Part 8

"Yes," said Lady Rossiter, beginning to wonder if a _catalogue raisonné_ of the Easter family and its connections was to be unrolled before her.

"Even Ambrose is not too little to----"

"Do you give?"

"I try to do so, Ruthie, certainly."

"Does Sir Julian give?"

Lady Rossiter not impossibly struggled for a moment with an unhallowed impulse before answering:

"I hope so. But will you try to remember what I've been telling you, Ruthie? It is not our business to think about whether other people give out in the right way or not--never, never judge others," said Edna parenthetically. "But I do want you to remember about Love. That it is the biggest thing in all the world and that nothing is quite so bad and ugly as to be angry, or unkind, or unloving. Love is what matters most, always."

Miss Easter, _more suâ_, contrived to combine a sort of perverted relevance with indecent vulgarity in her bored reply:

"Mr. Garrett kissed Auntie Iris this morning. Me and Peekaboo were hiding in the cowhouse and we saw. Auntie Iris said it was love."

Lady Rossiter received in silence this singular application of the Divine Law which she had promulgated so often and so indiscriminately that she had long ago come to look upon it as her own production.

"What have the children been doing?" said Mark's voice at the window. "Lady Rossiter, I'm afraid they've been worrying you dreadfully. I'm ashamed of them."

"Come in, Mark," said Edna, not without relief. "I hope, after what I've been saying to her, that Ruthie is going to make it up with Ambrose at once."

Mark lifted his daughter out of the window and despatched her in immediate search of her injured junior.

He leant against the low sill of the open window as Lady Rossiter came towards it.

She had long ago formed the habit, which she would not have admitted as being exceedingly agreeable to her, of taking it as her right to advise and question Mark Easter on all personal matters connected with his wifeless household. She belonged, indeed, to the class of those women who have a perfectly genuine love of approaching any admittedly _scabreux_ topics which intimately and painfully touch the life of another--a form of prurience sometimes decorated with such titles as "the tender touch of a good, pure woman."

"Poor little Ruthie! I've tried to talk to her a little bit. It's motherhood that's lacking in their lives, Mark."

It might reasonably be supposed that such motherhood as the unfortunate victim to alcohol who had partnered Mark's few, unhappy years of matrimony had afforded to his children was as well out of their way, but Mark made no such unsympathetic rejoinder. He gazed at Lady Rossiter with the straight, candid look that had never held anything but honest gratitude and admiration for Sir Julian's beautiful wife.

"They are getting older," he said disconsolately, "and they do not seem to improve."

Mark paused, as though weighing this extremely lenient description of his objectionable family.

"Ambrose can go to school in a year or so," said Lady Rossiter hopefully.

"I suppose so, but the worst of it is that he really is delicate. Now, Ruthie is as strong as a horse, but then I never did like the idea of sending a little girl to school."

"I can't see any alternative," Edna said decidedly. "She will have to be properly educated, and a governess, in the circumstances, is out of the question."

"I suppose so," doubtfully answered Mark.

"It's very unlikely one could get a good daily one, down here, and a resident one--you're a young man still, Mark, and people would talk," said Edna, seizing instinctively on the aspect of the question that it would afford her the most enjoyment to discuss. Had Mark been less than extraordinarily single-minded, it would also have afforded him the maximum of discomfort in listening to her.

"You see, the circumstances are altogether exceptional, and make things very hard for you, I'm afraid. You are a married man still, and there are always dangers. Well, you know as well as I do that there are things one can't put into words," said Edna, with no intention of being taken _au pied de la lettre_.

"And Mark, there's another thing. Ruthie is old enough to begin asking questions about her poor mother. What are you going to do about telling her?"

"I don't know," Mark said simply. "I've never thought about it."

Lady Rossiter gave a sort of musical groan.

"For all one knows, servants and people may have told her already, and it should have been so tenderly, so delicately done!"

"No, no," said Mark. "Sarah is a good creature, though she's rough; she has always been loyalty itself."

