Part 15

"Officiousness is the curse of the age!" exclaimed Sir Julian, neither for the first nor the second time. "Why can't people mind their own business? What has it to do with them?" As he spoke, some part of his mind commented upon the futility of these disjointed exclamations, and the irrationality of the desire to gain time that had caused him to utter them.

The three men gazed at Lady Rossiter.

"Oh, how I hate saying it!" she cried in an impulsive manner. "It isn't that I think there's any harm in it all--indeed, I don't. But I myself have seen little things--tiny, infinitesimal incidents, if you like--that somehow seem to carry significance by repetition. That sort of thing _doesn't_ do."

She looked at her listeners for an instant, and made inevitable selection amongst them.

She turned to the Alderman appealingly.

"I'm only a woman, but I know that sort of thing doesn't do in business offices. Isn't it true?"

"Quite true, Lady Rossiter," said the Alderman instantly. "It's an undesirable sort of element altogether. And once people start talking--especially a lot of girls, if you'll excuse my saying so--it's hopeless. It ought to be got rid of."

Edna hesitated a moment. Then she said:

"Shall I--shall I speak to poor Miss Marchrose? It might be easier for another woman to do it, and I don't think she would resent it from me."

Two, at least, of those present might reasonably have received this assertion with a considerable amount of surprise, in view of certain past incidents apparently shrouded in complete oblivion by the forgiving Lady Rossiter.

The Alderman was less responsive this time.

"It's very good of you, Lady Rossiter--very good indeed. I'm sure we all appreciate your keen interest in the welfare of the College and the staff. But at the same time--I don't know----" He stopped rather helplessly.

"You mustn't think of me," gently said Edna. "Just speak out, quite frankly, and tell me what would be best for everyone. Anything I can do, you know----"

"The fact is, it's least said soonest mended, in these cases," blurted out the Alderman. "The girl had better go. Don't you agree with me, Sir Julian?"

"It will probably end in that."

There was a certain surprise visible on Lady Rossiter's face as she heard her husband's reply.

"It's her livelihood," she reminded them; "we mustn't forget that. But at the same time, the College interests come first, and the one thing to be avoided, at any cost, is a crisis. So much can be done by staving things off."

"The doctrine of expediency," inaudibly muttered Julian through his teeth.

It was a doctrine that had never failed to rouse him to wrath.

Fairfax Fuller's deep, angry voice broke out suddenly:

"I should like to know what the girl is being accused of, that we should send away the best worker we've ever struck."

No one replied, until Edna said solemnly, "I accuse no one."

"I beg your pardon, Lady Rossiter, but it is too late to say that now. The girl _has_ been accused, and she knows it, and everyone else knows it. The whole thing is in the air. The place stinks of it," said Mr. Fuller with reckless candour. "There was some talk of my being sent off to Gloucester on business, but I don't leave this place until this mess is cleared up. Why, the atmosphere is like a barrel of gunpowder, simply waiting for a lighted match."

"Then why light it, Mr. Fuller?" sweetly enquired Lady Rossiter. "Why insist upon having things put into words?"

"Because it's common justice," said Mr. Fuller doggedly. "We can't send the girl away without giving her a reason, and there isn't a reason to give, that I can see."

"That question will rest with the directors, surely," Lady Rossiter reminded him. She looked straight at Alderman Bellew.

"She'll know fast enough what the reason is, without being told," the Alderman gloomily supported the lady. "She's not a chicken. A girl with any business experience knows very well that this sort of thing isn't tolerated in any office. Nothing serious, of course, as Lady Rossiter has just said, but it makes talk, and it won't do."

Fuller swung round and faced the Alderman.

"I'd like to have the sort of thing you've just alluded to, specified. I'm Supervisor of this staff, and I've nothing against Miss Marchrose."

"As you have just been reminded," pointedly said the Alderman, also becoming heated, "the question rests ultimately with the directors."

"Then my position here is a farce," the Supervisor retorted.

"Anything but that, Mr. Fuller," said Edna earnestly, and with the evident intention of laying a soothing hand upon his arm.

