Tension E-Book

E. M. Delafield

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 332

Beschreibung

"Auntie Iris has written a book!" "A book!" echoed both auditors of the announcement, in keys varying between astonishment and dismay. "Yes, and it's going to be published, and put into a blue cover, and sold, and Auntie Iris is going to make heaps and heaps of money!" "What is it to be called?" said Lady Rossiter rather gloomily, fixing an apprehensive eye on the exuberant niece of the authoress. "It's called, 'Why, Ben!' and it's a Story of the Sexes," glibly quoted that young lady, unaware of the shock inflicted by this brazen announcement, delivered at the top of her squeaky, nine-year-old voice. "Good God!" said Sir Julian Rossiter. His wife said, "Hush, Julian!" in a rather automatic aside and turned again to the herald of "Why, Ben!" now hopping exultantly round and round the breakfast-table. "Did you get a letter from Aunt Iris this morning, Ruthie?" "Daddy did, and he said it was a secret before, but now the publishers had accepted the book and everybody might know, and I said—I said——" Ruthie consecrated the briefest possible instant to drawing a sufficiently deep breath to enable her to resume her rapid, high-pitched narrative. "I said, 'Me and Peekaboo must come and tell you and Sir Julian, because you'd be so pleased and so excited, and so surprised!'"

Leseprobe

TENSION

E. M. DELAFIELD

CONTENTS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

TENSION

I

"Auntie Iris has written a book!"

"A book!" echoed both auditors of the announcement, in keys varying between astonishment and dismay.

"Yes, and it's going to be published, and put into a blue cover, and sold, and Auntie Iris is going to make heaps and heaps of money!"

"What is it to be called?" said Lady Rossiter rather gloomily, fixing an apprehensive eye on the exuberant niece of the authoress.

"It's called, 'Why, Ben!' and it's a Story of the Sexes," glibly quoted that young lady, unaware of the shock inflicted by this brazen announcement, delivered at the top of her squeaky, nine-year-old voice.

"Good God!" said Sir Julian Rossiter.

His wife said, "Hush, Julian!" in a rather automatic aside and turned again to the herald of "Why, Ben!" now hopping exultantly round and round the breakfast-table.

"Did you get a letter from Aunt Iris this morning, Ruthie?"

"Daddy did, and he said it was a secret before, but now the publishers had accepted the book and everybody might know, and I said—I said——"

Ruthie consecrated the briefest possible instant to drawing a sufficiently deep breath to enable her to resume her rapid, high-pitched narrative. "I said, 'Me and Peekaboo must come and tell you and Sir Julian, because you'd be so pleased and so excited, and so surprised!'"

"Is your little brother here as well?" said Sir Julian, gazing distastefully through his eye-glasses at Ruthie, heated, breathless, hopping persistently on one leg, and with a general air of having escaped from the supervision of whoever might have charge of her morning toilette before that toilette had received even the minimum of attention. Ruthie cast a look of artless surprise about her.

"I thought he was here. He came with me—but you know how he dawdles. He may be still in the drive."

A slow fumbling at the door-handle discredited the supposition.

"There he is!" shrieked Ruthie joyfully, and violently turning the handle of the door. "Ow! I can't open the door!"

"Of course you can't, if he is holding the handle at the other side. Let go."

"He won't be able to open it himself, he never can—and besides, his hands are all sticky, I know, because he upset the treacle at breakfast. Let go, Peekaboo!" bawled his sister through the keyhole.

"H'sh—sh. Don't shriek like that, he can hear quite well."

"But he won't let go——"

"Come away from the door, Ruthie, and don't make that noise."

Lady Rossiter herself went to the door of which the handle was being ineffectually jerked from without, and said with that peculiar distinctness of utterance characteristic of exasperation kept consciously under control:

"Is that you, Ambrose? Turn the handle towards you—no, not that way, towards you, I said—right round——"

"Turn it towards you, Peekaboo!" shrieked Ruthie, suddenly thrusting her head under Lady Rossiter's arm.

"Be quiet, Ruthie. There, that's right."

The door slowly opened, and a rather emaciated, seven-year-old edition in knickerbockers of the stalwart Ruthie advanced languidly into the room.

"How do you do?" he remarked, extending a treacle-glazed hand for the morning greetings entirely omitted by his excited elder sister.

"Good morning, Ambrose dear. You're paying us a very early visit."

"Auntie Iris has written a book!" announced Ambrose, more deliberately than, but quite as loudly and distinctly as, his senior. "And it's called, 'Why, Ben! A Story of the Sexes.'"

