THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mrs. Marion Randall Parsons 
 
TENSION 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 HXW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
TENSION 
 
 BY 
 
 E. M. DELAFIELD 
 
 Author of "Zella Sees Herself," "The Pelicans," 
 "Consequences," etc. 
 
 H3eto gorfe 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1920 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT. 1920, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1920 
 
 I 
 
R6I 
 
 0)358 
 
 TO SUPPLEMENT 
 
 THE OFFERING OF A VERY EARLY AND 
 
 UNFINISHED EFFORT, OF WHICH 
 
 THE DEDICATION RAN: 
 
 "TO MY MATERNAL PARENT" 
 
 M816S40 
 
TENSION 
 
 I 
 
 " AUNTIE IRIS has written a book ! " 
 
 "A book! " echoed both auditors of the announce- 
 ment, in keys varying between astonishment and 
 dismay. 
 
 " Yes, and it's going to be published, and put into a 
 blue cover, and sold, and Auntie Iris is going to make 
 heaps and heaps of money! " 
 
 " What is it to be called? " said Lady Rossiter rather 
 gloomily, fixing an apprehensive eye on the exuberant 
 niece of the authoress. 
 
 " It's called, ' Why, Ben! ' and it's a Story of the 
 Sexes," glibly quoted that young lady, unaware of the 
 shock inflicted by this brazen announcement, delivered 
 at the top of her squeaky, nine-year-old voice. 
 
 " Good God ! " said Sir Julian Rossiter. 
 
 His wife said, "Hush, Julian!" in a rather auto- 
 matic aside and turned again to the herald of " Why, 
 Ben!" now hopping exultantly round and round the 
 break fast- table. 
 
 " Did you get a letter from Aunt Iris this morning, 
 Ruthie?" 
 
 " Daddy did, and he said it was a secret before, but 
 now the publishers had accepted the book and every- 
 body might know, and I said I said " 
 
2 TENSION 
 
 Ruthie consecrated the briefest possible instant to 
 drawing a sufficiently deep breath to enable her to re- 
 sume her rapid, high-pitched narrative. " I said, ' Me 
 and Peekaboo must come and tell you and Sir Julian, 
 because you'd be so pleased and so excited, and so 
 surprised ! ' 
 
 " Is your little brother here as well ? " said Sir 
 Julian, gazing distastefully through his eye-glasses at 
 Ruthie, heated, breathless, hopping persistently on one 
 leg, and with a general air of having escaped from the 
 supervision of whoever might have charge of her morn- 
 ing toilette before that toilette had received even the 
 minimum of attention. Ruthie cast a look of artless 
 surprise about her. 
 
 " I thought he was here. He came with me but 
 you know how he dawdles. He may be still in the 
 drive." 
 
 A slow fumbling at the door-handle discredited the 
 supposition. 
 
 " There he is ! " shrieked Ruthie joyfully, and vio- 
 lently turning the handle of the door. " Ow! I can't 
 open the door! " 
 
 "Of course you can't, if he is holding the handle at 
 the other side. Let go." 
 
 " He won't be able to open it himself, he never can 
 and besides, his hands are all sticky, I know, be- 
 cause he upset the treacle at breakfast. Let go, 
 Peekaboo ! " bawled his sister through the keyhole. 
 
 " H'sh sh. Don't shriek like that, he can hear 
 quite well." 
 
 " But he won't let go " 
 
 " Come away from the door, Ruthie, and don't 
 make that noise." 
 
TENSION 3 
 
 Lady Rossiter herself went to the door of which 
 the handle was being ineffectually jerked from with- 
 out, and said with that peculiar distinctness of utter- 
 ance characteristic of exasperation kept consciously 
 under control: 
 
 " Is that you, Ambrose ? Turn the handle towards 
 you no, not that way, towards you, I said right 
 round " 
 
 " Turn it towards you, Peekaboo ! " shrieked Ruthie, 
 suddenly thrusting her head under Lady Rossiter 's 
 arm. 
 
 " Be quiet, Ruthie. There, that's right." 
 
 The door slowly opened, and a rather emaciated, 
 seven-year-old edition in knickerbockers of the stal- 
 wart Ruthie advanced languidly into the room. 
 
 " How do you do ? " he remarked, extending a 
 treacle-glazed hand for the morning greetings entirely 
 omitted by his excited elder sister. 
 
 " Good morning, Ambrose dear. You're paying us 
 a very early visit.'' 
 
 " Auntie Iris has written a book ! " announced Am- 
 brose, more deliberately than, but quite as loudly 
 and distinctly as, his senior. " And it's called, ' Why, 
 Ben! A Story of the Sexes.' " 
 
 " Yes, dear, Ruthie told us," said Lady Rossiter, a 
 rather repressed note in her voice indicating a renewed 
 sense of outrage at the singular title selected by Am- 
 brose's aunt for her maiden attempt at literature. 
 
 Ambrose turned pallid eyes of fury behind a large 
 pair of spectacles upon his sister. 
 
 " You said you wouldn't tell them till I came. . . . 
 It's very, very mean of you. . . . I'll tell Daddy the 
 manute I get home. ... I ... I ..." 
 
4 TENSION 
 
 His objurgations became incoherent, through none 
 the less expressive for that, and gaining steadily in 
 volume as he sought, in vain, to overpower the torrent 
 of self-defence instantly emitted from Ruthie's lungs 
 of brass. 
 
 Sir Julian Rossiter laid down his paper, opened the 
 French window, and thrust both his visitors into the 
 drive. 
 
 " Bolt the window, Julian," said his wife hastily. 
 " And I will tell Horber not to let them in at the front 
 door. Much as I love children, I can't have them 
 rushing in on us at breakfast; it's really too much." 
 
 " Do you suppose all their morning calls end like 
 this?" remarked Sir Julian, as he watched their de- 
 parting guests stagger down the drive, Ambrose's large 
 head still shaking with his wrath, and the voice of his 
 sister still audibly browbeating and calling him " Peek- 
 aboo." 
 
 " Why does she call her brother by that senseless and 
 revolting nickname? " 
 
 " I don't know. I think it's a nursery relic, and 
 dates from the days of their unfortunate mother." 
 
 " The dipsomaniac? " 
 
 Lady Rossiter said nothing. She was aware that 
 Mrs. Easter's enforced retirement into a home for 
 inebriates was an ancient scandal, and that Julian 
 had only introduced a reference to it in the idle hope 
 of trapping her into disregarding her favourite touch- 
 stone in conversation " Is it kind, is it wise, is it 
 true?" 
 
 Unlike his wife, but in common with many people 
 less apt at analysing the idiosyncrasy than himself, Sir 
 Julian habitually preferred silence to speech, unless he 
 
TENSION 5 
 
 had anything unpleasant to say. It was one of the 
 many differences which did not make for unity be- 
 tween them. 
 
 " I wonder," Sir Julian presently observed, " what 
 publisher is undertaking the responsibility of ' Why, 
 Ben ! ' How exactly like Auntie Iris to choose such 
 a preposterous name, and to call it ' A Story of the 
 Sexes ' into the bargain ! She can't be more than 
 twenty." 
 
 " It rather made me shudder when those two poor 
 children spoke the name so glibly. ' A Story of the 
 Sexes ' imagine their knowing such a word at all, 
 at their age ! " 
 
 Sir Julian shrugged his shoulder. " Nothing could 
 surprise me, from the egregious Ruthie. I suppose 
 I shall have to congratulate Mark Easter on his half- 
 sister's achievement this morning." 
 
 " Are you going to the College ? " 
 
 " I must. There is a meeting of the directors, and 
 I have to take the chair." 
 
 "Not a General Committee meeting?" said Lady 
 Rossiter quickly. 
 
 " No, Edna," replied her husband, with a great 
 finality. "Not a General Committee meeting." 
 
 If he did not add an ejaculatory thanksgiving aloud 
 to the statement, his wife was none the less aware that 
 he regarded with the extreme of disfavour her presence 
 at the general meetings of the committee which pre- 
 sided over that venture known as the " Commercial 
 and Technical College for the South- West of Eng- 
 land." On this reflection, Lady Rossiter infused as 
 much proprietary interest as possible into the tone of 
 her next enquiry. 
 
6 TENSION 
 
 X 
 
 " Have we got a Lady Superintendent yet ? I can't 
 bear to think of all my girls without a woman to look 
 after them. There are so many little things for which 
 women need a woman." 
 
 " One of the subjects before the meeting to-day is 
 to discuss an application for the post. Fuller thinks 
 he has found some one." 
 
 Edna Rossiter raised her well-marked, dark eye- 
 brows. 
 
 " Surely Mr. Fuller is hardly qualified to judge? " 
 
 " Probably not. That's why the question is to be 
 laid before the directors/' said her husband drily. 
 
 Lady Rossiter, tall and beautiful, with the maturity 
 of a woman whom the years had left with auburn 
 hair unfaded and opaque white skin almost unlined, 
 moved restlessly about the room. 
 
 Sir Julian, aware instantly that she was anxious to 
 pursue the subject, perversely remained silent behind 
 the newspaper. 
 
 " Do you know anything about this woman ? Is 
 she a lady?" 
 
 " I have not the least idea." 
 
 "Is she from the West Country?" 
 
 " She writes from London." 
 
 " Ah, our Devonians won't take to her if she's a 
 Cockney. I should prefer some one de nous autres, 
 Julian." 
 
 " So she may be, for all we know." 
 
 "You had better tell me her name, Julian." 
 
 "Why?" enquired Sir Julian childishly, and also 
 disconcertingly. 
 
 "Why?" echoed his wife, momentarily non- 
 plussed. 
 
TENSION 7 
 
 She looked at him for a moment with black- fringed, 
 amber-coloured eyes. 
 
 "Why not?" she demanded at last. 
 
 " It would convey nothing more to you than to the 
 rest of us." 
 
 " Oh, the perversity of man ! " cried Lady Rossiter 
 playfully. " Here am I backing up the great venture 
 heart and soul, knowing every member of the staff 
 individually and offering prizes to every class in every 
 subject, and even putting all my savings into the con- 
 cern and then I'm not allowed to hear what the 
 high and mighty directors are going to talk about! 
 Really, Julian, you men are very childish sometimes." 
 
 " She is a Miss Marchrose." 
 
 "Marchrose!" 
 
 Sir Julian, perceiving recognition in the tone of the 
 exclamation, and recollecting his own prediction that 
 the name would convey nothing to his wife, looked 
 annoyed. 
 
 " It is a most uncommon name." 
 
 Julian carefully refrained from questioning. 
 
 " I told you I might know something about her ! 
 The girl who jilted poor Clarence Isbister in that abom- 
 inable way was a Miss Marchrose." 
 
 " It doesn't seem probable that this girl could have 
 any connection with the woman who jilted your cousin 
 Clarence; she is a certified teacher of shorthand and 
 typewriting." 
 
 "Well, Clarence's girl was nobody at all, and she 
 was older than he, poor boy the Isbisters were not 
 at all pleased about it, I remember. But they'd made 
 up their minds to it, and it was all arranged, and then 
 came this thunderbolt." 
 
8 TENSION 
 
 "If it was such an unpopular engagement, the 
 Isbisters may owe her a debt of gratitude for throwing 
 him over." 
 
 " Ah, it was more than that. Don't you remember, 
 Julian ? They'd been engaged six weeks, and Clarence 
 was like a lunatic about her, and simply made his 
 father and mother consent to it all, and they kept on 
 saying the girl wasn't good enough for him, and 
 didn't seem to care for him much. And then he had 
 that appalling hunting smash." 
 
 " I remember," said Sir Julian, " when they thought 
 he was going to be paralysed for the rest of his life, 
 poor chap." 
 
 " So he was, from the waist downwards, for nearly 
 a year, and all the doctors said that his recovery was 
 a perfect miracle. But when he was still helpless, 
 and nobody knew if he had to be an invalid or not, 
 he offered to release Miss Marchrose from the en- 
 gagement and she gave him up." 
 
 " H'm," said Julian noncommittally. 
 
 " There have been women," said Lady Rossiter, with 
 tears in her eyes, and in her voice that peculiar 
 emotional quality which indicates that the general is 
 merely being used to indicate the particular, "there 
 have been women who have waited all their lives long 
 for just such an opportunity of giving/' 
 
 " On the whole, I am of opinion that the majority 
 of fiances would prefer not to provide the oppor- 
 tunity." 
 
 " Ah, Julian, it's easy enough for you to be cynical. 
 But to me it's simply inconceivable how she could 
 do it. How any woman could be so utterly heart- 
 less " 
 
TENSION 9 
 
 " Didn't Clarence Isbister marry somebody else last 
 year?" 
 
 " Thank God, yes." 
 
 Lady Rossiter was always ready, in a reverent and 
 uplifted manner, to render verbal recognition to her 
 Maker. "Thank God, it didn't destroy his faith in 
 women. He married a true, pure, sweet, loving girl 
 and one in his own class of life just a well-bred 
 English maiden." 
 
 " And what happened to the other one Miss 
 Marchrose? " 
 
 " I don't know, but she was very badly off, and had 
 been teaching when Clarence met her of course, it 
 was the money and position that made her accept him, 
 one supposes." 
 
 " Only the price was too high when it included at- 
 tendance on an invalid?" suggested Sir Julian, with 
 a malicious satisfaction in thus encouraging oblivion 
 of the, " Is it kind, is it wise, is it true? " axiom. 
 
 Perhaps a similar recollection flashed rather tardily 
 across Lady Rossiter's mind, for she replied with cir- 
 cumspection : 
 
 " God forbid that I should judge another ! But 
 one holds Love so infinitely sacred, that it is unbeliev- 
 able that, if she had once known it, she could have 
 profaned it so." 
 
 " I remember now ; we heard about it at the time. 
 Wasn't young Clarence very much cut up?" 
 
 " Poor boy ! He took it very hard. Don't you 
 remember ? his nurse came to me last year when I 
 had influenza, and of course she talked they always 
 do " 
 
 " So long as they find anyone to listen." 
 
io TENSION 
 
 " Do you know, Julian, that after she had thrown 
 him over, they could do nothing with him ? The nurse 
 told me herself that they thought he was going mad. 
 He actually beat his head against the wall of the bed- 
 room in the nursing-home." 
 
 "How sensible!" 
 
 In the face of this reverend and sympathetic com- 
 ment, Lady Rossiter not unnaturally ceased the recital 
 of her relative's unfortunate affaire du cceur. 
 
 " I suppose if this turns out to be the same woman, 
 you will advise the directors to refuse her applica- 
 tion?" 
 
 " On what grounds ? We did not advertise for a 
 Lady Superintendent of undeviating constancy and 
 infinite capacity for self-sacrifice. If she is a woman 
 of business and has the experience necessary, I 
 really don't see how I can bring it up against her that 
 she once gave the chuck to Clarence Isbister and was 
 responsible for his beating his head against the walls 
 of his nursing-home." 
 
 " I am only a woman, Julian," said Lady Rossiter 
 incontrovertibly, but with a certain pathetic smile 
 which she reserved for that particular statement, " but 
 I somehow don't like to think that the Superintendent 
 who is to look after the staff to whom the girls and 
 women and boys whom I have grown to know, will 
 turn to that she has no higher ideal of Life than 
 poor Clarence's Miss Marchrose." 
 
 " Most probably it is not the same person at all." 
 
 " I could remember her Christian name, if I were 
 to think a minute. . . ." 
 
 " Then please don't, Edna. I have not the slightest 
 
TENSION ii 
 
 wish to connect her with the Clarence drama, if it 
 should turn out to be the same woman. In fact, I 
 had much better not know it." 
 
 " It began with an ' L,' I'm almost sure," said 
 Lady Rossiter, unheeding. 
 
 " I hear the car," said her husband, rising hastily. 
 
 " Laura Lilian Lena Lucy Louisa. ... It 
 was Pauline, Julian I remember it now." 
 
 " I have not the least idea what the Superintendent's 
 Christian name may be, Edna." Sir Julian went into 
 the hall. " I shall not come back to lunch. What 
 time do you want the car this afternoon?" 
 
 " Oh, that doesn't matter," declared Lady Rossiter 
 brightly. " Don't think of that, dear. It's only my 
 nature-class this afternoon, you know, and I can quite 
 well walk down to the meeting-place. It's only at 
 Duckpool Cove. I want the class to see some of those 
 wonderful effects in sepia and green in the rock-pools 
 when the tide is out." 
 
 Sir Julian made the unwonted effort of restraining 
 a strong inclination to ask whether the class could not 
 witness these natural phenomena unchaperoned by 
 their president. 
 
 " I will send the car back, then. I shall walk home." 
 
 " As you like, but it really isn't necessary." 
 
 Sir Julian began to pull on his driving-gloves. 
 
 " Don't forget, Julian, to say something about 
 ' Why, Ben ! ' to Mark Easter. I suppose he will be 
 pleased. And couldn't one without hurting his feel- 
 ings, of course say something about the children 
 being up and about rather early ? I mean to say, I'm 
 fond of the little things, when Ruthie behaves and 
 
12 TENSION 
 
 Ambrose doesn't whine, and they don't quarrel but 
 we can't have them getting into the habit of running 
 in and out of the house at breakfast-time." 
 
 "Heaven forbid!" 
 
 " Well, try and say something, if you can." 
 
 " I'll see." 
 
 Sir Julian took his place at the steering-wheel. 
 
 He was a tall, thin man, ten years older than his 
 wife, his dark hair already sparse upon the crown 
 of his head, his clean-shaven hatchet face wearing an 
 habitual look of sardonic melancholy. His dark eyes, 
 set in a network of wrinkles, betrayed humour, but, 
 nevertheless, they seldom smiled. 
 
 At the bottom of the winding, shady drive he turned 
 the car out of the stone gateway and on to the high- 
 road. A hundred yards further on he stopped in 
 front of a small slate-roofed villa standing in an en- 
 closure of raggedly-growing laurel hedge and untidy 
 fencing, of which half the wooden palings were tumb- 
 ling down. 
 
 At the first sound of the horn hooting an announce- 
 ment of arrival, the small, pretentious-looking front 
 door burst open, and Miss and Master Easter pre- 
 cipitated themselves down the garden-path, vociferat- 
 ing greetings in unresentfully complete oblivion of their 
 recent unceremonious ejection at the hands of their 
 neighbour. 
 
 " Is your father ready? " 
 
 " Coming this minute," said Ruthie, and added in 
 a sudden falsetto, designed to penetrate to an upper 
 window of the villa, " Aren't you, Daddy?" 
 
 " I'll sound the horn to let him know you're 
 ready," volunteered Ambrose, outstretching a pair of 
 
TENSION 13 
 
 hands, noted with disgust by Sir Julian as displaying 
 the identical traces of syrup proclaimed by his sister 
 an hour ago. 
 
 " No, Peekaboo! Not you me!" 
 
 " Neither of you," said Sir Julian succinctly. 
 
 " May I get up beside you ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Will you take me into Culmouth too? Oh, do! " 
 
 " Certainly not. You are too dirty." 
 
 " There, Peekaboo," said Ruthie, with a sudden 
 access of extreme virtue. "What did I tell you? 
 I've washed, Sir Julian." 
 
 " I am very glad to hear it." 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 " Don't touch. It's the foot-brake." 
 
 "What's a foot-brake?" 
 
 "Is it a nice foot-brake?" 
 
 "Do you like having a foot-brake?" 
 
 " Have all motor-cars got foot-brakes ? " 
 
 " Does Daddy like foot-brakes? " 
 
 The extreme idiocy of the questions launched at 
 him drew forth a stifled ejaculation from the owner of 
 the foot-brake, but Ruthie and Ambrose received no 
 further enlightenment on the subject of their enquiries. 
 
 "Here's Daddy!" 
 
 " Good morning, Sir Julian. Sorry to have kept 
 you." 
 
 " Good morning." 
 
 " Go into the house, children. Sarah is looking for 
 you." 
 
 " Oh, she wants to wash my hands," aggrievedly said 
 the boy. 
 
 " Get under the laurels, flat, and I'll run and say 
 
14 TENSION 
 
 that Daddy's taken you in the motor to Culmouth," 
 suggested his sister with great readiness. 
 
 Mark Easter made no slightest attempt to cope with 
 his offsprings' ingenious admixture of uncleanliness, 
 deceit and disobedience. 
 
 He took his place beside Sir Julian and the car 
 started forward. 
 
 " I'm afraid those brats of mine came up at an 
 unearthly hour to disturb you this morning. I had 
 no idea where they were, or I'd have fetched them 
 back." 
 
 " They didn't stay long," said Sir Julian, with per- 
 fect truth. 
 
 " The fact is, Lady Rossiter is much too good to 
 them. But I'll see it doesn't happen again. They 
 were rather beyond themselves this morning." 
 
 Mark hesitated and Sir Julian waited, rather amused 
 to hear how his simple, straightforward agent and 
 man of business would explain the cause of his chil- 
 dren's objectionable upliftedness. 
 
 " I daresay they told you I had a letter from my 
 sister this morning. It seems that she's written a 
 novel, and Messrs. Blade have agreed to publish it. 
 Of course, she's very delighted about it, and asked 
 me to tell the kids, and the idea somehow took hold 
 of them. I don't see quite why it should appeal to 
 them so much, but you know how excitable children 
 are." 
 
 " Have you read the book ? " 
 
 " Good Lord, no ! I never took her scribbling se- 
 riously." 
 
 Mark took off his cap and let the wind ruffle up his 
 brown hair and moustache. His blue eyes laughed, 
 
TENSION 15 
 
 while his face was still screwed up into a look of per- 
 plexity. 
 
 " She's given it a very odd name. I daresay the 
 children told you." 
 
 " Yes. They did." 
 
 " I hope it's proper, I'm sure," said Mark Easter 
 doubtfully. " They say that girls always write the 
 most improper books. I suppose because they don't 
 know what they're talking about." 
 
 " I daresay it's innocent enough." 
 
 Mark repeated thoughtfully, " It seems an odd 
 thing to call a book, ' Why, Ben ! ' but I don't mind 
 saying that I wish she hadn't added that it was a 
 story of the sexes and the worst of it is that the 
 children have got hold of it, and I'm afraid that we 
 shall never hear the last of it." 
 
 Sir Julian, feeling quite unable to suggest an opti- 
 mistic alternative, wisely abandoned the subject. 
 
II 
 
 THE College stood not far from Culmouth Cathe- 
 dral, the biggest building of the many that surrounded 
 the open grass patch of the Cathedral Green. 
 
 It was a restored Georgian house, well in keeping 
 with its surroundings, and with a square paved court 
 at the back shaded by immense elm-trees. 
 
 Julian Rossiter always went up the shallow stone 
 steps that led to the big green double door with a 
 sense of satisfaction. 
 
 The satisfaction, however, from an artistic point of 
 view, diminished sensibly and at an ever-increasing 
 rate as he penetrated to the inside of the dignified 
 red and white exterior. 
 
 The large square hall was paved with uncovered 
 stones, and surrounded by doors of varnished deal, 
 each bearing an announcement in staring white letters. 
 
 " Nearly eleven o'clock," said Mark Easter. " Do 
 you want to look in at the classes, Sir Julian? Fuller 
 is probably giving a lesson till eleven." 
 
 Sir Julian signed assent, and the two men turned 
 to the stairs, also of uncarpeted stone. 
 
 On the first floor, which produced the same aspect 
 of chilly cleanliness, a door was held open from the 
 inside by a wooden kitchen chair, revealing the inte- 
 rior of Classroom No. V., which bore the white- 
 lettered announcement, " Demonstration Room." 
 
 A monotonous female voice, raised to a high, ex- 
 
 16 
 
TENSION 17 
 
 pressionless monotone, came from beside the large 
 blackboard facing a double row of desks and forms. 
 
 " Gay lengthened for the final syllable ture 
 li-ga-ture. Through the line for a third-place vowel. 
 Is that quite clear? 
 
 An expressionless murmur of assent came in reply. 
 
 " Once again then, please, and without putting in 
 the vowels. Are you ready? Take the same words 
 down again and the vowels to be indicated by the plac- 
 ing of the outline." 
 
 " Aperture adventure ligature - " 
 
 " Classroom pretty nearly full," said Mark under 
 his breath. " There are always more students of short- 
 hand than anything else." 
 
 "Who's giving the dictation?" 
 
 " Miss Farmer." 
 
 " It's an uneducated pronunciation. I wish we could 
 get a better class of teacher." 
 
 ' Young Cooper is pretty good. He takes French 
 and accountancy and book-keeping." 
 
 "Cooper has two gifts to a degree which I have 
 never seen equalled," Sir Julian said grimly. " He 
 has a genius for extracting a personal application 
 from everything he hears or sees, and he is firmly 
 convinced that his every action, trivial or otherwise, 
 is worthy of comment." 
 
 Five minutes later an opportunity presented itself 
 for immediate verification of this pleasing summary. 
 
 Brisk, snub-nosed and sandy-haired, Cooper emerged 
 bustling from " No. II., Book-keeping," just as Mark 
 and Sir Julian turned away from No. V. 
 
 " Good morning, Sir Julian. Good morning. I 
 thought you'd be in to-day." 
 
i8 TENSION 
 
 "Is Fuller disengaged?" 
 
 "I think so let me consult my watch." Cooper 
 shot into view a rather bony wrist with a large watch 
 on it. " I see by my wrist-watch that it's just on 
 eleven. Let me pop it out of sight again. Fuller 
 will be in his room, I fancy, but I'll go and find him 
 at once, Sir Julian, and tell him you're here. I'm 
 just on my way down now, to put these books away. 
 I'll look into Fuller's room on my way past." 
 
 " Thanks," said Julian laconically. 
 
 Cooper hastened ahead of them, murmuring as he 
 went: 
 
 " I'll just give a knock on Fuller's door, and look 
 in to say Sir Julian's here, and then I can get rid of all 
 these books . . . down the stairs, and one hand on 
 the books so that they don't slip from under my 
 arm . . ." 
 
 In an incredibly short space of time he had sped up 
 the stairs again and made the rather self-evident an- 
 nouncement : 
 
 " Run up again to let you know Fuller's there, Sir 
 Julian. I thought I'd let you know, so I ran up 
 again." 
 
 " Right. See you at the meeting, I suppose, 
 Cooper?" 
 
 " Yes, Sir Julian. I think I've always attended 
 every meeting since we first opened here. Half -past 
 eleven, the meeting this morning; that gives me just 
 half an hour. I leave you here, then, and turn off to 
 the locker room. ... Dear me, a sneeze is coming ; 
 now, can I get at a handkerchief in time? " 
 
 They left him rehearsing the procedure of his sneeze 
 in a sub-audible manner. 
 
TENSION 19 
 
 " That boy always reminds me of a curate," said 
 Sir Julian unkindly. 
 
 In the ground-floor room where the Supervisor sat 
 intrenched behind an enormous table piled with papers, 
 the subject of the vacant post of Lady Superintendent 
 was embarked upon. 
 
 " The girl I wrote to you about from London, Sir 
 Julian, is practically a lady," said Fuller, in a very 
 earnest manner, fixing a pair of black, straight-gazing 
 eyes on his chief. " In a general way, I wouldn't have 
 a girl who is a lady on the staff for anything you 
 could offer me, but this one has had three years' ex- 
 perience in Southampton Row, and .has the highest 
 testimonials, and certificates for shorthand and type- 
 writing and a diploma for French." 
 
 "What salary does she want? " said Mark Easter. 
 
 " She'd take the figure we decided on, because she 
 wants to come to the west of England." 
 
 " A hundred-and-twenty and exes ? " 
 
 " That's right." 
 
 "Free to come at once?" 
 
 " To-morrow, if we want her." 
 
 " That's good. She's prepared to undertake a cer- 
 tain amount of tuition, and supervision of the staff, 
 of course ? " 
 
 "Quite." 
 
 " Well, Sir Julian," said Mark Easter, turning to 
 him, " shall we put it to the directors? " 
 
 Sir Julian made no immediate reply, and Fuller, 
 nothing if not intent upon his business, laid both arms 
 upon the paper-bestrewn table, leant well forward, and 
 began in an earnest and expostulating tone : 
 
 " I see you're hesitating, sir. I wish you could 
 
20 TENSION 
 
 have had a personal interview with the young lady, 
 for I really was most favourably impressed most 
 favourably. As I say, a superior young woman is 
 always an influence, if there's no nonsense about her, 
 and Miss Marchrose certainly has none, so far as I 
 could judge. Of course, sir, the decision rests with 
 you, but I must say I should like to give her a trial. 
 I believe we might do worse." 
 
 " What sort of age is she? " 
 
 " She told me she was twenty-eight," said Fuller, 
 with a grin that revealed dazzling teeth in his swarthy 
 face, and thereby considerably increased his already 
 marked resemblance to a Southern State negro. 
 
 " I should have preferred an older woman." 
 
 " I doubt if she'll ever see thirty again, sir," said 
 Fuller simply. 
 
 " Well, Fuller, I know you've the interests of the 
 College very much at heart, and I'm quite willing 
 to give her a trial on your recommendation," said 
 Julian. " We'll put it before the directors at the 
 meeting." 
 
 " Thank you, Sir Julian. I thought you'd prob- 
 ably trust my judgment," Fuller remarked, with satis- 
 faction. " And I don't think you will regret it. She 
 struck me as being a thorough woman of business, 
 most capable, and as hard as nails." 
 
 At this final qualification Sir Julian looked rather 
 glum, irresistibly reminded of the heroine of that 
 episode which had wrought so much havoc in the 
 household of his wife's relatives. 
 
 " However," he remarked to Mark Easter, as they 
 went towards the committee-room at the appointed 
 hour, " I really do trust Fuller's judgment, so far as 
 
TENSION 21 
 
 the good of the College goes, though I haven't his 
 own implicit belief in his absolute infallibility." 
 
 " He thinks the whole show rests on him," said 
 Mark Easter, and added with belated justice, " And 
 for the matter of that, I really don't know where 
 we should get another man like him. He's a nailer 
 for work." 
 
 " I hope his protegee will be a success. If he talks 
 to the directors about her being practically a lady, as 
 distinguished, I suppose, from a * young lady in busi- 
 ness/ he'll fetch that old snob Bellew." 
 
 " He probably won't mention it," said Mark Easter 
 shrewdly. " He looks upon it as a disadvantage in the 
 abstract, but he told me yesterday that he thought he 
 could explain it if any objection were raised." 
 
 " Fuller would think he could explain it," Sir 
 Julian rejoined drily, " if the creation of the world 
 were in question." 
 
 The committee-room was a long, low annexe to the 
 main body of the building, with the usual green-baize 
 covered table placed lengthways down the middle of 
 the room, mahogany chairs at regular intervals round 
 it, an armchair at the head for the chairman, and on 
 the table the usual disposition of clean blotting-paper, 
 pencils, note-books, and a carafe of water covered 
 with an inverted glass. 
 
 A clock ticked on the chimneypiece. 
 
 Young Cooper was the sole occupant of the room, 
 and observed brightly, " No one has arrived yet, sir, 
 but I see the clock gives it as two minutes to the half- 
 hour." 
 
 "Got an agenda there, Cooper?" said Mark, and 
 proceeded to study the typewritten slip of paper. 
 
22 TENSION 
 
 Sir Julian went to the chair at the head of the 
 table. 
 
 He also looked idly at the agenda, listening the 
 while with the rather revolted fascination with which 
 young Cooper's peculiar style of sub-audible self- 
 communion always inspired him. 
 
 " I must move my chair or pull down the blind 
 sun coming right in through the window. If I lift 
 it so that oughtn't to interfere with anyone 
 else. Just caught the edge of the carpet, though - 
 that won't do ... put the chair-leg down on it, and 
 then we're all right." 
 
 " Now, Sir Julian, it's just striking the half-hour." 
 
 " I hear it." 
 
 " So do I," agreed Cooper agreeably, as the clock 
 on the chimneypiece chimed loudly. " I'm just going 
 to the window, to see if Mr. Bellew's car is in sight." 
 
 Having, as usual, suited the action to the word, 
 Cooper was shortly able to announce that the car was 
 there, and that he would come back to the table and 
 see if the blotting-paper was straight. 
 
 " They'll draw on it," he said mournfully. " They 
 always do. That's a thing I couldn't do myself, even 
 if I weren't taking down the Minutes. I couldn't pay 
 attention if I were drawing." 
 
 They did draw on the blotting-paper. 
 
 Sir Julian, leaning back at the head of the table, 
 giving only half his attention to the meeting, which 
 followed lines so habitual as to have become almost 
 routine, watched with idle amusement the verification 
 of Cooper's resignedly doleful prophecies. 
 
 Old Alderman Bellew, oily and apoplectic, made 
 meaningless circles and semi-circles with a pencil 
 
TENSION 23 
 
 grasped between the swollen knuckles of his first and 
 second fingers, and only glanced up once or twice as 
 a question of finance was touched upon by Fuller, 
 Financial Secretary to the College as well as Super- 
 visor of Classes. 
 
 Another director was yawning almost unconcealedly, 
 until, catching the eye of the chairman, he assumed an 
 expression of acute concern and hastily inserted a 
 forefinger into his still open mouth as though in search 
 of an aching tooth. This simple manoeuvre was ap- 
 parent to Sir Julian, and his eyes half involuntarily met 
 Mark Easter's laughing blue ones in an instant's ex- 
 change of silent amusement. 
 
 Julian looked down again at his own share of blot- 
 ting-paper, left immaculate in deference to Cooper's 
 feelings, and his thoughts dwelt upon Mark Easter. 
 
