"I don't know what he has noticed," said Mrs. Greatorex coldly.
"And I think, Richard," casting a chilly glance at Mr. Browne,
who took it and apparently was lost in wonder over it, "it would
be wiser if you abstained from open condemnation of things of
which you know absolutely nothing!"
"I'm in it, as usual," said Mr. Browne, with an air of tender
resignation. "But why these cold glances? I've seen her, you
know, and seeing is believing. Surely, I must know something--
some little thing!"
"Of course," said Miss Firs-Robinson triumphantly. "To see her
was enough, poor creature! So dull--so sat upon!"
"Did he do that?" asked Mr. Browne, with perhaps too lively an
interest. "Dared he sit upon her? Well, she'd tempt one that way,
you know."
"I agree with you, Richard," said Mrs. Greatorex, with a friendly
inclination towards him.
"Dicky does not mean that," said Miss Firs-Robinson angrily. "He
knows, because I've told him, that her husband made her life a
burden to her."
"Oh, but, really, it was her flesh I alluded to, you know, not
her husband--not her husband, you know!" said Mr. Browne, with
a reproachful glance at the irate dames on his left, and a sharp
attack on the sponge-cake on his right. The tea-table is fatally
near him. "Her--eh--well, it must be a burden to her, you
know, and no doubt, poor creature! she'll be glad to lay it
down."
He has now got a considerable portion of the sponge-cake in his
possession, and is waxing quite Christian in his air and smile.
The smile, indeed, is seraphic.
"I believe you've been taking us in all the time," said Miss
Firs-Robinson at last. She was broad-minded, and could laugh at
her own small defects at times. Mrs. Greatorex could not,
however, and had turned away, and was talking to Lord Ambert, who
was giving her rather curt replies, as he wanted to make the
running with the small heiress as strong as possible, and grudged
a moment taken from his stride. The small heiress, who was
flirting assiduously with the unfortunate curate, was well aware
of his impatience with Mrs. Greatorex, and laughed in her dainty
lace sleeves about it.
"I am afraid auntie is not orthodox," said she, looking at Tom
Blount, who was still hovering round her, out of two very
unorthodox blue eyes. She was alluding to her aunt's late
openly-expressed opinion that married people unsuited to each
other were better apart. "Are you, auntie?"
Auntie drew near at this challenge; when would she not draw near
when that pretty voice summoned her?
"I don't know what I am," said that stout lady, with a beneficent
smile. "But, 'on my, if it came to living with Dr. Darkham all my
life, I'd cry 'No, thank you!'"
"Oh, auntie, now you are giving yourself away indeed! You are
uncharitable, and Mr. Blount will put you down as incorrigible,"
said her niece, retreating behind the fan she held, as if
horrified.
Evidently, she was ashamed of herself, thought her aunt. Blount,
however, was filled with unhappy certainty that she was laughing.
"Don't mind her, Mr. Blount," said old Miss Robinson very kindly.
"I know you won't do anything of the kind."
"Ah, Lord Ambert--going?"
"Yes--aw--just dropped in for a moment, you know. Good-bye,"
to Elfrida, who smiled at him.
"See you at the Stackfords' on Tuesday?"
"I think not." She still smiled at him, her lovely little face a
picture. "This sudden illness of Mrs. Darkham's--it casts a
sort of gloom, you see."
"Yes; it would be inhuman," said the curate suddenly, "to go to a
tennis-party, or a party of any kind, when that poor woman is
lying at death's door."
"A merely plebeian idea, I assure you, Miss Robinson," said
Ambert, taking Elfrida's hand and pressing it in a tender
fashion. "I trust you will not let yourself be influenced by it,
and that I shall see you on Tuesday." He paused. "I shall see you
to-morrow, at all events!"
He pressed her hand again, bowed to Agatha--he had already made
his adieux to Mrs. Greatorex--gave a nod to Dicky Browne, who
seemed delighted with him in some strange way, and without so
much as a glance at the curate, though, certainly, courtesy
demanded as much as that, he went his way.