"Yes, dear, Ruthie told us," said Lady Rossiter, a rather repressed note in her voice indicating a renewed sense of outrage at the singular title selected by Ambrose's aunt for her maiden attempt at literature.

Ambrose turned pallid eyes of fury behind a large pair of spectacles upon his sister.

"You said you wouldn't tell them till I came.... It's very, very mean of you.... I'll tell Daddy the minute I get home ... I ... I...."

His objurgations became incoherent, through none the less expressive for that, and gaining steadily in volume as he sought, in vain, to overpower the torrent of self-defence instantly emitted from Ruthie's lungs of brass.

Sir Julian Rossiter laid down his paper, opened the French window, and thrust both his visitors into the drive.

"Bolt the window, Julian," said his wife hastily. "And I will tell Horber not to let them in at the front door. Much as I love children, I can't have them rushing in on us at breakfast; it's really too much."

"Do you suppose all their morning calls end like this?" remarked Sir Julian, as he watched their departing guests stagger down the drive, Ambrose's large head still shaking with his wrath, and the voice of his sister still audibly browbeating and calling him "Peekaboo."

"Why does she call her brother by that senseless and revolting nickname?"

"I don't know. I think it's a nursery relic, and dates from the days of their unfortunate mother."

"The dipsomaniac?"

Lady Rossiter said nothing. She was aware that Mrs. Easter's enforced retirement into a home for inebriates was an ancient scandal, and that Julian had only introduced a reference to it in the idle hope of trapping her into disregarding her favourite touchstone in conversation—"Is it kind, is it wise, is it true?"

Unlike his wife, but in common with many people less apt at analysing the idiosyncrasy than himself, Sir Julian habitually preferred silence to speech, unless he had anything unpleasant to say. It was one of the many differences which did not make for unity between them.

"I wonder," Sir Julian presently observed, "what publisher is undertaking the responsibility of 'Why, Ben!' How exactly like Auntie Iris to choose such a preposterous name, and to call it 'A Story of the Sexes' into the bargain! She can't be more than twenty."

"It rather made me shudder when those two poor children spoke the name so glibly. 'A Story of the Sexes'—imagine their knowing such a word at all, at their age!"

Sir Julian shrugged his shoulder. "Nothing could surprise me, from the egregious Ruthie. I suppose I shall have to congratulate Mark Easter on his half-sister's achievement this morning."

"Are you going to the College?"

"I must. There is a meeting of the directors, and I have to take the chair."

"Not a General Committee meeting?" said Lady Rossiter quickly.

"No, Edna," replied her husband, with a great finality. "Not a General Committee meeting."

If he did not add an ejaculatory thanksgiving aloud to the statement, his wife was none the less aware that he regarded with the extreme of disfavour her presence at the general meetings of the committee which presided over that venture known as the "Commercial and Technical College for the South-West of England." On this reflection, Lady Rossiter infused as much proprietary interest as possible into the tone of her next enquiry.

"Have we got a Lady Superintendent yet? I can't bear to think of all my girls without a woman to look after them. There are so many little things for which women need a woman."

"One of the subjects before the meeting to-day is to discuss an application for the post. Fuller thinks he has found some one."

Edna Rossiter raised her well-marked, dark eyebrows.

"Surely Mr. Fuller is hardly qualified to judge?"

"Probably not. That's why the question is to be laid before the directors," said her husband drily.

Lady Rossiter, tall and beautiful, with the maturity of a woman whom the years had left with auburn hair unfaded and opaque white skin almost unlined, moved restlessly about the room.

Sir Julian, aware instantly that she was anxious to pursue the subject, perversely remained silent behind the newspaper.

"Do you know anything about this woman? Is she a lady?"

"I have not the least idea."

"Is she from the West Country?"

"She writes from London."

"Ah, our Devonians won't take to her if she's a Cockney. I should prefer some one de nous autres, Julian."

"So she may be, for all we know."

"You had better tell me her name, Julian."

"Why?" enquired Sir Julian childishly, and also disconcertingly.

"Why?" echoed his wife, momentarily nonplussed.

She looked at him for a moment with black-fringed, amber-coloured eyes.

"Why not?" she demanded at last.

"It would convey nothing more to you than to the rest of us."

