“Oh, no,” said Iris, in rather shocked accents. “I’m simply absorbing local colour in at every pore.”
“You’d better come out on Salt Marsh this afternoon and see the wild duck. I’ve asked Mark to bring Mr. Garrett and we’re going to have a shot at them.”
Julian did not make the suggestion without first calculating the chances to be in favour of Miss Easter’s declining the proposed arrangement. Nor did she fail to reply with the typical suburbanism:
“I can’t bear seeing things killed, and I hate the noise of guns going off. Besides, it’s so cold. But we’ll come and meet you at tea-time.”
“We?”
“Oh, I’m going to take that girl that Mark likes so much for a walk. He says she never has anyone to talk to.”
“Miss Marchrose?”
“Yes, I think she’s a perfect dear, and quite awfully pretty.”
Julian mentally applauded her.
“It will be delightful if you’ll come and meet us,” he said cordially.
“You must come in and make tea for us at Culmhayes, if you will. We ought to be at the cross-roads, just this side of Salt Marsh, soon after four. It will depend on the light. I doubt if we shall be able to go on much after half -past three.”
Julian’s prognostication was verified, but before the three men had reached the cross-roads they encountered Iris and Miss Marchrose, silhouetted against the leaden sky of a rapidly-advancing winter twilight.
“You’ve come a long way!” exclaimed Julian, with an involuntary thought for the silk stockings and suede shoes which he felt convinced that Iris was still wearing.
“It wasn’t too far for you?” asked Mark of Miss Marchrose, with friendly solicitude.
She only shook her head in reply, but Julian, with the odd intuition of a man with whom the observation of humanity has always been of prevailing interest, knew that she was inwardly responsive with all the quick gratitude of femininity for a man’s rarely-expressed consideration for her physical limitations.
Iris said in a rather enfeebled voice:
“Oh, Douglas, have you been cruel and brutal and shot all those poor dear birds? How many did you kill?”
Mr. Garrett made pretence of not having heard the enquiry, for reasons which Julian was at no pains to guess, having watched his guest’s display of incompetence with some dismay throughout the afternoon.
“I want you to notice the strange, strong atmospheric smell of decay in these lanes, Iris” said Mr. Garrett, taking control of the conversation in a highhanded manner that precluded further idle enquiries on the day’s sport.
“The whole place is redolent of winter and the dying year. We realists must take in deep draughts of atmosphere.”
To which Iris rather inadequately responded by a high, squeaking enquiry as to Douglas’s dreadful, dreadful gun and the possibility of its going off unexpectedly and killing her.
Miss Marchrose fell into step between Mark and Julian, her hands thrust boyishly into the pockets of her coat.
“Iris is afraid of getting more atmosphere than she bargained for,” said Mark, with a laugh. “A shooting accident would make first-rate copy, I suppose.”
“I wonder,” said Julian. “The interest attaching to violent action always appears to me to be rather a fictitious one.”
“So it is,” Miss Marchrose answered quickly.
“Surely in real life the majority of dramas are almost devoid of violent action, nowadays. I mean that a crisis, off the stage, is not necessarily brought about by a duel, or a murder, or an elopement.”
“The world is more subtle than it used to be,” Julian assented. “What you call a crisis, after all is mostly an affair of the emotions. It is generally led up to by an atmospheric tension and culminates in some ultra violence of emotion, whether of anger or sorrow or resolution.”
Miss Marchrose glanced up quickly at the last words, and although it was too dark for him to see her expression, Sir Julian again felt with certainty that some inexplicable telepathy had conveyed to him her thought.
“She is remembering Clarence Isbister,” he told himself in a flash.
She spoke quietly enough.
“Yes, I know what you mean by that atmospheric tension a sort of awful, unspoken sense of disaster and yet nothing happening. Only everything is happening, inside, and everyone knows it without being able to define it.”
“Give me a good honest earthquake,” said Mark Easter.
“I’m with you, Mark,” Julian agreed.