"I'm sure she has; but after all, Mark, it is a thing which everybody round here knows. Ruthie may hear something any day. If ever she does, remember that you can always send her straight to me. Although it hurts so to dwell on those sad, ugly things, I would always put all that aside if I could help you or yours, Mark."

Edna eyed the recipient of these anticipated sacrifices with a long, compassionate look. If a deep, secret gratification held its place in that thoughtful gaze, Mark Easter was not likely to be any more aware of it than was Edna herself.

"Tell me," she exclaimed, as though struck by a sudden thought, "I'm right in thinking that everybody does know? There's no mystery, no conspiracy of silence about it all?"

"Not that I know of," said Mark, frankly astonished. "You know, you couldn't expect people to come up and ask me how I like it, or anything of that sort, could you?"

Edna's gravity did not for an instant relax at the rueful extravagance of the suggestion.

"I don't know if I ought to say this, Mark--but I think I must. One can't let one's friends risk ship-wreck just for lack of a little moral courage."

It might well have been supposed that any ship-wreck destined to Mark Easter had long since passed into the realm of accomplished fact, but it was evident that Edna had in view other and more pressing possibilities of disaster.

"You've thought of the trouble, the wretchedness that might be entailed on others, and the self-reproach to yourself, if there was any want of openness about the whole miserable question?"

"But I don't think there is any want of openness," said Mark blankly.

"Mark, forgive me. You don't resent my speaking about it all? You know I do it only because I'm so dreadfully sorry, and couldn't bear that there should be anything further...."

"You are everything that is kind," said Mark steadily, "and you and Sir Julian are the best friends I have in the world."

Edna could have dispensed with the inclusion of her husband's name.

It served, in fact, to stem her tide of warning, the more especially as she felt more or less convinced that Mark was not making the intended application of her words.

She gave smilingly graceful congratulations to the newly-betrothed Iris, the more strongly tinged with motherliness from her consciousness of recent success with Ruthie, and even endured a prolonged wringing of her hand from Mr. Garrett, who had followed his new lodestar to Culmhayes.

But that evening, after a silence more fraught with thoughtfulness even than usual, and in consequence even more studiously ignored than usual by Sir Julian, she said to him abruptly:

"Have you any idea whether Clarence Isbister's jilt knows the true facts of the case about Mark?"

Few things could be more designedly insulting than Lady Rossiter's practice of invariably alluding to Miss Marchrose in her capacity of a wrecker of hearts. Julian, however, replied imperturbably:

"Do you mean the dipsomaniac?"

Lady Rossiter liked the term no better than her husband liked that of "jilt," as applied to Miss Marchrose, and as she would not be guilty of making use of it, she merely inclined her head gravely.

"Because, Julian, if that woman knows into what she is drifting, then it will be a case of Clarence over again, and I am going to save my poor Mark from her. And if she _doesn't_ know, I am going to tell her, whatever it costs me to speak about it, that Mark is a married man."

X

Edna had no immediate opportunity of putting her altruistic designs into execution. Miss Marchrose was not easily available, and Mark Easter was reported to be less frequently at the College in consequence of the business devolving upon him in connection with Iris' approaching marriage.

"I don't know why Iris is in such a hurry, but they are going to be married at the beginning of the new year," Lady Rossiter told her husband. "Mr. Garrett is going to stay on down here."

"What an ass!"

Lady Rossiter always looked a little pained at a flippant or unkind reference to anyone. She did so now, and replied gently:

"He is very young and first love is a very beautiful thing. He naturally wants to stay where Iris is."

To which Sir Julian responded with an even greater intensity of conviction in his voice than before:

"_What_ an ass!"

The chief manifestations indulged in by first love, as personified by Miss Easter and Mr. Garrett, were perhaps not altogether unaccountable for Sir Julian's lack of enthusiasm.

To their habitual attitude of mutual admiration they now added an apparently inexhaustible stock of recondite jests and allusions utterly unintelligible to anybody but themselves.