"Oh, the perversity of man!" cried Lady Rossiter playfully. "Here am I backing up the great venture heart and soul, knowing every member of the staff individually and offering prizes to every class in every subject, and even putting all my savings into the concern—and then I'm not allowed to hear what the high and mighty directors are going to talk about! Really, Julian, you men are very childish sometimes."

"She is a Miss Marchrose."

"Marchrose!"

Sir Julian, perceiving recognition in the tone of the exclamation, and recollecting his own prediction that the name would convey nothing to his wife, looked annoyed.

"It is a most uncommon name."

Julian carefully refrained from questioning.

"I told you I might know something about her! The girl who jilted poor Clarence Isbister in that abominable way was a Miss Marchrose."

"It doesn't seem probable that this girl could have any connection with the woman who jilted your cousin Clarence; she is a certified teacher of shorthand and typewriting."

"Well, Clarence's girl was nobody at all, and she was older than he, poor boy—the Isbisters were not at all pleased about it, I remember. But they'd made up their minds to it, and it was all arranged, and then came this thunderbolt."

"If it was such an unpopular engagement, the Isbisters may owe her a debt of gratitude for throwing him over."

"Ah, it was more than that. Don't you remember, Julian? They'd been engaged six weeks, and Clarence was like a lunatic about her, and simply made his father and mother consent to it all, and they kept on saying the girl wasn't good enough for him, and didn't seem to care for him much. And then he had that appalling hunting smash."

"I remember," said Sir Julian, "when they thought he was going to be paralysed for the rest of his life, poor chap."

"So he was, from the waist downwards, for nearly a year, and all the doctors said that his recovery was a perfect miracle. But when he was still helpless, and nobody knew if he had to be an invalid or not, he offered to release Miss Marchrose from the engagement—and she gave him up."

"H'm," said Julian noncommittally.

"There have been women," said Lady Rossiter, with tears in her eyes, and in her voice that peculiar emotional quality which indicates that the general is merely being used to indicate the particular, "there have been women who have waited all their lives long for just such an opportunity of giving."

"On the whole, I am of opinion that the majority of fiancés would prefer not to provide the opportunity."

"Ah, Julian, it's easy enough for you to be cynical. But to me it's simply inconceivable—how she could do it. How any woman could be so utterly heartless——"

"Didn't Clarence Isbister marry somebody else last year?"

"Thank God, yes."

Lady Rossiter was always ready, in a reverent and uplifted manner, to render verbal recognition to her Maker. "Thank God, it didn't destroy his faith in women. He married a true, pure, sweet, loving girl—and one in his own class of life—just a well-bred English maiden."

"And what happened to the other one—Miss Marchrose?"

"I don't know, but she was very badly off, and had been teaching when Clarence met her—of course, it was the money and position that made her accept him, one supposes."

"Only the price was too high when it included attendance on an invalid?" suggested Sir Julian, with a malicious satisfaction in thus encouraging oblivion of the, "Is it kind, is it wise, is it true?" axiom.

Perhaps a similar recollection flashed rather tardily across Lady Rossiter's mind, for she replied with circumspection:

"God forbid that I should judge another! But one holds Love so infinitely sacred, that it is unbelievable that, if she had once known it, she could have profaned it so."

"I remember now; we heard about it at the time. Wasn't young Clarence very much cut up?"

"Poor boy! He took it very hard. Don't you remember?—his nurse came to me last year when I had influenza, and of course she talked—they always do——"

"So long as they find anyone to listen."

"Do you know, Julian, that after she had thrown him over, they could do nothing with him? The nurse told me herself that they thought he was going mad. He actually beat his head against the wall of the bedroom in the nursing-home."

"How sensible!"

In the face of this reverend and sympathetic comment, Lady Rossiter not unnaturally ceased the recital of her relative's unfortunate affaire du cœur.

"I suppose if this turns out to be the same woman, you will advise the directors to refuse her application?"

"On what grounds? We did not advertise for a Lady Superintendent of undeviating constancy and infinite capacity for self-sacrifice. If she is a woman of business and has the experience necessary, I really don't see how I can bring it up against her that she once gave the chuck to Clarence Isbister and was responsible for his beating his head against the walls of his nursing-home."

"I am only a woman, Julian," said Lady Rossiter incontrovertibly, but with a certain pathetic smile which she reserved for that particular statement, "but I somehow don't like to think that the Superintendent who is to look after the staff to whom the girls and women and boys whom I have grown to know, will turn to—that she has no higher ideal of Life than poor Clarence's Miss Marchrose."

"Most probably it is not the same person at all."

"I could remember her Christian name, if I were to think a minute...."