“A tangible misfortune is nothing, compared to those perfectly indefinable indications of disturbance on what I suppose we may call the mental plane.”
“A thing you can’t lay hold of,” said Mark, translating into his own phraseology.
“Those are much the worst,” Miss Marchrose repeated, with conviction. “Sometimes I wonder if, years and years hence, when things are very much more advanced, those weapons, belonging to what Sir Julian called the mental plane, will come to be the only ones used.”
“It would simplify war.”
“I wonder” said Julian. “Atmosphere is a powerful weapon.”
There was a silence as they trudged on steadily.
“On the whole,” was Sir Julian’s summing-up, “the big calamities, such as battle, murder, and sudden death, are no longer essential to constitute crisis. The same reactions in humanity’s present stage of development are produced without any visible action or events. Our consciousness has shifted to a more complex level.”
“A sign of the evolution of the race?”
“Well, yes. It implies a greater responsiveness to the invisible event.”
“Certainly,” said Miss Marchrose, “it is easier to cope with the obvious, symbolised, let us say, by telegrams, or your good honest earthquake.”
Mark Easter laughed.
“Telegrams and earthquakes meet with more sympathy, and certainly with more assistance, from one’s neighbours, than any amount of atmospheric pressure,” said he.
Miss Marchrose laughed too, but the conviction remained with Julian that she had inwardly recalled a connection between their discussion and that story, whatever the rights of it might be, that linked her name to that of Captain Clarence Isbister.
As they neared Culmhayes, traversing deeply sunken lanes and an occasional wind-swept field, Iris and Mr. Garrett fell further and further behind.
It was obvious that the creator of “Why, Ben!” preferred her reversions to the soil in the figurative sense of the words.
Occasional encouragement from her escort floated disjointedly, and rather with an effect of breathlessness, upon the cold air.
“... Should like to show you our own Highland peat bogs... our native heath... us Kelts...”
It was evident that fatigue was playing havoc with the purity of Mr. Garrett’s English.
“Iris isn’t used to walking,” Mark observed rather apologetically, “And you’ve come a long way.”
“I hope she isn’t too tired. It was my doing; I love getting out to Salt Marsh.”
“I know you do,” said Mark gently. “I wish you could get away from Culmouth more often.”
Mark was always interested.
Therein, Julian reflected, lay the half of his charm.
“Did Iris come for you to the College this afternoon?”
“No, I called for her on my way out, but she’s been up to the College quite often, and wants to learn typewriting. I should like to teach her myself if Mr. Fuller will let me.”
“Fuller will let you arrange anything that you like, and think best, only you’ve got enough to do already. I don’t know how you get through it all.”
Miss Marchrose uttered neither the meaningless protestations nor the pseudo-heroic acceptances habitually reserved for such intimations of indispensability. She said, “I enjoy it thoroughly, you know. Miss Easter brought your children to the College to-day, which created a diversion.”
Mark uttered a rather incoherent
sound, not inexpressive of dismay.
“Dare I ask how my children comported themselves?”
“They were quite good.”
“Poor things!” said Mark, with a half -laugh. “They are not often quite good. The Rector’s daughter is only with them for an hour or two in the mornings, and she complains that Ruthie is very noisy and intractable, and then Sarah has them more or less for the rest of the day; but she has no proper control over them, and the boy is always in disgrace. I don’t quite know what he does.”
The vastness of the field of conjecture thus opened up apparently held Miss Marchrose silent.
“Iris is very kind to them, but she spoils Ruthie, on the whole. And really, you know,” said Mark apologetically, “I think Ruthie is the more in need of being sat upon of the pair.”
Miss Marchrose laughed, but she made no endearing pretence of a tender-heartedness roused to rebellion at the idea of the requisite discipline.
Sir Julian reflected that, however thoroughly she might be aware of the peculiar circumstances governing Mark’s domestic arrangements, she had at all events no intention of making capital out of them by a display of sentimental interest in Mark’s singularly unattractive progeny.