 He thought of the good-looking, light-hearted fel- 
 low that Mark had been all his life, of his casual mar- 
 riage, embarked upon out of pure good-nature, with 
 a woman older than himself, and for no better reasons 
 than the ones that he had once put forward, half 
 apologetically, to Julian himself. 
 
 " She was having such a rotten time when I met 
 her in Ireland no one ever asked her to dance, and 
 the other girls all seemed to be younger and prettier 
 and having more fun. I used to take her for drives, 
 you know, and then dance with her in the evenings; 
 and upon my word, I was the only chap that ever 
 took any notice of her, I do believe. And I really did 
 want to settle down and have a home, and it somehow 
 seemed more likely she'd take me than one of the pretty 
 little fly-aways who could get all the fun they wanted 
 before settling down. She was by way of being a 
 
24 TENSION 
 
 good housekeeper, too, and fond of kids. I'm fond 
 of kids myself," said Mark Easter wistfully. 
 
 Sir Julian wondered, not for the first time, how long 
 that fondness had survived the shrieking, stamping, 
 bullying era inaugurated by Ruthie, and the whin- 
 ing, unwashed, question-asking proclivities of her 
 junior. 
 
 Mark Easter never spoke of his children except 
 with a sort of apologetic tolerance, but neither was he 
 often to be seen in their company. 
 
 He was agent to the Rossiter estate, and more often 
 found about his work and at the College in Culmouth 
 than in his untidy, servant-ridden, mistressless house. 
 
 Julian's thoughts turned for an unwilling moment 
 to the recollection of the rapidly-growing gossip that 
 had saddled Mark Easter, ten years ago, with an al- 
 ternatively morphomaniac, drug-taking inebriate or 
 homicidally insane partner. To his own ever-increas- 
 ing, silent certainty that disaster threatened the only 
 human being whom he cared for in the world, to 
 Mark's haggard face and prolonged absences from 
 home. 
 
 Then to a grey dawn, when Mark had ridden up 
 to ask in three inarticulate words for help that Julian 
 had given in almost unbroken silence. Mrs. Easter 
 had gone away, and there was no more occasion for 
 furtive surmise, for everyone knew at last that she 
 had been steadily drinking her way into the home for 
 inebriates that now had sheltered her for more than 
 seven years. 
 
 And Mark, with an elasticity at which Julian had 
 never yet ceased to marvel, had recovered his habit of 
 easy laughter, his keen interest in his work, his old 
 
TENSION 25 
 
 enthusiasm for the Commercial and Technical College 
 schemes. 
 
 Sir Julian secretly admired and envied his almost 
 childlike absorption in the College. He sent sidelong 
 glances from time to time at Mark's keen, handsome 
 face, at the shrewdness of the gaze which he kept 
 upon each speaker. 
 
 Fairfax Fuller never was there a worse mis- 
 nomer, thought Julian, with a grim half -smile, as he 
 looked at his swarthy- faced subordinate Fairfax 
 Fuller might have made a good speaker say, a 
 political agent. Kept to his facts, always sound, and 
 with a weight of personal conviction that told. But 
 there was nothing to look interested about, Julian re- 
 flected, as Mark Easter was looking interested. 
 
 Fuller always put forward the same arguments : for 
 a better class of teacher, for an extension of adver- 
 tisement, always with the same implication of his own 
 indispensability as managing Supervisor. 
 
 Alderman Belle w was tedious, obviously only speak- 
 ing at all so as to impress the fact of his presence 
 on his fellow-directors, and Mark Easter said nothing, 
 until Miss Marchrose's application for the post of Lady 
 Superintendent was brought forward by Fuller. 
 
 The discussion of the appointment was merely for- 
 mal, and Sir Julian gave it formal sanction. 
 
 " I think that concludes our business for to-day, gen- 
 tlemen. Thank you all very much." 
 
 The chairman rose. 
 
 "Anything else you want me for, Fuller? " he en- 
 quired, as the meeting dispersed. 
 
 " I don't think so, thank you, sir," said Fuller, with 
 a manifest air of dissatisfaction. 
 
26 TENSION 
 
 Sir Julian, knowing his Supervisor, lingered. 
 
 " Lady Rossiter has kindly asked the members of 
 the staff out to Culmhayes on Sunday, Sir Julian." 
 
 Sir Julian looked quite as much annoyed as did Mr. 
 Fuller* 
 
 Few things were, in the opinion either of the Super- 
 visor or of his employer, less to be commended than 
 Lady Rossiter's benevolent attempts at keeping in 
 touch with the staff of the College. 
 
 Appearances, however, were discreetly maintained. 
 
 " I hope as many of them will come as care for the 
 walk," said Sir Julian, with gloomy civility. 
 
 " I am sure they will be delighted, and it will make 
 a nice beginning for Miss Marchrose on her first Sun- 
 day." 
 
 Sir Julian walked away even gloomier than before 
 at the recollection that his wife's hospitality would 
 not improbably be extended to the perpetrator of the 
 outrage which had driven Captain Clarence Isbister to 
 such extreme demonstrations of despair. 
 
 " Do you happen to remember did you notice - 
 what that woman's Christian name was? " he enquired 
 of Mark Easter. 
 
 " The new Superintendent ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Let me see. I saw her letter to Fuller some- 
 thing unusual. . . . Was it Pauline?" 
 
 " I thought so," said Sir Julian. 
 
 It was characteristic both of Sir Julian's dislike 
 to anything which came, in his opinion, under the 
 extremely elastic heading of officiousness, and of the 
 care with which he had impressed his dislike upon 
 Mark Easter, that his companion did not ask him why 
 
TENSION 27 
 
 he thus dejectedly took for granted the name bestowed 
 at baptism upon Miss Marchrose. Mark Easter, talk- 
 ative and open-hearted, was yet the only man from 
 whom Sir Julian said that he had never received an 
 officious enquiry or an unasked offer of assistance. 
 
 If the remark might be looked upon as a form of 
 the highest commendation, it was one which Sir Julian 
 had never yet shown any disposition to make in regard 
 to his wife. 
 
 Nothing had as yet persuaded Edna Rossiter of the 
 inadvisability of addressing personalities to a man 
 whose surface cynicism was used to cloak extreme 
 sensitiveness, and whose bitterness of speech was the 
 outcome of such disillusionment of spirit as comes only 
 to those capable of an idealism as delicate as it is 
 reserved. 
 
 " Are you going home, Mark, or will you lunch at 
 the club?" 
 
 " The club," said Mark decidedly, with an intona- 
 tion that brought before Sir Julian's inner vision a 
 lively picture of the probable congealed mutton, under- 
 done potatoes, the lumpy milk-pudding of Sarah's pro- 
 viding, doubtless to be consumed to an accompaniment 
 of senseless comments and enquiries from Ruthie and 
 Ambrose on the engrossing subject of "Why, Ben! 
 A Story of the Sexes." As the thought crossed his 
 mind, Mark observed: 
 
 " Iris is coming down here later on. Of course, she 
 wants to be in London for the publication of her novel, 
 but that won't be out till the winter, she says. Poor 
 girl ! I wish people would not put it into her head 
 that it is her duty to come and look after me and the 
 children at intervals." 
 
28 TENSION 
 
 "Who does put it into her head?" 
 
 " Various old aunts. I wish people would mind 
 their own business. Poor Iris hates the country." 
 
 " Is she still living in the flat? " 
 
 " Yes, with another girl. I believe they sleep in 
 the boot-hole and do their own cooking, but it's all a 
 great success, and Iris is very happy, and has the sort 
 of Bohemian society she likes. It is a much better 
 arrangement than her being down here with me. I'm 
 not sure," said Mark thoughtfully, "that I approve 
 of relations living together after they are grown-up." 
 
 Sir Julian agreed with him so cordially as to suggest 
 that the case in point was emphatically one in which 
 the proposed arrangement would be eminently un- 
 desirable. 
 
 " I don't know that Iris, devoted though she is to 
 them, is the best possible person to be with the chil- 
 dren." 
 
 " No," said Julian, with restraint, considering his 
 private opinion to be that if anything on earth could 
 render Mark Easter's progeny more insufferable than 
 nature and the maternal shortcomings had already 
 made them, it was the society of their affected, sub- 
 urban, and distinctly underbred young relative. It was 
 a source of continual wonder to him, what sort of a 
 person the second Mrs. Easter could have been, to 
 have presented Mark with such a half-sister as the 
 twenty-year-old perpetrator of " Why, Ben! " 
 
 The conclusion. long ago come to by him, that Mark 
 had been afflicted with the most intolerable set of rela- 
 tions ever owned by man, was destined to be furnished 
 with yet another proof of validity at the end of the 
 day. 
 
TENSION 29 
 
 As the two men came back across the fields of Sir 
 Julian's property late in the afternoon, Mark whistling 
 under his breath and Julian silent in the comfortable 
 companionship of long association and mutual under- 
 standing, a sound of hoarse, ceaseless yelling that could 
 have been produced by no other human larynx than 
 that of Mark Easter's daughter came from the garden 
 of the villa. 
 
 " I'm afraid that's Ruthie," said her parent, sensibly 
 slackening his pace. 
 
 " I'm certain it is." 
 
 Ruthie was bent double across the dangerously- 
 creaking top bar of the wooden paling. 
 
 She raised a face, flushed and distorted, indeed, as 
 much from her unnatural position as from her vocal 
 efforts, but unstained by tears, and proclaimed aloud: 
 
 " Daddy, Peekaboo has been such a naughty boy. 
 Sarah is putting him to bed and I'm singing so that 
 he can hear me from the night-nursery window. He 
 has written up in ink all over the drawing-room door, 
 and the dining-room door, and the nursery door, ' The 
 two best books in the world are " Why, Ben ! " and 
 the Bible.' " 
 
Ill 
 
 EDNA ROSSITER, in common with the majority of 
 her sex, supposed herself to be a religious woman be- 
 cause she had, from early girlhood, indulged nightly 
 in five minutes spent on her knees beside her bed, her 
 face pressed against the satin quilt, while she thought 
 about herself. 
 
 Very soon after her marriage she formed the habit 
 of prolonging the five minutes into ten, or even fifteen, 
 while she consecrated a few vindictively earnest 
 thoughts of forgiveness to her husband. 
 
 Within the last ten years, all the forbearance which 
 she was capable of displaying being apparently without 
 any effect upon Sir Julian, Lady Rossiter had rather 
 disgustedly transferred her allegiance from the Al- 
 mighty, in propria persona, to God as He is found in 
 Nature. 
 
 Nature, primarily, meant out-of-doors generally, in 
 warm weather, and the sound of the sea two miles 
 off, audible from beside the boudoir fire, in the colder 
 seasons. 
 
 Lately, however, Nature had also embraced such of 
 humanity as had its place rather lower than that of 
 the Rossiters in the social scale. 
 
 Edna sought for the Divine Spark in her fellow- 
 creatures, and frequently discovered it, with renewed 
 satisfaction to herself and to its possessor. 
 
 As she often said, smiling a little: 
 
 30 
 
TENSION 31 
 
 " There's so much bad in the best of us, 
 There's so much good in the worst of us " 
 
 She never finished the quotation, except by the 
 smile, because she knew it to be at all times easy to 
 trip over its inversions and repetitions, and thus risk 
 the transition from the sublime to the ridiculous. 
 
 One of the most recent manifestations of what 
 Julian had once designated in his wife's hearing as 
 the " Hunting of the Spark," was her wholesale invi- 
 tation to the staff of teachers at the College to spend 
 Sunday afternoon at Culmhayes. 
 
 A few stray and tentative young women had availed 
 themselves of it once, showing a marked disposition 
 towards wandering arm-in-arm round the gardens, 
 avoiding their hostess as much as possible, and Cooper 
 had twice walked over from Culmouth and made 
 nervously easy conversation to Lady Rossiter, which 
 had dwindled into a sort of alert silence when her hus- 
 band came in. 
 
 " Mind you bring them all next week," had been 
 Lady Rossiter's farewell injunction, to which Cooper 
 had replied with great confidence and assurance. 
 
 Preparing for her guests on Sunday afternoon, there- 
 fore, Lady Rossiter gazed smilingly out of her window 
 at a cloudless day of August. Evidently Nature was 
 in league with her votary. 
 
 Lady Rossiter told her maid to bring the black-and- 
 white mousseline de sole. No other colours suited her 
 fairness so admirably, and she always wore the com- 
 bination when embarking upon any enterprise of par- 
 ticular benevolence. The thick pallor of her complex- 
 ion could afford to defy the sun, and she seldom wore 
 
32 TENSION 
 
 a hat in the garden. A black-and-white-striped sun- 
 shade made quite as effective a background for her 
 mass of auburn hair and black eyebrows and lashes. 
 
 Before going downstairs she thoughtfully slipped 
 the rings from her long white fingers, and bade her 
 maid substitute a small crystal cross on a velvet ribbon 
 for her pearl necklace. 
 
 The maid had not been with her very long, and 
 obeyed the mandate with such wooden matter-of-fact- 
 ness that Lady Rossiter added gently : 
 
 " One doesn't want anyone to feel the least little - 
 difference in any way. We have all grown to have 
 such false ideas of values . . ." 
 
 ' Yes, m'lady," said Mason, looking so thoroughly 
 bewildered that Lady Rossiter resolved to read extracts 
 from Ruskin aloud to her while her hair was being 
 brushed at nights. 
 
 She went downstairs slowly, to find Julian reading 
 in the hall. 
 
 "Jorrocks?" she enquired playfully, but with a 
 meaning that she knew would not be lost upon her hus- 
 band. 
 
 Ever since she had wrung from a monosyllabic 
 Julian the admission that neither Ruskin, Pater, nor 
 Stevenson " meant " to him that which they meant to 
 her, Edna had assumed, by almost imperceptible de- 
 grees, that her husband's only literature consisted of 
 Jorrocks and the volumes of the Badminton series. 
 
 Dickens she had unwillingly conceded to him, since 
 Dickens made no appeal to her personally, but she was 
 more apt to dwell upon his liking for the " Pickwick 
 Papers " and " Nicholas Nickleby " than for " Great 
 Expectations " or " David Copperfield." 
 
TENSION 33 
 
 At her enquiry Julian closed his book. 
 
 " Jorrocks, of course," he assented expressionlessly, 
 putting down Huysman's " En Route," and not 
 troubling to display the title. 
 
 " Did Mr. Fuller tell you how many of my staff 
 meant to come this afternoon? " 
 
 " No. I don't suppose, in any case, that they would 
 have told him." 
 
 " That's so curious to me, Julian. To work to- 
 gether all the week, and yet know nothing of one an- 
 other's real life nothing of what goes on in the free 
 time, or the one holiday of the week." 
 
 " What generally goes on, I imagine, is that the girls 
 have their hair waved on Saturday afternoons, stay in 
 bed on Sunday mornings, and go out with their young 
 men on Sunday evenings. I doubt if the procedure 
 ever varies." 
 
 " And that with God's own blue sea less than a mile 
 away ! " ejaculated Lady Rossiter under her breath, but 
 nevertheless quite audibly. 
 
 " Cooper generally goes for a walk on Saturday af- 
 ternoon," said Sir Julian consolingly ; " and Fuller, and 
 I imagine a good many of the other fellows as well, to 
 a football or cricket match." 
 
 " Can you wonder that we long to win them to 
 clearer, wider ideals? " his wife enquired. 
 
 She waited for no reply, aware of old that Julian 
 invariably professed a supreme indifference to the out- 
 look of the College staff when outside their College 
 walls, but trailed into the wide, cool drawing-room 
 containing little furniture and an abundance of roses 
 and heliotrope. 
 
 Lady Rossiter arranged the flowers herself, and did 
 
34 TENSION 
 
 so exquisitely. She often said that flowers were liter- 
 ally a necessity to her an opinion frequently held 
 by those whose financial situation has never compelled 
 them to regard flowers as an alternative to, let us say, 
 butter for breakfast, in which case the relative value 
 of the commodities in question is apt to undergo alter- 
 ation. 
 
 Poised over her bowls of pink roses, Lady Rossiter 
 was taken by surprise when her guests eventually ar- 
 rived. 
 
 Sir Julian strongly suspected that had the drawing- 
 room window given on to the drive, instead of on to 
 the green bowling-alley, his wife would herself have 
 met her visitors at the hospitably opened hall door, 
 thus sparing the dignity of Horber, undemocratic as 
 only a butler can be, from the announcement which he 
 stiffly made out of the extreme corners of his mouth. 
 
 " Miss Farmer, Miss Sandiloe, and Mr. Cooper, 
 m'lady." 
 
 Miss Farmer, in a green linen which accorded 
 singularly ill with a sallow complexion ; Miss Sandiloe, 
 girlish, pretty and full of giggles that threatened dis- 
 aster to a tightly-fitting and transparent white muslin ; 
 and Mr. Cooper, obviously in the toils of Miss Sand- 
 iloe, came one by one into the drawing-room, where 
 Lady Rossiter, in point of fact, had never intended 
 them to penetrate at all. 
 
 Sir Julian, watching the entry in an angle of the hall 
 window-seat which he trusted to be invisible from the 
 drawing-room, could not forbear the tribute of an un- 
 willing admiration to his wife's handling of the rather 
 embarrassed trio. 
 
 " Ah, but how nice ! Miss Farmer, of course we've 
 
TENSION 35 
 
 met before; and Mr. Cooper" -a shake of the hand 
 to each. " And ? " A pause, with pleasantly up- 
 lifted eyebrows, in front of Miss Sandiloe. 
 
 " Miss Sandiloe," Miss Farmer supplied, and added 
 rather haltingly, obviously unsure of the etiquette gov- 
 erning the position : 
 
 " The junior teacher of shorthand, Lady Rossiter." 
 
 " I'm so glad to see you," said the lady, with an 
 additional graciousness designed, Julian imagined, to 
 set the youthful stranger at her ease. 
 
 The unexpectedly high-pitched note, however, upon 
 which Miss Sandiloe off-handedly replied, " Oh, 
 thanks ! " did not indicate shyness. 
 
 Julian viewed it as an example of the law of cause 
 and effect that his wife's next observation was made 
 in tones that savoured less of kindly welcome and 
 more of rather distant patronage. 
 
 " I am always anxious to get to know all the mem- 
 bers of the College staff, and have them out here if I 
 possibly can. I take a great interest in the College. 
 In fact, I'm on the committee of management." 
 
 " Are you ? " said Miss Sandiloe indifferently. 
 " What topping flowers those are ! " 
 
 She thrust her face into the fragrant mass which 
 Lady Rossiter had just left. 
 
 " You must all come into the garden, when it's a 
 little cooler." 
 
 Lady Rossiter addressed herself to Miss Farmer. 
 
 " Meanwhile it's too bad of me to keep you standing 
 in this hot room. Come into the morning-room." 
 
 Julian fancied that Miss Farmer, heated and 
 wearied, and with dusty patent-leather shoes that 
 creaked as she walked, and bore a large crack across 
 
36 TENSION 
 
 each, as though they were too tight, cast a rather wist- 
 ful look at the large, beautifully-shaded room of which 
 they had penetrated no further than the threshold. 
 
 But she obediently followed her hostess, and Miss 
 Sandiloe, giggling slightly, tripped behind her with 
 Cooper in tow. 
 
 From sheer curiosity, Julian went into the morning- 
 room twenty minutes later. 
 
 His wife, looking unusually harassed, was seated 
 near the window, Miss Farmer, Miss Sandiloe and Mr. 
 Cooper having unconsciously placed themselves in a 
 semi-circle in front of her, each seated upon the edge 
 of an upright chair. 
 
 " Why," Lady Rossiter was exclaiming in her 
 brightest voice, " one of my greatest friends is a dear 
 little dressmaker who lives in Culmouth, and another 
 is the quaint old man who looks after the lifeboat- 
 house down in our Duckpool Cove." 
 
 Edna must be hard put to it, Julian reflected, to have 
 made use of both her dear little dressmaker and her 
 quaint old man within one sentence. Both, he knew, 
 were frequently in requisition for the dissipation of 
 any sense of awkwardness which she suspected might 
 be assailing her visitors, but one was generally held 
 in reserve to supplement the effect of the other if 
 necessary. 
 
 " Here you are ! " Edna exclaimed, almost with re- 
 lief in her voice, as he entered, thereby, Julian told 
 himself, depriving young Cooper of a remark which 
 he would certainly have made his own. 
 
 Young Cooper, however, was not to be defeated. 
 " We've accepted Lady Rossiter's kind invitation, 
 you see, Sir Julian," he observed. 
 
TENSION 37 
 
 " How are you, Cooper? How d'y'e do?" He 
 shook hands with the shorthand teachers. " Were you 
 the only people energetic enough to walk over in this 
 heat?" 
 
 " Why, yes. The new Lady Superintendent 
 spoke of coming since Lady Rossiter was so kind, 
 but she didn't turn up, so we've come without 
 her." 
 
 "Tell me about the new Superintendent," said 
 Edna quickly. " Miss Marchrose, isn't she? " 
 
 " Most pleasant and energetic," said Cooper rapidly. 
 " The sort of young lady / call capable." 
 
 " She's got into the way of things very quickly," 
 Miss Farmer supplemented. 
 
 " I wonder if she is connected with a Miss March- 
 rose whom I used to hear about, some years ago " 
 
 said Lady Rossiter thoughtfully. 
 
 " Here's Easter ! " exclaimed her husband, looking 
 from the window and feeling thankful for any inter- 
 ruption to Edna's possible intention of recapitulating 
 the scandal attaching to the unfortunately uncommon 
 name of the new Superintendent. 
 
 Young Cooper sprang up. 
 
 " Let me make rather more room. I'll move to this 
 chair, if I may, Lady Rossiter." 
 
 Mark Easter's arrival improved matters greatly, 
 even though he was accompanied by the preposterous 
 Ruthie, adopting a sudden pose of extreme shyness, 
 and concealing her face on her left shoulder, after the 
 manner of a timid infant of two years old. The mem- 
 bers of the staff knew Mark, had laughed at his jokes 
 in and out of office hours, had experienced his pleasant, 
 courteously-abrupt authority in work-time, and knew 
 
38 TENSION 
 
 him for a fellow-worker who spared himself less than 
 he did them. 
 
 Miss Sandiloe launched into the shrill fire of giggling 
 repartee which was her nearest approach to natural- 
 ness. Miss Farmer's frown of strained attention re- 
 laxed, and she leant back, as though for the first time 
 able to look at her surroundings, and Cooper ceased to 
 fix bulging and attentive eyes upon his hostess. 
 
 Julian marvelled, not at all for the first time, at the 
 invariable effect upon his surroundings of Mark 
 Easter's elementary witticisms and gay, indefinable 
 charm of manner. 
 
 He knew that his wife liked Mark, if only because 
 he was always ready to let her talk to him in low- 
 voiced, womanly sympathy of the otherwise unmen- 
 tioned Mrs. Easter. Lady Rossiter often said that, 
 but for her, the tragedy of Mark's life would have 
 been left to corrode in silent bitterness. 
 
 Perhaps it was true. 
 
 Julian knew that to his wife was it frequently given 
 to rush in where others might not only hesitate, but 
 positively refuse, to tread, and he knew that Mark's 
 simple gratitude for her interest in him was as genuine 
 as it was outspoken. 
 
 He wondered, sometimes, at that very simplicity, in 
 a man of acute sympathies and unfailing intuition such 
 as Mark again and again proved himself to possess in 
 almost every relation into which he entered. There 
 were even times when he asked himself, in utter per- 
 plexity, whether Mark could himself be as sensitive as 
 his quickness of perception for sensitiveness in others 
 appeared to denote. 
 
 He thought that he had seldom seen Edna look more 
 
TENSION 39 
 
 relieved than at the dissipation of the constraint 
 amongst her tea-party, caused by Mark's entrance. 
 
 " Will you ring for tea, Mark?" she asked smil- 
 ingly. She had the trick, not uncommon to a certain 
 type of woman, of assuming a more proprietary tone 
 and manner when speaking to a man not her husband. 
 
 Julian's restless and observant mind almost auto- 
 matically registered the subconscious irritation in- 
 stantly produced in the other two women. , 
 
 Miss Farmer, turning to young Cooper, asked him 
 if he would be so very kind as to reach her little bag, 
 which contained a handkerchief. 
 
 Miss Sandiloe, more actively resentful, as well as far 
 more self-confident in the youthful security of possess- 
 ing good looks and an evident admirer in the shape of 
 Cooper, was bolder. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Easter, I'm awfully glad you're here. I 
 mean, really I am. I've got some killing things to 
 tell you, about the Coll. We've got some freaks there 
 now, really we have." 
 
 " What have you done with the young gentleman 
 who wanted to learn enough shorthand to get him a 
 post in a newspaper office in six lessons ? " enquired 
 Mark, as usual full of interest. 
 
 " Oh, him ! It wasn't him I was thinking of so 
 much, really, though he certainly is a caution. I mean, 
 really he is. But he's come off the six lessons stunt, 
 all the same." 
 
 [t Well done ! Have you persuaded him to take a 
 course ? " 
 
 " I don't know what 7've got to do with it, I'm sure," 
 Miss Sandiloe said, with a self-conscious laugh. " But 
 I'm taking him for private tuition now, three times a 
 
40 TENSION 
 
 week, as well as him going to the usual classes, and 
 he'll be in the Speed in no time." 
 
 Miss Farmer, looking more animated than when 
 making impersonal and agonised conversation with her 
 hostess, joined in. 
 
 " Miss Marchrose is taking the High Speed room 
 now, Mr. Easter. She's got a beautiful pronouncia- 
 tion so clear, it is." 
 
 Lady Rossiter smiled a kind, faint smile, that, to 
 her husband's perceptions, admirably succeeded in un- 
 derlining her determination to avoid noticing Miss 
 Farmer's slip. 
 
 " It's so wonderful of you, I think, to be so devoted 
 to your work," she said. " That is one reason why I 
 love the society of workers. They are always so eager 
 about their work, and I think it is so wonderful of 
 them." 
 
 Edna did not generally repeat herself, but the curious 
 hostility vibrant in the air surrounding her philan- 
 thropic enterprise was making her nervous. 
 
 " I've always been keen on my job," said Cooper 
 complacently, " but I ought to have been an engineer. 
 I should have liked that." 
 
 " But then why not have followed your voca- 
 tion? " Edna enquired, with tilted eyebrows. 
 
 Cooper shook his head. 
 
 " It's an expensive training, Lady Rossiter. If I'd 
 had the capital, I should have liked it, though." 
 
 " I understand," gently said Edna, with a whole 
 world of implication in her tone, at which Cooper 
 looked rather astonished, and Miss Sandiloe decidedly 
 resentful. 
 
TENSION 41 
 
 " Daddy ! " said a sudden voice. 
 
 Everybody looked at the forgotten Ruthie, who 
 stood on one leg beside her father's chair. 
 
 " Daddy, I'm afraid I shall forget my piece, if I 
 don't say it soon," said Ruthie in an excessively au- 
 dible aside, and with the evident determination of dis- 
 playing her histrionic attainments to the assembly. 
 
 Mark laughed, with the injudicious tolerance that 
 he was all too apt to accord to the ill-timed demonstra- 
 tions of his offspring. 
 
 " Not now, Ruthie. Perhaps Lady Rossiter 
 doesn't want you to say your piece at all." 
 
 Few suggestions could have been better founded 
 upon fact, and Lady Rossiter made no attempt to con- 
 tradict Ruthie's father. 
 
 Julian wondered if it was altogether undesignedly 
 that Miss Sandiloe instantly exclaimed: 
 
 " Are you going to recite to us, dear ? " 
 
 " Yes, I am," said Miss Easter in loud, confident 
 tones. " I always recite when I go out to tea." 
 
 The relentless inevitability of the proposed enter- 
 tainment deprived even Miss Sandiloe of further ut- 
 terance for the moment. 
 
 " You will not be asked again if you give yourself 
 such a bad character," said Mark in a rather hopeless 
 voice. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I shall. Lady Rossiter always likes me 
 and Peekaboo to come; she said so! We can come 
 whenever we like." 
 
 Sir Julian's regard for Mark Easter alone prevented 
 him from disclaiming aloud any share in the unlimited 
 hospitality so rashly proclaimed by his wife in the days 
 
42 TENSION 
 
 of Ruthie's and Ambrose's comparatively innocuous 
 babyhood, and so unscrupulously worked to death by 
 them ever since. 
 
 " Is Peekaboo a pet ? " asked Miss Farmer kindly. 
 
 " Not always," Ruthie replied literally. " Some- 
 times he's a very naughty boy. Sarah has locked him 
 up in the boot-cupboard this afternoon, because 
 
 " Hush, hush," hastily said Mark, " we don't tell 
 tales out of school." 
 
 Julian wondered grimly what story of misdoing the 
 exhortation to fraternal charity might cover. The 
 unforeseeable and disastrous ingenuity of Ambrose's 
 misdeeds was only to be compared to the skill with 
 which his partner and instigator in crime invariably 
 managed to extricate herself at the eleventh hour from 
 complicity and leave him the solitary victim of blame 
 and punishment. 
 
 Tea and cakes, arriving opportunely, staved off 
 Ruthie's recitation, and brought the relief of move- 
 ment. 
 
 Lady Rossiter crumbled a very small sponge-cake be- 
 hind the silver-kettle, and said in a general sort of 
 way that she hoped everyone would make a very good 
 tea and eat a great deal. She herself always thought 
 of Sunday tea as one of the principal meals of the day, 
 as it would only be followed by cold supper in the 
 evening. 
 
 Whether cold supper was to be the portion of her 
 guests or not, however, the piled plates of buns and 
 the large cakes, bearing a certain superficial resemblance 
 to preparations for a school-treat, were better patro- 
 nised by Ruthie than by the members of the College staff. 
 
TENSION 43 
 
 " We mustn't leave it too late to be starting back," 
 Miss Farmer said nervously. " I mean, it's quite a 
 longish walk." 
 
 Julian gauged the measure of Edna's discouragement 
 by her omission to insist graciously upon an expedition 
 first round the garden. 
 
 " You must come again one Sunday," she said, not, 
 however, making precise mention of any date. " I 
 should like you to see my view of the sea. There is 
 a beautiful little glimpse to be had from a corner of 
 the garden. . . . You must so need a draught of blue 
 distance after working inside four walls all the week." 
 
 " Thank you, Lady Rossiter," said Miss Farmer 
 meekly, turning a pale brick-colour. 
 
 " Thanks," said Miss Sandiloe, her nose in the air 
 and her voice aggressive ; " but really I can get all the 
 view I want of the sea from Culmouth. My window 
 looks right over the bay that's why I took the apart- 
 ments I did. Are you ready, Horace?" 
 
 " Ready," said Mr. Cooper, with an alacrity that 
 might be partly attributable to the unprecedented use 
 of his Christian name Miss Sandiloe's not too subtle 
 retaliation for Lady Rossiter's frequent " Mark." 
 
 " Come along, Ruthie," said Mark Easter. " We'll 
 walk with you part of the way if we may, Miss 
 Farmer." 
 
 The teacher looked pleased, and they followed Miss 
 Sandiloe and her admirer, Mark adjusting his long, 
 easy stride to the very obvious limitations of Miss 
 Farmer's patent-leather shoes. 
 
 Edna looked after them, wearing a rather exhausted 
 expression. 
 
44 TENSION 
 
 " I am very tired, Julian. I shall go to the boudoir 
 and enjoy the silence till it's time to dress. Nothing 
 is so restful as complete silence, after all." 
 
 Julian honoured the assertion by making no reply to 
 it whatever. 
 
 " I have been told," said Edna, with gentle solem- 
 nity, " that my spirit is burning itself away. I know 
 you don't sympathise with that necessity for pouring 
 out, Julian this afternoon, for instance, has taken a 
 great deal out of me but I noticed that you gave out 
 nothing at all not one spark. Isn't it rather a pity ? 
 One can do so little, materially, but the things of the 
 spirit . . . Ah, well, I grudge none of it." 
 
 She went upstairs, however, very slowly, and leaning 
 heavily upon the banisters. 
 
 Julian's gaze did not follow her. 
 
IV 
 
 E found a treasure," Mark Easter enthusi- 
 astically told Sir Julian. " Miss Marchrose is the best 
 worker I've ever struck. And she'll do anything 
 doesn't mind what she turns her hand to. You'll have 
 to see her, Sir Julian dashed good-looking girl into 
 the bargain." 
 
 Sir Julian was not insensible to the attraction of the 
 last qualification, but he felt no security of endorsing 
 Mark Easter's ready acclamation of a pretty face. His 
 own taste was eclectic and the witless pink and white, 
 the unsubtle contours that constitute the ideal feminine 
 to the average Englishman, held no appeal for him. 
 
 He soon saw Miss Marchrose at the College, in the 
 room adjoining Fuller's office that had been designed 
 for the personal use of the Lady Superintendent. 
 
 She was talking to Mark Easter, standing beside 
 him in the window, and the afternoon sun struck full 
 upon her, revealing every little finely-drawn line of 
 fatigue round her eyes and mouth. 
 
 Sir Julian's first sensation was of involuntary, sur- 
 prised satisfaction at the slim, tall distinction of her 
 whole bearing; the next, one of surprise at Mark 
 Easter's verdict on her looks. 
 
 " Ten years ago, perhaps," he reflected. " Now she 
 probably varies according to her state of health. But 
 she'll never be called pretty." 
 
 45 
 
46 TENSION 
 
 Nevertheless, it seemed to him easy enough to trace 
 a softer, rounder contour to the oval face, and to erase 
 in imagination the shadows underlying black brows 
 and hazel eyes, and the tiny, indelible marks that some 
 past bitterness had left at either corner of the closely- 
 curved mouth that was Miss Marchrose's most unde- 
 niably beautiful feature. 
 