"Then please don't, Edna. I have not the slightest wish to connect her with the Clarence drama, if it should turn out to be the same woman. In fact, I had much better not know it."

"It began with an 'L,' I'm almost sure," said Lady Rossiter, unheeding.

"I hear the car," said her husband, rising hastily.

"Laura—Lilian—Lena—Lucy—Louisa.... It was Pauline, Julian—I remember it now."

"I have not the least idea what the Superintendent's Christian name may be, Edna." Sir Julian went into the hall. "I shall not come back to lunch. What time do you want the car this afternoon?"

"Oh, that doesn't matter," declared Lady Rossiter brightly. "Don't think of that, dear. It's only my nature-class this afternoon, you know, and I can quite well walk down to the meeting-place. It's only at Duckpool Cove. I want the class to see some of those wonderful effects in sepia and green in the rock-pools when the tide is out."

Sir Julian made the unwonted effort of restraining a strong inclination to ask whether the class could not witness these natural phenomena unchaperoned by their president.

"I will send the car back, then. I shall walk home."

"As you like, but it really isn't necessary."

Sir Julian began to pull on his driving-gloves.

"Don't forget, Julian, to say something about 'Why, Ben!' to Mark Easter. I suppose he will be pleased. And couldn't one—without hurting his feelings, of course—say something about the children being up and about rather early? I mean to say, I'm fond of the little things, when Ruthie behaves and Ambrose doesn't whine, and they don't quarrel—but we can't have them getting into the habit of running in and out of the house at breakfast-time."

"Heaven forbid!"

"Well, try and say something, if you can."

"I'll see."

Sir Julian took his place at the steering-wheel.

He was a tall, thin man, ten years older than his wife, his dark hair already sparse upon the crown of his head, his clean-shaven hatchet face wearing an habitual look of sardonic melancholy. His dark eyes, set in a network of wrinkles, betrayed humour, but, nevertheless, they seldom smiled.

At the bottom of the winding, shady drive he turned the car out of the stone gateway and on to the high-road. A hundred yards further on he stopped in front of a small slate-roofed villa standing in an enclosure of raggedly-growing laurel hedge and untidy fencing, of which half the wooden palings were tumbling down.

At the first sound of the horn hooting an announcement of arrival, the small, pretentious-looking front door burst open, and Miss and Master Easter precipitated themselves down the garden-path, vociferating greetings in unresentfully complete oblivion of their recent unceremonious ejection at the hands of their neighbour.

"Is your father ready?"

"Coming this minute," said Ruthie, and added in a sudden falsetto, designed to penetrate to an upper window of the villa, "Aren't you, Daddy?"

"I'll sound the horn to let him know you're ready," volunteered Ambrose, outstretching a pair of hands, noted with disgust by Sir Julian as displaying the identical traces of syrup proclaimed by his sister an hour ago.

"No, Peekaboo! Not you—me!"

"Neither of you," said Sir Julian succinctly.

"May I get up beside you?"

"No."

"Will you take me into Culmouth too? Oh, do!"

"Certainly not. You are too dirty."

"There, Peekaboo," said Ruthie, with a sudden access of extreme virtue. "What did I tell you? I've washed, Sir Julian."

"I am very glad to hear it."

"What's that?"

"Don't touch. It's the foot-brake."

"What's a foot-brake?"

"Is it a nice foot-brake?"

"Do you like having a foot-brake?"

"Have all motor-cars got foot-brakes?"

"Does Daddy like foot-brakes?"

The extreme idiocy of the questions launched at him drew forth a stifled ejaculation from the owner of the foot-brake, but Ruthie and Ambrose received no further enlightenment on the subject of their enquiries.

"Here's Daddy!"

"Good morning, Sir Julian. Sorry to have kept you."

"Good morning."

"Go into the house, children. Sarah is looking for you."

"Oh, she wants to wash my hands," aggrievedly said the boy.

"Get under the laurels, flat, and I'll run and say that Daddy's taken you in the motor to Culmouth," suggested his sister with great readiness.

Mark Easter made no slightest attempt to cope with his offsprings' ingenious admixture of uncleanliness, deceit and disobedience.

He took his place beside Sir Julian and the car started forward.

"I'm afraid those brats of mine came up at an unearthly hour to disturb you this morning. I had no idea where they were, or I'd have fetched them back."

"They didn't stay long," said Sir Julian, with perfect truth.

"The fact is, Lady Rossiter is much too good to them. But I'll see it doesn't happen again. They were rather beyond themselves this morning."

