Part 16

"Certainly not, Sir Julian. And of course we all know and like Mr. Mark Easter, and I've no doubt that he's never said a word to her that we mightn't all have heard. But somehow," said Mr. Cooper, with a fatalistic expression, "somehow, the staff have got talking."

"It doesn't concern them in any way whatever."

"Those were my very words," Mr. Cooper replied impressively, "my very words, when one of the young ladies approached me on the subject. This is an affair which concerns no one but Mr. Mark Easter, I said, and you may be sure that he will deal with it in the best manner possible. In fact, I said, if this unfortunate young lady has forgotten the circumstances of the case, we may be quite sure that Mr. Easter will himself take an early opportunity of reminding her."

Mr. Cooper's tone implied that no more triumphantly satisfactory _dénouement_ could be hoped for.

"And do you suppose that he has done so?" enquired Sir Julian, from sheer curiosity to hear Mr. Cooper's reply.

Cooper shook his head from side to side.

"I couldn't say at all, Sir Julian. There's been a very uncomfortable state of things prevailing for the last few days, altogether. I couldn't put a finger on any one thing not to give a name to it, but there's constraint, Sir Julian, and we all feel it. This has always been such a friendly little party, that one can't help noticing, like."

"I shall be greatly obliged, Cooper," said Sir Julian with deliberation, "if you would check this tittle-tattling, as far as possible. It is extraordinarily objectionable."

Cooper looked far from hopeful.

"She'll have to pull herself up, as it were, or else leave altogether, Sir Julian. Otherwise I don't see what's to prevent the staff from getting talking."

Sir Julian perceived that no amount of words would remove from Mr. Cooper his conviction of the inevitability of the calamity which he described as the "getting talking" of his fellow-workers.

"I shall think the matter over. Certainly we can't have this sort of atmosphere in the place. It's upsetting everyone."

"That is so, Sir Julian. It's the talk that's doing the harm," said Mr. Cooper solemnly.

"Certainly it is. I hope there will be no more of it."

Sir Julian's hope was uttered for rhetorical purposes merely. His never very sanguine outlook had been in no way illuminated by the eloquence of Mr. Cooper.

"Don't let me keep you any longer, Cooper; I know you're busy."

"Thank you, Sir Julian. If you'll excuse me. My watch--ten minutes past--then I'll go straight to Classroom III--up the stairs."

Mr. Cooper hurried away, taking two steps at a time.

Sir Julian's discussion with Mark was completed rapidly enough.

"I'm quite ready to see this Gloucester affair through," said Mark, looking out of the window. "Fuller doesn't seem anxious to take it on."

"Can you spare the time?"

"Easily."

"To-day is Friday. What about Monday?"

"Right."

Mark said nothing more. The tiny furrow between his eyes had deepened a very little.

They spoke of business for a little while and then Sir Julian left Mark in solitary possession of the small office.

As he came away he encountered Miss Marchrose.

Her observation was worthy of Mr. Cooper.

"I'm going to the High Speed room," she said, with evident nervousness.

"Are you giving another test there?"

"Oh, no. We're very slack at present. The last lot have gone out, and we mostly have beginners. But I want to put some things away."

She was quite evidently defending herself against some unspoken accusation.

As she turned away, she looked back at Sir Julian, again with that suggestion of wishing to say something further.

"What is it?" he asked, almost involuntarily.

"Nothing," said Miss Marchrose, her voice catching in her throat.

Sir Julian walked away slowly.

"Sir Julian!" she said, rather breathlessly.

He turned at once.

"Are you--are you just going?"

"I am in no hurry."

He reflected for an instant and then decided to take her wishes for granted.

"You will find me in the annexe. There's no hurry, so take your time about putting the papers away. I'll wait for you there," said Sir Julian calmly.

He waited barely five minutes.

She came into the room, very erect, with tension in every line of her face and figure, and a little dent coming and going at the corner of either nostril.

She shut the door quietly behind her.