 Her hair was brown, a soft dead-leaf colour that held 
 no gleams of light and framed her square forehead 
 loosely. Julian, looking at her, received the impression 
 that her face held possibilities full of colour and ani- 
 mation, and yet was more often only faintly coloured, 
 and shadowed with weariness. 
 
 " Charming at eighteen and probably not ad- 
 mired, except by an occasional connoisseur and now 
 absolutely dependent for looks on the state of her 
 vitality," he summarised her to himself. 
 
 But he ceased to entertain any doubts as to the vital- 
 ity of Miss Marchrose when he heard her speak. 
 
 At the first sound of her voice he recognised that 
 therein lay the charm which had made Mark Easter de- 
 clare her to be good-looking. The soft beauty of a 
 woman's speaking voice such as that of Miss March- 
 rose might well prove responsible for greater delusions. 
 
 The contrast between the extraordinarily musical in- 
 flexions of her tones and their rather curt, business- 
 like utterances almost amused Julian. 
 
 He remembered Fuller's complacent recommenda- 
 tion, " Hard as nails, I should think," and surmised 
 that Miss Marchrose had addressed him with the same 
 abrupt, impersonal manner. 
 
 Unlike the majority of women, she seldom smiled. 
 When she did so and presently Julian noticed that 
 
TENSION 47 
 
 Mark Easter could elicit that quick, soft change of ex- 
 pression more often than anyone else it altered the 
 character of her face very much, and made her look 
 much younger, and rather appealing. 
 
 Her powers of organisation were admirable and, as 
 Mark had said, she was ready to concentrate her whole 
 energies upon her work, indifferent, apparently, to the 
 after-office hours which constituted the whole reality 
 of life for those who only lived through the day's busi- 
 ness in order to attain their freedom at the end of it. 
 
 " I hope you have found comfortable accommodation 
 in Culmouth," Sir Julian said to her. 
 
 " Yes, thank you." 
 
 Miss Marchrose appeared so little expectant of any 
 further interest in her welfare that Julian almost won- 
 dered whether her definition of officiousness might not 
 prove to coincide with his own. 
 
 A month after her arrival, however, Mark Easter 
 told the Rossiters that Miss Marchrose was lodging at 
 a farm outside Culmouth, nearly half an hour's walk 
 from the College. 
 
 " It wouldn't be far for her to come over here, if 
 you thought of asking her, Lady Rossiter," said Mark. 
 " I'm afraid she must be rather lonely, for she knows 
 no one down here." 
 
 " I wonder why she came here," Edna remarked. 
 
 " For love of the country, I think," Mark answered, 
 with sufficient assurance in the assertion to make Julian 
 wonder if he had received a confidence. 
 
 " I want to know this Miss Marchrose," said Lady 
 Rossiter with decision. " I think I must go to the 
 College to-morrow I have been quite a long time 
 without seeing any of my friends there. Dear Mr. 
 
48 TENSION 
 
 Fuller ! I love Mr. Fuller he and I have such long 
 talks over the welfare of the staff." 
 
 " I shall be in there all day to-morrow. Won't you 
 look in and let Miss Marchrose give you a cup of tea? " 
 said Mark. 
 
 "Of course I will. They love dispensing a little 
 hospitality, don't they, and I'm always most ceremoni- 
 ous about returning their calls here. Not that Miss 
 Marchrose has come over yet with the others." 
 
 Mark looked a little perplexed, and Julian, unex- 
 pectedly even to himself, said rather curtly : 
 
 1 You won't be able to ask her to make one of 
 your Sunday Band of Hope expeditions, Edna." 
 
 " No? " said his wife, still smiling. " I know there 
 are wheels within wheels, and one reason, I think, why 
 they trust me is that I respect all the little prejudices 
 and etiquettes that mean so much to them. Give Miss 
 Marchrose due warning, Mark, will you, that I shall 
 call at tea-time to-morrow and see if she is not too 
 busy to let me have some tea. I want to get into 
 touch with all of them, you know." 
 
 Julian, in rather grim anticipation of the process as 
 regarded Miss Marchrose, announced his intention next 
 day of accompanying his wife to the College. 
 
 " My dear, I am not often honoured, but shall we 
 not rather overwhelm the young woman ? " 
 
 " I don't think she is easily overwhelmed." 
 
 Edna laughed musically that is to say, Sir Julian 
 felt convinced that she herself so designated the low, 
 controlled sound of amusement that she so seldom 
 enough judged it a propos to emit. 
 
 But her voice was very serious the next instant, and 
 had even dropped a semitone, as she made enquiry : 
 
TENSION 49 
 
 " Julian, can you tell me yet whether she is really 
 connected with poor Clarence's tragedy ? " 
 
 " No, certainly not I haven't tried to find 
 out." 
 
 " I wonder why, when you knew that the whole ques- 
 tion touched me very nearly. Nothing has much 
 sacredness to you, Julian, has it? " 
 
 " I see nothing sacred in the amorous extravagances 
 of your cousin Clarence, certainly." 
 
 " And you care very little whether the woman who 
 is charged with the welfare of all those young men 
 and women - sharers, after all, of our common hu- 
 manity can give them true, pure-hearted love and 
 service and fellowship," mused Edna. " And yet to 
 me those ideals which you dismiss so lightly seem the 
 most important things in all the world. You see, 
 Julian, love seems to me to matter more than anything 
 in the whole world." 
 
 " In the case of a Lady Superintendent for the Col- 
 lege, a knowledge of shorthand is more important," 
 said Julian indifferently. 
 
 He had long since fallen into the habit of uttering 
 the cheap jeers that had once inadequately served to 
 protect him from blatant references that now had al- 
 most lost effect. 
 
 " God forbid that I should condemn anyone who 
 am I, to judge of another? but I can't pretend to 
 you, Julian, that it won't become a question of con- 
 science with me, if I find that a position of such re- 
 sponsibility towards my boys and girls is held by a 
 woman who could throw a man over heartlessly, break 
 her given pledge, just at the moment when he was more 
 in need of her than ever before." 
 
50 TENSION 
 
 "If she was heartless, he may have been well rid 
 of her, as I said before." 
 
 " At what a cost ! His first faith shattered, poor 
 boy. You remember what that nurse told me about 
 him." 
 
 " I remember perfectly, but I should think both 
 Clarence Isbister and the girl he married would very 
 much rather have it forgotten." 
 
 " I don't forget easily, Julian." 
 
 " Then in kindness to Clarence, I should advise you 
 to keep your recollections to yourself. I doubt if he 
 would thank you or anyone else for reminding the 
 world that he ever saw fit to beat a tattoo with his 
 head on the walls of his nursing-home for the sake 
 of a young woman whom he afterwards forgot all 
 about." 
 
 " We can never tell that. Certain wounds do not 
 heal, although they may be hidden from sight." 
 
 " Then I'm sorry for Mrs. Clarence." 
 
 " I wonder if Miss Marchrose knows that he has 
 married," said Edna, rather viciously. 
 
 " I wish you would not take it for granted that this 
 is the same woman," said Julian irritably. 
 
 Edna laid two fingers upon his sleeve in a manner 
 designed to emphasise her words. 
 
 " I shall take nothing for granted. But you see, 
 Julian, I can't take life quite as you do quite as 
 callously, as cynically. There is a big responsibility 
 for those of us who see a little ah, such a very little 
 way it is further into the heart of things. We can 
 only hope, and give, and spend ourselves and judge 
 
TENSION 51 
 
 Julian, who disliked being touched, moved his arm 
 out of reach, and replied to these humanitarian senti- 
 ments unsympathetically. 
 
 " Your remarks have not the slightest bearing upon 
 the case, Edna." 
 
 He thought to himself bitterly, not for the first time, 
 that a stronger man would reject the weapons of 
 obvious, meaningless satire, but nervous irritability 
 again and again drove him to seek an outlet in words 
 that he despised. 
 
 In silence, he entered the College with Edna, and 
 let her proceed to the Supervisor's room, aware that 
 he had purposely timed their arrival for an hour when 
 Fairfax Fuller would be engaged in one of the class- 
 rooms. Few things discomposed Mr. Fuller more 
 than a feminine intrusion which could not be accounted 
 for by a question of business. 
 
 " He will be disappointed/' seriously said Edna, 
 turning away from the empty room. " But we shall 
 have other talks. I don't despair yet of getting Fuller 
 to Culmhayes, for all his misogyny." It was a prin- 
 ciple with Lady Rossiter, her husband knew, never to 
 allow their differences to degenerate into an offended 
 silence when they were alone. 
 
 He sometimes thought that he could have borne it 
 all better had she been a woman to make scenes, and 
 to oppose him with tears or temper, instead of with 
 that considered, brightly-unconscious, eternal loving- 
 kindness. 
 
 They found Miss Marchrose in her own room, at 
 work on the typewriter. She wore a long blue pina- 
 fore, and Julian noticed with an odd satisfaction that 
 
52 TENSION 
 
 this was one of the days when her variable face showed 
 colour and unmistakable beauty. 
 
 " Good afternoon," said Julian. " I hope we are 
 not too early. My wife Miss Marchrose." 
 
 Lady Rossiter, shaking hands, revealed her rather 
 large white teeth in a smile, but Miss Marchrose, after 
 her fashion, remained calmly serious. 
 
 " Won't you sit down? " 
 
 Lady Rossiter glanced slowly round the room. 
 
 It was a large light office, the window thrown open 
 and looking on to the square paved court at the back 
 of the house; the furniture scanty and of the most 
 utilitarian description. 
 
 Miss Marchrose's writing-table was orderly, al- 
 though papers were stacked upon it in wicker trays. 
 A telephone with a glass mouthpiece stood at one 
 corner and an electric reading-lamp at the other. 
 
 The typewriter had a very small table to itself, and 
 a high chair with a small cushion placed in front of 
 it. Except for three or four chairs and a strip of 
 carpet, there was no other furniture in the room. 
 
 " I've not seen this room furnished before," Edna 
 Rossiter observed. ' You've hardly had time for the 
 finishing touches yet, though, have you? " 
 
 Her tone was that of assertion, not of enquiry, but 
 Miss Marchrose replied as though to a question. 
 
 " I'm afraid there isn't anything more to come. Mr. 
 Fuller has kindly let me have everything I want." 
 
 "Even to a glass mouthpiece for the telephone?" 
 enquired Edna smoothly. 
 
 A similar adornment distinguished her own tele- 
 phone in the boudoir at Culmhayes, and Julian knew 
 
TENSION 53 
 
 that his wife frequently drew attention to it by apol- 
 ogies for her own fastidiousness. 
 
 " That was brought by Mr. Easter. I used to dis- 
 like the old one so much, and he found it out, and very 
 kindly gave me that." 
 
 " I shall talk to Mr. Easter about infringing my 
 patent," laughed Edna. She turned to her husband. 
 
 " Mark must have seen the glass one in my boudoir, 
 of course." 
 
 Julian was perfectly aware of the instinct which 
 had prompted his wife to make use, in addressing her- 
 self to him, of Mark Easter's first name. 
 
 He smiled rather grimly. 
 
 " I think you must have some flowers in here," Edna 
 said to Miss Marchrose. " It does make all the differ- 
 ence, doesn't it, when one is chained to a desk all day? " 
 
 " But I'm not chained to a desk," said Miss March- 
 rose tranquilly. " I take two or three classes, and 
 I'm very often in Mr. Fuller's room. Besides, I don't 
 like flowers in an office; do you? " 
 
 " Ah, well," said Edna, in a voice the measured 
 graciousness of which contrasted with the Superin- 
 tendent's matter-of-fact utterance, " flowers mean 
 rather a lot to me. I'm not happy unless I have a 
 great many all round me. . . . But I know many peo- 
 ple simply look on flowers as flowers, of course. Tell 
 me, do you care for out-of-doors? " 
 
 Miss Marchrose looked unintelligent. 
 
 " Because I have some little nature-classes, as we 
 call them, for looking into the heart of our West 
 Country rather more closely. One week I take my 
 little band down to the sea, another time up to the 
 
54 TENSION 
 
 woods, sometimes just to study the wonderful colour 
 in a Devonshire lane. I can't help thinking you might 
 find a great deal to admire round Duckpool Farm. 
 Isn't that where you're staying? " 
 
 " Yes. I hope you're going to let me give you some 
 tea, Lady Rossiter.'' 
 
 " Presently, but you mustn't let us put you out. 
 Don't alter anything I love taking things just as I 
 find them. . . . But tell me why you went to the farm ; 
 I thought it rather wonderful of you to strike out such 
 a new line, instead of going to rooms in Church Street 
 or St. Mary-Welcome's, as they all do." 
 
 u There are no rooms vacant in Church Street, I 
 believe," said Miss Marchrose, very curtly indeed. 
 
 Julian felt convinced that she wished the implication 
 made that had rooms been available she would have 
 selected them, and equally certain that the implication 
 would have been untrue. 
 
 " Is Easter here to-day? " he enquired abruptly. 
 
 " Yes ; I'll let him know you've come. He generally 
 has tea in here, and so does Mr. Fuller." 
 
 She went to the telephone. 
 
 " You mustn't let us interrupt your work if there's 
 anything you want to finish before tea," Edna told her. 
 " I know what it means to all of you to get through by 
 six o'clock sharp, especially in these late summer even- 
 ings when it's already getting dark early. It must be 
 too cruel to be robbed of even a few moments of fresh 
 air and liberty." 
 
 Julian remembered Mark's eulogies. 
 
 " What time do you leave the College, I wonder ? " 
 he asked her, smiling slightly. 
 
 " It depends on the work. There's been a good deal 
 
TENSION 55 
 
 of correspondence lately and I've stayed late to finish 
 it up. If I may, there is just something I want to 
 finish here." 
 
 She laid her hand on the typewriter. 
 
 " Please do." 
 
 Without further apology, Miss Marchrose sat down 
 to her machine and completed the sheet upon which she 
 had been engaged. As she drew it off the roller, Mark 
 Easter came in. 
 
 She looked up with a sort of pleasure in her glance, 
 and handed him a thin pile of foolscap sheets. 
 
 " Five copies," she said. 
 
 Mark glanced at the papers. 
 
 " I'm so grateful ! " he exclaimed. " That's exactly 
 what I wanted. Do you know what that is, Sir 
 Julian?" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Estate business," laughed Mark. " Miss March- 
 rose is good enough to help me through with some of 
 it, as she only works ten hours a day here." 
 
 " You ought to be ashamed of yourself for letting 
 her do it." 
 
 " Well," said Miss Marchrose gaily, " he boils my 
 kettle for me." 
 
 Mark had placed the big kettle on the gas-ring and 
 cleared the table of the heavy typewriter. 
 
 He was in his usual excellent spirits, and made in- 
 different jokes at which Miss Marchrose laughed with 
 an absence of constraint such as Julian had not seen in 
 her before. It was evident that Mark's gift for mak- 
 ing friends had not failed him, any more than his 
 magical capacity for diffusing contentment throughout 
 his surroundings. 
 
56 TENSION 
 
 Contentment, however, stopped short at Lady Ros- 
 siter, as it was always apt to do when the focus of 
 general attention was diverted to an object which she 
 considered unworthy. 
 
 "Isn't Mr. Fuller coming in to tea?" She quietly 
 interrupted Mark's exchange of chaffing allusions with 
 Miss Marchrose. 
 
 " He generally comes. I'll go and dig him out," 
 Mark volunteered. 
 
 " Your presence has frightened him away, Edna," 
 said her husband, not without malice. " Fuller is a 
 shy bird." 
 
 Edna smiled serenely. 
 
 " Poor Mr. Fuller, he and I are great friends." 
 
 It might be doubted whether Lady Rossiter found 
 cause for thankfulness in the presence of her great 
 friend when he eventually joined the tea-party, his face 
 black with scowls at the interruption to his work and 
 suffused with shyness at her complacent greeting. 
 
 Miss Marchrose poured out tea and talked to Julian, 
 who sat next her, and Mark, to whom self -conscious- 
 ness was unknown, handed plates of bread-and-butter 
 and. cut up a small plum-cake and endeavoured to win 
 smiles from the recalcitrant Fuller. Edna, her voice 
 modulated to careful sweetness, manufactured kindly 
 conversation. 
 
 But Mr. Fuller, his elbows very much squared and 
 his bullet head thrust well forward, devoted his energies 
 to the rapid demolition of his meal, and replied mono- 
 syllabically to Mark's kindly derision and Lady Ros- 
 siter's benevolences alike. His shyness, however, ap- 
 peared to place him under a mysterious compulsion to 
 recite aloud, in an inward voice, any scrap of printed 
 
TENSION 57 
 
 matter upon which his eye chanced to fall, regardless 
 of relevance. This necessity, though common enough 
 in any assembly of not too congenial strangers, did not 
 add to continuity of discourse. 
 
 As thus, when Lady Rossiter moved a pot of plum 
 jam towards him, saying that she was so sorry that 
 the injunction to make no difference had not been at- 
 tended to, Mr. Fuller was constrained to reply in a 
 very severe way, No ; he never ate jam Three gold 
 medals at the Paris and Vienna Exhibitions but it 
 was there every day, he believed. 
 
 " It is there, because / like it," said Miss Marchrose. 
 ' They never had anything but bread-and-butter till I 
 came." 
 
 Edna's ever-ready eyebrows went up, but she still 
 addressed herself exclusively to Fairfax Fuller. 
 
 " Plum jam is quite my favourite. I never really 
 care for the expensive varieties, or think them a bit 
 better than the others." 
 
 " Inspection invited at the manufactories/' Fuller 
 pursued his way, almost turning the jam-pot upside 
 down in an apparently agonised search for further 
 literature. 
 
 " Jam on bread-and-butter is quite a luxury. Julian 
 and I never get it at home," Lady Rossiter persevered. 
 
 " London, Edinburgh, and at Sharplington in Es- 
 sex," said Fuller, without looking at her. 
 
 " Have you ever been over one of those big fac- 
 tories? It would be rather interesting," Mark said, 
 in a charitable endeavour to introduce some element of 
 continuity into the conversation. Lady Rossiter at 
 once seconded the attempt. 
 
 " I've always so wished to have an opportunity of 
 
58 TENSION 
 
 that sort. I should like to know just how the poor 
 factory hands live, and what the conditions of work 
 really are in those great places." 
 
 " I don't suppose that Sharplington in Essex is on 
 the same scale as London or Edinburgh," Mark sug- 
 gested. 
 
 At which interesting initial stage of an interchange 
 of views, Mr. Fuller suddenly disconcerted everybody 
 by looking straight across the table at the almanack 
 which hung upon the wall, and declaring with a sort 
 of suppressed violence : 
 
 " Five thousand souls gained last year alone The 
 Church Mission Society." 
 
 Edna's pale skin absolutely flushed and she set her 
 lips. Mark hastily bent down to pick up an imaginary 
 handkerchief, and Miss Marchrose laughed. 
 
 "That's settled it," thought Julian. "Edna will 
 never forgive her that laugh." 
 
 He saw no reason to reverse the judgment while his 
 wife took her cool, kindly farewell of the Lady Super- 
 intendent. 
 
 " You must come out to Culmhayes one day. Of 
 course, I know Saturday afternoons and Sundays are 
 your only free times, so I never issue workday invita- 
 tions. But I'm always so glad to see any of you, and 
 you can just rest and do anything you please, and not 
 feel obliged to make conversation." 
 
 Julian watched the recipient of these attentions 
 rather curiously. - 
 
 She withdrew her hand from Lady Rossiter's kind, 
 enveloping clasp and put it into the pocket of her pina- 
 fore very deliberately. 
 
 " On Saturdays I'm going to the estate office with 
 
TENSION 59 
 
 you, I hope. Didn't we arrange that?" she asked 
 Mark Easter. 
 
 "If you have nothing better to do, I should be most 
 grateful. Everything is in confusion there, since my 
 clerk had to leave on account of sudden illness." 
 
 " I shall like it very much," said Miss Marchrose, 
 with a very charming smile, and still addressing her- 
 self exclusively to Mark. " And I've nothing better to 
 do at all, thank you." 
 
 Julian, while inwardly applauding her, wondered 
 whether she had herself been entirely aware of the full 
 efficiency of the oblique retaliation. 
 
 On the whole, he thought that she had. 
 
V 
 
 As Julian pursued his acquaintance with Miss 
 Marchrose and he was by no means minded to let it 
 drop he came more and more to the conclusion that 
 she had been quite as conscious as himself of the 
 mutual antagonism which Edna and she had roused 
 in one another on the rather disastrous occasion of 
 their meeting. 
 
 She neither came over to Culmhayes nor showed 
 any disposition to join Lady Rossitef's cherished 
 nature-classes, the final sessions of which were drawing 
 near with the approach of the colder weather. 
 
 Julian saw her at the College, where she worked 
 hard and successfully, and once or twice at his own 
 estate office, where she frequently replaced Mark 
 Easter's absent clerk. 
 
 " I don't know that we ought to let you spend so 
 much time here, though it is quite invaluable to the 
 business," he once said to her. 
 
 To which Miss Marchrose returned very candidly 
 that it was always the greatest possible p^asure to her 
 to do anything for Mr. Easter. 
 
 Julian quite believed it. 
 
 The friendship established between her and Mark 
 was founded on excellent good comradeship, a mutual 
 respect for one another's power of work, and the very 
 admirable sense of humour possessed by each. 
 
 60 
 
TENSION 61 
 
 Julian, watching the frank gaiety of her manner as 
 she came to accept him in the light of Mark's friend 
 instead of merely as a director of the College, found 
 himself wondering from time to time if Miss March- 
 rose, sharp-tongued and quick-witted, apt at satire 
 even at her gentlest, could by any possibility ever have 
 been the heroine where Captain Clarence Isbister, 
 youthful, sporting, and essentially British, had once 
 been the hero. His wife appeared inclined to let the 
 question rest, and Julian had no desire to remind her 
 of it; but for the satisfaction of his own curiosity, he 
 told himself, he would have liked to establish the proof 
 or otherwise of Fuller's verdict to which he was only 
 half inclined to subscribe " hard as nails." 
 
 It was Edna, however, who returned to the charge 
 of Miss Marchrose's identity. 
 
 " I might have known it," her husband reflected. 
 
 He heard with his accustomed phlegm of manner, 
 that Edna, conducting the nature-class through a cer- 
 tain small wood just off the Rossiter estate, in order to 
 introduce it to a sunset effect visible through the beech- 
 trees, had met with an interruption before anyone had 
 had time to do more than ejaculate a preliminary 
 "Wonderful!" 
 
 " They are apt to be a shade blatant, poor dears ! 
 and talk about the sun looking like a ball of fire in 
 the sky and that sort of thing." 
 
 :< You could scarcely ask for a more accurate de- 
 scription, after all," murmured Julian. 
 
 " But what one's there for, of course, is to get them 
 to see a little deeper, a little more into the heart of 
 Nature's beauty and wonderful, wonderful tenderness. 
 I wanted to show them the glint of red on the stems 
 
62 TENSION 
 
 of those trees, and the miracle of hush that comes over 
 the world just as the sun goes down. . . ." 
 
 Lady Rossiter paused, absorbed in the regretful ret- 
 rospect of the showman whose curtain has accidentally 
 come down with a run in the midst of his star per- 
 former's best turn. 
 
 "Well, what happened? Did the sun refuse to go 
 down after all?" was Julian's rather ribald interrup- 
 tion to her thoughts. 
 
 " The sun was in the most exquisite blaze of red and 
 gold, and one could only hold one's breath in awe at 
 the most wonderful pageant the world can show, when 
 that Marchrose woman from Culmouth College came 
 crashing through the undergrowth, ringing a bicycle- 
 bell, and with her back actually, her back to that 
 sunset ! " 
 
 " What did you do?" asked Julian, with consider- 
 able interest. 
 
 Lady Rossiter made the strangely contradictory 
 statement that her sex, when describing the character 
 of a crisis, so frequently appears compelled to proffer. 
 
 " I didn't say one word, Julian. I felt that I sim- 
 ply couldn't have spoken. I couldn't help holding up 
 my hand and saying very quietly indeed : ' Ah, hush ! 
 Can't you feel that it hurts, somehow, to disturb such a 
 moment as this ? ' It was such hideous profanity, 
 Julian!" 
 
 "Did you tell her so?" 
 
 " I could never say anything that would deliberately 
 hurt another," Lady Rossiter made grave reply. 
 " But I laid my hand on that terrible bicycle, and the 
 girl had to keep still for a minute or two." 
 
 "Was she angry?" 
 
TENSION 63 
 
 " I hope I sent out some calming, loving thoughts, 
 for the whole evening was terribly jarred, one could 
 feel it. Poor foolish, defiant creature! I could see 
 her hands shaking, as she tried to take her machine 
 from me. I couldn't let her go like that, of course, 
 and I tried to say a little something, very quietly, about 
 the glory of God's own evening light all round us. 
 But she kept her back to the sunset all the time. 
 
 " And, Julian, to my dismay and astonishment, she 
 was not alone. Mark was with her." 
 
 "Why shouldn't he be?" 
 
 " Have you forgotten my poor Clarence so soon?" 
 reproachfully enquired Lady Rossiter, whose cousinly 
 affection for her poor Clarence appeared to increase by 
 leaps and bounds in proportion to the growth of her 
 disesteem for Miss Marchrose. 
 
 " Clarence has nothing to do with it. The cir- 
 cumstances are entirely dissimilar." 
 
 " We can't tell that in the case of a woman whom 
 I must, much as I dislike uttering any shadow of con- 
 demnation, call utterly heartless. Shall I ever forget 
 what that hospital nurse told me of poor Clarence's 
 state of mind after that heartless betrayal- 
 
 " In any circumstances, Edna, Mark isn't in the 
 least likely to knock his head against the walls of the 
 cottage, and if he does, they will very probably fall 
 about his ears. I wish he would attend to his own 
 house, before doing up the tenants' ! Those children 
 have nearly broken down the whole of the garden 
 palings. But go on did you achieve any rapproche- 
 ment between Mark and the sunset, or was he also 
 ringing bicycle-bells and turning his back on it ? " 
 
 " Mark made some foolish explanation about seeing 
 
64 TENSION 
 
 the girl back to Duckpool Farm, but they were evidently 
 walking, and pushing the bicycle between them." 
 
 " I don't see how they could do anything else, if 
 there was only one bicycle," said Julian, idly desirous 
 of making more obvious a want of sympathy that was 
 already perfectly well en evidence. 
 
 " You may not understand it, Julian, but Mark is 
 very dear to me. To you he may be merely a good 
 fellow, and an excellent estate agent, but to me he has 
 been something more ever since that ghastly tragedy 
 of his wife. I gave him all the help that a woman 
 could give, then, and I can't ever forget it. I can't 
 let Mark break his heart a second time. Not that she's 
 attractive, or even pretty," said Edna, distinctly divided 
 between her determination to exploit Mark Easter's 
 peril and her reluctance to allow to Miss Marchrose 
 any of the usual advantages attributed to a charmer 
 of men. . . . 
 
 " I know no one less likely than Mark Easter to make 
 a fool of himself in that particular way," said Julian 
 emphatically. 
 
 " It's not Mark that I'm afraid of," inconsistently 
 said Lady Rossiter. " A friendship with a good, true 
 woman is often a man's best safeguard." 
 
 Julian wondered whether it would be worth while 
 to simulate a belief that the good, true woman in 
 question was Miss Marchrose, but Edna left him no 
 time to adopt this amiable pose. 
 
 " I am going to find out once and for all whether 
 that girl I suppose she calls herself a girl is really 
 poor Clarence's evil genius or not. Personally, I be- 
 lieve she is." 
 
TENSION 65 
 
 Julian left it at that, not desirous of sparing his 
 wife the trouble of her proposed investigation by tell- 
 ing her Miss Marchrose's identity without more ado. 
 
 Making his own observations, he thought Mark in 
 no danger of falling a victim to the beaux yeux which, 
 if their smile was chiefly kept for answering his, were 
 far more often bent upon a typewriter or an account- 
 book than diverted towards him. Fuller continued to 
 extol the Lady Superintendent, and Sir Julian went 
 oftener to the College than usual, not concealing from 
 himself that he found the enigma of her personality 
 of interest. 
 
 She continued gaily impersonal towards him until 
 one evening in October, when he overtook her at the 
 door of the College, and on an impulse born of un- 
 acknowledged, overwhelming loneliness, suddenly 
 asked her if she would care to drive down to the shore 
 with him and go on to the farm afterwards. 
 
 He had long ago decided that Miss Marchrose, al- 
 though her manner was often abrupt, was devoid of 
 shyness as of conventional politeness. If his sugges- 
 tion displeased her, she would undoubtedly decline it. 
 
 But she exclaimed with undisguised pleasure, and 
 took her place in the car beside him. 
 
 Julian was more than usually dissatisfied with life, 
 and made no attempt at conversation. It struck upon 
 him with relief that Miss Marchrose was equally silent, 
 and presently he glanced at her. 
 
 She was leaning back, her hair blown from her tem- 
 ples by the soft, salt-laden breeze, and she looked 
 neither young nor pretty in the waning light, but ex- 
 ceedingly weary. 
 
66 TENSION 
 
 "Do you like your work?" Julian enquired with 
 extreme abruptness, and a sudden, genuine desire for 
 information. 
 
 " At the College? Very much indeed." 
 
 Her tone was guarded, he felt. 
 
 " I mean the whole thing. What made you take up 
 this sort of thing? Tell me about it." 
 
 He almost heard her hesitate before she answered 
 with careful lightness: 
 
 " Oh, I had to do something, and I should dislike 
 teaching children and do it very badly. I trained 
 as a shorthand-typist, and am really qualified for a 
 secretary. I rather like doing shorthand." 
 
 The acuteness of his disappointment actually sur- 
 prised Sir Julian. He realised that he had made the 
 most tentative of efforts to get into touch with one 
 whom he vaguely thought of as a kindred spirit, and 
 that he had been lightly and unmistakably rebuffed. 
 He kept silence, making a pretence of absorption in his 
 driving. 
 
 Unexpectedly, Miss Marchrose made a sort of inar- 
 ticulate sound of interrogation. 
 
 "Sir Julian?" 
 
 He turned his head. 
 
 " I'm sorry," she said gently. " You really wanted 
 to know, didn't you? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " After I'd said that, I I thought you were dis- 
 appointed." 
 
 " You are very quick to detect an atmosphere." 
 
 " I'm sorry," she said again. " Sometimes I don't 
 realise when the platitudes that one keeps as stock 
 answers to enquiries are unnecessary." 
 
TENSION 67 
 
 " Thank you," said Julian. 
 
 " I took up work because I was tired of living at 
 home. A good many girls are like that. However, 
 in our case there was very little money, and it was 
 just as well that I should do something. I thought 
 I should like secretarial work; it all sounded interest- 
 ing, and I had always cared for books and writing. 
 I didn't know in the least what it was going to be 
 like. I'd never even been to school. The six 
 months at the training institute wasn't bad; it was all 
 quite new, and I liked learning the things, and doing 
 well in the shorthand tests. At the end of the course, 
 the training institute undertook to find one a post 
 and they got me a job with a firm in London. It was 
 supposed to be a very good one short hours and 
 decent pay. My mother my father was dead - 
 was upset at the thought of my staying on in London 
 alone, but I wrote and said that I'd been able to manage 
 perfectly while I was at the institute one lived ' in ' 
 there, as a matter of fact and that anyway I'd 
 made up my mind to do it, and to make a success of it. 
 After all, I was twenty-two and she could give me 
 a small allowance, and I thought that with that and 
 my salary it wouldn't be very difficult/' 
 
 " I should imagine that by yourself, in London, at 
 twenty-two, it might, on the contrary, be very difficult 
 indeed," said Julian significantly. 
 
 " Not in the way you mean," Miss Marchrose re- 
 marked candidly. " From what one reads in novels, 
 girls who work have to be on their guard from morn- 
 ing till night against undesirable attentions. It was 
 the one thing I thought I should have to beware of. 
 . . . And all I can say is, that unless one asks for 
 
68 TENSION 
 
 trouble of that sort, it simply doesn't happen to the 
 average woman." 
 
 Julian thought of his own inward verdict on a beauty 
 that had probably been very much too subtle and un- 
 vivid for universal recognition, and said nothing. 
 
 " I was five years working in London," Miss March- 
 rose told him simply, " and I have never in my life 
 been spoken to or followed in the street. And no 
 one has ever tried to make love to me." 
 
 Julian noted with a flash of appreciation that she 
 did not add, "against my will." 
 
 " All the difficulties and all the miseries were quite 
 different. Things I'd never thought of, or realised 
 at all . . ." 
 
 " Tell me about them." 
 
 " I was ashamed of minding it so much but the 
 difference between being a girl living at home, 
 however poor, and a girl going out every day to earn 
 her own living. There were such a lot of things I 
 didn't know. For instance, I had to be told, at that 
 first office I went to, about calling the manager ' sir ' 
 when I spoke to him, and his son was ' Mr. Percy ' to 
 the clerks and typists, always. 
 
 " And then I'd never lived in London, and at first I 
 used to go to Slater's Restaurant for lunch, and think 
 how economical I was, and all the time the other 
 typists were laughing at me and thinking I was giving 
 myself airs because, of course, I ought to have gone 
 to Lyons or an A.B.C. or bought sandwiches and eaten 
 them in the office. And another thing I hadn't real- 
 ised beforehand was the deadly monotony of it day 
 after day, sitting in the clatter of all those machines, 
 and typing as hard as one could go. Nothing to 
 
TENSION 69 
 
 look forward to, except Saturday afternoon and Sun- 
 day, and then I was dead tired, and I hated my rooms, 
 because they were cheap and ugly and uncomfortable. 
 They weren't really, you know I had a bedroom 
 and a sitting-room, that first year, and a fire when- 
 ever I wanted it most people have a bed-sitting- 
 room and go to bed when they want to keep warm 
 but I'd come straight from my home." 
 