Fuller almost backed into the wall in his avoidance of it.

"Indeed," said Lady Rossiter pleadingly, "no one minimises your position here, nor the responsibility that rests upon you with regard to the staff. But you force me to say something that I would much, much rather leave unsaid."

Sir Julian wondered whether it would be of any use to ask her to do so, and decided that it would not.

"I used to hear about this poor creature years before she ever came here. It isn't the first time that there's been--trouble."

Sir Julian's eyes almost involuntarily met those of the Alderman as this pregnant announcement fell upon the air. He interposed in a level voice:

"My wife means nothing that is derogatory to Miss Marchrose, Mr. Bellew. We are, however, in a position to know that a few years ago she broke off an engagement of marriage under circumstances that were certainly painful, but perfectly honourable to herself. That matter, of course, concerns her private life, and has nothing whatever to do with the point at issue."

"Excepting this, Julian," his wife said resolutely, "that a girl who has once put herself into a false position of that kind is liable to do the same sort of thing again."

"She may get engaged to the whole office one after another and chuck them next day, for all I care, so long as she does her work properly," said Fuller, quite as resolutely as, and a good deal more vehemently than, Lady Rossiter.

"It would scarcely be good for the office generally," replied Edna drily.

"Now, my dear fellow," began the Alderman, "you must look at this matter in the light of reason. The greater good of the greater number, you know. This young woman mustn't be allowed to upset the office."

"She hasn't done so."

"On your own showing, Mr. Fuller," said Lady Rossiter, very much in the tone of one endeavouring to reason with an idiot, "and to quote your own words of a few moments ago, the whole thing is in the air. Everybody is upset and disturbed, because it is impossible for anybody to give out reckless and excited and undisciplined thoughts and emotions without their having an effect upon his or her surroundings. It is----"

"I've yet to learn," Mr. Fuller interrupted, without the slightest ceremony, "that a first-class worker can be dismissed on account of thinking."

"Fuller, Fuller, Fuller!" bleated the Alderman, in an expostulatory tone.

"We can discuss this later on, Fuller," said Sir Julian wearily.

"Sir Julian, I prefer to make my attitude perfectly clear to you at once----" began Mr. Fuller with great vehemence, when Mark Easter came back into the room.

Although the inopportuneness of an abrupt silence striking through the excited conversation that had raged a moment before was evident to the point of blatancy, an immediate dumbness fell upon everyone as the door opened before Mark.

To Sir Julian's perception, it was oddly significant that Mark, after one quick glance from face to face, should remain silent and unsmiling, asking no question.

It was the woman present who haltingly broke through the awkward pause.

"We were just wondering if--if there was to be any tea for us. A Committee meeting in the afternoon is so unusual for the College, isn't it? We hardly know ourselves, when it isn't the ordinary eleven o'clock meeting."

"There is tea in Miss Marchrose's room," said Mark.

He spoke without expression.

"Oh, thank you," said Edna, from pure nervousness, and walked out of the room.

Sir Julian followed her, partly from sheer desire not to be confronted with his infuriated Supervisor, and partly from a wish to see Miss Marchrose herself.

She passed them in the passage, and Edna inclined her head without speaking, and walked on.

Sir Julian stopped.

"Are you coming to give us some tea?" he asked her.

"Yes--No. No--I don't think so," she said confusedly, her pale face colouring unmistakably.

Sir Julian felt vaguely disappointed. He had expected that the consciousness of antagonism in the air would have roused in her a certain latent defiance already dimly foreshadowed in her erect bearing and abrupt, defensive phraseology. But she was looking tired already, and frightened, as though she realised herself to be very much alone.

"Are you busy?" he asked.

"I am, rather."

She looked at him doubtfully, and once more he saw the shadow of fear, unmistakable, in her dark-circled eyes.

He did not know what else to say, although he felt very sorry for her, and he thought that for a moment she seemed about to say something further.

But she only opened her lips for an instant and then turned away without speaking.

"Good-bye," said Sir Julian lamely.

"Good-bye."