When Lady Rossiter made civil enquiry of Mr. Garrett as to the length of time he could afford to remain away from his journalistic work in London, he scarcely troubled to answer her, but directed a meaning look towards Iris and said darkly:

"Ah, what would the old man say to _that_? It tallies quite oddly with that letter we were speaking of, doesn't it?"

"Yes, indeed," said Iris obligingly. "You know what I said about telepathy, too, Douglas."

"What?" Lady Rossiter not unnaturally wanted to know.

Iris' reply was unsatisfactory rather than informative.

"Oh, just something foolish Douglas and I had been discussing. He's _too_ silly sometimes, you know."

"You forget our old friend McTavish," retorted Douglas, with an air of dry repartee that would have been more effective had anyone, with the presumable exception of Iris, been in possession of any clue as to the identity of McTavish.

An appreciative laugh from Miss Easter rippled lightly through the rather embarrassed silence.

"Oh, poor McTavish! You're always flourishing that creature at me!"

"Who or what is McTavish?" said Mark, in a tone which voiced the inexplicable but growing feeling of umbrage which was invading the minds of the assembly in regard to the unknown.

Douglas and Iris exchanged mirthful looks that seemed charged with meaning.

"Oh, McTavish! He's a friend of Douglas--a sort of friend. I suppose you would call him a friend, Douglas?"

"Well, hardly _my_ friend, perhaps."

"Well, perhaps hardly!"

Iris fell into transports of laughter.

"A friend of a friend of yours!" she gasped.

At this sudden introduction of a brand-new element into their exchange of witticisms, Mr. Garrett's expression of rather satirical humour relaxed also into unrestrained laughter.

"We Scotch lads are accused of having no sense of fun," he ejaculated, in accents broken with mirth, "but, my certie, a real pawky bit of Scotch humour like that makes a perfect child of me!"

It was not often that Mr. Garrett relapsed into dialect, and his auditors were left to conclude that extreme wit and point must have characterised the reference which had left them so entirely cold.

"Half the time I don't know what they're driving at," Mark disconsolately told Lady Rossiter, but he added that Iris seemed to be very happy and that Garrett was fortunately not dependent upon his profession. That this was vaguely literary was all that could be gathered by those not in Mr. Garrett's confidence, but he now assumed a more than proprietary tone in discussing "Why, Ben! A Story of the Sexes."

"I can't help thinking, Iris, that your next novel will certainly bear an impress of greater maturity," Mr. Garrett academically observed, "when you have entered upon the second phase of a woman's deeper experience."

Iris looked as though she were undecided whether to blush or to look extremely modern and detached.

She finally produced a rather unconvincingly coy flutter of the eyelids, which committed her to nothing.

The second phase of a woman's deeper experience was to be entered upon in the beginning of January, and Iris spent a great deal of her time in going backwards and forwards between London and Devonshire. She had developed an enthusiasm for Miss Marchrose, and refused to give up her course of typewriting lessons at the College, where her presence produced the slight stirring of interest always provoked by a bride-elect.

Even Lady Rossiter, although her opinion of Miss Easter's conquest was far from being an exalted one, displayed a certain deference to the interesting situation by driving her into Culmouth and talking all the way, in a very candid and enlightening manner, of the sacrifices entailed by matrimony.

At the College, Lady Rossiter, as though struck by a sudden thought, said that she would come upstairs with Iris and seek the Lady Superintendent.

"A very little gratifies them, and I always like to keep in close touch with the staff. I must arrange for one of my little Sunday tea-parties next week, and you must come and help me entertain them all, Iris."

The social status, _ipso facto_, conferred upon the wearer of an engagement- or a wedding-ring, by whomsoever bestowed, is curiously typical of the point of view of certain feminine minds. It might be doubted whether Miss Iris Easter, unattached, would have been considered in any way competent to help the chatelaine of Culmhayes in her entertainments.

Iris, however, was never lacking in responsiveness.