 She paused. 
 
 " How long did you stand it? " 
 
 " Eight months. And then I knew I'd been a fool, 
 and I thought that if my mother would forgive me 
 and let me come home, I'd try again. She had a 
 small business and I could have helped her she al- 
 ways wanted me to. But of course my pride didn't 
 like giving in, and after I'd once made up my mind 
 that I was going back, it seemed easier to bear it all, 
 and so I kept on putting off writing the letter, think- 
 ing I'd at least have done a year of it before collapsing. 
 And then my mother died, quite suddenly, and so I 
 never went home at all, except just to settle every- 
 thing up it wasn't even our own house. And there 
 was not much more money than before, so when I'd 
 sold the business, which was luckily quite easy, I took 
 another post." 
 
 "Was that the only alternative?" asked Julian, 
 his voice as matter-of-fact as hers had been through- 
 out. 
 
 " There was an aunt, but she had two daughters of 
 her own, and they seemed to think it extremely provi- 
 dential that I could do something for myself. They 
 are very kind, and I generally spend my holidays with 
 them. They live near London." 
 
70 TENSION 
 
 " You don't like London," Julian affirmed, guided 
 by something in her tone. 
 
 " No, not much. However, the aunt's husband got 
 me the offer of a post as shorthand teacher at that big 
 place in Southampton Row, and I went there, and it 
 was a success. I got a lot of private tuition work, 
 and they raised my salary every year, and I actually 
 saved money. That's why I'm here now." 
 
 Julian remembered Mark Easter : " She comes here 
 for love of the country, I think." 
 
 " But I've never liked any work better than this," 
 said Miss Marchrose warmly, " and I wanted to be 
 in the country. In some ways, I'm happier here than 
 I've been anywhere in my life." 
 
 " I'm glad. Only I'm afraid perhaps it's lonely, if 
 you don't know anyone here. Do they make you 
 comfortable at the farm?" 
 
 " Very, and I've always wanted to live on a farm." 
 
 Julian stopped the car as they came in sight of the 
 shelving declivity of fine, powdery sand, lying in un- 
 even hillocks, with tufts of stiff grasses amongst the 
 boulders. 
 
 A broken line of white, flecking the darkness, 
 showed the receding tide. 
 
 " Would you like to go down to the edge of the 
 sea ? " Julian asked her. 
 
 " I'd like to very much." 
 
 She did not ask whether he meant to accompany 
 her, but after a moment moved away, and Julian re- 
 mained in the car, feeling the sting of the salt on his 
 lips and listening to the faint sound of the water on 
 the grey expanse of gleaming sand. 
 
TENSION 71 
 
 No one knew how many nights in the year he came 
 to the edge of Culmouth sands and paid silent, invol- 
 untary tribute there. 
 
 He came nearer to making a confidence than per- 
 haps ever before when Miss Marchrose came back 
 again, and took her place beside him. 
 
 " I always wanted to go to sea," said Sir Julian 
 Rossiter slowly. " It wasn't practicable because I was 
 the only son, and my father wouldn't hear of it, on 
 account of the place. But that was what I wanted." 
 
 " Yes, I see," said Miss Marchrose. 
 
 And something underlying the note of beauty which 
 he had before admired in her voice carried to Sir 
 Julian the conviction that she did see. 
 
 He drove her to the gate of the farm, and they 
 talked a little, with comfortable inconsequence, on the 
 way. 
 
 When she got out of the car, Miss Marchrose 
 thanked him cordially, and her movements, as she 
 crossed the yard and went up the stone steps to the 
 house door, were no longer eloquent of weariness. 
 
 Julian drove back to Culmhayes through the dark 
 lanes. 
 
 It was characteristic of him that he should observe, 
 as he took his place opposite to his wife at the end of 
 the dinner-table that evening : 
 
 " I took Miss Marchrose back in the car this even- 
 ing. She came out of the College just as I was going 
 past." 
 
 He was quite aware, without looking at her, of the 
 exact angle to which Edna's eyebrows raised them- 
 selves. 
 
72 TENSION 
 
 " I thought she stayed at the College working till 
 all hours, and then had to be escorted home by un- 
 fortunate Mark?" 
 
 " Apparently the procedure is not invariable." 
 
 Edna waited until the servants were out of the room, 
 and then spoke again. 
 
 "Julian about that girl I couldn't leave it at 
 that, you know. God knows how much I dislike any 
 form of interference, but then it's for Mark Easter 
 I can never feel that Mark hasn't a very real claim 
 on me." 
 
 " In the name of fortune, Edna, what are you talk- 
 ing about? " 
 
 " You mean," said Edna, fixing him with a coldly 
 thoughtful eye, and perfectly aware that he meant 
 nothing of the sort. " You mean that, with my ideals, 
 all humanity has a claim on me. I do hold that it is 
 so, and, as you know, I am always ready to give what 
 I can, though it may not be silver or gold. I was 
 rather struck by a curious little incident this morning, 
 Julian, which illustrates my meaning. I think I must 
 tell you." 
 
 Edna placed her white arms upon the table and 
 leant a little forward, her handsome face full of the 
 absorption that is the expression common to most 
 faces, handsome or otherwise, of which the owner 
 is talking freely about him or herself. 
 
 " For the last week or two I have been having a 
 poor woman out from Culmotith in here to do some 
 sewing, because Miss Brown is ill. I went in to talk 
 to her for a minute or two, the first day she came. I 
 hate them to feel as though they weren't of the same 
 flesh and blood as oneself and I was struck by 
 
TENSION 73 
 
 the sort of hard dreariness in her face, as though she 
 had never known the meaning of love or gladness. 
 I asked no questions, of course, but just laid my hand 
 on her shoulder and said quietly, ' I don't know if 
 you've ever read Browning perhaps not but there 
 is a line of his that I want you to think about while 
 you're mending those curtains : " God's in His 
 Heaven all's right with the world ! " And then 
 I left her. 
 
 " Well, she didn't make very much response, poor 
 thing, but every time I saw her when she came here 
 I've just, in my own thoughts, thrown a little Cloak 
 of Love round her. It seemed to me all that I could 
 do. And this morning after all these weeks, when 
 one just went quietly on without any visible sign of 
 success this morning, Julian, when I came into the 
 sewing-room she looked up and smiled." 
 
 Julian looked as though this consummation struck 
 him as being in the nature of an anti-climax. 
 
 " Day after day, I'd thrown my little Cloak of Love 
 round her and she'd come to feel the warmth of it 
 at last. It has made me very happy, Julian. You will 
 smile at me, very likely, but the winning of that poor 
 little seamstress to a brighter, truer outlook seems to 
 me well, just extraordinarily worth while." 
 
 There was silence, while Lady Rossiter's softened 
 expression denoted that she was devoting her reflec- 
 tions to the recent conquest. But presently she went 
 back to her original ground of departure. 
 
 " About Mark, though I care for him too much 
 to see him take any risks. And I find would to 
 God I hadn't ! that my original instinct was correct." 
 
 Lady Rossiter waited, but her husband showed no 
 
74 TENSION 
 
 disposition to ask for elucidation, and she was obliged 
 to go on unquestioned. 
 
 " It was this very girl Pauline Marchrose who 
 threw over Clarence Isbister because of his accident." 
 
 For once, Sir Julian displayed astonishment in the 
 right place. 
 
 " Good Lord ! " he said, in a startled voice. " I'd 
 forgotten all about that business." 
 
 There was a long pause. Then Julian remarked 
 slowly : 
 
 " Yes I should rather like to hear the rights of 
 that story. Perhaps, after all, Clarence Isbister 
 wasn't quite such an ass as I always thought him." 
 
VI 
 
 " How's the ' Tale of Two Sexes/ or whatever it's 
 called, getting on ? " flippantly enquired Sir Julian of 
 his agent. 
 
 " Coming out any day now," said Mark, with a grin, 
 " and the gifted authoress is coming to stay with us 
 next month. Will you and Lady Rossiter come and 
 dine one night? I'm afraid you'll get a very poor din- 
 ner, but you know what to expect of Sarah. I should 
 like to make it rather more amusing for Iris, if you 
 can face it." 
 
 "Delighted," said Sir Julian untruthfully. 
 
 The proposed entertainment was one which he had 
 sampled before, and for which he had conceived a pro- 
 found distaste. 
 
 An element of novelty was introduced, however, at 
 the eleventh hour, when the evening of the dinner- 
 party arrived. Mark greeted Sir Julian and Lady 
 Rossiter on the threshold. 
 
 " A creature called Douglas Garrett has turned up, 
 by what he and Iris call a coincidence. Of course, I 
 had to ask the chap to dinner, and he's gone to the 
 ' King's Head ' to get his things." 
 
 " The more the merrier," said Julian rather 
 gloomily. 
 
 " I've got Miss Marchrose to come, so we shall be 
 even numbers," said Mark cheerfully. 
 
 75 
 
76 TENSION 
 
 " Good." 
 
 " You should have let me know," murmured Edna 
 gently. " She may perhaps want keeping in counte- 
 nance a little, as regards evening dress. I could so 
 easily have put on a high gown." 
 
 Regrets on the score of Edna's modest and ex- 
 tremely becoming decolletage, half shrouded in tulle, 
 proved unnecessary. 
 
 Miss Iris Easter was in full dinner-dress, of a rose 
 colour that enhanced her extreme fairness and 
 prettiness. 
 
 Small as was Julian's admiration for her person- 
 ality, he was always struck afresh at the sight of her, 
 at the size of her enormous eyes as nearly violet 
 as any eyes outside the pages of a novel her crinkled, 
 fluffy hair, her general delicacy of form and feature. 
 Even the misguided instinct which had led her to 
 outline a charming upper lip with sealing-wax red 
 could not detract from her porcelain prettiness. 
 
 She was the possessor of a high, youthful, lisping 
 voice that always reminded Julian of the adjective 
 " fluted," and a pronunciation that is best indicated 
 by the fact that she always pronounced her own name 
 as though it were spelt " heiress." 
 
 At the sight of Lady Rossiter she cried : 
 
 " Eoh ! heow blessed to see you again, dear Lady 
 Rahsittur!" and almost similarly greeted Sir Julian, 
 with her head very much on one side. 
 
 Lady Rossiter said " My dear ! " in a tone which 
 simultaneously conveyed protest at Miss Easter's ex- 
 cessive effusion and the unspoken admission that any 
 lesser enthusiasm would never have met the case, and 
 Julian laughed a little, simply because Iris was so 
 
TENSION 77 
 
 pretty and her monstrous affectation had not yet had 
 time to produce its usual effect upon his temper. 
 
 "Where's your young man?" Mark asked her, 
 with a laugh. " He ought to be back by this time." 
 
 "Douglas?" said Iris, in a careless and interroga- 
 tory way, as though the enquiry might refer to any 
 number of attendant swains. " Oh, he'll be here 
 directly. I can hear the dear kiddies, Mark." 
 
 So could everyone else, as Ruthie and Ambrose 
 whined, argued, and stampeded their way downstairs. 
 
 The usual violent onslaught on the door-handle en- 
 sued, but after it had been wrenched from Ambrose 
 by Ruthie's superior height and strength of muscle, 
 they effected a decorous entry into the drawing-room 
 hand-in-hand. 
 
 " Oh, you sweet pets! " was the misguided exclama- 
 tion of their Auntie Iris. Julian wondered if it were 
 provoked by the unwonted starchy whiteness of 
 Ruthie's skirts, which had a look of having been out- 
 grown by her some months previously, or by the long, 
 pale sausage of hair that had been forced into an un- 
 willing curl on the extreme top of her brother's head. 
 
 " Say how do you do," Mark admonished them, 
 with a rather puzzled look as he took in the cleanly 
 aspect for once presented by his progeny. 
 
 " How fast Ruthie is growing ! " said Lady Rossiter, 
 in a slightly disparaging tone. Mark gazed regret- 
 fully at the legs of his daughter and muttered under 
 his moustache : 
 
 " They want someone to see to their clothes. 
 Sarah does her best, but servants can't be expected 
 
 Lady Rossiter turned upon him a deepened gaze 
 expressive of compassion, comprehension, and much 
 
78 TENSION 
 
 else that was destined to remain unappreciated, as 
 further sounds of arrival took Mark to the door. 
 
 " That was a cab, surely," said Lady Rossiter. " I 
 suppose it's Miss Marchrose. That seems rather an 
 expensive item for her." 
 
 "How dear of you, Lady Rossiter! I do believe 
 you always think of every little thing." 
 
 On this extravagant assertion of Miss Easter's her 
 brother returned to the drawing-room with his two 
 remaining guests. 
 
 Mr. Douglas Garrett was a tall, saturnine youth, 
 whose conversation principally consisted in empha- 
 sising the gulf separating the rest of humanity from 
 himself and some persons unspecified, but amalga- 
 mated under the monosyllable " we." 
 
 " We poor motor-cyclists can't hope to be as punc- 
 tual as the rest of the world," he observed to Lady 
 Rossiter, to whom he was presented by Iris as " My 
 great friend, Mr. Garrett, dear Lady Rossiter, but 
 everyone calls him Douglas." 
 
 " You will hardly need to be told that I have Scotch 
 blood in me, after that," gravely said Mr. Garrett. 
 " We Kelts are faithful to the traditional old names 
 of the Clan." 
 
 " Oh," said Iris, her head more on one side than 
 ever. " Isn't there some poem about, ' Douglas, 
 Douglas, tender and true'?" 
 
 Mr. Garrett inclined his head towards her in 
 acknowledgment and murmured something about 
 " we lovers of the dear old bard " which nobody 
 seemed quite to catch. 
 
 The room, not over large, now appeared to be 
 rather uncomfortably crowded, and pervaded, more- 
 
TENSION 79 
 
 over, by a growing consciousness that something must 
 be happening to the dinner. 
 
 Lady Rossiter said to Mark, " I always love a little 
 house, especially in winter. They are so much 
 warmer," at the same time holding a newspaper be- 
 tween herself and the fire, the size of which was out 
 of all proportion to the room and to the number of 
 its occupants. 
 
 " I know you love kiddies," Auntie Iris remarked 
 in a general sort of way to Miss Marchrose, Julian, 
 and Mr. Garrett. " These little people are too quaint 
 for words; aren't you, children? " 
 
 The rather embarrassing enquiry appeared to pre- 
 sent no difficulty to Ruthie, who made it the ground 
 of a sudden onslaught upon Mr. Garrett. 
 
 "Are you married?" she enquired with loudness 
 and assurance of the astonished young man. 
 
 " Certainly not," said Mr. Garrett, with emphasis. 
 Ruthie immediately took an uninvited seat upon his 
 knee. 
 
 "Come here, Ambrose dear," said Auntie Iris has- 
 tily, " and talk to us." 
 
 " Eh ? " said Ambrose, looking enquiringly at her 
 through his spectacles. 
 
 It needed no intuition to recognise either the intona- 
 tion or the vocabulary of Sarah in the pleasing mono- 
 syllable shot forth by Master Easter. 
 
 "What have you been doing to-day?" rather 
 rashly pursued Auntie Iris. 
 
 "Eh?" 
 
 " Don't say ' eh ' like that, darling. I can't imagine 
 what's come over the child." 
 
 " That's Peekaboo's new bad habit," his sister glee- 
 
8o TENSION 
 
 fully proclaimed. " He says ' eh ' to everything 
 
 now." 
 
 Ambrose looked venomously at her, but said noth- 
 ing. 
 
 " Do you know what we Scotch lads and lassies used 
 to be taught in our nursery days ? " Mr. Garrett en- 
 quired. 
 
 "Eh?" 
 
 "We used to be taught," Mr. Garrett said, with 
 great distinctness and an air of originality, " Birds in 
 their little nests agree." 
 
 " That's what Sarah says." 
 
 Mr. Garrett looked rather depressed at this unen- 
 thusiastic reception of his scholastic axiom. 
 
 There ensued a pause, during which Julian could 
 hear his host and Lady Rossiter pursuing a conversa- 
 tion in which the last thing had long been said. 
 
 He turned to Miss Marchrose, and ill-adapted as 
 were her twenty-eight years, her tired eyes, and her 
 rather worn mauve foulard to bear comparison with 
 the radiant Iris, Julian found it pleasant to look at 
 her and to listen to her charming voice. 
 
 The satisfaction, however, was not afforded to him 
 for long. " Auntie Iris ! Shall I say my piece ? " 
 Ruthie asked in her accustomedly penetrating accents. 
 
 Everybody looked doubtful. 
 
 " Hark ! " exclaimed Julian, quite involuntarily. 
 "Isn't that ?" 
 
 Sarah, looking . heated, announced dinner. 
 
 " Oh, what a pity ! " said Ruthie. " But I daresay 
 me and Ambrose will be still here when you come out 
 from dinner. So I can say it then." 
 
 With this altruistic reassurance still ringing in the 
 
TENSION 81 
 
 air, to an accompaniment of stubbornly reiterated 
 " ehs " from Ambrose, the dining-room was reached. 
 
 " I see that your novel is being very well advertised," 
 Sir Julian began conversation with his hostess. 
 " We have it on order, but it has not yet arrived. I 
 hope that means that the sales are going well." 
 
 " Don't hope that," said Mr. Garrett in a deep voice 
 across the table. 
 
 " Why not? " said Mark, after giving Sir Julian due 
 time for the enquiry which nothing would have in- 
 duced him to make. 
 
 " ' Why, Ben ! ' is not to be lightly put before the 
 multitude. Iris has shown extraordinary courage in 
 attacking a problem which could only present itself to 
 thinking minds. The very title tells one that a 
 Story of the Sexes. By the by, Iris, we realists of 
 the new school are inclined to wish that you had 
 made that the name of the book outright." 
 
 " No, no," said Mark, and added courageously, 
 " Besides, I like ' Why, Ben ! ' It's so original." 
 
 " Is your book a novel ? " Miss Marchrose enquired 
 of Iris. 
 
 Mr. Garrett took the reply upon himself. " An ex- 
 traordinarily powerful study of man's primitive needs," 
 he explained. 
 
 " Iris Miss Easter has gone straight down to 
 the very bed-rock of the soil. We present-day pagans 
 are gradually winning our way back to Mother 
 Nature, don't you think ? " 
 
 Julian involuntarily glanced at his wife at this per- 
 verted example of her own theories. 
 
 " Perhaps," said Edna very sweetly, " Mother 
 Nature is herself leading us home. One has only to 
 
82 TENSION 
 
 look round one, after all. Personally, I have a tiny, 
 tiny little nature-class which means a great deal to 
 me. And I make everyone join who has one little 
 spark of the Divine Fire, whoever it may be. But then 
 I'm afraid I'm a socialist a rank, rank democrat." 
 
 The announcement provided ample opportunity for 
 the more strenuous form of egotism known as Gen- 
 eral Conversation. 
 
 "Oh, Lady Rossiter!" piped Iris; "but I always 
 say that if the socialists divided everything up and 
 made everyone equal to-day, things would all go back 
 to the old way to-morrow ! " 
 
 " I must admit that we thinkers are all in favour 
 of democracy as a rule," said Mr. Douglas Garrett, 
 obviously resentful at having to agree with anyone 
 present ; " but take the Keltic element alone per- 
 haps I shall make my point best by putting my own 
 case to you. . . ." 
 
 His sombre gaze was fixed upon Miss Marchrose, 
 who brazenly ignored the whole of the last half of his 
 sentence, and said pleasantly that she knew nothing 
 about politics and had always been brought up to be- 
 lieve the whole subject quite unfit for feminine ears. 
 
 " This from an emancipated lady who has taken 
 up a business career!" said Edna, with a hint of 
 mockery. " I quite imagined you an advocate of 
 woman's rights, Miss Marchrose." 
 
 " The cry of Woman's Rights, my dear Edna, was 
 a catchword which has passed out of the language 
 while Miss Marchrose was still in the nursery," said 
 Sir Julian suavely ; " consequently it probably conveys 
 nothing to her generation, whatever it may do to ours." 
 
 Julian was quite conscious of the anything but doubt- 
 
TENSION 83 
 
 ful taste of this chivalrous rebuke, and felt rather 
 grateful to Iris for breaking in with the artless and 
 time-honoured statement that she always had all the 
 rights she wanted, and men always seemed ready to 
 give up their seats in omnibuses or railway carriages 
 so as to offer them to her. She also added that she 
 could not think why this was. 
 
 Sir Julian gave her the required explanation of the 
 phenomenon, while Mark turned with a certain aspect 
 of relief to his neighbour, Miss Marchrose, and Mr. 
 Douglas Garrett and Lady Rossiter looked disapprov- 
 ingly at one another and both began to talk at once 
 with immense firmness and determination. 
 
 Julian never knew by what means his wife accom- 
 plished her end, but at a later stage of dinner, when 
 Mark and Miss Marchrose had been laughing at one 
 another's jokes for some time, Edna's voice suddenly 
 fell audible on the other side of the table addressing 
 herself to Mr. Garrett: ". . . but Clarence Isbister 
 is the only son, and a particularly nice boy." 
 
 Julian would not look at Miss Marchrose, but Edna's 
 voice had been so distinct that both Mark and she 
 stopped speaking. It was Iris, however, with the 
 praiseworthy instinct of her kind for following up any 
 clue, however remote, that might eventually lead to an 
 only son, who asked : 
 
 " Are those the Shropshire Isbisters ? " 
 
 " A branch of the same family. But I was telling 
 Mr. er " 
 
 Edna made a slight and insultingly-meant pretence at 
 having forgotten Mr. Garrett's name. Nobody sup- 
 plied it, unless an exception be made of Iris, who mur- 
 mured that everyone called him Douglas. 
 
84 TENSION 
 
 " About some dear cousins of mine, Isbisters 
 
 people who live in Queen's Gate Gardens most of the 
 year." 
 
 Lady Rossiter paused, looking straight at Miss 
 Marchrose, who said nothing at all, and looked calmly 
 back at her. 
 
 There was complete silence for an instant. Before 
 it had assumed significance, Mark Easter broke it 
 with cheerful trivialities. 
 
 Julian wondered whether Miss Marchrose was con- 
 scious of challenge. 
 
 Her face was inscrutable, but he felt by no means 
 sure that she had not very accurately interpreted 
 Edna's unspoken warning that Mark Easter, if nec- 
 essary, should yet be told how Clarence Isbister had 
 fared at the hands of his betrothed. 
 
 When the not-too-successful dinner had come to an 
 end, and Mark had returned to the drawing-room with 
 the reluctant Julian and a now eloquent Garrett, whose 
 discourse on the convivial proclivities of " we-fellows- 
 about-town " had met with the smallest possible amount 
 of attention from either of his seniors, success seemed 
 within more measurable distance of the evening's en- 
 tertainment. 
 
 Julian was not, indeed, pleased to find the son and 
 daughter of the house sprawlingly occupying the 
 hearthrug, to the exclusion of everyone else from sight 
 or heat of the fire, but he perceived that Ruthie and 
 Ambrose, objectionable in themselves, had at least 
 served to obviate possible mutual friction between the 
 remaining occupants of the room. 
 
 Lady Rossiter was maintaining with persevering 
 sweetness a kindly catechism as to the tastes and 
 
TENSION 85 
 
 habits of Master Ambrose Easter, who responded with 
 his newly-acquired monosyllable, reiterated upon a 
 loud, enquiring, unintelligent note. Iris was pictur- 
 esquely turning over a heap of music just where the 
 lamplight fell on her bright, soft hair, and Miss March- 
 rose, leaning back in an armchair, hearkened with an 
 unsympathetic expression to Ruthie's noisy and highly- 
 emphasised rendering of an objectionable poem bla- 
 tantly entitled " I am Grandpa's Little Sweetheart." 
 
 " Children, I thought you were in bed long ago," 
 said Mark, eyeing them in a rather dejected fashion. 
 
 " Sarah can't put us to bed yet, she's got to wash 
 Up," said Ambrose, in a practical way. 
 
 " Listen, Daddy! " cried Ruthie: 
 
 " So I'm the little girlie who always has to go 
 And stand each happy Christmas beneath the mistletoe, 
 And Grandpa comes up softly " 
 
 "Ruthie! Stop that." 
 
 " But Daddy, it's my piece ! " 
 
 Mark sank into a chair with a sort of groan. 
 
 :< The Rector's daughter gives them lessons, and she 
 will teach them these things," he confided to Miss 
 Marchrose, who responded almost more sympathet- 
 ically than was courteous. 
 
 " We've just come to the end." 
 
 Accordingly, when Ruthie's final assertion of her 
 hypothetical grandparent's infatuation had died away, 
 and Lady Rossiter had said coldly, " Very nice, Ruthie 
 dear," and Mr. Garrett had muttered something about 
 we votaries of the Muse to Iris, and everybody else 
 had maintained an unenthusiastic silence, Mark Easter 
 
86 TENSION 
 
 bribed, commanded, and cajoled his children into im- 
 mediate disappearance from the drawing-room. 
 
 " Auntie Iris will come and tuck you up, darlings," 
 exclaimed Miss Easter winningly, waiting until they 
 might safely be assumed to be well out of hearing, and 
 merely with the evident intention of captivating Mr. 
 Douglas Garrett. 
 
 He immediately joined her as she stood, still flut- 
 tering music-leaves. 
 
 " Won't you sing ? " he enquired tenderly. 
 
 But Iris was in the case of the majority of those of 
 her sex known to sing. She had studied for some 
 time, reported ecstatic opinions of her voice, its power 
 and its quality, possessed a large quantity of music, 
 and had never been heard to utter a note. 
 
 " The Signora won't hear of my trying my voice 
 yet," said Iris, in the accustomed formula of these 
 carefully sheltered nightingales. " She thinks it may 
 take eight or ten years to develop it, and then I might 
 even think of Grand Opera. It seems too quaint, 
 doesn't it?" 
 
 This last tribute to modesty appearing to require no 
 reply, Mr. Garrett turned to Miss Marchrose. 
 
 " I fancy from your speaking voice that you can 
 sing," he said kindly. " We musicians are not over- 
 critical, as I'm sure Iris will tell you, and I'm sure it 
 would be delightful to hear you." 
 
 Miss Marchrose looked at her host. 
 
 " Do," he said. 
 
 He and Julian listened to her, while Iris and Mr. 
 Garrett retired to a distant sofa and conversed in un- 
 dertones, and Lady Rossiter put on one of her kindest 
 expressions. 
 
TENSION 87 
 
 Miss Marchrose had chosen the only old-fashioned 
 volume from amongst Iris's extremely modern selec- 
 tion, and she sang " Annie Laurie " and " Jock o' 
 Hazeldean." Her voice had the indescribable quality 
 of pathos that is sometimes heard in Irish voices, 
 and was fairly well trained, though it was quite evi- 
 dent that no cherishing Signora had ever had the 
 charge of it. It was not a beautiful voice, but every 
 note within its small compass was exceedingly sweet. 
 
 " Thanks thanks so much," said Mr. Garrett 
 from his sofa. " We Kelts have a very soft corner 
 for the Songs of Hame. Won't you try 'Loch 
 Lomond ' ? " 
 
 But Miss Marchrose said no, and that she was afraid 
 that she had forgotten that part of her audience was 
 Scotch, or she would never have attempted Scotch 
 songs, thus making an end of the pretty illusion that 
 her selection had been out of compliment to Mr. Gar- 
 rett and his nationality. 
 
 " Isn't your voice sufficiently trained to be of a 
 little use to you ? " Lady Rossiter asked the singer. 
 " Private engagements are really not so very dif- 
 ficult to get, and I'm sure you'd like adding to the 
 music of the world better than that eternal short- 
 hand." 
 
 " I am better qualified to add to the music of the 
 world on a typewriter than on a piano," said Miss 
 Marchrose. 
 
 " Go on singing," Julian told her. 
 
 This time she sang popular musical comedy songs, 
 rather amusingly, and with the slightest of accom- 
 paniments. 
 
 Mark roared with laughter, Lady Rossiter substi- 
 
88 TENSION 
 
 tuted a tolerant look for the one of kindness, and Iris 
 and Mr. Garrett exchanged a slight shudder. 
 
 " Well done ! " said Sir Julian, when she stopped. 
 " But sing ' Annie Laurie ' once more." 
 
 He listened with peculiar satisfaction while she did 
 as he had asked her. 
 
 The dinner-party was broken up by Lady Rossiter, 
 who said to Miss Marchrose as she bade her good 
 night : 
 
 " We mustn't keep your cab waiting ; that ' King's 
 Head ' fly charges abominably as it is. Besides, I 
 don't forget that you have to be at work at nine to- 
 morrow morning. Good night." 
 
 She drew on her fur coat, preparatory to walking 
 with Julian the few hundred yards to their own gates. 
 
 As they turned away, Mark Easter handed Miss 
 Marchrose into her cab, and they heard him say, 
 " Good night, Annie Laurie." 
 
VII 
 
 AFTER that evening, Mark often called Miss March- 
 rose " Annie Laurie." 
 
 Julian frequently wondered what the result might 
 be if he ever did so in the presence of Lady Rossiter. 
 
 Lady Rossiter, however, was much engaged with the 
 valedictory meetings at which the members of the 
 nature-class bade nature farewell until the return of 
 warmer weather, and had no immediate leisure to be- 
 stow upon the growing friendship between Mark and 
 Miss Marchrose. 
 
 Julian made his own observations, and was more 
 than ever convinced that Mark Easter was in no dan- 
 ger from a repetition of the fate which had overtaken 
 Captain Clarence Isbister. That episode, moreover, 
 remained to him utterly incomprehensible. He sur- 
 mised that the clue to it might be found in that contra- 
 diction between the half -mocking, half -defiant direct- 
 ness of Miss Marchrose's eyes and the curiously un- 
 conscious pathos of her mouth. 
 
 At the villa, Iris Easter for the time being remained 
 installed, reaping an astonishing harvest of press-cut- 
 tings, variously indicating surprise, disgust, and admi- 
 ration at the startling character of " Why, Ben! " 
 
 Mr. Douglas Garrett remained in Culmouth and in- 
 terpreted the press-cuttings to her in his character of 
 " one of we poor literary hacks." 
 
 In the first week of December there took place at 
 
 89 
 
90 TENSION 
 
 the College one of the General Committee meetings so 
 abhorred of Sir Julian. 
 
 " There are a great, great many things," said Edna 
 thoughtfully, " that I want to speak about at the meet- 
 ing. I have been so little to the College lately, but it is 
 not often out of my thoughts/' 
 
 " Bellew is taking the chair/' Sir Julian observed, 
 less irrelevantly than might have been supposed. 
 
 He was aware, and knew that Edna was aware, that 
 no check or limit would be placed by Alderman Bellew 
 on the College problems that Lady Rossiter might 
 choose to regard as coming within the scope of her in- 
 fluence. 
 
 He wondered for the hundredth time whether it 
 would not have been possible to decline the compli- 
 mentary offer of a position on the general committee 
 of management which had been made to Lady Rossiter 
 as wife of the leading director, and which he knew that 
 she cherished the more from being the only representa- 
 tive of her sex at the meetings. 
 
 " By the by/' he said suddenly, " the position of 
 Lady Superintendent carries, ipso facto, a place on the 
 General Committee. You will have another lady to 
 keep you in countenance, Edna/' 
 
 " What, poor Miss Marchrose? " 
 
 " Miss Marchrose," Julian assented, tacitly refusing 
 the epithet. 
 
 Lady Rossiter was silent for a moment and then said 
 quietly, " I'm so glad that I can spare the time to come 
 in to-day. She could never have faced all those men 
 by herself, poor thing, and they would probably have 
 disliked it as much as she would, or more. An un- 
 married woman is always at a disadvantage/' 
 
TENSION 91 
 
 Julian left undisputed this cardinal article of faith 
 characteristic of the wedded Englishwoman. 
 
 In the hall of the College they found Cooper, who 
 said in a congratulatory way, " Sir Julian and Lady 
 Rossiter ! You've come for the General Meeting. Let 
 me take your coat, Lady Rossiter, and put it here 
 just lay it across the chair-back. We're going to have 
 a good meeting, I think no absentees. Will you 
 wait in Mr. Fuller's rooms, Sir Julian? I'll open the 
 door." 
 
 Mr. Fairfax Fuller greeted his chief with an air of 
 relief that turned into a look of smouldering resent- 
 ment as Lady Rossiter shook hands with him, which 
 she always did, as she said, on principle, either disre- 
 garding or not observing the Superintendent's strong 
 tendency to entrench himself behind a writing-table 
 and thrust both hands into his pockets. 
 
 She did not, however, shake hands with Miss March- 
 rose, but nodded to her in a very kindly way and said 
 " Good morning " in a pleasant undertone. 
 
 Old Alderman Bellew was talking in the window to 
 Mark Easter. 
 
 "How are things going, Mr. Fuller?" Edna en- 
 quired with grave interest. 
 
 " Going right enough," muttered Fuller, looking at 
 his watch. 
 
 " Oh, I'm glad. You know I care so much. What 
 are you putting before the committee to-day? " 
 
 Fuller turned his back upon her. 
 
 " Miss Marchrose, give Lady Rossiter an agenda." 
 
 " Yes, yes," Edna cried, barely glancing at it, " but 
 I don't mean just the headings. For instance, ' Pro- 
 posed Saturday afternoon classes.' Is there really any 
 
92 TENSION 
 
 chance of it? You know the whole question is very, 
 very near my heart, Mr. Fuller." 
 
