Such not being the comfortable conviction of Sir Julian, he waited for further enlightenment.
“The girl can go.”
“Oh,” said Sir Julian. “Yes. The girl can go, of course.”
“It needn’t affect her references in any way,” said the Alderman, apparently made uneasy by something in Sir Julian’s tone.
“Certainly not.”
“There’s no harm in the girl, I daresay, though I don’t like what I hear of those antecedents of hers.”
Sir Julian was perfectly well aware that Miss Marchrose’s antecedents, so far as Alderman Bellew’s knowledge of them was concerned, rested upon the slender fabric of the hints thrown out by Lady Rossiter on the subject. He therefore remained unresponsive, and Alderman Bellew presently, with an air of rather puzzled reluctance, abandoned the subject.
“It’s no business of mine,” Sir Julian told himself with increasing vehemence, as his perception grew of the strength of the league that was so successfully fighting the shadow of a possibility.
Even Culmhayes was pervaded by unrest.
Edna was silent all through dinner, except when the servants were in the room, when she discoursed in an elevating way about the first breath of spring, and a tiny twitter which she said that she had heard in the beech- wood that afternoon.
Sir Julian heard about the twitter towards February or March every year, and received the news of it with modified enthusiasm only.
As soon as they were alone, Edna drew a long breath, flung her head back, and said with a sort of restrained ardour:
“Julian, whom do you suppose I met this afternoon in the beech- wood?”
“The first squirrel of the year,” suggested Sir Julian, with perfect indifference.
“I am not laughing.”
“Neither am I. Do you mean a human being, or a harbinger of spring?”
“I met Mark,” said Lady Rossiter very gravely.
Sir Julian peeled a walnut attentively.
“It seemed I say it in all reverence like an answer to prayer, for I had prayed over it all. Julian, I was miserable. I could see all the tangle and perplexity so clearly, and yet I felt bound and helpless. I could do nothing to help or to hinder.”
Julian reflected detachedly that his wife did herself less than justice.
“And then I met Mark. And I knew as soon as I saw him that it was my opportunity for helping. It is so curious, when one has formed the habit of looking for little opportunities, how the big one is sure to come sooner or later. Mark wanted help badly, Julian.”
Lady Rossiter waited for a moment, during which her husband remained motionless, and then went on speaking in slow, even tones.
“I believe in courage, as you know, most intensely. It is so difficult, sometimes, to break through our conventional reserve. It was so to-day. But I spoke. Mark has no woman in his life.”
“I can hardly agree with you, in the circumstances,” muttered Julian grimly, but his wife disregarded the interruption.
“And there are times when a man wants a woman to whom he can speak freely. Oh, I didn’t hurt his chivalry in any way I respect it far too much. Nothing was put into words between us, practically but everything was implied.”
“At the moment, Edna, I prefer words to implications, as I am very much more likely to understand them. What did you say to Mark?”
“Very little,” said Edna, with a dignified simplicity that failed entirely to convince Sir Julian of the accuracy of her statement. “But, thank God, I believe I have made certain that there will be no debacle such as one could not help dreading. I was in terror that that unfortunate girl should try to force an issue.”
Sir Julian realised, with a slight shock of surprise, that his wife’s estimate of Miss Marchrose’s capabilities of enterprise were identical with his own. Edna, he reflected, did not yet know that Miss Marchrose had, to all intents and purposes, most unmistakably hauled down her colours when she had tendered her resignation to him that morning.
“How are you to prevent her from forcing an issue?” he asked.
“It’s so simple. Mark is going away on business, and he leaves on Saturday instead of on Monday. A week makes a long break, Julian, in a case like this, and she will either understand why he has gone without being told, or she will find her position intolerable, and leave the College. Even if she stays on though I think it impossible that she should they will begin again on a very different footing. Mark understands now.”
“Understands what, in Heaven’s name?”
Edna raised her eyebrows and made a significant gesture. “Mark goes to-morrow?”
“Yes. Thank Heaven, I made him see that there is greater courage in turning one’s back, sometimes, than in facing a danger. Every day that passes, as these last days have passed, the risk of an explosion becomes greater. It’s like skating over a volcano.”
“Nobody ever does skate over volcanoes,” said Julian, almost automatically. His mind was working rapidly.
Mark was turning his back.
As Edna had said, it might be the greater courage.
There would be no crisis. Nothing had happened and nothing would happen. A crisis, indeed, must have spelt disaster, Sir Julian told himself mechanically, all the while with a sense of having somehow missed a clue. The next moment he had found it.
His original instinct with regard to Miss Marchrose had been right. She had in all probability known whither she was drifting, and she had been prepared to face the rapids gallantly. But Mark... Julian dropped his metaphors and envisaged crude facts Mark, after all, had himself been responsible for the determining factor that alone could have vanquished her courage utterly.
Fully alive to an awkward situation, Mark Easter had inevitably conveyed to the girl, whom Sir Julian, more than ever, qualified as an incurable romanticist, the illimitable difference in their scales of relative values.
And it was that certainty that, reaching her in the atmospheric tension of the last few days, had defeated Miss Marchrose.
XIX
“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 hi
m, 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.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 144