Edna’s Cassandra-like prophecies of the danger threatening Mark Easter’s peace of mind recurred to him, and he felt vaguely uneasy. The two beside him were talking with a complete ease that denoted at least a very secure sense of sympathy, although Julian’s perceptions could detect no undercurrent of deeper emotion.
At Culmhayes, the light streaming from the open door revealed Miss Marchrose with a fresh, vivid colour that became her infinitely, and eyes full of gaiety and animation.
Julian ordered tea and was conscious of a perfectly distinct relief at the absence of Edna’s habitual kind, pervasive welcome. He was aware that, had his wife been present, the tea-party would not have prolonged itself as it did over the fire in the library; still less would Iris’s small piping soprano have largely monopolised the conversation with anecdotal gush relative to the inspiration, production, and reception of “Why, Ben!”
And yet Julian, in despite of his almost unlimited disesteem for the masterpiece in question, listened to its creator’s artless self-advertisement altogether contentedly, idly watching, as he did so, the firelight play on the rather saturnine face of Mr. Douglas Garrett, punctuating with portentous movements of the head and assenting monosyllables the discourse of his prettily idiotic disciple in the realms of idealism. Watching also the almost motionless gaze which Mark Easter’s blue eyes kept turned towards the shadow in which stood the great armchair, beside which he had drawn his own.
Miss Marchrose was leaning back, almost invisible in the flickering firelight that supplemented the distant electricity over the deserted tea equipage. Sir Julian could hardly see her, but from time to time he heard her speak, and thought again that her voice, with vibrations and intonations full of harmony, was sufficiently arresting to constitute a charm superior to that of physical beauty.
Iris, fluffy and brilliant both at once, actually failed to rouse in him that irritated scorn for her absurdity which almost invariably overpowered his pleasure in her extreme prettiness. Even her literary pretensions sounded less outrageous than usual in that assembly of which the peace and friendly well-being seemed to Julian’s acute sensitiveness to be almost tangible entities. He did not seek to define to himself the most unwonted kindliness with which Iris Easter actually caused him to regard her when she suddenly spoke in praise of Miss Marchrose’s singing, and said that she would like to hear her again.
“‘Maxwelton’s braes are bonny,’ “Mark hummed under his breath.
“I’ll sing it for you again, some day,” said Miss Marchrose. And although she spoke quite lazily, without turning her head, in that moment Sir Julian realised that his latent compassion for the possible victim of a misplaced attraction was not destined to be called forth by his friend, by light-hearted, easy-going Mark Easter, but by Miss Marchrose, whom Fairfax Fuller had called “as hard as nails.”
If was seven o’clock before they left Culmhayes.
“Mark, we shall be late for dinner,” said his sister. “Not that it matters very much, since Douglas is coming to dinner, and he’ll be just as late as we are. We’re not dressing.”
Mr. Garrett raised himself rather reluctantly out of his armchair.
“Oh,” said Iris, on a sudden piercing note of inspiration, to Miss Marchrose, “do come too. I’m sure you’ll be too late for anything at that awful farm place, and we should so like to have you. Then you could sing ‘Annie Laurie ‘for Mark.”
Miss Marchrose declined the invitation in spite of the one-sided angle of solicitation to which Iris inclined her golden head, but Julian thought that she seemed pleased at the younger girl’s very evident cordiality.
He listened next moment with a surprise half shadowed by a vague unformulated suspicion, as Iris suddenly urged upon her brother the necessity for his escorting Miss Marchrose to her lodgings.
Extravagant solicitude for the welfare of a member of her own sex was no habitual foible of Miss Easter’s, and for a moment Julian wondered whether she thought herself to be doing her brother a service.
Miss Marchrose, however, very decidedly declined all companionship on her short walk, and Mark showed no disposition to force the point.
Sir Julian said nothing at all, but went with the guests to the gates of the drive.
“Ta-ta!” said Miss Easter in preposterous valediction, raising herself on tiptoes, and clinging in an engaging manner to Mr. Garrett’s elbow.