 " It's for discussion to-day," said Mr. Fuller, bend- 
 ing over his writing-table and intently studying the 
 cover of Pitman's Shorthand Dictionary. 
 
 " Oh, yes, but then there's so much that doesn't al- 
 ways come up at the big meetings. Le dessous des 
 cartes. In fact," Edna tactfully amended, " the other 
 side of the cards." 
 
 " Pocket Shorthand Dictionary, Centenary Edition," 
 was Fuller's explosive reply, as he traced the words on 
 the book before him with a square, tobacco-stained 
 forefinger. 
 
 Julian was vividly reminded of the highly unsuccess- 
 ful tea-party given in her office by Miss Marchrose. 
 He refrained from glancing at her, feeling intimately 
 convinced that the same thought was in her mind at 
 the moment. 
 
 "Shall we make a move, Fuller? It's just time." 
 
 Fairfax Fuller, with extreme and obvious thankful- 
 ness, hastily rose to comply with the suggestion. 
 
 Lady Rossiter's traditional seat was at the right-hand 
 side of the chairman. She placed herself there and 
 glanced round. Miss Marchrose entered just behind 
 Sir Julian. She looked not at all shy, but merely rather 
 doubtful. 
 
 Edna half -rose, with benevolent shielding in every 
 line of her admirably-hung coat and skirt, but Mark 
 Easter was before her. 
 
 " Here, Miss Marchrose, if you will," he said quietly, 
 and making way for her at the table as he spoke. She 
 gave him a quick glance of acknowledgment and took 
 the place that he indicated, between young Cooper and 
 
TENSION 93 
 
 himself at the end of the long table furthest from the 
 chair. Julian was seated at the bottom of the table, 
 facing the Alderman. 
 
 " Well, ladies and gentlemen," said the chairman, 
 " I'm happy to tell you that our Commercial and Tech- 
 nical College is doing well, doing very well. I know 
 how much you all have this enterprise at heart, and, 
 indeed, I may say that to the youth of this country, it 
 is an enterprise which cannot which can, rather, or 
 
 er I should say cannot be of anything but in- 
 estimable advantage." 
 
 The Alderman's opening gambit was new to nobody. 
 Cooper put his pencil behind his ear until such time as 
 the minutes of the conference should claim it from in- 
 action, and only began to fidget when old Bellew made 
 allusion to the increased attendance in the evening 
 classes for French, " so ably presided over by Mr. 
 Cooper." 
 
 " The financial statement submitted to the directors 
 by our good friend Mr. Fuller there, is a highly satis- 
 factory one, and the recent audit was conducted to the 
 complete er satisfac to the complete that is 
 
 to the er general " 
 
 The Alderman paused again, struggled, was defeated, 
 and ended defiantly, " To the general satisfaction." 
 
 " I will ask Mr. Fuller to read to the meeting those 
 figures which will best serve to put the position clearly 
 before the meeting." 
 
 Fairfax Fuller, standing at attention, his voice im- 
 passive, and his face full of triumph, recited a rapid 
 litany, in which the words " two thousand eight hun- 
 dred and eleven " predominated. 
 
 " Bravo," murmured Mark Easter, thus encouraging 
 
94 TENSION 
 
 the members of the meeting to a general rustle of ap- 
 plause at this indication that something, evidently num- 
 bering two thousand eight hundred and eleven parts, 
 had been gained, or saved, or judiciously made use of, 
 for their benefit. 
 
 " That, if I may say so, gentlemen," Mr. Fuller im- 
 pressively remarked, " is a very remarkable result. 
 When I came here as Supervisor, three years ago, mat- 
 ters were not in this state. Far from it. Mr. Mark 
 Easter here can tell you that, so can Sir Julian Ros- 
 siter. The College, if I may say so, has pulled itself 
 together since then. I don't wish to claim any credit 
 for myself." ("Liar!" mentally ejaculated Julian.) 
 " But the figures at the end of each year have shown a 
 very marked improvement. I hope next year we may 
 do better still. I may say, that I hope so confidently." 
 
 Fuller sat down again, pulling up the legs of his 
 trousers at the knees, and sufficiently intent upon the 
 operation to miss the smile of congratulation that Lady 
 Rossiter was holding in waiting for him. 
 
 The old chairman, breathing heavily, leant across 
 the table and addressed Sir Julian Rossiter. 
 
 " Now, Sir Julian, you're a younger man than I am, 
 and I'm going to ask you to raise the one or two 
 points we have here on the agenda. I think we want 
 the opinion of the meeting on one or two matters, eh? " 
 
 Julian spoke rapidly, and as concisely as possible. 
 Cooper's pencil flew across the pages of his note-book. 
 
 " The question has been raised of keeping the College 
 open on Saturday afternoons. There is plenty of evi- 
 dence that, if we did so, we should get quite a number 
 of town pupils. The early closing of the shops would 
 bring us various shop employees, who are only too 
 
TENSION 95 
 
 anxious to give an hour or two of their spare time to 
 learning. That, I believe, applies especially to the 
 shorthand and typewriting classes. The other subjects, 
 of course, have always been in less demand. The num- 
 ber of students is easily covered by the evening classes 
 on Tuesday and Fridays for such subjects as ac- 
 countancy, for instance, or French. The question is, 
 therefore, whether it would not be worth while to ar- 
 range for a later closing on Saturdays, so as to hold a 
 weekly class for beginners in shorthand and typing.'* 
 
 Sir Julian paused and Fairfax Fuller said eagerly: 
 
 " I could engage for our having five pupils, straight 
 off the reel, sir. I actually hold that number of ap- 
 plications." 
 
 " Excellent," said the Alderman, from the head of 
 the table. 
 
 " Ah ! " breathed Lady Rossiter. " One would be so 
 glad and proud, I feel that too, very strongly to 
 help lay the foundation of knowledge of that effi- 
 ciency which is to build up the forces of our Empire. 
 After all, it is the class we are trying to reach that is 
 the very backbone of the country." 
 
 The irrelevant diatribes to which Lady Rossiter was 
 almost invariably moved by a General Committee meet- 
 ing contributed in no small measure to her husband's 
 distaste for them. 
 
 He looked straight in front of him and addressed 
 the chairman. 
 
 " The whole question, of course, hinges on the staff 
 available. Miss Marchrose and Mr. Fuller are of 
 opinion that it could be arranged, but before approach- 
 ing any of the teachers, it was thought desirable to get 
 the committee's opinion." 
 
96 TENSION 
 
 " The question being," ponderously repeated the old 
 Alderman, looking round the table, " the question be- 
 ing, whether or not the College is to open on Saturday 
 afternoons for a special shorthand and typing course." 
 
 " I have here a scheme," began Fuller eagerly, but 
 Lady Rossiter's clear voice interrupted him. 
 
 " Mr. Chairman, I am only a woman, amongst all 
 you men, but I want you to let me speak." 
 
 Edna leant forward in her favourite attitude, her 
 arms folded upon the table, her furs flung back. 
 
 " Delighted, Lady Rossiter, delighted to hear your 
 views," growled the Alderman. 
 
 Julian, looking down his nose, saw Fuller thrust his 
 bull-neck forward and jab viciously at the blotting- 
 paper in front of him with a blunt pencil. 
 
 Mark Easter was pulling at his moustache, leaning 
 well back in his chair, and Miss Marchrose was gazing 
 at Lady Rossiter. Her dark brows were drawn to- 
 gether in a slight frown, that might have indicated 
 puzzledom or disapproval alike. 
 
 " It seems to me," said Edna, in the time-honoured 
 opening phrase of the amateur, " it seems to me, that 
 we perhaps none of us quite realise what it would mean 
 to ask any of the staff to give up that precious Satur- 
 day. I always feel that it must mean so much to them. 
 We, who can wander out into God's beautiful sunshine 
 at will, can hardly grasp what it must be like to be 
 imprisoned between four walls all the week, without 
 free time, without access to the fresh air, the movement 
 of the world outside. Oh," cried Edna, in a very im- 
 passioned manner indeed, " I think if one only puts 
 oneself into the place of those girl and women prison- 
 
TENSION 97 
 
 ers, toiling for their bread and butter all the week, it 
 will become impossible to take away the poor little 
 Saturday half -holiday which is all they have! There 
 is no one, I can confidently say, who has our great 
 national cause more at heart than I have, who would do 
 more to bring the light of education into the drab lives 
 of those poor shop creatures, but it seems to me that, 
 as members of the committee, we must give our first 
 thought, our first consideration, to our own our very 
 own workers. I, personally, have always felt the staff 
 at the College to be my very own." 
 
 Julian dared not glance at the representatives of 
 Lady Rossiter's very own, so vividly did his imagina- 
 tion set before him the infuriated lowering of Fuller's 
 dark brow, and the probable line of satire round Miss 
 Marchrose's curving lips. 
 
 He had frequently before heard Lady Rossiter moved 
 to a very similar eloquence, but neither custom nor a 
 resolute avoidance of any eye in the room could pre- 
 vent him from wincing inwardly while her voice rang 
 out. 
 
 " It almost seems to me that we forget sometimes 
 oh, I'm not speaking personally, Heaven knows, I'm 
 weak enough myself but sometimes I think we for- 
 get that it's flesh and blood like our own that we're 
 dealing with. These men and women who work for a 
 living are human beings like ourselves ! " 
 
 An electric silence followed the announcement. 
 
 Edna's head was moved slightly backwards, in the 
 manner of one who has flung down the gauntlet fear- 
 lessly. Her eyes travelled slowly round the table. 
 
 Suddenly she uttered an impulsive " Ah! " 
 
98 TENSION 
 
 Julian, taken unawares, glanced up quickly. His 
 wife's eager, ardent gaze had fallen upon Miss March- 
 rose, motionless in her place. 
 
 "My dear!" she exclaimed half under her breath, 
 but entirely audibly, " I forgot you I forgot you 
 were here. Have I hurt you ? " 
 
 "Good God!" broke from Fairfax Fuller, and al- 
 most at the same instant Mark Easter, with ingenious 
 clumsiness, sent an empty chair to the floor. 
 
 Sir Julian set his teeth and stood up. 
 
 " I am afraid that we have strayed from the subject 
 under discussion. May I suggest that Mr. Fuller 
 should outline the scheme? " 
 
 " Certainly, Sir Julian, by all means by all means," 
 said the chairman, looking harassed. 
 
 Fuller's scheme anticipated the humanitarian doubts 
 raised by Lady Rossiter. The Saturday class should 
 be open from two o'clock to four, and Saturday duty 
 taken weekly in rotation by each one of the three short- 
 hand teachers belonging to the College. The classes 
 of the week should be so rearranged as to enable those 
 members of the staff who had been at work on Satur- 
 day afternoon to return to the College at midday only 
 on Monday morning. 
 
 " Excellent," said Mark Easter. 
 
 " The Lady Superintendent, who will herself kindly 
 undertake one Saturday class in three, is of opinion that 
 the proposition is entirely practicable and would meet 
 with every response from the teachers concerned." 
 
 He turned enquiringly to Miss Marchrose. 
 
 " Yes, certainly," she said briefly. 
 
 " Then if Miss Marchrose will speak to the two lady 
 teachers, Miss Farmer and Miss Sandiloe " 
 
TENSION 99 
 
 Mark paused. 
 
 " Unless anyone else wishes to raise any further point 
 in that connection," said the chairman, " I may take it 
 that we are all agreed ? " 
 
 Sir Julian, half against his will, received the odd im- 
 pression that everyone was suffering from a strange 
 sensation as of being shattered, so that scarcely any 
 discussion of the point at issue ensued, and the remain- 
 ing business of the day was disposed of between Mark 
 Easter and Alderman Bellew with unwonted rapidity. 
 
 Fairfax Fuller spoke no word, and as soon as the 
 meeting ended left the room with no slightest pretence 
 at the civility of a valediction. 
 
 " Poor old Fuller ! " said Mark to Julian, with his 
 tolerant laugh. 
 
 " My sympathies are with Mr. Fuller," declared 
 Edna lightly. " He is a misogynist, poor dear. I 
 know he thinks that women at a meeting are a mistake ; 
 he was looking at poor Miss Marchrose with such an 
 expression of contempt and fury! However, he car- 
 ried his point as to the Saturday classes, and his scheme 
 certainly appealed to one. All the same, I'm glad I 
 had the courage to utter my little testimony before you 
 all." 
 
 Julian refrained from looking at Mark Easter. 
 
 " I am thinking of resigning from the committee," 
 he remarked gloomily. " Like Mr. Fuller, I am a 
 misogynist." 
 
VIII 
 
 AFTER this gratifying announcement from her hus- 
 band, it may be supposed the more readily that Lady 
 Rossiter, on the day following the General Committee 
 meeting, should elect to discover various small items 
 of business requiring her presence in London. 
 
 She left Culmhayes on Friday evening, and the fol- 
 lowing morning saw Julian at Mark Easter's front 
 door. 
 
 "Come out after wild duck, Mark?" 
 
 " Rather." 
 
 " The keeper tells me there are any amount out Salt 
 Marsh way. Could we raise another gun? " 
 
 " There's that fellow Garrett." 
 
 " Well, bring him along, if he cares to come. Start 
 from here at two o'clock ? " 
 
 " That'll do. I have to be at the office this morn- 
 ing." 
 
 " Good Lord, Mark, you live at that office, I believe, 
 when you aren't at the College. What does your sister 
 say to you?" 
 
 " She has other fish to fry," said Mark drily. 
 
 Julian admitted the truth in the implication when he 
 presently encountered Miss Easter loitering along the 
 lane. Her golden head was uncovered, and she wore 
 a curious cockney medley of black fur, silk decollete 
 blouse, tweed skirt, silk stockings, and high-heeled shoes 
 of thin suede. 
 
 100 
 
TENSION loi 
 
 She said, " Oh, Sir Julian ! " with great enthusiasm, 
 and insisted upon tripping along the hard, frozen lane 
 beside him as far as his own gate. 
 
 Sir Julian, who thought her pretty, if absurd, was 
 always able to endure her society with equanimity for 
 a short while, and made amiable enquiry after " Why, 
 Ben!" 
 
 "Oh, isn't it too, too wonderful?" said Iris, in 
 slightly awe-stricken tones. " The little tiny seed I 
 tried to sow bearing such wonderful fruit and shed- 
 ding light in so many dark places! " 
 
 " Very wonderful," Julian agreed, mentally applying 
 the epithet to the phenomenon of any seed possessing 
 the peculiar property of shedding light in dark places. 
 
 " It's perfectly dear of you to say so," warmly re- 
 sponded the authoress. 
 
 " Douglas Garrett, you know, my great friend, he 
 knows the most fearful amount about books, and he 
 says that ' Why, Ben ! ' has simply gone straight back 
 to earth." 
 
 " Sounds rather like a fox." 
 
 " I always think there's something so pure and strong 
 and passionate about the soil. That's why I gave Ben 
 a rural setting. The peasantry are so primitive. I'll 
 tell you a secret. I'm really down here to study the 
 setting for my next book." 
 
 " Are you writing another one now ? " 
 
 " 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 after- 
 noon 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 
 
102 TENSION 
 
 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 Culm- 
 hayes, 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 encoun- 
 tered 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, 
 
TENSION 103 
 
 knew that she was inwardly responsive with all the 
 quick gratitude of femininity for a man's rarely-ex- 
 pressed 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 incompe- 
 tence with some dismay throughout the afternoon. 
 
 " I want you to notice the strange, strong atmos- 
 pheric smell of decay in these lanes, Iris/' said Mr. 
 Garrett, taking control of the conversation in a high- 
 handed 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 un- 
 expectedly 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 shoot- 
 ing 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. 
 
104 TENSION 
 
 " 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 sor- 
 row or resolution." 
 
 Miss Marchrose glanced up quickly at the last words, 
 and although it was too dark for him to see her ex- 
 pression, 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 hap- 
 pening, 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, trans- 
 lating into his own phraseology. 
 
 " Those are much the worst," Miss Marchrose re- 
 peated, with conviction. " Sometimes I wonder if, 
 years and years hence, when things are very much 
 
TENSION 105 
 
 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 pow- 
 erful 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 sud- 
 den death, are no longer essential to constitute crisis. 
 The same reactions in humanity's present stage of de- 
 velopment are produced without any visible action or 
 events. Our consciousness has shifted to a more com- 
 plex 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 tele- 
 grams, or your good honest earthquake." 
 
 Mark Easter laughed. 
 
 " Telegrams and earthquakes meet with more sym- 
 pathy, and certainly with more assistance, from one's 
 neighbours, than any amount of atmospheric pressure," 
 said he. 
 
 Miss Marchrose laughed too, but the conviction re- 
 mained 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. 
 
io6 TENSION 
 
 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 breathless- 
 ness, 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 after- 
 noon? " 
 
 " 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 prot- 
 estations 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." 
 
TENSION 107 
 
 Mark uttered a rather incoherent sound, not inex- 
 pressive of dismay. 
 
 " Dare I ask how my children comported them- 
 selves ?" 
 
 " They were quite good." 
 
 " Poor things ! " said Mark, with a half -laugh. 
 " They are not often quite good. The Rector's daugh- 
 ter 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 govern- 
 ing 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 
 
io8 TENSION 
 
 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 mo- 
 nopolised 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 con- 
 tentedly, 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 pret- 
 tily idiotic disciple in the realms of idealism. Watch- 
 ing 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 dis- 
 tant 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 
 
TENSION 109 
 
 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 en- 
 tities. 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, with- 
 out 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 in- 
 spiration, to Miss Marchrose, " do come too. I'm 
 
no TENSION 
 
 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 in- 
 clined her golden head, but Julian thought that she 
 seemed pleased at the younger girl's very evident cor- 
 diality. 
 
 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 valedic- 
 tion, raising herself on tiptoes, and clinging in an en- 
 gaging 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 modi- 
 
TENSION in 
 
 fied by the recollection of that odd iiash 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 re- 
 spectfully resentful servant informed her that Miss 
 Ruthie and Master Ambrose were at the front door, de- 
 claring an urgent necessity for seeing Lady Rossiter. 
 
 " Tell them I am busy writing," said Edna hastily, 
 certainly not pausing for the application of her fa- 
 vourite, " 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 re- 
 buff 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 con- 
 vey her desire for immediate admission, Lady Rossi- 
 
 112 
 
TENSION 113 
 
 ter 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 ulti- 
 mate 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 completely 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 trium- 
 phantly. 
 
 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 cer- 
 tain 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, 
 
ii 4 TENSION 
 
 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 unre- 
 sponsiveness. 
 
 " 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 in- 
 exorably. 
 
 Ambrose thrust his large pale face forward and un- 
 expectedly 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 pos- 
 sible 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. 
 
 " Ruthie ! Let go of your little brother this mo- 
 ment! How dare you?" 
 
 Slap! 
 
 Scream ! 
 
 Bang! Slap! 
 
 " Ruth! I am ashamed of you." 
 
 Lady Rossiter clung to the curtains with one strong 
 
TENSION 115 
 
 white hand and endeavoured to reach and to separate 
 these makers of a hideous brawl with the other, but 
 was placed at a disadvantage by the extreme proba- 
 bility of overbalancing herself and contributing an 
 anti-climax to the situation. 
 
 " I'll pay you out, Peekaboo, I will," bellowed 
 Ruthie viciously, and abundantly making good the 
 threat as she uttered it. 
 
 Nor did she cease belabouring her victim until he had 
 torn himself from her grasp and fled back to the se- 
 curity of the avenue as fast as his short legs could 
 cover the ground. 
 
 Edna raised her person from its attitude of perilous 
 incline. 
 
 A more unprecedented opportunity for preaching the 
 great rule of love, with the text, as it were, under her 
 own window, had never yet come to rouse that passion 
 for propaganda which is so vital a characteristic of 
 those who know least of human nature. 
 
 It may definitely be assumed that Edna, gravely com- 
 pelling the representative of a younger generation into 
 the morning-room, and confronting her with earnest 
 tenderness, was more bent upon delivering herself of 
 beautiful truths than upon ascertaining their applica- 
 bility or otherwise to the individuality of her exceed- 
 ingly unpromising convert. 
 
 " Ruthie, Ruthie, do you know that cruelty and vio- 
 lence are the very worst sins that anyone can commit? 
 To hurt somebody else is to hurt one's own soul. . . . 
 You are sinning against the greatest law in the whole 
 world when you behave as you did just now the 
 Law of Love." 
 
n6 TENSION 
 
 Ruthie was silent, and Lady Rossiter, with a fleeting 
 thought of what an admirable mother she would have 
 made, drew the child gently to her. 
 
 " Don't you know that we all contribute, by every- 
 thing we do and say, to the good and bad in the world ? 
 When you are angry, you send out black, ugly thoughts 
 that help to destroy all the good and beautiful harmony 
 that God has put into this lovely world." 
 
 Ruthie cast an enquiring glance out of the window 
 at the bleak, grey sky, perfectly bare borders and rather 
 uncompromising Scotch firs which were alone visible 
 at the moment of this lovely world. 
 
 " When you have gentle, loving, beautiful thoughts," 
 said Lady Rossiter eloquently, " they send out little 
 wordless messages into the air and go to join the great 
 Divine chorus of Love that is going on everywhere 
 without stopping. You know we are all giving out 
 something all the time? " 
 
 Ruthie for the first time looked faintly interested. 
 
 "Am I giving?" 
 
 " Yes, dear, that's what I'm trying to tell you about. 
 That's why little Ruthie must " 
 
 "Is Daddy?" 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 "Is Peekaboo?" 
 
 " Yes," said Lady Rossiter, beginning to wonder if 
 a catalogue raisonnc of the Easter family and its con- 
 nections 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 mo- 
 
TENSION 117 
 
 ment with an unhallowed impulse before answer- 
 ing: 
 
 " 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 re- 
 member 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 sua, 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 appli- 
 cation 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. 
 
n8 TENSION 
 
 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 mother- 
 hood 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 gov- 
 
TENSION 119 
 
 erness, in the circumstances, is out of the ques- 
 tion." 
 
 " 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 excep- 
 tional, 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 it- 
 self." 
 
 " 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, re- 
 
120 TENSION 
 
 member 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 sacri- 
 fices 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 every- 
 body does know? There's no mystery, no conspiracy 
 of silence about it all ? " 
 
 " Not that I know of," said Mark, frankly aston- 
 ished. " 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 possi- 
 bilities 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 
 
TENSION 121 
 
 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 
 thought fulness 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 hus- 
 band 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 
 
122 TENSION 
 
 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, what- 
 ever 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: 
 
 "JF/iaf anass!" 
 
 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. 
 
 123 
 
i2 4 TENSION 
 
 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 d?rkly: 
 
 " 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 infor- 
 mative. 
 
 " 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 
 
TENSION 125 
 
 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 ex- 
 pression 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 Gar- 
 rett 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 dis- 
 cussing " 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. 
 
126 TENSION 
 
 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 back- 
 wards and forwards between London and Devonshire. 
 She had developed an enthusiasm for Miss Marchrose, 
 and refused to give up her course of typewriting les- 
 sons 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 situa- 
 tion 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 whom- 
 soever 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 
 
TENSION 127 
 
 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 preco- 
 cious-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 dis- 
 posal of chairs next to her own rostrum. 
 
128 TENSION 
 
 " You mustn't be nervous," Lady Rossiter said to 
 her smilingly, in an undertone that might have an- 
 swered 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 com- 
 ing 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 shoul- 
 ders, 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 rail- 
 way 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 enun- 
 ciation distinct. She varied neither her intonation nor 
 the rate at which she read from the printed page be- 
 fore 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 
 
TENSION 129 
 
 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 look- 
 ing resentfully at the aggressively proficient child in 
 front of her ; and the other one, though scribbling fran- 
 tically, 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 long- 
 hand. 
 
 Iris Easter watched the class with very evident in- 
 terest 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, de- 
 notes 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 
 
i 3 o TENSION 
 
 look at Miss Marchrose with complete satisfaction, 
 and even ask herself whether that woman could pos- 
 sibly 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 long- 
 hand," said Miss Marchrose serenely, " please give your 
 papers in at the desk, Classroom I, and for the bene- 
 fit 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 any- 
 thing, 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 
 
TENSION 131 
 
 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 an- 
 swered 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 
 
132 TENSION 
 
 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 un- 
 brilliant 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 some- 
 times but one has to tread, oh so lightly and deli- 
 cately! 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 with- 
 out 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." 
 
TENSION 133 
 
 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 de- 
 cided that to do so would be a tacit assumption of 
 facts better unrecognised. 
 
 Then, for she was of acute perceptions, she became 
 subtly aware that disturbance was in the air. 
 
 Miss Marchrose had whitened quite perceptibly, and 
 then Lady Rossiter received the odd impression that 
 some weapon of vengeance had been seized upon by 
 her, suspended for an instant, and tacitly rejected as 
 unworthy. 
 
 The impression was instantly intensified when Miss 
 Marchrose spoke at last, although she merely said, 
 " I have to speak to Mr. Fuller. Forgive me if I use 
 the telephone for one moment." 
 
 Hastily and unwisely, Edna tested her own sudden 
 suspicion. 
 
 "Did you know Mark Easter's story already?" 
 
 Miss Marchrose looked down as though from an 
 infinite height, her mobile face purposely supercilious. 
 
 " Oh, yes," said she, her voice full of deliberate 
 scorn. 
 
 Edna did not ask from whence the information had 
 emanated, since she was suddenly aware, with all the 
 certainty of intuition, that Miss Marchrose had un- 
 doubtedly derived her knowledge of Mark Easter's 
 affairs direct from himself. 
 
XI 
 
 As Lady Rossiter proceeded on her way downstairs, 
 leaving Iris to the completion of her lesson, she was 
 waylaid by young Cooper. 
 
 " I've been waiting for you, in the hope that you 
 would spare me one moment, Lady Rossiter. There 
 was a little matter about which the staff wanted me to 
 consult you." 
 
 Such a reference appealed to Edna at any time, and 
 came as balm to the present state of her spirit, at the 
 moment so seriously discomposed that she had been 
 obliged to repeat to herself more than once, as she went 
 downstairs : 
 
 " Still lovingly to bear a fool, 
 Nor speak till wrath has time to cool, 
 And thus live out my golden rule." 
 
 " I always have time for the business of the 
 College, as you know," she responded graciously. 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Why, the staff thought the idea, as a matter of 
 fact, originated with me, and they have all taken it up 
 quite enthusiastically we thought that we should 
 very much like, in view of our long connection with 
 Mr. Mark Easter, to make a little presentation to Miss 
 Iris Easter, in honour of her wedding. Just a small 
 affair, you know subscribed for by the staff of the 
 College." 
 
 134 
 
TENSION 135 
 
 "But how charming of you all! Only no one 
 must be put to serious expense. I am sure Miss 
 Easter would be dreadfully distressed if that hap- 
 pened." 
 
 Cooper looked rather offended. 
 
 " Certainly not, Lady Rossiter. I think you may 
 rely upon my judgment not to make excessive demands. 
 But, of course, if you think anyone else had better col- 
 lect the money, I shall resign the job into other hands 
 with the very greatest pleasure." 
 
 Edna hastily uttered the necessary disclaimers. 
 
 " It was suggested," said Cooper, still with reserve 
 in his voice, " that you would be so very kind as to assist 
 at the presentation, which might perhaps be made the 
 occasion for some small gathering such as we had last 
 year at Christmas. I find that the members of the 
 staff are quite anxious for it." 
 
 Lady Rossiter remembered, without much enthu- 
 siasm, a New Year party at which the staff of the Com- 
 mercial and Technical College had entertained their 
 directors, pupils and acquaintances, in a large class- 
 room decorated with bunting for the occasion. 
 
 " That is a most excellent idea/' she said slowly, 
 partly because it sounded sympathetic and partly in 
 order to gain time. " But perhaps Miss Easter might 
 feel rather shy in the presence of so many people who 
 would be strange to her. What about a little infor- 
 mal tea-party? But, of course, all that can be settled 
 later. What are you thinking of giving her? " 
 
 " Nothing has been actually decided upon, though / 
 should suggest some little thing in silver. The ladies 
 always like silver. I remember selecting a wedding- 
 present for a lady friend," said Cooper, looking slightly 
 
136 TENSION 
 
 sentimental, " that proved highly acceptable. A silver 
 serviette-ring it was, with her initials her new in- 
 itials engraved upon it." 
 
 " I'm sure it was delightful, and Miss Easter is 
 certain to like anything that you all choose." 
 
 " We all know her, and she's been here quite a lot 
 lately, and of course Mr. Mark Easter does a great 
 deal for the staff, and we're all very fond of him," 
 added Cooper, with a sudden outburst of naturalness. 
 
 Edna, in common with quite a number of other peo- 
 ple, always underwent, more or less unconsciously, a 
 slight stirring of resentment at any spontaneous 
 tribute to someone else's popularity. 
 
 It was perhaps this which moved her to a rather 
 thin and repressive smile. 
 
 " It will gratify Mr. Easter very much indeed, I 
 know. And after all, it's the thought that is of real 
 value not the offering. Do tell the staff how very 
 much I hope they will let me hear any further ideas." 
 
 " Thanks very much, Lady Rossiter," said Cooper, 
 rather stiffly. 
 
 Edna, dissatisfied, reflected for a moment. 
 
 " Couldn't you all come out to Culmhayes and talk 
 it over with me?" she enquired, as by an inspiration. 
 " We might form a little committee, and go into ways 
 and means, and perhaps I could find out some trifle that 
 would please Miss Easter, and let you know. How 
 would that be?" 
 
 " It's very kind of you. I myself always prefer to 
 have these things on a business footing," said Cooper, 
 looking cheered. " I am essentially a business man." 
 
 "Then what about Sunday afternoon? Perhaps 
 you and Miss Farmer and what about Mr. Fuller? " 
 
TENSION 137 
 
 If young Cooper could have answered all too cer- 
 tainly, " what about Fuller," he refrained from any 
 such disastrous candour. But he gave his grateful 
 pledge of coming to Culmhayes on the following Sun- 
 day with as many of the staff as were considered 
 necessary to form a small committee. Cooper was 
 insistent upon the necessity for such. 
 
 " You notice that I like things done in order? " said 
 he. 
 
 " Yes, indeed," murmured Edna. " Here is Miss 
 Easter coming downstairs, so I suppose the lesson is 
 over, and we must be going. Good-bye, Mr. Cooper 
 -I shan't forget." 
 
 " Let me see you down. Hark ! " said Cooper, 
 with an expression of animated interest. 
 
 Iris and Lady Rossiter both paused. 
 
 "Did you hear my knee-joint crack just now? 
 That was my knee. I put it out at football, months 
 ago, and since then it cracks, like that." 
 
 And with this addition to the sum total of their gen- 
 eral information, Edna and Miss Easter drove away 
 from the College. 
 
 " Poor young man ! " said Lady Rossiter leniently. 
 
 " Oh, the dear College ! I wish my lessons hadn't 
 come to an end, but of course I shan't have time now. 
 Miss Marchrose is going to come and stay with us, 
 later on when 
 
 " When you're married? " 
 
 Iris put her head on one side. 
 
 " It is nice and generous of you to have taken a 
 fancy to poor Miss Marchrose," said Lady Rossiter, 
 who seldom divested the Lady Superintendent of the 
 adjective. " But after all, there are one or two things 
 
138 TENSION 
 
 to be considered. Your husband may not take a very 
 great fancy to her." 
 
 Edna's warning would have tallied much more with 
 her very real distrust of the proposed scheme had 
 she omitted the word " not " in the last sentence. 
 
 Iris, however, answered confidently, " Oh, but 
 Douglas will always like my friends, and I shall always 
 like his. We have every single thing in common, 
 you know." 
 
 Leaving Iris to her delusion, that wreathed her 
 pretty, silly little face in dreamy smiles, Lady Rossi- 
 ter leant back and indulged in reflections of her own. 
 She was more tired than was usual with her, and her 
 habitual serenity of mind was invaded by a certain dis- 
 content of which she did not seek to analyse the cause. 
 
 She looked at the hoar-frost, sparkling on the 
 hedges, and at the chill blue of the sky, and perfunc- 
 torily told herself, as often before, " God's in His 
 Heaven all's right with the world " ; recalled, in a 
 vague and disjointed manner, fragments of R. L, 
 Stevenson that she had often thought to be peculiarly 
 applicable to herself, and remembered that two of her 
 particular friends were a humble little dressmaker and 
 a quaint old seafarer; she humorously adjured her- 
 self to " t'ink ob de blessings^ children, t'ink ob de 
 blessings." But all was of no avail. She felt sad- 
 dened, inexplicably depressed. 
 
 For many years Edna Rossiter had believed that 
 her strong suit, so to speak, was Love. She " gave 
 out." 
 
 As a young girl, she had perhaps fancied, as young 
 girls are prone to fancy, that only as the heroine of 
 a grande passion could she fulfil herself. Her first 
 
TENSION 139 
 
 love had disappointed her. A cheerful, beauty-loving 
 young architect, he had failed to return adequate replies 
 to the letters, pulsating with quotations from Laurence 
 Hope, in which Edna had poured forth her soul dur- 
 ing a temporary absence. 
 
 She began to doubt, to read the verses of Arthur 
 Symons, and to think that only by suffering could she 
 find herself. Even the breaking-off of her engage- 
 ment, however, failed immediately to terminate the 
 quest successfully. 
 
 " I have tried not to be bitter, " was the keynote of 
 Edna's twenties. 
 