He waited thoughtfully outside the College for Lady Rossiter, nor did the entertainment of afternoon tea prolong itself.

She came out, followed by Mark Easter.

"Will you have a lift, Mark?"

"Thank you, I've got one or two things to finish here."

Julian, being well aware that at this Edna was endeavouring to exchange with him a sudden, meaning glance, became instantly absorbed in the mechanism of the car.

"Mark, don't do that. Do come back with us now," said Lady Rossiter earnestly, and irresistibly and quite involuntarily reminding Sir Julian of the heroine of a certain type of fiction, pleading at the door of the public-house, "_Bill, come home with me now_."

He stifled the ribald association and started the engine.

"You'll walk back then, later?"

"Come back with us, Mark," repeated Lady Rossiter.

Sir Julian opened the door of the car.

"Why are you in such a hurry?" demanded Lady Rossiter resentfully, in an undertone.

"Perhaps we could wait for you, Mark, if you're only going to be a little while."

"I'm afraid I shall be longer than that," said Mark, looking harassed.

"That's all right," said Sir Julian firmly, and took his seat in the driver's place.

Lady Rossiter reluctantly stepped into the car beside him.

They saw Mark turn into the College again as the car moved from the door.

"I am utterly exhausted," said Edna.

Her husband, according to his wont, made no response, and she presently spoke again.

"Couldn't you _feel_ the tension in that place, Julian?"

"Yes."

"You are not a fanciful person, perhaps not even a very perceptive one, and certainly Mr. Fuller is neither. Yet both you and he were on edge. I could see it and feel it."

"And hear it too, I imagine, so far as Fuller was concerned," said Sir Julian, not without reason.

"One does not expect very great self-command from a man of his type. But I'm frightened, Julian, I tell you honestly. You know how extraordinarily susceptible I am to the influence of a thought-form?"

"Of a _what_?" said Sir Julian, having heard her perfectly, but being desirous of venting his own sense of uneasiness in ill-temper.

"Perhaps I used an out-of-the-way expression. But you know what I mean, surely. On another plane--one that is perhaps not so far removed from our own as we sometimes think--these things are classified. I have no psychic gifts myself," said Edna, in a modest way that positively seemed to imply a certain distinction in the absence of those attributes, "but undoubtedly there are those amongst us who can absolutely _see_ and translate into terms of colour and shape for the rest of us."

"I feel sure that the colour and shape of any thought-form belonging to Fuller at the present moment would repay inspection," said Sir Julian grimly.

"Ah, poor Mr. Fuller! It hurt one, didn't it? Prejudice and violence and ignorance--the three foes that we, who can see a little further into the great, wonderful Heart of Life, have to fight against all the time. But sometimes it does feel as though all one's love and pity were being flung back upon oneself again, as though a hard wall of resistance were opposing everything."

Edna gasped a little.

Her husband wondered so much whom she supposed herself to have been loving and pitying that afternoon, that he felt constrained to ask the question aloud.

"But all--all of them!"

Edna, usually undemonstrative, flung apart her hands in an expressive gesture.

"How can you ask, even? The pity of it all, Julian! That was what wrung my heart.... Oh, Julian! be careful."

Sir Julian, most skilful of drivers, had sent the car swerving recklessly round the sharp corner of Culmhayes drive.

"I beg your pardon, Edna."

Both were silent till the house was reached. The topic that occupied them both, however, was revived that evening.

This time Edna approached it from a less exalted point of view.

"It's very curious how much these people absorb one's thoughts. And yet, of course, it's not curious at all. They're fellow-creatures, after all. Sometimes I think the old Alderman is quite right. The best thing would be for Miss Marchrose to go. I wish she would resign of her own accord."

"I think," said Sir Julian, "that there is every chance of your wish being realised."

"Why?"

"It's a question," said Sir Julian, very distinctly, "of exactly how long she can stand her ground. She is a very intelligent person, and, unless I am greatly mistaken, a very sensitive one, and my own opinion is that she will be defeated early in the day by the mere atmospheric pressure against her."

"You mean that she will _feel_, without having it put into words, that things can't go on as they are at present?"