Mark hesitated and Sir Julian waited, rather amused to hear how his simple, straightforward agent and man of business would explain the cause of his children's objectionable upliftedness.

"I daresay they told you I had a letter from my sister this morning. It seems that she's written a novel, and Messrs. Blade have agreed to publish it. Of course, she's very delighted about it, and asked me to tell the kids, and the idea somehow took hold of them. I don't see quite why it should appeal to them so much, but you know how excitable children are."

"Have you read the book?"

"Good Lord, no! I never took her scribbling seriously."

Mark took off his cap and let the wind ruffle up his brown hair and moustache. His blue eyes laughed, while his face was still screwed up into a look of perplexity.

"She's given it a very odd name. I daresay the children told you."

"Yes. They did."

"I hope it's proper, I'm sure," said Mark Easter doubtfully. "They say that girls always write the most improper books. I suppose because they don't know what they're talking about."

"I daresay it's innocent enough."

Mark repeated thoughtfully, "It seems an odd thing to call a book, 'Why, Ben!' but I don't mind saying that I wish she hadn't added that it was a story of the sexes—and the worst of it is that the children have got hold of it, and I'm afraid that we shall never hear the last of it."

Sir Julian, feeling quite unable to suggest an optimistic alternative, wisely abandoned the subject.

II

The College stood not far from Culmouth Cathedral, the biggest building of the many that surrounded the open grass patch of the Cathedral Green.

It was a restored Georgian house, well in keeping with its surroundings, and with a square paved court at the back shaded by immense elm-trees.

Julian Rossiter always went up the shallow stone steps that led to the big green double door with a sense of satisfaction.

The satisfaction, however, from an artistic point of view, diminished sensibly and at an ever-increasing rate as he penetrated to the inside of the dignified red and white exterior.

The large square hall was paved with uncovered stones, and surrounded by doors of varnished deal, each bearing an announcement in staring white letters.

"Nearly eleven o'clock," said Mark Easter. "Do you want to look in at the classes, Sir Julian? Fuller is probably giving a lesson till eleven."

Sir Julian signed assent, and the two men turned to the stairs, also of uncarpeted stone.

On the first floor, which produced the same aspect of chilly cleanliness, a door was held open from the inside by a wooden kitchen chair, revealing the interior of Classroom No. V., which bore the white-lettered announcement, "Demonstration Room."

A monotonous female voice, raised to a high, expressionless monotone, came from beside the large blackboard facing a double row of desks and forms.

"Gay lengthened for the final syllable ture—li-ga-ture. Through the line for a third-place vowel. Is that quite clear?"

An expressionless murmur of assent came in reply.

"Once again then, please, and without putting in the vowels. Are you ready? Take the same words down again and the vowels to be indicated by the placing of the outline."

"Aperture—adventure—ligature——"

"Classroom pretty nearly full," said Mark under his breath. "There are always more students of shorthand than anything else."

"Who's giving the dictation?"

"Miss Farmer."

"It's an uneducated pronunciation. I wish we could get a better class of teacher."

"Young Cooper is pretty good. He takes French and accountancy and book-keeping."

"Cooper has two gifts to a degree which I have never seen equalled," Sir Julian said grimly. "He has a genius for extracting a personal application from everything he hears or sees, and he is firmly convinced that his every action, trivial or otherwise, is worthy of comment."

Five minutes later an opportunity presented itself for immediate verification of this pleasing summary.

Brisk, snub-nosed and sandy-haired, Cooper emerged bustling from "No. II., Book-keeping," just as Mark and Sir Julian turned away from No. V.

"Good morning, Sir Julian. Good morning. I thought you'd be in to-day."

"Is Fuller disengaged?"

"I think so—let me consult my watch." Cooper shot into view a rather bony wrist with a large watch on it. "I see by my wrist-watch that it's just on eleven. Let me pop it out of sight again. Fuller will be in his room, I fancy, but I'll go and find him at once, Sir Julian, and tell him you're here. I'm just on my way down now, to put these books away. I'll look into Fuller's room on my way past."

"Thanks," said Julian laconically.

Cooper hastened ahead of them, murmuring as he went:

"I'll just give a knock on Fuller's door, and look in to say Sir Julian's here, and then I can get rid of all these books ... down the stairs, and one hand on the books so that they don't slip from under my arm...."