"Sit down," said Sir Julian, placing a chair for her, so that she could lean both arms on the table, and steady a certain tremulousness of which he suspected the existence.

In order to give her time, he slowly and carefully took out and lit a cigarette. He was conscious of a sensation of surprise in the midst of his mingled annoyance and compassion. He had not expected her to acknowledge defeat so quickly, and he wondered whether some element of which he knew nothing had been introduced into the invisible contest against her.

"I think I shall have to ask you to accept my resignation," she said at last, in a sort of rush.

"I'm sorry," said Sir Julian carefully.

"I've spoken to Mr. Fuller about it, but he--he was a little bit difficult."

"I can quite believe it."

"I couldn't get him to accept my resignation at all," she said, smiling rather forlornly.

"Fuller is not easily defeated."

She interpreted his thought rather more accurately than he desired, in her quick rejoinder.

"And I _am_. I haven't been able to cope with the last few days at all. Do you remember how we talked about atmosphere one afternoon before Christmas?"

"On the way back from Salt Marsh? I was thinking about it not so very long ago."

"Then," said Miss Marchrose slowly, "you knew about--this place?"

Sir Julian made no pretence at not having understood her.

"I know that it has afforded a rather poignant example of the very thing we discussed that afternoon," he replied.

"I thought you knew," she said, pushing her hair away from her forehead with a rapid, nervous movement. "But you see _I'm_ in the dark. No one has said a single word to me. I'd so much rather they did."

"Yes, I can understand that. But you see no one is in a position to say a word to you, except--officially--Mr. Fuller as Supervisor."

"Then why hasn't he?" Miss Marchrose demanded, a sudden colour flooding her pale face.

Sir Julian said nothing, for the conclusive reason that he could think of absolutely nothing to say.

"He told me to-day that my services had been perfectly satisfactory, and that he didn't want me to leave."

"I know he doesn't."

"In that case," said Miss Marchrose, "I must place my resignation with you direct, Sir Julian."

"Have you definitely decided to resign?"

"I'm afraid so," she said, again colouring suddenly.

Sir Julian once more kept silence from a helpless sense of the impossibility of any discussion, although intuition told him that she was more or less blindly in search of a safety-valve for her perplexities.

She remained in her chair for a minute or two, looking down at the table, and only a very slight, involuntary movement of her fingers betrayed the tension of waiting.

Sir Julian paid the penalty sooner or later exacted of all those whose perceptions are acute, in realising with vividness her sense of bafflement as he remained mute.

With a sort of remnant of the pluck that he had always credited her with, she rose at last and said, "Thank you very much, Sir Julian," quite steadily.

He rose also and opened the door, and she went out.

Sir Julian remained more than ever convinced that some very forcible factor, of which he was still unaware, had entered the lists against her, and definitely defeated her.

"It's no business of mine," he reflected to himself, almost violently.

Nevertheless, he had more to hear upon the subject that same afternoon.

He met Alderman Bellew, whose discursive comments were not to be stayed.

"Easter's a very nice chap, you know," said the Alderman sapiently. "I don't like the idea of this young woman making a fool of him. He's not been looking himself for the last day or two. Didn't you think him a bit off colour at the General Meeting yesterday, now? I can assure you that he didn't look himself, to me. He looked"--the Alderman lowered his voice in a very impressive and mysterious manner--"he looked _worried_."

Sir Julian felt inclined to ejaculate, "You don't say so!" at this bit of penetration, but the Alderman went on:

"It's not to be wondered at, either. I don't know whether you've noticed a sort of disturbance lately in the College--something in the air?"

"I know what you mean," Sir Julian said truthfully, but noncommittally.

"Exactly. Just what Lady Rossiter was speaking of the other day. Well, now that sort of thing won't do, will it? It upsets the staff--upsets the work--upsets that chap Fuller, badly. Took it very much to heart, didn't he? I suppose he thinks it reflects upon his credit as Supervisor, when things go wrong with the staff. However, it's all quite easily put right, when all's said and done."

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 _débâcle_ 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 him, 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.