"It wouldn't need very keen perceptions to have come to that conclusion already."

"Perhaps not." Lady Rossiter spoke thoughtfully. "You see, the one thing one doesn't want, is to have things put into words."

Sir Julian, disagreeing with her even more completely than he usually did, answered nothing.

"It's Mark I'm thinking of principally. At the present moment I honestly believe that Mark, who is exceptionally simple, hardly realises that anything has upset the College. Certainly he won't attribute it--yet--to the way in which that unfortunate young woman has been behaving."

"Why should he attribute it to her behaviour any more than to his own?" Sir Julian reasonably enquired. "It usually requires the behaviour of two people to start this sort of idiotic gossiping."

"Mark has been foolish, I daresay," coldly said Lady Rossiter. "All men are alike in these matters, and when a woman hurls herself at a man's head you can't expect him not to take a certain amount of advantage."

"Of what, exactly, has this hurling consisted?" demanded Sir Julian, with an air of judicial impartiality.

"You have seen quite as much as I have," Lady Rossiter mistakenly informed him; "she never has a civil word for anyone else, and she is perfectly brazen in boasting of the amount of extra work she does for him. She haunted the estate office when that other girl was ill, and took over her typewriting work in the calmest way. Of course, it was practically impossible for Mark to refuse, when she insisted. And, of course, there's her fashion of getting him to walk home with her after dark every night."

"And all this would be perfectly legitimate and desirable if only Mark's dipsomaniac was in a better world instead of in this one," was the thoughtful _résumé_ of Sir Julian--a _résumé_ of which the wording, if not the substance, found so little favour in his wife's hearing that she had instant resort to the inevitable Roland with which it was her custom to counter his time-honoured Oliver.

"If you remember anything at all of that miserable affair that went so near to wrecking poor Clarence Isbister's life, you can hardly say that."

Sir Julian wished for no recapitulation of the oft-told tragedy alluded to.

"I remember perfectly. He battered his head against the walls of his nursing-home, and I think any girl was well rid of him on that account alone."

Lady Rossiter rose with great quiet.

"I am going to bed. It has been a strain, altogether. But, after all, I shall feel it's been worth anything--whatever it may cost me--if only one can stave off any sort of disastrous crisis. It seems to me that, at the moment, the one thing to be avoided is definitely putting things into words."

"Plain speaking?" enquired Sir Julian. "It is, on the contrary, the one thing that I should really like. But don't be afraid, Edna. We shan't get it--unless it's from Fuller."

XVIII

Sir Julian's desire for plain speaking was more amply gratified on the following day even than he had anticipated. He had purposely made an early appointment at the College, in order to discuss with Mark and the Supervisor the question of the journey to Gloucester, but he was aware that a curiously strong sensation of anxiety constituted an underlying motive for his presence there.

There flashed across his mind the dim recollection of a conversation in which he had taken part, with Mark Easter and Miss Marchrose, one afternoon on the way from Salt Marsh to Culmhayes.

They had agreed in their estimate of the potency of an atmosphere. He thought it was Miss Marchrose herself who had said that "the worst times are when nothing at all has happened, and yet everything is happening."

Prophetic, reflected Julian, half amused. He made his way slowly to Mark Easter's room.

A feminine voice, lowered to that penetrating sibilance which most infallibly attracts the attention which it is designed to escape, reached his ears.

"----And she knew I was looking at her, too. I could tell she did, by the way she coloured. You know. And I never said a word. Simply looked at her, you know. 'Don't let me disturb you,' I said. Like that, quite quietly."

Sir Julian pushed the half-open door. Miss Farmer and Miss Sandiloe stood in close confabulation just inside the room.

"Oh, good morning, Sir Julian." They both looked much confused.

"Good morning," he said gravely. "Mr. Easter has not arrived yet?"

"No," said Miss Sandiloe, ever ready of speech, in spite of her manifest discomfiture.

"No, he hasn't. He very often gets in rather later these mornings."

"I can wait," said Sir Julian. "It's not ten o'clock yet."