In an incredibly short space of time he had sped up the stairs again and made the rather self-evident announcement:

"Run up again to let you know Fuller's there, Sir Julian. I thought I'd let you know, so I ran up again."

"Right. See you at the meeting, I suppose, Cooper?"

"Yes, Sir Julian. I think I've always attended every meeting since we first opened here. Half-past eleven, the meeting this morning; that gives me just half an hour. I leave you here, then, and turn off to the locker room.... Dear me, a sneeze is coming: now, can I get at a handkerchief in time?"

They left him rehearsing the procedure of his sneeze in a sub-audible manner.

"That boy always reminds me of a curate," said Sir Julian unkindly.

In the ground-floor room where the Supervisor sat intrenched behind an enormous table piled with papers, the subject of the vacant post of Lady Superintendent was embarked upon.

"The girl I wrote to you about from London, Sir Julian, is practically a lady," said Fuller, in a very earnest manner, fixing a pair of black, straight-gazing eyes on his chief. "In a general way, I wouldn't have a girl who is a lady on the staff for anything you could offer me, but this one has had three years' experience in Southampton Row, and has the highest testimonials, and certificates for shorthand and typewriting and a diploma for French."

"What salary does she want?" said Mark Easter.

"She'd take the figure we decided on, because she wants to come to the west of England."

"A hundred-and-twenty and exes?"

"That's right."

"Free to come at once?"

"To-morrow, if we want her."

"That's good. She's prepared to undertake a certain amount of tuition, and supervision of the staff, of course?"

"Quite."

"Well, Sir Julian," said Mark Easter, turning to him, "shall we put it to the directors?"

Sir Julian made no immediate reply, and Fuller, nothing if not intent upon his business, laid both arms upon the paper-bestrewn table, leant well forward, and began in an earnest and expostulating tone:

"I see you're hesitating, sir. I wish you could have had a personal interview with the young lady, for I really was most favourably impressed—most favourably. As I say, a superior young woman is always an influence, if there's no nonsense about her, and Miss Marchrose certainly has none, so far as I could judge. Of course, sir, the decision rests with you, but I must say I should like to give her a trial. I believe we might do worse."

"What sort of age is she?"

"She told me she was twenty-eight," said Fuller, with a grin that revealed dazzling teeth in his swarthy face, and thereby considerably increased his already marked resemblance to a Southern State negro.

"I should have preferred an older woman."

"I doubt if she'll ever see thirty again, sir," said Fuller simply.

"Well, Fuller, I know you've the interests of the College very much at heart, and I'm quite willing to give her a trial on your recommendation," said Julian. "We'll put it before the directors at the meeting."

"Thank you, Sir Julian. I thought you'd probably trust my judgment," Fuller remarked, with satisfaction. "And I don't think you will regret it. She struck me as being a thorough woman of business, most capable, and as hard as nails."

At this final qualification Sir Julian looked rather glum, irresistibly reminded of the heroine of that episode which had wrought so much havoc in the household of his wife's relatives.

"However," he remarked to Mark Easter, as they went towards the committee-room at the appointed hour, "I really do trust Fuller's judgment, so far as the good of the College goes, though I haven't his own implicit belief in his absolute infallibility."

"He thinks the whole show rests on him," said Mark Easter, and added with belated justice, "And for the matter of that, I really don't know where we should get another man like him. He's a nailer for work."

"I hope his protégée will be a success. If he talks to the directors about her being practically a lady, as distinguished, I suppose, from a 'young lady in business,' he'll fetch that old snob Bellew."

"He probably won't mention it," said Mark Easter shrewdly. "He looks upon it as a disadvantage in the abstract, but he told me yesterday that he thought he could explain it if any objection were raised."

"Fuller would think he could explain it," Sir Julian rejoined drily, "if the creation of the world were in question."

The committee-room was a long, low annexe to the main body of the building, with the usual green-baize covered table placed lengthways down the middle of the room, mahogany chairs at regular intervals round it, an armchair at the head for the chairman, and on the table the usual disposition of clean blotting-paper, pencils, note-books, and a carafe of water covered with an inverted glass.

A clock ticked on the chimneypiece.

Young Cooper was the sole occupant of the room, and observed brightly, "No one has arrived yet, sir, but I see the clock gives it as two minutes to the half-hour."

"Got an agenda there, Cooper?" said Mark, and proceeded to study the typewritten slip of paper.

Sir Julian went to the chair at the head of the table.

He also looked idly at the agenda, listening the while with the rather revolted fascination with which young Cooper's peculiar style of sub-audible self-communion always inspired him.