"I shall adore that, dear Lady Rossiter. I think Miss Marchrose is simply too sweet for words, you know, and Mark admires her awfully."

Lady Rossiter was only too well aware of it, but the observation served to strengthen the decision that she had already taken.

"This is my last lesson," Iris said sentimentally, as they went up the stone stairs. "I shall be able to help Douglas, of course, so much more, now that I can really type. Oh, Mr. Cooper, good morning!"

The young man returned cheerful greetings. "You'll find Miss Marchrose in the High Speed, if you're looking for her. I'm on my way downstairs."

"I have not been in to any of the classrooms for a long while," Lady Rossiter said graciously. "What is happening in the High Speed?"

"A test, I believe, Lady Rossiter. Perhaps you would care to come in and have a look. A stimulus," said Cooper, with great gallantry, "is always desirable. I will escort you if I may. I'm afraid I always go upstairs two steps at a time. Sometimes three."

The High Speed room was fairly well occupied. Half a dozen young girls, between the ages of fifteen and twenty, a couple of middle-aged women, a precocious-looking little boy with eyes that seemed ready to pop out of his head, and several half-grown youths, sat at the wooden desks. Miss Marchrose stood at the top of the room, book in hand, and turned as Cooper opened the door.

It was an understood thing that the wife of the principal director had the right of entry throughout the College precincts and Miss Marchrose, whatever her feelings, had no alternative but to direct the disposal of chairs next to her own rostrum.

"You mustn't be nervous," Lady Rossiter said to her smilingly, in an undertone that might have answered its purpose better but for the absolute silence pervading the room. "I've heard these tests given before, and I always think it's nervous work for the reader. I know I should be in terror myself of coming across quite unpronounceable words. But you probably know the book. What is it?"

Miss Marchrose showed her the text-book in silence, and Lady Rossiter, though she smiled and nodded at it, did no more than glance at the covers.

"This is the speed test," Miss Marchrose announced clearly. "Are you ready?"

Nobody answered, but the tension in the room was obvious, and the little boy in front squared his shoulders, bending his head forward until it almost touched his note-book, and grasping a short pencil in a stubby hand of which each fingernail was quite neatly and symmetrically outlined in black.

"In the United Kingdom there are over 500 railway companies, the lines of which ... are worked or leased by about forty of the principal companies.... It was in the first half of the nineteenth century that the majority of the great undertakings received parliamentary sanction...."

Miss Marchrose's voice was quite level and her enunciation distinct. She varied neither her intonation nor the rate at which she read from the printed page before her, already carefully subdivided into phrases.

Most of the shorthand-writers seemed able to take down the test--a shade behind the reader, however, so that their pencils were never altogether off the paper. The youths in the back of the room displayed greater facility, sometimes able to pause with the end of a sentence and relax an aching right hand. Only the little boy dashed down his dots and outlines as the words left Miss Marchrose's lips, and sat with pencil impudently poised in the air during the regulated pause separating each phrase. Both the elder women in the class, who might have been of the less superior type of hotel-clerk or assistant manageress, came to early grief.

One of them laid her pencil down outright after the first five-and-twenty words, shaking her head, and looking resentfully at the aggressively proficient child in front of her; and the other one, though scribbling frantically, her pencil almost piercing the paper, with a painfully flushed face and a hand that shook from strain, was quite evidently unable to keep up with the dictation, and was, moreover, scribbling down a large proportion of the words in almost illegible longhand.

Iris Easter watched the class with very evident interest and amusement, and smiled at the precocious little boy until she had extorted from him in return a significantly triumphant grin.

Lady Rossiter also looked at the class with that gravely observant gaze that, more often than not, denotes complete absorption in something quite else, and thought about Miss Marchrose.

She also glanced at her once or twice, as she stood facing the room, very erect, with her eyes on the book, and with no trace of shyness or nervousness in her bearing.

Edna, whose very decided beauty was of the type that seldom or never varies, could on this occasion look at Miss Marchrose with complete satisfaction, and even ask herself whether that woman could possibly be a day under thirty-five. Neither the strong sunlight of a frosty January morning nor the contrast with Iris Easter showed her to advantage.