Miss Farmer began to sidle towards the door. Her companion followed her, but was inspired to turn round and add an unnecessary rider to her last observation.

"Mr. Easter is always here so late in the evenings now, too," she remarked artlessly, as she went out of the room.

Sir Julian heard a nervous giggle as the door closed behind them both, and he thought that Miss Farmer ejaculated something that sounded like, "However you could, Sandiloe!"

"If Miss Marchrose has been up against _that_ sort of thing for the last week...." was his unformulated thought.

A further example of "that sort of thing" confronted him in the entrance hall, where he presently betook himself restlessly.

Three girls, all of them pupil-teachers of the College, with young Cooper, the Financial Secretary, stood near the notice-board. Their necks were craned forward, and their eyes, expressive of curiosity, suspicion and a certain excitement, were unanimously following the tall, slight figure of Miss Marchrose as she disappeared towards a distant classroom.

"Good morning," said Sir Julian, with extreme abruptness, and in tones not usually associated with a morning greeting.

Everyone jumped violently.

The three pupil-teachers disappeared with celerity, and Mr. Cooper turned a brick-red countenance upon his chief.

"Just looking at the notice-board," he said, in an affable manner.

"There appears to be nothing on it," Sir Julian made rejoinder, with equal obviousness, but in a voice that was not without point.

"Nothing at all," agreed Mr. Cooper, rather feverishly, and running a hand across the green-baize square as though further to demonstrate its bareness.

"I see you're in early, Sir Julian."

"I have an appointment with Mr. Easter, but I'm rather too soon. Fuller is in class, I suppose?"

"Yes, Sir Julian. Let me see," Cooper produced his wrist-watch. "I'll look at the time. Yes. He'll be in class for the next three-quarters of an hour. Shall I send for him, Sir Julian?"

"No, thanks. I'm in no hurry. There's just the question of the place to be opened at Gloucester. You've heard about it, haven't you, Cooper?"

"Oh, yes, Sir Julian. The whole staff has been much interested, and very proud too, if I may say so. I'd even thought--I don't know if I may venture----"

"Are you a candidate for the job of going down there next week?" Sir Julian asked, smiling.

"Not myself," said Mr. Cooper. "I may even say, Sir Julian, that I doubt if I could be spared at the moment. We have one or two French scholars, and the accountancy is particularly heavy just now. Of course, it's what you wish, Sir Julian, but I hardly think I could leave at present, even for a day or two. But I was wondering whether I might venture a suggestion."

"Certainly," said Sir Julian, rather astonished.

"It has occurred to me," remarked Mr. Cooper, with a certain pompousness, "that Miss Marchrose would not be at all unfitted to do what's required. And a little change might be rather a good thing for her, in its way, Sir Julian."

"Indeed?"

"There's been a certain amount of feeling, I'm afraid, just lately."

"I should like details, if you please."

"One hardly likes to say anything," Mr. Cooper began, with great and evident satisfaction. "She's a splendid worker, as you know, Sir Julian, and the other young ladies took to her quite wonderfully from the start. Quite foolish, one or two of them were about her. But the fact is, if you'll excuse my mentioning it, she's been rather indiscreet of late."

"Go on," said Julian in level tones, as Cooper waited, apparently for some sign of encouragement.

"The fact is, to put the whole matter in a nutshell, some of them have got talking. You know what that means, especially with one or two rather excitable young ladies."

There was a pause, during which Julian recollected Mr. Cooper's old-time predilection for the society of Miss Sandiloe.

"She hasn't made any secret of liking Mr. Mark Easter's society very much, and she's given him a good deal of hers. That's all it amounts to," said Mr. Cooper, with a great effect of frankness.

"He has found her useful for some of the extra work."

"No doubt, Sir Julian. That's all it is. But she's in that office of his nearly as often as she's in her own, and then they've been late a good many evenings and stayed on here working after the College was supposed to be closed. It was also known, Sir Julian, that the present Mrs. Douglas Garrett--Miss Easter that was--used to ask Miss Marchrose to her brother's house a good deal while she was home."

"We are not in the least responsible for what the staff may do out of hours."