The Alderman looked up, and at the same instant Fairfax Fuller took two steps forward.
“It isn’t, perhaps, a very easy thing for me to say,” Lady Rossiter said unfalteringly, “but we all know one another here. And I believe oh, so intensely! - in having courage. But never mind that. I needn’t go into any details, but it’s this I think the general feeling amongst the staff is that there might be some slight alteration in the duties of the Lady Superintendent. They don’t altogether like her doing so much. It’s natural enough, isn’t it? Perhaps they feel that inordinately long hours kept by one person cast a slur upon the others, who don’t seem to be quite so devoted. Perhaps she hasn’t been very tactful about it. I don’t know about that. But at all events, couldn’t we give her a holiday from evening work for the present? Let her go at about four o’clock?”
The Alderman’s prawn-like eyes were fixed admiringly upon Lady Rossiter, but he said nothing.
Sir Julian spoke.
“You can’t make an invidious distinction of that sort, Edna. It would be impossible.”
“But she looks very tired,” said Edna smoothly. “She has certainly been doing too much. We can put it on that score.”
“Who has been objecting to the hours that Miss Marchrose puts in?” demanded Fairfax Fuller bluntly.
Edna’s little smile admirably blended a protest at the question and a quiet determination to leave it unanswered.
“Because,” said Fuller, “if you’ll be good enough to tell that person to address his or her complaint to me, Lady Rossiter, I will deal with it in the proper way. I never yet heard of a good worker being sent off duty early because a slack one didn’t like the sight of over- work.”
“Come, come, Fuller,” said the Alderman uncertainly.
Fairfax Fuller turned a black gaze upon him that actually caused the old man to move his chair backwards.
“Leave it alone, Edna,” said her husband. “If there’s jealousy amongst the staff, Fuller is quite right in saying that he’s the person to adjust it. They had no business to appeal to you.”
“You force me to speak plainly,” said Lady Rossiter. “It isn’t only a little jealousy, though there is that as well. But to put things exactly as they are - the staff doesn’t like the habit that Miss Marchrose has fallen into of staying on overtime till all hours, and then being taken home. And, frankly, I don’t think you can blame them. That sort of thing isn’t done. It makes talk at once.”
“Evidently.”
The fury in Fuller’s voice was hardly suppressed.
“I believe that I am not censorious,” said Lady Rossiter. “It is utterly foreign to my nature, and I would sooner blind myself to evil than look out for it yet there are things which go against one’s every instinct. This is a very little community and has always been a very peaceful and happy one. It hurts me very much, somehow, that there should be talk of the kind that I know has been going on lately.”
“Mischief -making “muttered Fuller fiercely and without completing his sentence.
“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 w
ith 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 darkcircled 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 on 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 husb
and 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 harp 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.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 142