Her voice stopped.

There was a general, inarticulate sound of relief throughout the room.

"When you have transcribed the test into longhand," said Miss Marchrose serenely, "please give your papers in at the desk, Classroom I, and for the benefit of those who have not done a speed test before I may add that the students must not assist one another in the transcriptions."

The class gathered up note-books and pencils and left the room, with much scraping of benches and shuffling of feet.

"Oh, Miss Marchrose, I do think you're clever," was the remark made by Iris, rather unnecessarily, to Lady Rossiter's way of thinking.

"Will they all pass that awful test?"

"Oh, no; 'getting it back,' as they call it, is the part they seem to find most difficult. Some of the less intelligent ones seem to have absolutely no sense of the meaning of words. If the shorthand outline isn't clear, they guess at the word and put in almost anything, whether it makes sense or not. Of course, that's where the majority of stenographers do fail."

"But if they make those little scrabbles clearly enough, then it's all right?" said Miss Easter.

"Yes, that's where the younger ones score. The children nearly always learn much faster than the older ones and make the outlines more clearly, and then they can transcribe easily enough, whether they understand the meaning of what they've taken down or not."

"Oh, that awful little boy with the eyes!"

"He'll pass," said Miss Marchrose, laughing. "He's a dreadful child."

"Iris, dear," said Lady Rossiter softly, "when do you have your lesson?"

Thus obliquely recalled to the immediate duties of her state of life, Miss Marchrose conducted her pupil to a small classroom where the Remington machine awaited her, and in front of which Iris took her seat with obvious and immense satisfaction in the flashing of her engagement-ring as her small hands moved backward and forward on the keyboard.

"If you don't have to stay with her while she's practising, I should like to have a look at your own office," said Lady Rossiter very sweetly. "I so often wonder if you don't find it cold in this weather."

"It is very cold indeed, but as I keep the window wide open, that's my own fault," Miss Marchrose answered brusquely.

But she led the way into her room and prepared to shut the window, which was, as she had said, wide open.

"Oh, but don't! There can never be too much of God's own fresh air to please me," Lady Rossiter exclaimed, at the same time fastening the high collar of her fur coat. "Besides, I know you get so little out-of-doors you must want all the sunshine possible. Tell me, do you like your work here?"

"Yes."

"That's rather wonderful of you. Mr. Easter, our agent, you know, and also my very dear friend, tells me that you work so well and conscientiously. I am sure you like working for Mr. Easter: everyone does."

"Yes."

"I'm so very, very glad about dear little Iris and this engagement. Quite suited to each other in every sort of way. After all, deep can only call to deep in very exceptional cases, and they are both so young and happy. Besides, it will be a great weight off her brother's mind."

Miss Marchrose did not even return her former unbrilliant monosyllable, and Lady Rossiter was obliged to persevere.

"There had been so much sadness already, there--of course, he never talks of it, except to me sometimes--but one has to tread, oh so lightly and delicately! It is all past now, as far as such things can be past when there are constant grievous reminders, but he and I went through it all side by side at the time--shoulder to shoulder."

Edna paused, and looked rather resentfully at her unresponsive auditor. Evidently the warning of which she stood in such need was to be delivered without any assistance from herself.

She looked full at the Lady Superintendent, who gazed back at her with calm hostility in her eyes.

"You know that Mark Easter is a married man?" Lady Rossiter said slowly and very distinctly, as though determined, which indeed she was, that the fact should be made clear beyond the possibility of misunderstanding. "His wife, unfortunate woman--God forbid that I should condemn her!--is in a home for inebriates. But she is still alive, and may live for years."

Silence ensued, and Lady Rossiter considerately averted her eyes. She wondered for a moment whether she should lay her hand upon the other's shoulder with a silent pressure of sympathy, but decided that to do so would be a tacit assumption of facts better unrecognised.