"I must move my chair or pull down the blind—sun coming right in through the window. If I lift it—so—that oughtn't to interfere with anyone else. Just caught the edge of the carpet, though—that won't do ... put the chair-leg down on it, and then we're all right."

"Now, Sir Julian, it's just striking the half-hour."

"I hear it."

"So do I," agreed Cooper agreeably, as the clock on the chimneypiece chimed loudly. "I'm just going to the window, to see if Mr. Bellew's car is in sight."

Having, as usual, suited the action to the word, Cooper was shortly able to announce that the car was there, and that he would come back to the table and see if the blotting-paper was straight.

"They'll draw on it," he said mournfully. "They always do. That's a thing I couldn't do myself, even if I weren't taking down the Minutes. I couldn't pay attention if I were drawing."

They did draw on the blotting-paper.

Sir Julian, leaning back at the head of the table, giving only half his attention to the meeting, which followed lines so habitual as to have become almost routine, watched with idle amusement the verification of Cooper's resignedly doleful prophecies.

Old Alderman Bellew, oily and apoplectic, made meaningless circles and semi-circles with a pencil grasped between the swollen knuckles of his first and second fingers, and only glanced up once or twice as a question of finance was touched upon by Fuller, Financial Secretary to the College as well as Supervisor of Classes.

Another director was yawning almost unconcealedly, until, catching the eye of the chairman, he assumed an expression of acute concern and hastily inserted a forefinger into his still open mouth as though in search of an aching tooth. This simple manœuvre was apparent to Sir Julian, and his eyes half involuntarily met Mark Easter's laughing blue ones in an instant's exchange of silent amusement.

Julian looked down again at his own share of blotting-paper, left immaculate in deference to Cooper's feelings, and his thoughts dwelt upon Mark Easter.

He thought of the good-looking, light-hearted fellow that Mark had been all his life, of his casual marriage, embarked upon out of pure good-nature, with a woman older than himself, and for no better reasons than the ones that he had once put forward, half apologetically, to Julian himself.

"She was having such a rotten time when I met her in Ireland—no one ever asked her to dance, and the other girls all seemed to be younger and prettier and having more fun. I used to take her for drives, you know, and then dance with her in the evenings; and upon my word, I was the only chap that ever took any notice of her, I do believe. And I really did want to settle down and have a home, and it somehow seemed more likely she'd take me than one of the pretty little fly-aways who could get all the fun they wanted before settling down. She was by way of being a good housekeeper, too, and fond of kids. I'm fond of kids myself," said Mark Easter wistfully.

Sir Julian wondered, not for the first time, how long that fondness had survived the shrieking, stamping, bullying era inaugurated by Ruthie, and the whining, unwashed, question-asking proclivities of her junior.

Mark Easter never spoke of his children except with a sort of apologetic tolerance, but neither was he often to be seen in their company.

He was agent to the Rossiter estate, and more often found about his work and at the College in Culmouth than in his untidy, servant-ridden, mistressless house.

Julian's thoughts turned for an unwilling moment to the recollection of the rapidly-growing gossip that had saddled Mark Easter, ten years ago, with an alternatively morphomaniac, drug-taking inebriate or homicidally insane partner. To his own ever-increasing, silent certainty that disaster threatened the only human being whom he cared for in the world, to Mark's haggard face and prolonged absences from home.

Then to a grey dawn, when Mark had ridden up to ask in three inarticulate words for help that Julian had given in almost unbroken silence. Mrs. Easter had gone away, and there was no more occasion for furtive surmise, for everyone knew at last that she had been steadily drinking her way into the home for inebriates that now had sheltered her for more than seven years.

And Mark, with an elasticity at which Julian had never yet ceased to marvel, had recovered his habit of easy laughter, his keen interest in his work, his old enthusiasm for the Commercial and Technical College schemes.

Sir Julian secretly admired and envied his almost childlike absorption in the College. He sent sidelong glances from time to time at Mark's keen, handsome face, at the shrewdness of the gaze which he kept upon each speaker.

Fairfax Fuller—never was there a worse misnomer, thought Julian, with a grim half-smile, as he looked at his swarthy-faced subordinate—Fairfax Fuller might have made a good speaker—say, a political agent. Kept to his facts, always sound, and with a weight of personal conviction that told. But there was nothing to look interested about, Julian reflected, as Mark Easter was looking interested.

Fuller always put forward the same arguments: for a better class of teacher, for an extension of advertisement, always with the same implication of his own indispensability as managing Supervisor.