 By the time she had reached the stage of quoting: 
 
 "How many loved your moments of glad grace 
 And loved your beauty with love false or true, 
 But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, 
 And loved the sorrows in your changing face " 
 
 lines which the majority of women read with such 
 a singular sense of applicability to their own needs 
 Edna had met Sir Julian Rossiter. 
 
 She was a great deal more beautiful at nine-and- 
 twenty than at nineteen, and she had, moreover, learnt 
 to smile. Tragedy, in which she really excelled, had 
 proved strangely unprovocative of interest in anyone 
 but herself, and she had therefore been obliged to 
 cultivate the large, grave serenity ^that forgets itself in 
 the thought of others. 
 
 It was not this, however, which had caused Sir 
 Julian to ask her to marry him. 
 
 Edna disliked the memory of the scene that had led 
 to his proposal, although time and her own industry 
 had draped the situation with much that it had lacked 
 
TENSION 
 
 at the moment. She had met him on board ship, and 
 her mother, a slightly vulgar woman who had always 
 rather disliked the only one of her daughters whom 
 she had not married off in early girlhood, had speedily 
 discovered that the owner of Culmhayes was in need 
 of a wife. Edna, who had so long and so vainly vis- 
 ualised herself as the ideal Helo'ise to an as yet-un found 
 Abelard, had had time to become heartily sick of 
 such barren dreams, and was by now prepared to re- 
 linquish them in favour of mere emancipation from 
 spinsterhood and a restricted life. 
 
 For three of the endless days of a sea-voyage Sir 
 Julian had appeared to be attracted by her, and on 
 the fourth he had devoted himself to a blue-eyed 
 widow, travelling second-class. The voyage was 
 nearly over before the first-class passengers saw him 
 again in their midst. Edna could remember still the 
 evening before Dover was reached, when her mother, 
 exasperated, had uttered the short, sudden gibe that had 
 put into words the humiliating truth never before 
 spoken between them. 
 
 She remembered still the despairing resentment that 
 had seized upon her, at her realisation that such taunts, 
 once uttered, may speedily become common, between 
 people in constant proximity and without mutual re- 
 spect. 
 
 Her rare tears had shaken her, and it was Sir 
 Julian who had found her, crying in a solitary corner 
 of the deck. Edna could remember though never 
 in her life did she willingly recall that anger and 
 misery together had made her give him, in reply to 
 his urgent enquiry, something that very nearly ap- 
 
TENSION 141 
 
 preached to the raw, crude truth. And that night 
 she had said to herself: 
 
 " Thank Heaven, I shall never see him again ! " 
 
 The next morning he had asked her to marry him, 
 making no protestations of passion such as she had 
 once thought herself fated to evoke, but suggesting 
 a mutual companionship, likely to prove of solace- to 
 both, and to release her from a situation which had 
 become intolerable to her. 
 
 Julian's candour had humiliated her bitterly, for 
 her one moment of envisaging the truth in all its bit- 
 terness had passed from her. 
 
 But she had accepted him. 
 
 She would not have believed it, had she been told 
 that the evening of that self -betrayal, of which she 
 thrust the memory away thenceforward, had witnessed 
 the truest, most intimate relationship in which she and 
 her husband were destined ever to stand towards one 
 another. 
 
 The prosperous chatelaine of Culmhayes had had 
 many years in which to forget the mortifications and 
 disappointments of her pre-marriage days. She ruled 
 an admirable household admirably, she " gave out," 
 she discovered Nature, and she opposed a perpetual 
 exhalation of large-hearted tolerance to the small 
 shafts of rather indifferent satire that more and more 
 formed the basis of Sir Julian's conjugal intercourse. 
 
 Edna indulged in no bitterness of resentment against 
 her husband, except on the rare occasions when she, 
 always unwillingly, remembered that chivalry and not 
 love had prompted his offer of marriage to her. His 
 frequent captiousness, his small verbal incivilities, his 
 
142 TENSION 
 
 absence of any sympathy with her ideals, even his 
 systematic reticence as to his personal thoughts and 
 feelings, roused nothing in her beyond an appreciation 
 of the opportunity that they provided for breadths of 
 sunny-hearted charity. She was not an unhappy 
 woman, and never made the mistake of calling her- 
 self one. Even the absence of children she regretted 
 more for their own sakes than for hers, since she be- 
 lieved that her maternal instinct had become diverted 
 into more universal and more spacious channels than 
 could have been the case had it been exercised solely 
 upon sons or daughters of her own. 
 
 That Sir Julian was " difficult " she never disguised 
 from herself. He had, in fact, become rather more 
 " difficult " year by year, and Edna had long since 
 given up her early attempts to probe into his point of 
 view. She came to the conclusion that Julian was in- 
 articulate because he was unenlightened, that he liked 
 " Jorrocks," and that he was permanently discontented 
 because he had not enough to do and refused to en- 
 visage the deeper issues of life. 
 
 She reflected complacently sometimes that they had 
 never had a quarrel and remained unaware that the 
 fact admirably measured the extent of their estrange- 
 ment. 
 
 Lady Rossiter sighed at the end of her retrospect. 
 
 "Don't you like Miss Marchrose?" enquired Iris 
 quite suddenly. 
 
 "But I wasn't thinking about her! What makes 
 you ask? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Iris vaguely. " I've some- 
 times thought you didn't like her awfully much." 
 
 Lady Rossiter reflected before making any reply. 
 
TENSION 143 
 
 She held the theory that the expression of an opinion 
 should always be a well-considered matter, and was 
 apt to say that words were like thistledown and might 
 blow to unsuspected distances and in unforeseen di- 
 rections. 
 
 There was, however, nothing of the airy quality of 
 thistledown in her deliberately given answer. 
 
 " Miss Marchrose does not strike me as attractive," 
 she said carefully, " but a young woman earning her 
 own living is hardly to be judged by the rules that we 
 should apply to one of nous aittres. I never care to 
 say that I dislike anyone it seems to me so trivial, 
 so short-sighted, to dislike the little that one can know 
 of any fellow-creature. The Divine Spark is always 
 lurking somewhere although I admit that some- 
 times, in the less advanced, it is difficult really to hold 
 fast to that belief." 
 
 " Oh, but you always do ! No one is like you," said 
 Miss Easter, in all good faith. " I don't believe I've 
 ever heard you say an unkind word of anybody." 
 
 Lady Rossiter smiled. 
 
 " The great thing," she observed gently, " is never 
 to say anything, unless one can say something kind. 
 And it is very strange, Iris dear, how one can nearly 
 always find something that is nice and yet true, to 
 say of everyone." 
 
 " You can, I'm sure." 
 
 Iris was always complaisant, besides being young 
 and happy and therefore disposed to be uncritical, and 
 she had long entertained a simple and quite unreason- 
 ing admiration for Lady Rossiter. 
 
 Her enthusiasm for Miss Marchrose was a recent 
 impulse only, and did not prevent her from a fur- 
 
144 TENSION 
 
 ther endeavour to obtain light upon Lady Rossiter' s 
 views. 
 
 " She's quite too nice to me, always, and I do think 
 she must have been pretty. In fact, she is now, in a 
 sort of way." 
 
 " Quite/' agreed Lady Rossiter serenely. 
 
 " Sometimes I wonder if she has foreign blood in 
 her." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " I'm not sure," said Miss Easter impressively, " that 
 I should quite, absolutely, always trust her." 
 
 Lady Rossiter 's common-sense did not altogether 
 admit of her accepting so remarkable a reason for as- 
 suming untrustworthiness, but she was entirely in ac- 
 cord with the result of Miss Easter's logic, however de- 
 fective the means by which that result was obtained. 
 
 " It's curious that you should say that," she re- 
 marked slowly. " Instinct is a strange thing, Iris." 
 
 "Yes, isn't it? They always say a woman's in- 
 stinct is never wrong," glibly returned Miss Easter. 
 " But I don't mean anything unkind about Miss March- 
 rose, truly I don't; there's only one thing I don't like 
 about her." 
 
 Lady Rossiter made a sound expressive of enquiry. 
 
 " I never can bear people who try to be sarcastic," 
 murmured Iris, voicing unaware the fundamental dis- 
 trust which governs the whole of the British middle 
 classes. 
 
 " Satire is a very cheap, unworthy weapon," said 
 Lady Rossiter, not without inward reminiscences of 
 Sir Julian as she spoke. " But to be quite fair, I don't 
 think I've ever heard poor Miss Marchrose try to be 
 satirical or anything of that sort. She's generally 
 
TENSION 145 
 
 rather tongue-tied and awkward when I'm there. You 
 see, Iris, I'm afraid she knows that I have heard a 
 good deal about her, one way and another." 
 
 Lady Rossiter hesitated, remembered Mark, and de- 
 cided to go on. 
 
 " I am afraid there is not much doubt that Miss 
 Marchrose once did a very, very heartless action, and 
 I am afraid that heartlessness and meanness are only 
 too terribly apt to go together. There is something 
 about the hard lines of her mouth but after all, how 
 can I cast the first stone? I had rather let the facts 
 speak for themselves." 
 
 Followed the narrative of Captain Isbister, his en- 
 gagement to a girl not of his own class, his accident, 
 his offer to release the girl, and her prompt acceptance 
 of it, culminating in the unbridled display of anguish 
 witnessed in the nursing-home by Captain Isbister's at- 
 tendant, which climax was received by Iris far other- 
 wise than it had once been received by Sir Julian Ros- 
 siter. 
 
 " Oh, oh, poor dear thing ! How too terrible ! I 
 am sure Douglas would go on exactly like that if I ever 
 threw him over. But of course I never could. It's 
 the most dreadful thing I ever heard of how any- 
 one could be so heartless ! " 
 
 " How indeed ! " sadly ejaculated Lady Rossiter. 
 " And you know, Iris, by some miracle of science, he 
 actually did recover, and can walk as well as you or I. 
 So if she had been steadfast, they would have been 
 married by this time, and she would have been in a 
 very different position now." 
 
 " It's like a book," said Iris, awe-stricken. " But 
 she couldn't have cared for him really." 
 
146 TENSION 
 
 " Indeed, no ! I thank God from the bottom of my 
 heart that poor Clarence found out in time what a mis- 
 take he had made. He was younger than she, poor 
 boy, and it was all thoroughly unsuitable. He has 
 found his ideal since then." 
 
 Iris looked a shade disappointed. 
 
 " Ah, my dear, you are thinking that nothing is like 
 first love and in a way it's true. But there's an- 
 other kind of love, too, that comes later, when one has 
 outgrown the personal part of it all the divine sel- 
 fishness that is so sweet and natural and inevitable in 
 youth. And that is the love, the great universal ten- 
 derness, that comes to one later on, and that seeks a 
 widening circle, and a bigger outlet, in order to spend 
 itself on others. But you know nothing about that 
 yet, childie dear. How should you, indeed? " 
 
 Very few people like to be told that there is anything 
 in the gamut of the emotions of which they know noth- 
 ing, and Iris looked with rather an unresponsive eye at 
 her dear Lady Rossiter. 
 
 " After all," said that lady, rendering her usual smil- 
 ing acknowledgment to the Deity, " after all, there are 
 many compensations for growing old, in God's world." 
 
 The aphorism admitted not at all of contradiction, 
 and hardly of agreement, and Iris accordingly relapsed 
 into silence. 
 
 " I will let you know about my little tea-party for 
 the staff," was Lady Rossiter's last remark. ' They 
 will like to see your bright face and pretty frock, dear. 
 Their lives are very drab." 
 
 The bright face and pretty frock of Iris Easter, how- 
 ever, were not allowed to shed illumination upon the 
 drab lives of Lady Rossiter's guests on Sunday until 
 
TENSION 147 
 
 the wedding-present question had been inadequately 
 discussed. 
 
 Mr. Cooper was mounted upon verbal stilts, and 
 adorned his discourse with many tags of commercial 
 phraseology ; Miss Farmer would only say that she was 
 sure Miss Easter would be pleased whatever they 
 settled; and Miss Sandiloe giggled and looked mean- 
 ingly at Mr. Cooper. Needless to say, Mr. Fairfax 
 Fuller put in no appearance. 
 
 Edna was by turns kindly, practical, helpful and 
 sympathetic, but still no decision could be reached. 
 
 " What is the amount subscribed ? " 
 
 " Just over two pounds, so far, but there are a few 
 more responses to come in." 
 
 " It isn't the amount, Lady Rossiter, is it? " wearily 
 enquired Miss Farmer. 
 
 " Certainly not. The thought is everything." 
 
 It almost appeared as though the thought was indeed 
 to be everything. 
 
 " Have you decided what you wish to give ? " 
 
 The three members of the staff exchanged glances. 
 
 " So many people thought of a pair of silver vases." 
 
 " Or a little travelling-clock, Lady Rossiter." 
 
 " A good many voted for a small paper-knife, as 
 being individual, like," said Cooper. 
 
 " Charming," warmly said Lady Rossiter, appearing 
 to address all her three vis-a-vis at once. 
 
 The discussion continued at a similar rate of progress 
 for the remainder of the afternoon. 
 
 Edna began to feel considerably taxed at the in- 
 ordinate extent to which she was required to " give 
 out," in her own favourite phrase. There were limits 
 to the life-giving forces that could be radiated for the 
 
148 TENSION 
 
 benefit of three discursive and unbusinesslike fellow- 
 creatures on a cold afternoon in winter. True to her 
 principles, she reflected, with a humorousness that re- 
 mained strictly tender, that she must definitely take the 
 responsibility for which they all appeared so inadequate 
 onto her own shoulders. 
 
 She prepared to intimate her decision by a leading 
 question. 
 
 " And about the actual presentation ? Perhaps it 
 would prevent little jealousies, little follies of that sort 
 after all, human nature is human nature if it 
 were presented by someone not quite of the College 
 personnel? Of course, in the name of you all, by 
 someone who would be able to make a little speech. 
 Oh, nothing formal, of course, only a few words, but 
 one wants those to be the right words ! I don't know 
 if " 
 
 She paused. 
 
 " It was proposed," said Cooper " and I may add 
 carried unanimously that the presentation and a few 
 words of good wishes from us all " 
 
 " Being a good speaker," interpolated Miss 
 
 Sandiloe. 
 
 " And in an official position, so to speak and 
 
 a friend of Miss Easter's," said Miss Farmer, also in 
 parentheses. 
 
 Cooper shot a repressive glance left and right. " I 
 am just telling Lady Rossiter. The obvious person, 
 of course, Lady Rossiter, has been approached. Miss 
 Marchrose has kindly agreed to make the presentation 
 on behalf of the staff." 
 
XII 
 
 IT was left to Sir Julian, as not infrequently hap- 
 pened, to look upon the varied assortment of flotsam 
 and jetsam thrown up by the tide of Lady Rossiter's 
 eloquence. 
 
 Whilst Edna sat indoors, rather limply endeavouring 
 to maintain a high level of sympathetic brightness 
 round the exhausted subject of Miss Easter's projected 
 wedding-present, Julian, having ascertained the pres- 
 ence of his three guests indoors, hastily walked out of 
 the house. 
 
 He sought his habitual refuge the long, deserted 
 stretch of shore skirted by a pebbly ridge, locally known 
 as the sea-wall. 
 
 There he found Miss Marchrose. 
 
 If Julian had counted upon finding the foam-flecked, 
 windy spot in its usual state of solitude, he gave no 
 sign of being disconcerted. 
 
 They exchanged greetings and prepared to walk the 
 mile length of the sea-wall together. In spite of the 
 strength of the salt wind blowing full against them, the 
 blue knitted cap that she wore needed no restraining 
 hand, and she was restfully free from fluttering ends 
 and tags of garments. 
 
 With great abruptness she began to speak as they 
 walked. 
 
 " I knew that you were related to the Isbisters, of 
 course. If you remember, Lady Rossiter said some- 
 
 149 
 
150 TENSION 
 
 thing about them that night that we had dinner to- 
 gether, and I thought at the time " 
 
 She broke off, and Julian, conscious of extreme cu- 
 riosity as to the reason why she had suddenly intro- 
 duced so admittedly scabreux a topic, enquired after a 
 moment : 
 
 "What did you think at the time?" 
 
 " I thought Lady Rossiter wished me to understand 
 that she knew of the relationship in which I once stood 
 to Captain Isbister." 
 
 For the life of him, Julian could think of no re- 
 joinder. 
 
 " I know that things of that kind always are known, 
 and the people I've been thrown with, sooner or later, 
 always turned out to have heard the story. Or if they 
 hadn't," said Miss Marchrose in a voice of calm de- 
 spair, " someone took the trouble to tell them." 
 
 " Officiousness is the crying sin of the age," Julian 
 observed sententiously. 
 
 " It seems to me a purely individual matter. It 
 can't concern anyone else not even the people who 
 employ me." 
 
 " Certainly not." 
 
 " Did you know? But of course you did." 
 
 " I knew that Clarence Isbister had been engaged to 
 someone of your name, and that the engagement had 
 been broken off after his accident." 
 
 " I broke it off," she said defiantly. 
 
 " So one heard," 
 
 " Everyone has heard that," said Miss Marchrose. 
 " Everyone has heard that when he was told that he 
 must be an invalid and helpless for the rest of his life 
 he offered to release me from the engagement and 
 
TENSION 151 
 
 I said yes. And that he was very much upset about 
 it, just at the time." 
 
 Julian stifled a fleeting recollection of the well-worn 
 legend accompanying the story of Captain Isbister's 
 betrayal. 
 
 "Of course, it is inevitable that his relations should 
 have heard about it, I suppose," Miss Marchrose 
 said. 
 
 Julian felt inclined to reply, " Clarence Isbister is an 
 ass, and not worth worrying about," and then decided 
 that that would not do, and awaited her next words in 
 silence. He perceived that some unusual emotion had 
 strung her to the pitch of excitement at which self- 
 contained people become reckless, and emotional ones 
 untruthful. Having already formed the conclusion 
 that Miss Marchrose belonged to the former class, he 
 listened with the greater interest. 
 
 Her next words gave him a clue to the vexation that 
 vibrated in her tones. 
 
 " I was angry, I'm afraid, this morning, when Miss 
 Easter actually began about it." 
 
 " Extremely impertinent of her. I hope you told 
 her so." 
 
 " She is very good-natured," said Miss Marchrose re- 
 morsefully. " She has always gone out of her way to 
 be nice to me, and when I began to be angry with her 
 she only said, ' Oh, I'm so dreadfully sorry ; I should 
 never tell a soul except Douglas, you know, so you 
 needn't mind my knowing about it.' ' 
 
 At her faint mimicry of Iris' affected little pipe they 
 both laughed. 
 
 "As a matter of fact, poor little thing, she only 
 wanted me to contradict the version that she had heard. 
 
152 TENSION 
 
 She said she couldn't and wouldn't believe it, and was 
 sure that her her informant had been mistaken." 
 
 Sir Julian wondered grimly whether Miss Marchrose 
 was as little at a loss as himself to identify the infor- 
 mant in question. Her next words rather relieved him. 
 
 " She may very well have heard it from the girl 
 she lives with. Curiously enough, she was once gov- 
 erness to Lady Mary Isbister's little girl, and it is quite 
 probable that she heard something about it there. I 
 don't know. There seem to be no end to the coinci- 
 dences that accumulate round unpleasant things. It 
 happened more than three years ago, and he's married 
 now, and perfectly happy why can't it be allowed to 
 rest?" 
 
 " No one has any right to attempt to force your 
 confidence." 
 
 " Miss Easter didn't do that, exactly. I think she 
 thought I should be only too ready to explain away the 
 story as it stood, and throw some light which would 
 show that I hadn't just thrown over a man who cared 
 for me on the grounds of his being condemned to the 
 life of a paralytic invalid." 
 
 " I should find it very difficult to believe that you 
 did that," said Sir Julian gently. 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " The facts of the story, in the main, are perfectly 
 correct. I told Miss Easter so." 
 
 They had reached the end of the sea-wall, and as 
 they turned mechanically back upon their footsteps, Sir 
 Julian for a moment found himself facing her. 
 
 The look in her eyes was doubtful, defiant, beseech- 
 ing, all at once. Something in it evoked from him a 
 very sincere and simple desire to reassure her. 
 
TENSION 153 
 
 "Won't you tell me about it, if you care to? I'm 
 quite sure that, whatever the facts may be, there is 
 another aspect to them than the obvious one." 
 
 He heard a little gasp that unmistakably denoted 
 relief. 
 
 " Thank you very much. It's so much easier now 
 you've said that and I want to tell you about it. 
 You'll understand, perhaps." 
 
 " Don't hurry," said Julian, more with reference 
 to a certain breathlessness in her speech than to the in- 
 creased speed at which she was walking beside him. 
 
 However, she slackened her pace and presently began 
 to speak quietly. 
 
 " I don't suppose you know exactly what it's like 
 for a girl with no home of her own the difficulty 
 of having any friends, or seeing anyone except just 
 the people one's working with not that there was 
 ever anyone I wanted to see particularly, the men I 
 associated with were all of Mr. Cooper's type, as nice 
 and as polite as could be, always but I had nothing 
 in common with them except the day's work. There 
 were a few friends of my father's he was an archi- 
 tect but after his death they rather dropped away 
 from us. They were the sort of people who turned 
 up their noses at the dressmaking business. My 
 mother took it up, after he died, because it was the 
 only thing she could do to make money, and she hoped 
 it would mean that I need never go out and work for 
 myself when I grew up. I'm glad," said Miss March- 
 rose vehemently, " I'm glad and thankful that she never 
 lived to see the muddle I made of everything." 
 
 Sir Julian remained silent, aware that she was talk- 
 ing to herself as much as to him. 
 
154 TENSION 
 
 " After she died I got a job in Southampton Row. 
 I lived in a hostel for women workers. It was all 
 right in a way, but deadly lonely. And I wasn't used 
 to the sort of girls who live at those places, and I 
 thought myself too good for them and of course 
 they saw it. They used to play cards in the evening, 
 or some of them played the piano, and sometimes 
 they made up parties to go to the pit at 
 the theatre but after I'd been disagreeable once or 
 twice, naturally they didn't ask me any more. And I 
 never sat in the public sitting-room downstairs, but 
 always went up to my own bedroom. And I read a 
 book at meals. You don't know how people who do 
 that are hated. So they ought to be, I suppose, but in 
 those days I thought it was quite worth while to make 
 them all indignant, and find myself left in peace. But 
 all the time I was more and more lonely, and I used 
 to sit and think in the evenings, wondering how I 
 could bear it if all my life was going to be like that 
 just working on and on and then becoming like one 
 of the older women at that hostel there were dozens 
 of them pinched and discontented, always worrying 
 over expense, and why there weren't two helpings of 
 pudding at dinner, with nothing to do, nothing to 
 remember, nothing to look forward to knowing 
 themselves utterly and absolutely unnecessary in the 
 world. And they'd got used to it that was the 
 ghastly part of it and yet they couldn't always have 
 been like that. Once they must have passed through 
 awful phases of rebellion and despair, like me, and 
 hoping against hope that something glorious and bril- 
 liant would turn up the sort of things that only 
 happen in books and then gradually they'd got re- 
 
TENSION 155 
 
 signed and hopeless, and indifferent the worst of 
 all. And I felt that all that, year after year, would be 
 coming nearer and nearer to me " 
 
 " It couldn't," muttered Julian. " Marriage, for in- 
 stance - 
 
 "Of course, everyone said that. My mother said 
 it she kept on talking about ' When you marry, 
 Pauline/ as though it was something almost inevitable. 
 My aunt said it, when I spent my holidays at her house. 
 At first I used to say it myself thinking, like fools 
 of girls always do, that love meant happiness and that 
 it was bound to come." 
 
 The bitterness in her tone shocked him, but he said 
 nothing. 
 
 " As I'm telling you these things that I've never told 
 anyone, I'd better tell you the whole truth," said Miss 
 Marchrose, her voice coldly dispassionate all at once. 
 " I am not in the least attractive. No one, except Clar- 
 ence Isbister, has ever wanted to marry me. Some girls 
 sometimes quite pretty ones are like that. They 
 don't know what it means to be wanted by anyone." 
 
 " Stop that," said Julian. " I can't stand it. No 
 man has any right to hear this sort of thing. Besides, 
 it's nonsense. You were never in a position to know 
 any men of your own sort." 
 
 " I used to tell myself that. But it wasn't altogether 
 true. There were always plenty of people at my aunt's 
 house she lived in Hampstead and both my cousins 
 went to a school of art, and had any number of friends, 
 and they were always nice to me, and took me to all 
 their parties when I was with them. That's how I met 
 Clarence Isbister at the Chelsea Arts Ball. He'd 
 come with a party of people, and one of them knew my 
 
156 TENSION 
 
 cousin Dolly, and she introduced him to me, and he 
 brought Mr. Isbister and said he wanted to know me. 
 He was only a boy twenty-one, I think." 
 
 " Quite old enough to know his own mind." 
 
 {t Was he? To my dying day," said Miss March- 
 rose very simply, " I shall never understand why he 
 fell in love with me. I danced very badly, but he didn't 
 seem to mind, and asked me to sit out with him in- 
 stead. We talked, but I don't think we had anything 
 much in common. I told him I was a teacher of short- 
 hand, having my holiday. He kept beside me the 
 whole evening and asked to be introduced to Dolly and 
 if he might come and see us in Hampstead. Of course 
 she said yes. I always remember Dolly when we got 
 back, after the ball, and how she said, ' Pauline, that 
 man's fallen in love with you. And, mark my words, 
 he's the sort who'd ask one to marry him.' 
 
 " And she was quite right. Dolly was always right 
 about men, though the sort of men she knew weren't 
 the same sort as Clarence. 
 
 " Well, you know, I was engaged to him. I was 
 twenty-dve, and I'd been dreading the future, and it 
 seemed, in a way, the most unexpected chance of escap- 
 ing everything I was most afraid of. But I don't 
 know if you'll ever believe it if I tell you how much I 
 hesitated." 
 
 " I shall believe anything you tell me. Why did you 
 hesitate?" 
 
 " Because he was twenty-one, and an ass," replied 
 Miss Marchrose, with the most unexpected candour. 
 "And I didn't even like him much; he irritated me 
 nearly unbearably sometimes. It was very ungrateful 
 of me, but it seemed to me that he loved me without 
 
TENSION 157 
 
 rhyme or reason he knew nothing whatever about 
 me. And I told him that I didn't care for him. But 
 I think, partly, the fuss his people made helped to make 
 him want it all the more, just to show them that he 
 would take his own way. They'd always made a baby 
 of him at home, I gathered, and he had suddenly begun 
 to resent it" 
 
 " Yes," said Julian thoughtfully, " that tallies with 
 the little I remember of the Isbisters, when I met them 
 several years ago. Did you ever stay there ? " 
 
 " No. His father and mother were much too angry 
 about it, but he had money of his own and they couldn't 
 stop it. We were more or less engaged when he had 
 his accident. He'd been at home, and he'd been hoping 
 that his mother was coming round a little, and that 
 perhaps he could take me to see her in London. He 
 was very fond of his mother; but poor Clarence! he 
 was like a little boy talking of the ' lark ' it would 
 be to steal a march on them all, and get married at a 
 Registrar's Office one morning." 
 
 " Would you have done that? " 
 
 " I thought I would I was back at work by then, 
 and in the hostel again. He used to come and take me 
 for walks and drives and out to dinner and often 
 and often I was miserable and felt that I was taking 
 everything from him, and giving him nothing at all. 
 And besides v 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I suppose no one gives up romantic ideals, if 
 they've had them, without a struggle," said Miss 
 Marchrose, speaking very fast. 
 
 " Believe me," said Julian gently, " it is worth while 
 to remain faithful to one's romantic ideals. People 
 
158 TENSION 
 
 will tell you that to relinquish them means progress 
 but don't believe them. One is the poorer all the rest 
 of one's life for having let them go/' 
 
 " No one else has ever said that to me. I said it 
 to myself sometimes but most of the time I honestly 
 thought that I should be a fool to chuck away what 
 Clarence offered me. And when he had his accident, 
 in the country, I knew nothing about it for a week 
 after it had happened naturally, no one thought of 
 letting me know. I imagined all sorts of things 
 that he'd chucked me, you know. And I was angry 
 and furious and disappointed in spite of everything. 
 But my aunt read about the accident in some paper or 
 other, and wrote to me. And afterwards Clarence's 
 mother wrote." 
 
 " She didn't ask you, then, to give him up? " 
 " She didn't say anything about my being engaged 
 to him at all. But when he was better, still in the 
 nursing-home, he wrote himself, and told me that most 
 likely he would be half -paralysed for the rest of his 
 life. They really thought he would be, then, you 
 know. And he asked me if I thought I could bear it. 
 That was when I first began to realise my own in- 
 adequacy. You see, all the time I'd been thinking of 
 him, and how young he was how unlike what I'd 
 sometimes fancied. But when he wrote like that, I 
 knew that I couldn't even write the only sort of letter 
 that would have been any good. I was worse than 
 useless. I wrote the sort of answer that really meant 
 nothing at all though I put all the sort of affection- 
 ate expressions that he liked, and anything and every- 
 thing I could think of but I didn't answer one word 
 about our engagement. I couldn't. I wrote to him 
 
TENSION 159 
 
 every day, and all the while I was trying to gain time, 
 to think it all out. 
 
 " You've no idea how difficult it is sometimes just 
 to get time and a place for thinking. There was my 
 work all day, and then I used to fancy I'd have the 
 evening but it was so cold in my room, and I found 
 that I was only thinking about that all the time, and 
 how I could keep my hands warm. And in bed one 
 always imagines one can do all one's thinking in bed. 
 But one can't! Things look quite different in the 
 night, somehow much more important I can't ex- 
 plain; and then all the shorthand outlines one had 
 been making all day on the blackboard seemed to 
 come into the darkness. I'm making it all sound 
 muddled, I know but that's what it was. Just a 
 muddle, and all the relative values of things seeming 
 to turn upside down." She paused. 
 
 " I understand," said Julian. 
 
 " In the end, Clarence wrote again, and said he must 
 release me from the engagement; he couldn't ask me 
 to marry a man who would most likely never be able 
 to walk again. And I thought, and thought till I 
 was nearly frantic. You see, in a way, it would be 
 the impulse of every woman to feel that she was all 
 the more bound in honour to stick to a man because of 
 that of course, I'm not speaking about those people 
 who love one another, that's different. But it kept 
 coming over me like a wave how unthinkable it 
 would be to refuse to marry a man after all, after one 
 had promised, just when he'd had that appalling knock 
 from Fate and everything that made his life worth 
 living had been taken away. As though one could 
 never do enough to make up for it all. . . . But in 
 
160 TENSION 
 
 the end it was that which decided me. You see, I 
 knew that I could never make up and not only that, 
 but that I might make it far, far worse for him. It 
 seemed to me that only a very great love could have 
 been adequate. And I not only didn't love him, but 
 I knew myself I'm not patient, I'm not an unselfish 
 woman. Heaven only knows what I should be, mar- 
 ried to an invalid, to an unfortunate boy who cared 
 for me, and who would be utterly dependent on me for 
 all the things that matter most. And I could have 
 given him nothing I should have been worse than 
 useless to him. There was nothing real between us 
 only just his infatuation and I knew that couldn't 
 last. I believed then, when I thought of him as a 
 cripple, that if I'd married Clarence, he would have 
 come to hate me. Before he was hurt, I'd meant to 
 risk it and to try and be a good wife to him, though 
 even then I knew I was cheating taking all he could 
 give me, and bringing so little. But afterwards, it 
 seemed to me that it would be a worse cheating to try 
 and meet a tremendous demand like that with just 
 nothing at all. So I wrote and tried to explain it to 
 him, and tell him why I wouldn't say I'd marry him in 
 spite of it all." 
 
 For the last time, they reached the end of the sea- 
 wall and turned, once more facing the blustering wind. 
 In the rapidly gathering twilight Julian could only 
 see that her face was very pale. 
 
 " Well," she said, with a very small, rather tired 
 laugh, " he didn't become a cripple for life, and he 
 married somebody else, who was suitable. And I 
 sometimes wonder whether I was a fool." 
 
 " I don't think you wonder really," said Sir Julian 
 
TENSION 161 
 
 steadily. " You know as well as I do that you had 
 been led into a false position, and that you had the 
 courage to act up to your own inmost convictions, in- 
 stead of making bad worse by yielding to the impulse 
 of a generous self-sacrifice that is bound to spell disas- 
 ter unless there is the capability of sustained effort 
 to back it. Lacking that capability, as you were aware 
 of lacking it, you were brave enough to set obvious 
 sentiment at defiance." 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Miss Marchrose, in an odd voice be- 
 tween laughter and sadness, " I have never before 
 heard the case for the defence stated like that ! Thank 
 you, Sir Julian." 
 
 They climbed the sandy declivity, tufted with hill- 
 ocks and boulders almost invisible in the increasing 
 dusk, and reached the narrow and stony road at the 
 top. 
 
 " We are not far from the farm," said Julian. 
 " You must be tired." 
 
 " No, I like going down to the sea. I'm glad I met 
 you. I was so angry at the beginning of the afternoon 
 after I'd seen poor little Miss Easter." 
 
 " I'm not at all surprised." 
 
 " Do you think," said Miss Marchrose, somewhat 
 more than doubtfully, " that she is a discreet person? " 
 
 Sir Julian so emphatically thought the contrary that 
 for the moment words almost failed him. 
 
 " Let us hope," he said at last, rather grimly, " that 
 decency may induce her to hold her tongue on a sub- 
 ject of which she knows nothing whatsoever." 
 
 It struck him as he spoke that the foundation of the 
 hope was but a frail one, and he wondered whether 
 Miss Marchrose was thinking of Mark Easter as the 
 
1 62 TENSION 
 
 recipient of his sister's newly-acquired piece of in- 
 formation. 
 