“Good night,” said Miss Marchrose generally, and turned upon her way.
Sir Julian accompanied her to the farm without evoking any protestation but a laughing one, and she told him how much she had enjoyed the afternoon.
“I’m glad,” said Sir Julian.
Walking back alone to Culmhayes, he wondered whether he had spoken the truth.
His gladness, at all events, was considerably modified by the recollection of that odd hash of illumination which had come to him.
“It is no business of mine,” Julian told himself, shrugging his shoulders with a timely recollection of his favourite bugbear, officiousness. And all through the solitary evening, and his exceeding appreciation of such solitude, he thought about the business which was none of his.
IX
PERHAPS the closest bond of union between Julian Rossiter and his wife now consisted in the common dismay which invaded them when Ruthie and Ambrose Easter thought fit to inflict themselves, uninvited, upon the Culmhayes establishment.
On the morning after Edna’s return from London, she was writing in the morning-room, when a respectfully resentful servant informed her that Miss Ruthie and Master Ambrose were at the front door, declaring an urgent necessity for seeing Lady Rossiter.
“Tell them I am busy writing,” said Edna hastily, certainly not pausing for the application of her favourite, “Is it kind, is it wise, is it true?” since it was neither the first nor the last, and eventually turned out to be far from compliant with even the second regulation, since the visitors, accepting Horber’s rebuff with deceptive quiet, immediately made their way round to the window of the morning-room, where they startled Lady Rossiter considerably by suddenly appearing, with flattened noses and glaring eyeballs, against the pane.
She made imperious signs at them with an ivory penholder, without avail. Unable to contemplate the prospect of pursuing her morning avocations under the mouthing pantomime by which Ruthie sought to convey her desire for immediate admission, Lady Rossiter flung open the window, shivering at the rush of the raw morning cold.
“Good morning, children,” she said forbearingly.
All Lady Rossiter’s Christianity was required to induce her to accept as even faintly probable the ultimate evolution of a Divine Spark from the personality of Ruthie. But she always felt bound to act upon such an assumption, if only because Sir Julian so firmly and complete
ly rejected it.
“I thought Horber told you I was busy, Ruthie. I can’t see either of you now, you must run home again.”
“Auntie Iris is here, too,” said Ruthie triumphantly.
Lady Rossiter did not relegate the value of Auntie Iris’ society to the abysmal depths of contempt to which Sir Julian had long since uncharitably consigned it, partly because her principles never allowed her any point of view other than one consciously superior to that of her husband’s, and partly because Auntie Iris had always been prone to seek her advice with a certain gushing deference that was not without its appeal. Nevertheless, she received with a very apparent absence of elation the announcement of her young neighbour’s proximity.
“Where is Auntie Iris?”
“She is with Sir Julian. He met us all in the drive.”
“Did he tell you to come up to the house and find me?”
“Oh, no, we came all of ourselves. We’ve got such a piece of news.”
Lady Rossiter was reminded of an earlier occasion, when the heralds of Auntie Iris had thrust themselves unbidden into her presence.
“Has ‘Why, Ben! ‘gone into a second edition?”
She had not reckoned with the proneness of a new interest to oust an old one from youthful minds.
Ambrose and Ruthie both looked at her with the lacklustre gaze and hanging under- jaw of utter unresponsiveness.
“I can’t keep the window open any longer, it’s too cold. Run back to Auntie Iris, now.”
“But we haven’t told you the news.”
“Quick, then.”
“You must guess first,” said Ruthie loudly and inexorably.
Ambrose thrust his large pale face forward and unexpectedly snatched the dallying announcement from the lips of his sister, perhaps from a well-grounded fear that it must otherwise be uttered from without an abruptly-closed window.
“Auntie Iris is going to marry Mr. Garrett!”
Lady Rossiter was left no time in which to utter possible congratulations, as the momentary advantage reft from his senior by Ambrose was dearly paid for by him in the gale of bufferings to which she instantly subjected him.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 132