Alderman Bellew was tedious, obviously only speaking at all so as to impress the fact of his presence on his fellow-directors, and Mark Easter said nothing, until Miss Marchrose's application for the post of Lady Superintendent was brought forward by Fuller.

The discussion of the appointment was merely formal, and Sir Julian gave it formal sanction.

"I think that concludes our business for to-day, gentlemen. Thank you all very much."

The chairman rose.

"Anything else you want me for, Fuller?" he enquired, as the meeting dispersed.

"I don't think so, thank you, sir," said Fuller, with a manifest air of dissatisfaction.

Sir Julian, knowing his Supervisor, lingered.

"Lady Rossiter has kindly asked the members of the staff out to Culmhayes on Sunday, Sir Julian."

Sir Julian looked quite as much annoyed as did Mr. Fuller.

Few things were, in the opinion either of the Supervisor or of his employer, less to be commended than Lady Rossiter's benevolent attempts at keeping in touch with the staff of the College.

Appearances, however, were discreetly maintained.

"I hope as many of them will come as care for the walk," said Sir Julian, with gloomy civility.

"I am sure they will be delighted, and it will make a nice beginning for Miss Marchrose on her first Sunday."

Sir Julian walked away even gloomier than before at the recollection that his wife's hospitality would not improbably be extended to the perpetrator of the outrage which had driven Captain Clarence Isbister to such extreme demonstrations of despair.

"Do you happen to remember—did you notice—what that woman's Christian name was?" he enquired of Mark Easter.

"The new Superintendent?"

"Yes."

"Let me see. I saw her letter to Fuller—something unusual.... Was it Pauline?"

"I thought so," said Sir Julian.

It was characteristic both of Sir Julian's dislike to anything which came, in his opinion, under the extremely elastic heading of officiousness, and of the care with which he had impressed his dislike upon Mark Easter, that his companion did not ask him why he thus dejectedly took for granted the name bestowed at baptism upon Miss Marchrose. Mark Easter, talkative and open-hearted, was yet the only man from whom Sir Julian said that he had never received an officious enquiry or an unasked offer of assistance.

If the remark might be looked upon as a form of the highest commendation, it was one which Sir Julian had never yet shown any disposition to make in regard to his wife.

Nothing had as yet persuaded Edna Rossiter of the inadvisability of addressing personalities to a man whose surface cynicism was used to cloak extreme sensitiveness, and whose bitterness of speech was the outcome of such disillusionment of spirit as comes only to those capable of an idealism as delicate as it is reserved.

"Are you going home, Mark, or will you lunch at the club?"

"The club," said Mark decidedly, with an intonation that brought before Sir Julian's inner vision a lively picture of the probable congealed mutton, underdone potatoes, the lumpy milk-pudding of Sarah's providing, doubtless to be consumed to an accompaniment of senseless comments and enquiries from Ruthie and Ambrose on the engrossing subject of "Why, Ben! A Story of the Sexes." As the thought crossed his mind, Mark observed:

"Iris is coming down here later on. Of course, she wants to be in London for the publication of her novel, but that won't be out till the winter, she says. Poor girl! I wish people would not put it into her head that it is her duty to come and look after me and the children at intervals."

"Who does put it into her head?"

"Various old aunts. I wish people would mind their own business. Poor Iris hates the country."

"Is she still living in the flat?"

"Yes, with another girl. I believe they sleep in the boot-hole and do their own cooking, but it's all a great success, and Iris is very happy, and has the sort of Bohemian society she likes. It is a much better arrangement than her being down here with me. I'm not sure," said Mark thoughtfully, "that I approve of relations living together after they are grown-up."

Sir Julian agreed with him so cordially as to suggest that the case in point was emphatically one in which the proposed arrangement would be eminently undesirable.

"I don't know that Iris, devoted though she is to them, is the best possible person to be with the children."

"No," said Julian, with restraint, considering his private opinion to be that if anything on earth could render Mark Easter's progeny more insufferable than nature and the maternal shortcomings had already made them, it was the society of their affected, suburban, and distinctly underbred young relative. It was a source of continual wonder to him, what sort of a person the second Mrs. Easter could have been, to have presented Mark with such a half-sister as the twenty-year-old perpetrator of "Why, Ben!"

The conclusion, long ago come to by him, that Mark had been afflicted with the most intolerable set of relations ever owned by man, was destined to be furnished with yet another proof of validity at the end of the day.