 If so, she gave no further sign of it, and he took her 
 to the door of the farmhouse almost in silence. 
 
 Julian's thoughts that evening were occupied almost 
 exclusively with Miss Marchrose. The complete 
 frankness with which she had spoken that afternoon 
 had put before him an extraordinarily new aspect of the 
 self-contained, competent Lady Superintendent of the 
 College. It appeared to him that he very well could 
 imagine for himself all that she had hinted at, rather 
 than described. 
 
 The architect father, the excellent, probably middle- 
 class mother, who had set up a dressmaking business so 
 that her child might live at home, and the youthful 
 spirit of pride and intolerance that had resented the 
 very existence of any such endeavour to shield her. 
 Even the semi-Bohemian, semi-suburban home of the 
 aunt and cousins at Hampstead came very clearly be- 
 fore his mind's eye. He felt convinced that the aunt 
 was an elder sister of the paternal Marchrose, and 
 that she and " Dolly " had brought much common-sense 
 to bear upon the Clarence equation and that they must 
 have talked the matter over and over, with a great 
 effect of giving frank and disinterested advice. 
 
 And the girl who was tired of her work, who 
 thought herself too good for the inhabitants of her 
 hostel dwelling, whom " no one had ever wanted to 
 marry " it was not altogether wonderful, Julian 
 thought, that she should have stifled her foolish, school- 
 girl dreams of romance and accepted all that the in- 
 fatuated boy of " the sort who asks one to marry him " 
 had been ready to offer her. 
 
TENSION 163 
 
 Her acceptance of him was much less remarkable 
 than her subsequent rejection. 
 
 It never occurred to Julian for an instant to question 
 that she had taken her decisive step from any reason 
 but the one she had given : that of knowing herself un- 
 equal to meet the supreme demand suddenly made upon 
 her. Julian remembered the words that he had twice 
 heard applied to that refusal of hers. 
 
 " Of course she didn't really care for him." 
 
 The literal truth, Julian reflected. And it was her 
 resolute facing of that truth, in defiance of sentiment 
 as of condemnation from others, that, to Julian's way 
 of thinking, had redeemed the wrong that she had done 
 to Clarence Isbister no less than to her own inner 
 vision. 
 
 " For when all's said and done," said Julian to him- 
 self, " what is she but an incurable romanticist, unable 
 to put up with the second best in that which, rightly or 
 wrongly, she rates highest in life? But what one sees 
 ahead for her that's another matter." 
 
 Sir Julian, pessimist and idealist both at once, 
 shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the speculation. 
 But it had brought him to the thought of Mark Easter. 
 
 He thought that Mark, ten years ago, would have 
 loved her, and that he would have made her happy. 
 Julian, who had very completely missed happiness him- 
 self, still held that in the knowledge of it lay the secret 
 of fulfilment. Mark had known it, knew it still. It 
 lived, fundamental, in himself. But Miss Marchrose 
 should have known it as a gift from without, a sudden 
 revelation, even if enduring in its entirety for a little 
 while only. Julian wondered whether she were destined 
 still to know it, through the man whom he believed 
 
164 TENSION 
 
 should teach her, through Mark Easter, and if so, at 
 what cost? 
 
 He summed it up with his usual, " It's no business of 
 mine. But I believe she'd think it worth while, at any 
 price and by Heaven, she's right! " 
 
 Perhaps incurable romanticism was not attributable 
 to Miss Marchrose only. 
 
XIII 
 
 WHEN Lady Rossiter indulged, in the presence of 
 her husband, in a space of silent reverie, it was always 
 her intention to meet with interruption and enquiry that 
 should lead to a mutually beneficial discussion upon the 
 subject of her thoughts. In spite of the many disap- 
 pointments inflicted upon her by Sir Julian in this re- 
 spect, it was also her custom to return good for evil 
 by never allowing him more than ten consecutive min- 
 utes of reflectiveness without some sympathetic re- 
 minder that he was not alone. 
 
 Accordingly, when he had smoked two cigarettes 
 after dinner in complete silence, gazing the while, with 
 obvious preoccupation, into the fire, Lady Rossiter 
 lifted up her voice and spoke. 
 
 " I saw the first little, wee, wonderful sign of spring 
 this afternoon. A patch of snowdrops, just outside 
 the gates/' 
 
 "Did you?" 
 
 " Such brave little white sentinels ! I always love 
 the French name perce-neige," said Lady Rossiter, 
 who, like many another cultured soul, generally saw 
 more beauty and expressiveness in the vocabulary of 
 languages other than her own. 
 
 " I am afraid there was no neige for them to percer 
 on this occasion/' observed Sir Julian, with very lan- 
 guid interest in the horticultural vagaries of these har- 
 bingers of spring. 
 
 165 
 
1 66 TENSION 
 
 (< There very well might be, by to-morrow. I 
 thought it bitterly cold. Were you out this after- 
 noon? " 
 
 " I was. I heard Cooper being extremely eloquent 
 and long-winded in the distance, and I thought that 
 everything pointed to my taking a long walk." 
 
 " They came to consult me about a presentation 
 a wedding-present for Iris." 
 
 " I hope you told them they had much better let it 
 alone." 
 
 " Julian, how could I ? Poor things, it is rather 
 touching of them a sum which would seem little 
 enough to ourselves, must mean a great deal to them 
 perhaps a question of actual bread and butter." 
 
 " Then why encourage them to throw it away? " 
 
 " I told them that of course it was the thought that 
 she would value. But they'd set their hearts on having 
 some sort of little ceremony you know how they 
 love anything of that kind with speeches and an ex- 
 cuse for a gathering." 
 
 " Where do they want to gather? Fuller will never 
 allow them to desecrate the College. You remember 
 how sulky he was when they got up that party there, 
 this time last year." 
 
 Edna uttered her usual lenient " Poor Mr. Fuller ! 
 He is heart and soul devoted to the College. But I 
 think perhaps if I talked to him, it might be possible 
 to soften his hard heart. He really only needs a little 
 management, and I've practically undertaken to go and 
 see him about it. Why shouldn't the poor things have 
 a little pleasure in their lives? I sometimes think 
 there's very little gaiety in the world, Julian." 
 
TENSION 167 
 
 " I hope you may add to it by paying Fuller a visit, 
 but I do not feel particularly sanguine." 
 
 " I don't think I shall have much trouble with him, 
 somehow/' said Edna, with a little laugh. " Only the 
 whole thing will need rather tactful handling, as it 
 may be a shade difficult for Iris, if she's not expecting 
 it. She'll have to say a few words, unless Mark says 
 them for her." 
 
 "Of course, the whole thing is really a tribute to 
 Mark," said Julian. " He's extraordinarily popular 
 as well he may be." 
 
 " Yes, they practically admitted that they hoped it 
 would please him. But after all, Julian, ' all the world 
 loves a lover.' ' 
 
 " Does it? " said Sir Julian expressively. " Did all 
 this conversation take place at tea this afternoon, may 
 I ask, in the presence of the smirking Iris herself? " 
 
 Lady Rossiter looked pained at the extreme unkind- 
 ness of the adjective selected by her husband. 
 
 " Iris didn't come in till later, though, as a matter of 
 fact, her arrival interrupted us when there were sev- 
 eral points still unsettled. One thing, though, rather 
 vexed me." 
 
 " What was that? " asked Sir Julian, rather wearily, 
 aware that he would be told whether he enquired or 
 whether he did not, and for once choosing the less un- 
 amiable course. 
 
 " There was some idea," Lady Rossiter understated 
 the case, " of getting the actual presentation itself made 
 by the most unsuitable person they could very well 
 have selected that unfortunate courtesan manque c, 
 the superintendent woman." 
 
i68 TENSION 
 
 If Lady Rossiter wished to see the effect of her 
 pleasant epithet upon her husband, she was doomed to 
 disappointment. The complete silence in which he 
 received it impelled her to continue. 
 
 " It is a very disagreeable word to apply to any 
 woman, but I fail to see what else one can call her. 
 We know that she entangled one, very young, man, 
 with money and position, and then threw him over in 
 a peculiarly heartless manner, and that she is now tak- 
 ing every advantage of poor Mark's miserable situa- 
 tion to try and involve him in an affair that can only 
 mean scandal and misery, however it ends." 
 
 " I fail to see how the reckless career which you 
 impute to Miss Marchrose, Edna, can possibly affect 
 the quality of the silver salt-cellars, or whatever it is, 
 that she is to present to Iris." 
 
 " Ah, Julian a young girl, pure, innocent, un- 
 sullied! How could one see it, without a sense of 
 profanation? Call it fanciful if you like, but there is 
 something in me that could never bear to allow that." 
 
 " No, I don't think I should call it fanciful, Edna," 
 said her husband slowly. 
 
 "You think me prejudiced!" exclaimed Edna. 
 " But indeed, Mark is very dear to me, and for his 
 sake and for womanhood's sake I can't bear that 
 the the delicate bloom should be brushed from any 
 token connected with his sister's wedding." 
 
 " Then you had better arrange to have a bonfire of 
 the remaining copies of ' Why, Ben! A Story of the 
 Sexes,' " imperturbably replied her husband. 
 
 Julian had for so long been in the habit of protect- 
 ing himself against those peculiar shafts that are only 
 launched by really and professedly good women, with 
 
TENSION 169 
 
 indifferent satire, that the small, cheap fleer came al- 
 most automatically to his lips. It certainly interfered 
 not at all with his intimate realisation that Lady Ros- 
 siter could hardly have chosen a worse moment for an 
 endeavour to enlist his sympathies on her side in the 
 indirect contest that she had elected to wage against 
 Miss Marchrose. 
 
 " I would sooner make the presentation myself, ab- 
 surd though it would be, than feel that she was mak- 
 ing it." 
 
 " It would, however, as you say, be absurd," re- 
 plied Sir Julian coldly. "Of course, it must be made 
 by a representative of the College staff. Fairfax Ful- 
 ler is the proper person/' 
 
 " The misogynist ! " 
 
 Sir Julian wondered, not for the first time, why his 
 wife clung so persistently to the libel attached by her 
 to Mr. Fuller, and came to his habitual conclusion, that 
 she had found it necessary to her self-respect to deduce 
 a wholesale hatred of the female sex from the Super- 
 visor's taciturn reception of her own advances. 
 
 " I will talk to Mr. Fuller, Julian, and see what can 
 be arranged. I thought of going in one afternoon next 
 week. There is not too much time for arranging de- 
 tails now. The wedding is to-day fortnight." 
 
 " I hadn't realised it was so near. However, all the 
 better. It'll be over the sooner, and Iris can remove 
 her Douglas from hence before he has time to begin 
 talking about ' we married men.' ' 
 
 Lady Rossiter laughed discreetly, but after a little 
 pause she interjected quietly : 
 
 " Mr. Garrett is a good sort, really, in spite of his 
 
TENSION 
 
 She had no particular grounds for this charitable as- 
 sertion, but she made it a matter of principle to utter 
 some kind little phrase on behalf of anybody whom her 
 interlocutor of the moment had verbally slighted or 
 condemned. This peace-making habit was not unapt 
 to have the singular effect of promoting a lively desire 
 on the part of the first speaker to abuse the absent one 
 a good deal more vigorously than before. 
 
 Sir Julian, however, was either too old a hand, or 
 else too little interested in Mr. Garrett, to find himself 
 similarly moved. 
 
 " I cannot imagine why Iris insists upon being mar- 
 ried down here at all," he said, without hostility. 
 
 " She couldn't have been married from that tiny flat 
 of hers, and I think it's natural she should want it to 
 be from her brother's house. It will have to be very 
 quiet, as they won't have room for any sort of recep- 
 tion. Besides, it would be very unsuitable, and I'm 
 glad to say that Mark has made her see it." 
 
 " How many of ' we Garretts ' are going to grace 
 the scene? " 
 
 " Mr. Garrett only has a father," said Edna repres- 
 sively. " He is to stay at the cottage." 
 
 " Tell Mark that we can put up anyone he likes, for 
 a night or two." 
 
 " Indeed, yes. In a household where every item 
 must count, a guest is rather a serious consideration, 
 I'm afraid. Mark will probably be thankful when it's 
 all over." 
 
 Sir Julian felt no doubt of it. 
 
 His sympathies with Mark, already lively, became 
 acute the following morning when bride and bride- 
 groom-elect suddenly appeared in his study with the 
 
TENSION 171 
 
 purpose of expressing their gratitude for the extremely 
 liberal cheque that had been Sir Julian and Lady Ros- 
 siter's wedding-gift to Iris. 
 
 " Douglas and I have been nearly quarrelling the 
 whole way here as to how we'll spend it," said Miss 
 Easter candidly. 
 
 " Hardly quarrelling, have we? " reproachfully asked 
 Mr. Garrett, as usual addressing himself exclusively 
 to his betrothed. 
 
 "Oh, we've never really quarrelled yet, have we? 
 At least," said Iris archly, " unless you count the copper 
 tea-kettle time." 
 
 " Ah ! The copper tea-kettle ! " responded Mr. Gar- 
 rett meaningly. 
 
 At which reference they both, according to their 
 wont, indulged in the hearty laughter, naturally un- 
 shared by Sir Julian, of those to whom some perfectly 
 obvious allusion is amusingly intelligible. 
 
 " We've actually settled the great question of brides- 
 maids, Sir Julian," observed Iris, an easy victim to the 
 not uncommon bridal delusion that such details must 
 be of major interest to all alike. 
 
 " Your friend in London? " 
 
 "Oh, no! She doesn't approve of marriage, you 
 know. She thinks it a mere servile bond for the 
 woman," explained Iris glibly. " In fact, she's a tre- 
 mendous advocate for Free Love. She's furious with 
 me for marrying at all." 
 
 Sir Julian glanced at Mr. Garrett, wondering how 
 he regarded the rather stupefying gospel preached by 
 the chosen friend and companion of his bride. 
 
 The young man appeared more thoughtful than dis- 
 mayed. 
 
172 TENSION 
 
 " In a general way," he remarked detachedly, " we 
 moderns are all in favour of abolishing the present 
 rather archaic marriage laws, and re-establishing the 
 whole thing upon the basis of a purely civil contract; 
 dissoluble after a term of years at the wish of either 
 or both of the contracting parties." 
 
 Sir Julian had a momentary vision of earnest sub- 
 urban debating societies, at which he felt sure that Mr. 
 Garrett had formerly launched his eloquence, in words 
 almost, if not quite, identical with his present text. 
 Having no wish to fathom the young man's further 
 views, he merely renewed enquiry of Iris as to the 
 question of bridesmaids. 
 
 "Only dear little Ruthie," said Iris. "It's quite 
 odd, but I haven't got an enormous number of girl 
 friends. Somehow I've got heaps and heaps more men 
 friends. I can't imagine why, I'm sure." 
 
 Neither could Julian, but he refrained from saying 
 so. 
 
 " At one time, I rather wanted Miss Marchrose. Of 
 course, I know she's not quite, absolutely, altogether 
 one of ourselves but still, as it's all to be so quiet 
 and then I could have got hold of a cousin to match 
 her but she wouldn't hear of it. Of course, she is 
 older than I am." 
 
 " A good deal older, surely," said Sir Julian rather 
 drily, contemplating the youthful blend of prettiness 
 and vulgarity in front of him. 
 
 " Douglas," said Iris, with great suddenness, " do 
 go away. I've just remembered that I want to ask 
 Sir Julian something most frightfully particular." 
 
 "Secrets?" ejaculated Douglas, with playful re- 
 proach. 
 
TENSION 173 
 
 " Just a tiny, tiny little one. Now do go right away, 
 there's a dear boy." 
 
 Thus adjured, it was scarcely possible for Mr. Gar- 
 rett to do otherwise than to obey, but it would have 
 shown but little knowledge of his capabilities as an en- 
 gaged young man to expect him to do so without a last 
 mirthful flight of fancy. 
 
 " Then I'm weel awa'," he exclaimed, in a Scotch 
 manner that almost compensated for the lack of rele- 
 vance in his choice of idiom, and swung his long legs 
 over the sill of the low window, scraping the paint 
 with his boots as he did so and annoying Sir Julian. 
 
 " It's about Miss Marchrose," said Iris, her head 
 even more on one side than usual. 
 
 Sir Julian wondered whether he could possibly stop 
 her before she said anything more. 
 
 " At first I liked her awfully. In fact, I think she's 
 sweet. But the story about the poor man she threw 
 over is perfectly dreadful. Of course, she couldn't 
 have cared for him really, because any woman ' 
 
 " I know all about that," hastily interrupted Sir 
 Julian. " Surely we needn't go into a thing that hap- 
 pened several years ago before she ever came here, and 
 which is no one's business but hers." 
 
 "If it had been Douglas," pursued Miss Easter, fix- 
 ing an enormous pair of melancholy eyes upon her dis- 
 comfited listener, "if it had been Douglas, however 
 much of an invalid he had to be, I should simply want 
 to marry him all the more. I should want to give up 
 my whole life to him, so as to make up a little." 
 
 " Well, I hope you may never be tried in such a ter- 
 rible manner," said Julian, unable to repress a shudder 
 of horrified sympathy for the invalid who should find 
 
174 TENSION 
 
 his shattered life relegated to the devotion of Miss 
 Easter. 
 
 " But of course, she couldn't have loved him really," 
 asserted Iris, apparently unaware of a certain lack of 
 originality in her choice of comment. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Or she would have felt that she couldn't do enough 
 to make up for it all." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " That's what I should feel if it had been Douglas." 
 
 Sir Julian could not think of a reply that should pro- 
 vide any variation upon his previous monosyllabic 
 ones. 
 
 " And if it had been me, Douglas would have felt 
 just like that, too." 
 
 Sir Julian began to wonder how much longer they 
 were to continue this consideration of hypothetical con- 
 tingencies. 
 
 " The fact is, I'm afraid I've been too fearfully silly 
 for anything." 
 
 It being impossible to express his own conviction that 
 nothing could be more probable, Sir Julian still sat 
 speechless, looking with growing dismay at his visitor, 
 who was exhibiting every sign of an intention to burst 
 into tears. 
 
 " I am afraid," said Iris, beginning to cry, " that 
 Mark has fallen in love with her." 
 
 After a pause of extremely uncomfortable consider- 
 ation, Sir Julian observed, with a sententiousness of 
 which he was perfectly aware : 
 
 "If such is unfortunately the case, why should you 
 blame yourself?" 
 
 " Because I did everything I could to make it hap- 
 
TENSION 175 
 
 pen. I saw they liked each other, ages ago oh, long 
 before Christmas ! and I had her to dinner and things, 
 and made her sing ' Annie Laurie ' because Mark ad- 
 mired her voice, and I told him how she said she liked 
 working at the College with him." 
 
 " But why, in Heaven's name? " 
 
 " Because," sobbed Iris, " I thought it would be such 
 a beautiful thing for them to defy conventionality and 
 be happy in spite of everything a grande passion 
 you know. . . ." 
 
 The extreme perversion of the point of view thus 
 disclosed left Sir Julian, at no time eloquent, more 
 completely deprived of utterance than ever before. 
 
 " In those days," Iris continued, with an effect of 
 great remoteness in her manner, " I thoroughly and 
 completely believed in Free Love myself. Of course, 
 I was younger, then." 
 
 " Only by two months," Sir Julian gloomily re- 
 minded her. 
 
 " Oh, yes, but those two months have taught me 
 everything. Love is such a wonderful teacher. Ever 
 since I've been engaged to Douglas, it's been like a new 
 heaven and a new earth, and I can see things that I 
 never saw before." 
 
 She began to dab at her eyes with her handkerchief, 
 while Sir Julian thought of a great many observations 
 which it was extremely improbable that he would make 
 aloud. 
 
 " It was only a day or two ago that I heard about 
 her having been engaged and then jilting the man be- 
 cause of his accident, and it was the most frightful 
 shock you can imagine. What should I feel if she did 
 that sort of thing to Mark one day? Of course, it 
 
176 TENSION 
 
 shows that she's not at all the sort of person to sacrifice 
 herself for anybody." 
 
 " I am quite sure," said Sir Julian gently, " that you 
 have no idea what a terrible thing it would be for any 
 man to fall seriously in love with a woman to whom 
 he could never offer marriage. Mark is a married 
 man." 
 
 " He hasn't seen that awful creature for years and 
 years," said Iris resentfully. 
 
 " That has nothing to do with it. She is his wife/' 
 
 " It seems so dreadfully hard." 
 
 " Yes, but it would seem a great deal harder if he 
 cared for someone else." 
 
 " And she for him," Iris added tenaciously. 
 
 " I hope that your imagination has misled you," said 
 Sir Julian gravely. 
 
 " But what shall I do?" 
 
 " Nothing. If you have already ceased your ex- 
 traordinarily misguided efforts towards bringing them 
 together, you can only leave the whole question alone. 
 After all, Mark knows very well that as long as his 
 wife is alive he's as much bound to her as though she 
 were living at home in the normal way. They are 
 neither of them children, and we have no right what- 
 ever to suppose that they cannot tell right from wrong." 
 
 " I never told her Mark was married." 
 
 "I think she knows." 
 
 " I wonder if that would stop her," said Iris, reflec- 
 tively. " I can't help feeling that if by some dreadful 
 Kismet Douglas had been already married when we 
 met, I should have given myself to him just the same. 
 I should simply have had to. I'm sure that in some 
 former incarnation " 
 
TENSION 177 
 
 " You know nothing about it," said Julian uncere- 
 moniously. " You have been a foolish little girl, and 
 the only thing left for you to do is to forget the ex- 
 tremely poor taste in which you have been behaving. 
 I should like to know what made you come and tell me 
 about it, though." 
 
 " I thought you could talk to Mark." Miss Easter 
 wept piteously, looking so very youthful that Julian 
 felt inclined to relent. 
 
 " That shows how very little you know about it. I 
 have no intention of insulting Mark by doing anything 
 of the kind, and if I did, he would very properly kick 
 me out of the house. Stop crying, please." 
 
 " Wouldn't it be better if Miss Marchrose were to 
 leave the College?" 
 
 "What for? Now stop being so childish and let 
 me fetch you a glass of water. Mr. Garrett will want 
 to know why you have been crying." 
 
 " I always, always tell Douglas everything. We've 
 promised never to have any secrets from one another. 
 Perfect confidence is the only way to married happi- 
 ness." 
 
 " You can tell me about that after you've been mar- 
 ried a year or two. But now I want you to listen to 
 me." 
 
 Iris looked at him with drowned, forget-me-not 
 eyes. 
 
 " I am going to forget what you have told me, as 
 far as it is humanly possible to do so, and you must 
 do the same. Promise me that you won't mention 
 what we have been discussing to anybody else, ever." 
 
 "Oh, but Douglas! Oughtn't I to tell Douglas?" 
 
 " No, certainly not" 
 
178 TENSION 
 
 " It seems so awful to begin one's married life with 
 a secret." 
 
 Sir Julian had perhaps never before felt so much 
 tempted to resort to physical violence. 
 
 " I assure you that it would be exceedingly dishon- 
 ourable, and that you couldn't do Mark a worse service, 
 than to hint at such a thing to anybody on earth." 
 
 " Then," said Iris heroically, " I promise." 
 
 Sir Julian relaxed his clenched hand, and opened the 
 door for her. 
 
 " I never, never thought," said Miss Easter, " that 
 you and I would ever share a secret, Sir Julian ! I used 
 to be so dreadfully afraid of you but I never shall 
 be again ! " 
 
 Watching his departing confederate, restored once 
 more to smiling animation, flutter from the room, 
 Julian returned to his seat before the writing-table. 
 
 " For a man who professes to dislike officious inter- 
 ference," he reflected ruefully, " I am the recipient of 
 an unfortunate number of disastrous confidences." 
 
XIV 
 
 LADY ROSSITER, a few days later, put on a compar- 
 atively new set of black fox furs, which helped to en- 
 hance in her the agreeable conviction of being in a 
 position to be kind to those less fortunate than herself, 
 and drove to Culmouth College. 
 
 It was her intention to put the matter of the presenta- 
 tion upon a sound footing without delay, and she had 
 purposely chosen a Saturday afternoon for her visit, 
 knowing that the College would be almost empty and 
 that Fairfax Fuller was generally to be found there 
 alone until half -past two or three o'clock. 
 
 The Supervisor, however the window of whose 
 private office gazed on to that side of the street by 
 which the College was approached proved strangely 
 difficult of access. 
 
 The place seemed almost deserted, but Lady Rossiter 
 encountered downstairs the small and precocious-look- 
 ing student of shorthand whom she and Iris had re- 
 marked at the speed test. 
 
 "Do you know if Mr. Fuller is here, little boy? " 
 she enquired of him, with that extra distinct enuncia- 
 tion by which so many people indicate their conscious- 
 ness of addressing a social inferior, but also with a 
 very agreeable smile. 
 
 Edna believed much in the power of a smile, and 
 sometimes quoted a few lines of those popular verses, 
 " Just by smiling." 
 
 " Ay," said the little boy. 
 
 179 
 
i8o TENSION 
 
 " Will you go and tell him that a lady would like to 
 see him?" said Edna, who did not think the youth 
 capable of reporting her name correctly. 
 
 " Ay." 
 
 The messenger departed, whistling shrilly, and pres- 
 ently returned grinning broadly. 
 
 " Mr. Fuller, he's so busy as ever he can be. Could 
 you give a message, like? " 
 
 " I'm afraid not," said Edna, suave but firm. " Tell 
 him it's Lady Rossiter." 
 
 " I told him that," said the youth, looking still more 
 amused. 
 
 Edna began to feel that the value of smiles might 
 be overrated. 
 
 " Thank you. I'd better go myself. I'm so much 
 obliged to you." 
 
 She nodded at the little boy rather distantly and 
 went herself to knock at the closed door of Mr. Fuller's 
 office. 
 
 A voice within uttered a short, sharp ejaculation 
 which Lady Rossiter, with an optimism that did more 
 credit to her imagination than to her common-sense, 
 interpreted to mean, " Come in ! " 
 
 The room she entered was thick with the smoke and 
 odour of the peculiarly rank tobacco affected by Mr. 
 Fairfax Fuller, and in spite of an open window, a haze 
 of blue fumes hung over the table at which he sat, his 
 head thrust aggressively forward and his elbows 
 squared. 
 
 Few things could have been less expressive of wel- 
 come than his unsmiling " Good afternoon," as he rose 
 to his feet and laid his cherry-wood pipe upon the table. 
 
 " Don't stop smoking, I'm quite used to it," said 
 
TENSION 181 
 
 Lady Rossiter, gasping a little. " Are you very 
 busy?" 
 
 " Yes, very," said Mr. Fuller uncompromisingly. 
 
 " Then I mustn't keep you," his visitor smilingly ob- 
 served. " May I sit down? " 
 
 Fuller moved a chair about two inches in her direc- 
 tion and pushed into prominence the broad leather strap 
 and silver watch on his hairy and powerful wrist. 
 
 Lady Rossiter affected not to observe this gesture, 
 which she preferred to attribute to the awkwardness 
 of embarrassment rather than to any want of cor- 
 diality. 
 
 "And is all well with our College?" she enquired 
 brightly, and casting a friendly glance at the papers on 
 the table, all of which Mr. Fuller immediately thrust 
 into the nearest pigeon-hole. 
 
 " The College is all right." 
 
 " That's good. You know it's very near my heart. 
 I shall never forget how we've seen it grow from the 
 very start, and the interest one's had in every member 
 of the staff. I'm sure you're like me, Mr. Fuller, and 
 care a great deal about the human element." 
 
 Edna paused, but the sympathetic response which 
 might reasonably have been expected was not forth- 
 coming. 
 
 " We've been so like a little family party here, I 
 always think especially those of us who saw the very 
 beginning of all things. Let me see, I think you and 
 I and Sir Julian, and of course Mr. Easter, are the only 
 ones left of the original committee, aren't we? Oh, 
 and the old Alderman." 
 
 Fuller emitted a sound that might conceivably pass 
 for a rejoinder. 
 
1 82 TENSION 
 
 " They're all so pleased about Miss Easter's en- 
 gagement a wedding is always an excitement, isn't 
 it? Have they," said Edna, momentarily thoughtless, 
 " have they told you of their little scheme for making 
 her a presentation ? " 
 
 " As I happen to be Supervisor of the staff, they 
 naturally came to me in the first place, Lady Rossiter." 
 
 " Of course they did. How stupid of me ! One 
 forgets all the grades and distinctions, there are so 
 many of them now. But it was really about the pres- 
 entation plans that I wanted to talk to you." 
 
 She waited in vain for some assurance that the wish 
 had been in any way mutual. 
 
 " I felt sure that you and I would understand one 
 another," said Edna, almost pleadingly, "if we had a 
 little talk together." 
 
 Silence. 
 
 Lady Rossiter could no longer disguise from herself 
 that the little talk, if it was to take place at all, must do 
 so in the form of an unsupported monologue. She 
 began courageously : 
 
 " I like the idea, you know, and I think it will touch 
 and gratify Miss Easter and her brother very much in- 
 deed. Only these schemes are always the better for 
 tactful handling, don't you agree with me? We don't 
 want any little awkwardnesses. And I'm not quite 
 sure that I think the suggestion of having the presenta- 
 tion made by poor Miss Marchrose was a very wise 
 one. Now, Mr. Fuller, I know I can speak to you in 
 confidence, and I'm going to say something that I 
 should never dream of saying to any other member of 
 the staff. I am sorry to tell you that there are reasons 
 I needn't go into them, they are very painful ones 
 
TENSION 183 
 
 why Miss Marchrose should not be selected to offer 
 this little present to a young and innocent girl on behalf 
 of the staff. I know I need not go into details." 
 
 Fuller stared at Lady Rossiter with dark, smoulder- 
 ing eyes. 
 
 " I'm perfectly satisfied with Miss Marchrose's be- 
 haviour since she's been here," he growled at last. 
 
 Up went Edna's eyebrows, all too expressively. 
 " That's as it may be, Mr. Fuller. A woman is some- 
 times a good deal more clear-sighted than a man, in 
 certain matters. But I happen to have heard a good 
 deal about Miss Marchrose before she came here at 
 all, and as a member of the General Committee, and 
 also of Mr. Cooper's little committee for the pres- 
 entation, I may tell you that I very decidedly veto 
 any suggestion of letting her represent the staff of 
 this College." 
 
 The Supervisor looked her full in the eyes. 
 
 " Are you telling me, Lady Rossiter, that that girl 
 isn't straight?" 
 
 Edna's opaque white skin, that seldom registered al- 
 teration, coloured faintly. 
 
 " Mr. Fuller, God forbid that I should condemn any 
 woman unheard. I won't pretend not to know what 
 you mean." 
 
 " I can put it plainer if you like/' Fuller retor *L 
 " But I want yes or no, Lady Rossiter." 
 
 " Then," said Edna with dignity, " as far as I I " 
 tell, no." 
 
 " I should damned well think not," exploded Fair'f 
 Fuller, without a trace of apology. " I take my ordi 
 from Sir Julian Rossiter, and until he's lost confideo 
 in me, I run this staff the way I think best. Yoi 
 
1 84 TENSION 
 
 excuse me, Lady Rossiter, if I say that I think we've 
 discussed the matter long enough." 
 
 Edna stood up, more angry than she had ever allowed 
 herself to be since the days of her girlhood. 
 
 ' You forget yourself altogether, Mr. Fuller, and I 
 feel certain that you will be the first person to realise 
 that an apology is due to me when you are yourself 
 again." 
 
 For all answer, Fuller opened the door and banged 
 it to again almost before she had crossed the threshold. 
 
 Lady Rossiter, in the hall outside, found her knees 
 shaking under her in a manner hitherto unknown to 
 her. Fairfax Fuller's temper, displayed after the 
 fashion of his kind, was a return to nature of which 
 she had never before had experience. Not devoid of 
 an instinctive reluctance to being found, shaken and 
 agitated, in the College which had only been allowed to 
 see her as a serene visiting goddess, Edna almost fur- 
 tively made her way upstairs in search of an empty 
 classroom in which to calm herself. 
 
 A general quiet pervaded the upper floor of the 
 building; the smell of soap and water upon newly- 
 scrubbed boards proclaimed the recent presence of the 
 usual Saturday afternoon charwoman. Lady Rossiter, 
 still shaking, felt the imperative need of a champion, 
 and murmured something indignant to herself about a 
 woman alone, which was shortly afterwards disproved 
 by p. distant and subdued sound of unceasing voices. 
 Edtia reflected that even young Cooper might be of 
 sola'ce, and was also not averse from seizing the oppor- 
 tunity of disclaiming all further connection with the 
 presentation of Iris' wedding-present. 
 
 phe rose wearily, crossing the lobby in search of the 
 
TENSION 185 
 
 just-audible voice that she judged to come from the 
 smallest and most remote classroom. The door was 
 shut, but through the upper panels of glass Lady Ros- 
 siter was only too well enabled to perceive that which 
 struck fresh dismay to her mind. 
 
 Miss Marchrose was sitting at a small table in the 
 window, her back to the door, her head bent, and her 
 hands idle in her lap. Beside her sat Mark Easter, his 
 voice still audible, and in front of him a disordered pile 
 of papers at which he made no pretence of looking. 
 
 Lady Rossiter drew back almost upon the instant, 
 but she had seen that he was speaking much more earn- 
 estly than was usual with him. 
 
 From sheer desire to gain time in which to consider 
 these unwelcome phenomena, Edna retreated once more 
 to the room across the landing. 
 
 She remained there in thought for nearly twenty 
 minutes, subconsciously aware that the murmur of 
 those two voices went on almost without intermission 
 the while. 
 
 The noise as of heavily-nailed boots galloping up the 
 uncarpeted stairs came to distract her, and the little boy 
 whom she had seen earlier in the afternoon burst into 
 the room. 
 
 " Were you looking for me ? " Lady Rossiter en- 
 quired rather severely. 
 
 " Mr. Fuller axed me if you were here still." 
 
 " It's almost time for my car to call for me," Edna 
 said with dignity. " I am just coming down." 
 
 She had entirely regained her usual poise, and faced 
 Fairfax Fuller, who stood at the open door of his 
 room, obviously awaiting her, with perfect compo- 
 sure. 
 
1 86 TENSION 
 
 The Supervisor looked very much heated, but spoke 
 with grim formality. 
 
 " I must apologise for the expression I used to you 
 just now, Lady Rossiter." 
 
 Edna looked at him for a moment, and then let the 
 wide charity of her slowly-dawning smile envelop his 
 very patent anger and confusion. 
 
 " But that's quite enough ! Perhaps we both grew 
 rather excited; but after all, the best of friends must 
 have their little quarrels. I am more than ready to 
 forget." 
 
 " Say no more about it," muttered Fuller, obviously 
 under the impression that he was gracefully bringing 
 matters to a conclusion. 
 
 " Ah, but one word more I must say," Edna inter- 
 posed quickly. " You know, I'm afraid I must hold 
 quite, quite firm about the presentation. Or perhaps 
 I had better tell Mr. Cooper that, much as I appreciate 
 having been consulted, I prefer to withdraw from his 
 committee." 
 
 Fuller's bulldog jaw was set hard. 
 
 " That's as you like, of course." 
 
 If Edna had not expected such a rejoinder, the 
 tremor with which she received it was all but imper- 
 ceptible. 
 
 " I'm sorry we don't see things in the same light," 
 she said sweetly, " and I can't tell you how heartily 
 glad I should be to find myself in the wrong about poor 
 Miss Marchrose." 
 
 She hesitated for a moment, but neither the voice 
 nor the expression of Mr. Fairfax Fuller appeared to 
 denote any readiness to resume a discussion previously 
 so much fraught with verbal disaster. So Edna, al- 
 
TENSION 187 
 
 most hearing herself pause to think, " Is it kind, is it 
 wise, is it true? " said, " Good afternoon, Mr. Fuller," 
 with perfect cordiality, and descended the stairs, un- 
 escorted by the Supervisor. 
 
 On the doorstep she encountered old Alderman Bel- 
 lew, who greeted her with the more cordiality that he 
 had expected to find Sir Julian, of whom he was rather 
 afraid. 
 
 " Seeing the car outside, I thought Sir Julian might 
 have run in for a moment on business, and I was 
 anxious to see him. But it'll keep it'll very well 
 keep. I've had a little walk for nothing, that's all, and 
 it won't do me any harm." 
 
 The obese old man was panting. 
 
 " May I give you a lift anywhere? I always think 
 that's the best of a car one can be of use to people 
 who haven't got one." 
 
 " Well, I declare that's very kind of you. Would 
 the Council House be out of your way? " 
 
 " Not at all." 
 
 The Alderman dropped thankfully on to the com- 
 fortable seat offered him. 
 
 " Did you want to see my husband? " Edna sweetly 
 enquired, not devoid of curiosity. 
 
 " Only on a little matter of business connected with 
 the College. It came into my mind that I could get a 
 word with him when I saw the car outside the door. 
 But I daresay I shall see him next week or I can 
 drop him a line." 
 
 " Even Julian," said Lady Rossiter intentionally, 
 11 is hardly more interested in our College than I am. 
 You know how I've followed its career from the very 
 beginning and always kept in the closest possible touch 
 
i88 TENSION 
 
 with the members of the staff. And I needn't tell you 
 that I've never yet missed a General Committee meet- 
 ing." 
 
 " Have you not, indeed! " responded the Alderman, 
 obviously debating in his own mind whether or not he 
 should take Lady Rossiter into his further confidence 
 with regard to the affairs of Culmouth College. 
 
 She maintained a tactful silence. 
 
 " The fact is, Lady Rossiter, that a suggestion has 
 been made this is quite confidential, you understand 
 for opening a new branch of the College. They're 
 asking for something of the same kind in Gloucester- 
 shire, and it appears that the municipal authorities are 
 ready enough to guarantee the funds. I have a very 
 gratifying letter, which I want your husband to see, 
 speaking in most complimentary terms of our little 
 show here. Of course, it's quite understood to be more 
 or less run on philanthropic lines. That chap Fuller 
 has done marvels, and actually achieved a balance on 
 the right side, but the concern isn't primarily meant to 
 be a paying one, as I needn't tell you." 
 
 " No, indeed. One's idea was to fit the wage-earners 
 rather more for their task to help the inhabitants 
 of our little corner of the Empire to help themselves." 
 
 " Quite so. And apparently the fame of our little 
 enterprise has spread," said the old man, with great 
 satisfaction. " They actually want me to send a repre- 
 sentative to look at the buildings they have in view, and 
 put things in train a bit. Rather gratifying for little 
 Culmouth, eh ? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed." 
 
 "Of course, it all depends on Sir Julian's consent 
 
TENSION 189 
 
 naturally, that's an understood thing. After all he's 
 done for us, and his position and all." 
 
 " I am quite sure you may count upon him," said 
 Edna graciously. " He will appreciate the compliment 
 to our small experiment as much as I do." 
 
 If the good Alderman felt slightly puzzled at the 
 extremely proprietary attitude adopted by his listener, 
 he knew better than to give any sign of it. 
 
 " There'll be great excitement amongst the staff," he 
 said. " But, of course, they'll know nothing about it 
 for the present." 
 
 " There's something rather unsettled about the staff 
 just now," Edna thoughtfully rejoined. " You know 
 how things can be felt in the air sometimes, and I've 
 fancied rather an absence of our usual esprit de corps 
 lately. I haven't quite known what to attribute it 
 to- 
 
 Being at all events perfectly well aware of what she 
 was going to attribute it to now, Lady Rossiter only 
 paused long enough to make sure that the Alderman, 
 listening open-mouthed, had no theory to put forward. 
 
 " May I speak quite frankly, and in confidence? " 
 
 " Of course, of course." 
 
 " It's a thing that's rather difficult to speak of at 
 all, but, of course, you know Mr. Easter's circum- 
 stances as well as I do. He is a married man." 
 
 Alderman Bellew, looking more astounded than ever, 
 gave a breathless nod of assent. 
 
 " And also," said Edna, smiling a little, " he hap- 
 pens to be an extremely attractive person. Conse- 
 quently, when a young a fairly young woman 
 spends her Saturday afternoons typing at the estate of- 
 
190 TENSION 
 
 fke, and then has herself escorted home afterwards, 
 and keeps all her civility, and all her smiles, and all 
 her conversation, for one particular person well, one 
 is inclined to wonder a little, that's all." 
 
 " Bless my soul ! " ejaculated the astonished Alder- 
 man. 
 
 Edna suddenly became grave. 
 
 ;< You understand that I'm not, for one single in- 
 stant, hinting at any sort or kind of of understand- 
 ing or flirtation between them. I know Mark, I sup- 
 pose, better than anybody else on earth knows him, and 
 I trust him absolutely. But I needn't tell you a 
 man is a man." 
 
 "Of course," said the Alderman portentously, as one 
 resolved to rise to the occasion, " we really know very 
 little about her. I suppose you mean the Lady Super- 
 intendent?" 
 
 " Yes, poor Miss Marchrose. Don't think that I 
 would willingly say an unkind word about her, for 
 indeed I could never cast the first stone. But I've been 
 uneasy for some time, and this afternoon it gave me a 
 little shock to see something oh, never mind what ! 
 A straw very often shows which way the wind blpws." 
 
 Having by this reticence left the simple-minded Al- 
 derman to infer the existence of a whole truss of straw 
 at the very least, Lady Rossiter leant back and closed 
 her eyes, as though in weary retrospect. 
 
 " It would never do to have talk of that kind going 
 about, Lady Rossiter. Demoralise the staff in a mo- 
 ment, you know. I remember rather a similar case, 
 years ago, in the big insurance office where I started 
 life. One of the partners played the fool nothing 
 wrong, you know, but there was a pretty typist, and he 
 
TENSION 191 
 
 was for ever sending for her to take down letters, and 
 the others got talking you can guess the sort of 
 thing. The girl had to get the sack, of course." 
 
 The matter-of-factness of this conclusion was against 
 all Lady Rossiter's avowed principles of championship 
 of her sex, and consistency would not allow her to as- 
 sent. But she gave a heavy sigh, and said : 
 
 " I know the sort of thing you mean, and gossip 
 spreads so easily in a little community like ours. I 
 can't help knowing, either, that one or two people have 
 already noticed the way in which Miss Marchrose be- 
 haves." 
 
 " Oh, well, you know," leniently remarked the old 
 man, " it may not be altogether her doing. Easter has 
 no business to forget he's a married man." 
 
 " I am afraid," Edna answered with reserve, " that I 
 know one or two things about Miss Marchrose which 
 go to show that she is not exactly an inexperienced 
 person. Besides, women have very strong instincts 
 sometimes, and get to know a good deal by intuition. 
 I will tell you perfectly honestly, Mr. Bellew, that I've 
 never altogether trusted her, although it seems a hard 
 thing to say." 
 
 Perhaps the Alderman was somewhat of the same 
 opinion. 
 
 " What does Sir Julian think? " 
 
 " He has comparatively few opportunities of judg- 
 ing; and besides, I haven't really discussed the matter 
 with him. One does dislike anything of that sort so 
 intensely, it's very difficult sometimes to speak of it." 
 
 :< Yes, yes, Lady Rossiter of course. But you 
 mustn't distress yourself, on any account. That would 
 never do. You know, the girl can go." 
 
192 TENSION 
 
 Edna was sincerely horrified at this ruthless cutting 
 of the Gordian knot. 
 
 " Oh, but it's her livelihood ! We could hardly turn 
 her away like that, unless there was anything definite. 
 There should always be infinite piti fulness, to my mind. 
 Mine is only a humble little creed, but that's the key- 
 note of it all. Long-suffering. Sometimes a woman 
 can do more than a man in such cases. Much as one 
 would dislike it, perhaps one might say a word or two/' 
 
 " Well, well, it's very good of you, I'm sure. The 
 poor thing may be in a false position altogether," said 
 the Alderman, with more compassion than Edna, in 
 spite of her creed, thought altogether called for by the 
 possible plight of the Lady Superintendent. 
 
 " I know I can rely on you to keep all this to your- 
 self absolutely. Perhaps I ought hardly to have 
 spoken, but it gave me a great shock this afternoon. 
 However, we needn't go into that. There is really 
 nothing to be done, except to be very much on one's 
 guard as to possible gossip amongst the staff," 
 
 " We must await developments," said the Alderman 
 solemnly. 
 
 On this noncommittal cliche, he thanked Lady Ros- 
 siter very much for having brought him to the steps 
 of the Council House, and ponderously ascended them, 
 still evidently full of thought as to her hinted revela- 
 tions. 
 
 Edna, deeply reflective, was motored back to Culm- 
 hay es. The question of the presentation had almost 
 been driven from her mind by the preoccupation en- 
 gendered at the sight of Mark Easter and Miss March- 
 rose in their companionable solitude. Her suspicions, 
 
TENSION 193 
 
 already stirring, were now in a lively state of activity, 
 and her feelings divided between an unconscious satis- 
 faction in having been proved a true prophet and a 
 very real apprehension as to the condition of Mark 
 Easter's affections. She remained, however, carefully 
 compassionate in her thoughts of the chief culprit, and 
 was resolved that no impetuosity of Alderman Bellew's 
 should summarily deprive Miss Marchrose of a good 
 post, and incidentally provide her with a grievance. 
 
 Edna's appeal to the Alderman had been as nearly 
 impulsive as any utterance of hers ever could be. She 
 had chosen her words as she always did but the 
 instinct that had moved her to speak at all was the age- 
 old and overmastering desire of drawing attention in- 
 stantly to the failure of a fellow-creature in subscrib- 
 ing to the recognised code. 
 
 She consecrated several grave moments of thought 
 to the situation, which she mentally qualified as a 
 problem, although she would have been puzzled to de- 
 fine the exact necessity for a solution. 
 
 In her own room, Lady Rossiter became still further 
 conscious of the disturbed state of her spirits. 
 
 She rang for her maid. 
 
 " Shall I take your furs, m'lady? " 
 
 Edna parted with her last shred of calm, in some 
 mysterious fashion, when the comfortable and emi- 
 nently becoming weight was lifted from her shoulders. 
 
 " I am very tired, Mason," she remarked patiently. 
 
 "Yes, m'lady? It's rather tiring weather," said 
 Mason woodenly. 
 
 " I don't know about that. But when one thinks 
 a great deal about other people their weakness and 
 
194 TENSION 
 
 ingratitude and folly it seems to wear one out, 
 somehow." 
 
 " I've mended the blue tea-gown, m'lady. Shall I 
 put it out? " 
 
 " No," said Edna, with most unwonted sharpness. 
 
 It seemed to her that Mason was a woman on whom 
 it was extraordinarily difficult to make any impression. 
 Edna sedulously " took an interest " in all her servants, 
 and made a point of lending books to her own maid, 
 but never had she met with one less responsive to her 
 influence. 
 
 She compressed her lips slightly, and made the small, 
 collected pause with which it was her custom to coun- 
 ter such rare tendencies to irritability as she ever ex- 
 perienced. 
 
 The instant's recollection was followed, as always, 
 by a flow of larger, more serene charity, enveloping 
 successfully even the recalcitrant Mason. 
 
 " I hope you have a nice book for Sunday, Mason. 
 I know it's your great day for reading." 
 
 " Yes, thank you, m'lady." 
 
 Lady Rossiter's thoughts dwelt tenderly on those 
 copies of Rtiskin and Stevenson, in the rather cheaper 
 editions, which she kept for purposes of lending. She 
 had drawn attention to several passages in them by 
 faint scorings in pencil. 
 
 "Well, and which is it?" 
 
 Mason looked blanker than ever. 
 
 " What, m'lady ? " 
 
 " Which book are you reading, Mason? " 
 
 The silence that ensued might, from Mason's expres- 
 sion, have been construed as one both sulky and resent- 
 ful, but Edna waited with implacable sunniness. 
 
TENSION 195 
 
 Finally the maid, opening the door for her mistress, 
 replied in a vicious manner: 
 
 " Well, m'lady, at the present, I'm reading a sweetly 
 pretty story called ' East Lynne.' ' 
 
XV 
 
 THE activities of Lady Rossiter did not altogether 
 cease at her conversation with Alderman Bellew. 
 
 She spoke to Miss Farmer, at the back of her mind 
 the conviction that Miss Farmer would think it due to 
 the other members of the College staff to ascertain 
 whether their attention had yet been focussed upon the 
 incipient scandal in their midst. 
 
 She made tentative beginning: 
 
 [< You will reassure me, Miss Farmer, and I can't 
 tell you how glad I shall be. It is my fancy, isn't it, 
 that there is what shall I call it ? something that 
 rather disturbs in the atmosphere? " 
 
 " The College, do you mean, Lady Rossiter?" 
 Miss Farmer spoke confusedly, evidently quite unde- 
 cided in her mind as to Lady Rossiter's meaning, and 
 anxious not to commit herself until she had ascer- 
 tained it. 
 
 " Ah, then you do know. I'm sorry," spoke Edna 
 gravely. " One condemns no one that's under- 
 stood, of course. But you, who are working there all 
 day and every day you must know better than any- 
 one how far it's all gone. I mean nothing that can't 
 be spoken oh, yes, you know after all, we're both 
 women. But there's the staff to think of my staff 
 that I'm proud of, and care for. Tell me, do they 
 talk about Miss Marchrose and this insane infatuation 
 of hers?" 
 
 196 
 
TENSION 197 
 
 " No no, I don't think so I hardly know . . ." 
 hesitated Miss Farmer, very red, and obviously feeling 
 her way. 
 
 " Thank God for that ! " Lady Rossiter piously in- 
 terjected. "You understand what I mean? It's not 
 that I, of all people, who know Mark Easter intimately, 
 could ever underrate the fact that he is an unusually 
 attractive man. But then, you see Mark is married. 
 It's so simple, isn't it, to those of us who can see 
 straight? There is just that choice right or wrong 
 and one's chosen one's path long, long ago. But 
 this poor girl in whom we're interested, whom one 
 longs, oh, so pitifully and tenderly to help. You 
 see, I'm afraid that her ideals are poor, dwarfed, 
 stunted things. She is very foolish, undignified and 
 unwomanly, but I pray and I believe I try with all 
 my heart to believe that it is just that because 
 she knows no better. Only, Miss Farmer don't let 
 them talk at the College. I know it's very easy a 
 little staying on after hours, an excuse or two for going 
 into Mr. Easter's office, a hundred-and-one indiscre- 
 tions of that kind and the mischief's done/' 
 
 " Oh, Lady Rossiter ! but really, excuse me if I say 
 that I hardly think - 
 
 Edna swept on, sweeping with her the bewildered 
 and embarrassed protests trembling on Miss Farmer's 
 lips. 
 
 " No one could ever fear harsh judgments from you, 
 Miss Farmer. I know that, and that's why I've spoken 
 to you. And because I want you to try and prevent 
 others from judging and condemning unheard. . . . 
 There'll be talk oh, I know human nature, and that 
 it's impossible for things to be otherwise but at least 
 
198 TENSION 
 
 I may count upon you for stemming the tide a little, 
 until the way is rather clearer. Believe me, there will 
 be a crisis a solution of some sort will come. I 
 know that the present state of tension can't last." 
 
 It may reasonably be conceded that Lady Rossiter 
 had ample cause for the assertion. 
 
 She sent Miss Farmer away, muddle and incohe- 
 rency on her inarticulate tongue, and in her starting 
 eyes fears visible for all to see. 
 
 Edna thought of Mark Easter, and asked herself 
 whether one word from her might not save Mark from 
 endless vexation and discomfort when the inevitable 
 debacle should come upon the impossible situation. 
 She had for too long been accustomed to look upon her- 
 self as the only feminine element in Mark's mutilated 
 life, to entertain on his behalf fears of a more serious 
 kind. 
 
 But Mark was thinking of his sister's wedding and 
 of her many, and essentially unreasonable, attempts 
 to turn his small house into a scene of extensive and 
 prolonged hospitalities for which it was eminently un- 
 fitted in every possible way. 
 
 Edna postponed the utterance of her one word. 
 
 She only offered, very gently and matter-of-factly, 
 to enact the part of mistress of the house when and 
 whenever her services might be acceptable. Mark 
 Easter thanked her very warmly and thought that he 
 could " manage." 
 
 That the process of " managing " was not an easy 
 one was descried shortly before the wedding by Lady 
 Rossiter and her husband, inadvertently entering the 
 villa and finding it a sea of frenzied preparation. 
 
 Aggressively new trunks stood in the small entrance, 
 
TENSION 199 
 
 effectively blocking the staircase, and from the draw- 
 ing-room door, propped open by a piano-stool, came 
 the sound of voices raised in considerable agitation. 
 
 The form taken by the bouleVerseinent of the five 
 occupiers of the drawing-room appeared to consist 
 principally in their each and all having taken a seat 
 upon some pieces of furniture not primarily intended 
 to be sat upon. 
 
 Iris, very dishevelled, was perched upon the piano ; 
 her fiance bestrode a small table; Mark, looking 
 harassed, sat on the corner of the lowest bookcase in 
 the room; and Ruthie and Ambrose, their respective 
 boots drumming a lively quartette against the wains- 
 coting, disfigured either end of the writing-table. Iris 
 turned in instant appeal to the entering visitors. 
 
 " We're simply fearfully worried," she declared 
 penetratingly. " Do help me to settle. Oh, do sit 
 down, Lady Rossiter ! " 
 
 Edna smilingly selected the corner of the sofa least 
 encumbered by cardboard boxes and crumpled tissue- 
 paper. 
 
 " It's old Aunt Anne. We don't know what to do 
 about having her at the wedding. We never, never 
 thought she'd want to come." 
 
 " She's seventy-nine," said Mark. 
 
 " And perfectly awful," moaned Iris. 
 
 " One had hoped, and meant, to avoid a conventional 
 gathering of relations altogether," mournfully inter- 
 jected Mr. Garrett's deep tones. " I myself have had 
 to be extraordinarily careful. We, who are members 
 of the Clan, have to reckon with such immense feudal 
 feeling and that kind of thing the sort of old-time 
 loyalty one hardly sees on the wrong side of the Bor- 
 
200 TENSION 
 
 der and finally we decided to eliminate all but the 
 very nearest. The dear old pater is going to represent 
 the family, and the old pipers and gillies and er 
 dependents generally." 
 
 " I am afraid he has a long, cold journey before 
 him, then, in this bitter weather," said Edna civilly. 
 
 " The pater is not actually in dear old Scotland at 
 the moment," said Mr. Garrett, in a tone of reserve. 
 
 " But Aunt Anne ! " wailed Iris. " Will you believe 
 it, she's written to ask if we're expecting her here 
 to-morrow just two days before the wedding. And, 
 of course, we're not. We never thought of her coming 
 at all, did we, Mark, at her age? " 
 
 " And she's only sent you salt-cellars, at that," said 
 Mark, with a rueful grin. 
 
 " We should be delighted to receive anyone at 
 Culmhayes if it's a question of room," began Sir 
 Julian, in voice wherein delight was not the most prom- 
 inent emotion discernible. 
 
 " Thank you, Sir Julian, it's most awfully good of 
 you. But it's not that. Douglas' father will insist on 
 going to the hotel, with him, so we shall have a spare 
 bed. But Aunt Anne wants such a lot of looking 
 after; and then she'll be old-fashioned, and hate every- 
 thing and disapprove of my frock, and I can't bear 
 it if she's to come and spoil everything," said Miss 
 Easter, in an outburst of passionate resentment. 
 
 " My dear, what can it matter what other people 
 think? One takes one's own line, without hurting 
 or vexing anyone that, never but just quietly, 
 
 without wondering what others may say " But 
 
 Lady Rossiter's generalities proved of no avail in 
 
TENSION 201 
 
 soothing Iris, although they gave Douglas an oppor- 
 tunity for uttering a small effective Gaelicism. 
 
 " Dinna fash yersel', Iris, as we Kelts say at home." 
 
 " It's all very well, but how can I write and tell 
 Aunt Anne not to come that we aren't expecting 
 her? It would look as though we didn't want her." 
 
 The truth of this implication appeared in such bla- 
 tant obviousness to at least three of Iris' listeners that 
 none of them spoke a word. 
 
 At last Sir Julian said drily: 
 
 " In fact, it's one of those disconcerting situations 
 that look exactly what they really are." 
 
 " And one wishes they didn't," concluded Mark. 
 
 " The modern wedding," said Mr. Garrett suddenly, 
 " I look upon as the surviving relic of a barbarous age. 
 It is iniquitous that a contract between two private 
 parties should be made the excuse for a public display, 
 an incontinent gathering together of incongruous mul- 
 titudes, for the mere purposes of gaping and staring. 
 To my mind, there should be no other ceremony than 
 the verbal plighting of troth, given in the presence of 
 two witnesses, upon the bare, open heath " 
 
 " We haven't any bare, open heaths round Cul- 
 mouth," interposed Julian hastily. 
 
 " I was thinking of the customs in my ain coun- 
 tree," said Mr. Garrett morosely. 
 
 A rather blighted silence fell upon the room. 
 
 It was broken by the wailing voice of Ambrose, 
 whom everyone had forgotten. 
 
 "Aren't we ever going to have tea?" 
 
 " Good gracious, I'd forgotten all about it ! " cried 
 Iris, exaggeratedly aghast. " Ruthie darling, do go 
 
202 TENSION 
 
 and see if Sarah can let us have tea at once. We 
 shall be seven." 
 
 Sir Julian made earnest attempts and Lady Rossi- 
 ter polite feints, at leaving the villa on the instant. 
 
 ' You ihust stay," said Iris piteously, " because 
 everything is so awful that I know I'm going to scream 
 presently." 
 
 On this inducement or another, the visitors remained 
 throughout a strange, Passover meal, in the course 
 of which Iris leapt up and wrote and destroyed three 
 successive telegrams alternately telling Aunt Anne that 
 she was or was not expected on the following day, and 
 Mr. Garrett discoursed further on the marriage laws 
 of England, regarded by him with the extreme of dis- 
 favour, and the children took advantage of their 
 father's usual leniency and their aunt's roving atten- 
 tion, to dispose of immense quantities of cake previ- 
 ously smeared with jam. 
 
 Edna, remembering the quasi-maternal role adopted 
 by herself towards Ruthie, fixed a look of grave sur- 
 prise upon the child from the other side of the table. 
 
 Ruthie ate on. 
 
 Lady Rossiter deepened the look and sought to con- 
 vey its full inner meaning by dropping a pained glance 
 at the jam-laden slab in Ruthie's hand and then raising 
 her eyebrows and slightly contracting the corners of 
 her mouth. 
 
 These signals being stolidly disregarded, there only 
 .remained to say, in very gentle accents : 
 
 " Are you always allowed cake and jam together, 
 dear?" 
 
 " Always," said Ruthie, with a face of brass, and 
 in her voice an intensity of assurance that conveyed 
 
TENSION 203 
 
 with certainty, to anyone as well conversant as was 
 Lady Rossiter with the extremely low standard of 
 truth prevailing in the Easter nursery establishment, 
 that she was lying. 
 
 Edna turned her gaze upon Ambrose. 
 
 His face already bore the peculiarly glazed and pallid 
 look that characterises over-eating, but on meeting 
 Lady Rossiter's eye he made a mighty effort to cram 
 his remaining cake into an already bulging cheek. 
 
 "You'll choke, Peekaboo," warned Ruthie, with 
 only too much reason. 
 
 Thereafter the conversation was adjusted to the ac- 
 companiment of the exceedingly distressing sounds 
 proceeding intermittently from Ambrose. 
 
 " Dear, dear a crumb gone the wrong way? " said 
 the unobservant Iris. " You'll be better in a minute, 
 dear." 
 
 " I choked " began Ambrose wheezingly, obedi- 
 ent to the unwritten law which decrees that the victim 
 of a choking fit should add to his own discomfort and 
 that of other people by entering into a gasping analysis 
 of the phenomenon. 
 
 " Look at the ceiling, Ambrose," advised M'ark. 
 
 Everyone in the room immediately set this desirable 
 example by a sort of mysterious instinct, while the un- 
 fortunate Ambrose kept his head well down over his 
 plate and continued to emit hysterical crows. 
 
 " Look at me, Peekaboo ! " shouted Ruthie. " I'm 
 looking at the ceiling ! " 
 
 She hung backwards over her chair, glaring upwards 
 with starting eyeballs. 
 
 " Don't do that, Ruthie," said Mark, Iris and Lady 
 Rossiter simultaneously. 
 
204 TENSION 
 
 " Try and get your breath, laddie," advised Mr. 
 Garrett kindly, if with some superfluity. 
 
 " He'll be better in a moment. Go on talking," 
 was Lady Rossiter's tactful suggestion, which had the 
 immediate effect of paralysing the assembly into a 
 silence upon which the paroxysms of Ambrose struck 
 with greatly enhanced violence. 
 
 Sir Julian threw himself into the breach, addressing 
 himself to Mark Easter with an air of unconcern which 
 he felt to be overdone. 
 
 " Have you talked to Walters about the car for 
 Tuesday? I told him you would let him know what 
 time- 
 
 " Let's pat Peekaboo on the back," cried Ruthie 
 hilariously. 
 
 " Gently, then. Yes, Sir Julian, thanks very much, 
 I ... No, no, Ruthie stop that can't you see 
 you're making him worse? " 
 
 " Daddy, I just choked a crumb " 
 
 " For goodness' sake don't talk, Ambrose. You'd 
 better go upstairs." 
 
 "I'm sure the child will have convulsions in an- 
 other minute. Do look at his face! Douglas, don't 
 you think he's turning black? " 
 
 This last contribution of his Auntie Iris' to the sum 
 of calamities already overwhelming the distressed Am- 
 brose caused him to burst into tears. 
 
 "Do drink some tea, dear," urged Lady Rossiter. 
 
 " Take him upstairs, Ruthie," said her parent 
 wearily. 
 
 The victim was removed, protesting inarticulately 
 at the mirthful ministrations still insisted upon by his 
 sister. 
 
TENSION 205 
 
 Everyone was conscious of relief, and Lady Rossi- 
 ter said tolerantly, " Poor little boy ! " 
 
 " He feels the wedding dreadfully" Iris observed. 
 
 "Feels the wedding?" 
 
 " Yes, you know, he's afraid that it means losing 
 me. I've always been so much with the dear kiddie- 
 widdies." 
 
 " You've always been very fond of them, my dear, 
 and they of you," said Mark gratefully. 
 
 " I should have liked little Peekaboo for a page," 
 said Iris sentimentally, " but he's just the wrong size. 
 And besides, poor darling, he hasn't got his front 
 teeth. Ruthie's bridesmaid frock has come, Lady 
 Rossiter." 
 
 Under cover of the polite interest evinced by Edna 
 at the information, her husband made his escape from 
 the room. 
 
 He and Mark, smoking in the garden, turned with 
 undisguised relief from the topic of the hour, and dis- 
 cussed instead the affairs of Culmouth College. 
 
 "What about this Gloucester business? Old Bel- 
 lew is patting himself on the back all right. He thinks 
 there's likely to be an opening in Cardiff, too." 
 
 " All the better. We always hoped the scheme 
 would spread, Sir Julian." 
 
 " I know. Who could have guessed it would come 
 so quickly, though? Look here, Mark, have you 
 thought who ought to go and see these Gloucester fel- 
 lows and start them off in their new premises ? " 
 
 "Well I left that to you," said Mark hesitat- 
 ingly. 
 
 "Of course, you're the man to send, but I don't 
 know that we can spare you at the minute." 
 
206 TENSION 
 
 " Fm quite at your disposal for anything," said Mark 
 cheerfully. 
 
 " Would you go? After all, it could only be a mat- 
 ter of two or three days." 
 
 "That's all. But the only thing I'm thinking is, 
 whether it wouldn't be a good thing to take one of the 
 actual staff someone who's really been working the 
 thing from the inside." 
 
 For an insane moment, a surmise worthy of Iris 
 herself crossed Sir Julian's mind. Could Mark Easter 
 be about to adjudicate to himself Miss Marchrose as 
 a travelling companion? 
 
 " What about Fuller? " said Mark. " He's a good 
 man of business, and got all the facts and figures at 
 his finger-ends." 
 
 " He could be spared, I suppose? " 
 
 " I think so. Miss Marchrose could quite well take 
 on for a day or two. She's won golden opinions from 
 Fuller." 
 
 "H'm. The misogynist," said Sir Julian reflec- 
 tively. 
 
 Interruption came only too soon. 
 
 Sir Julian heartily wished that he had taken the more 
 drastic measure of returning outright to Culmhayes 
 when the garden was invaded not only by the lovers 
 themselves, Edna walking slightly behind them with 
 a rather consciously unconscious expression, but also 
 by a triumphantly whooping Ambrose, glorying in his 
 restored ability to. render the day hideous with sound. 
 
 Ruthie was for the moment, unwontedly enough, 
 both invisible and inaudible. 
 
 Iris instantly attached herself to Sir Julian. He had 
 been regretfully compelled to realise that ever since 
 
TENSION 207 
 
 the day, regarded by him with horror, of their conver- 
 sation in his study, Miss Easter had assumed the ex- 
 istence of some intimate understanding between them, 
 such as caused her to make him the recipient oT many 
 small personal confidences that filled him with em- 
 barrassment. 
 
 " You know I wanted Douglas to be married in a 
 kilt?" 
 
 "Did you?" 
 
 " But he's so ridiculously shy. And what's that other 
 thing they wear? " 
 
 Sir Julian looked unintelligent and Mr. Garrett's 
 deep voice behind him made suggestion. 
 
 " Is the lassie thinking of the tartan? " 
 
 " Ye-es," said Iris doubtfully. " Or do I mean a 
 plaid?" 
 
 Sir Julian felt quite unequal to enlightening her. 
 
 " I see that I shall have to teach you many things," 
 said Mr. Garrett gloomily. 
 
 "Do you expect ever to live in Scotland?" Sir 
 Julian enquired. 
 
 " We toilers and sowers gravitate to London instinc- 
 tively. I always say," Mr. Garrett observed, in tones 
 of great interest, " I always say that London is the 
 modern Mecca. Pilgrims come there from all parts. 
 It is, in many ways, a city of freedom. London, 
 someone has said the name of the writer has es- 
 caped my memory is the only capital in the world 
 where a man can eat a penny bun in the streets without 
 exciting comment. Now, that seems to me quite ex- 
 traordinarily descriptive." 
 
 It seemed to Sir Julian, on the contrary, quite ex- 
 traordinarily futile, and he wished, not for the first 
 
208 TENSION 
 
 time, that Iris would make her appeals to some other 
 source, when she murmured in a trustful way: 
 
 " Isn't Douglas rather wonderful? You know what 
 I mean I think he's wonderful, sometimes. The 
 things he says, I mean." 
 
 " We shall live in London for a time," Mr. Garrett 
 pursued. " My journalistic work will keep me there, 
 and then we have to think of Iris' literary career. I 
 immensely want her to meet some of the great thinkers 
 of the day." 
 
 Iris looked awe-stricken, clasped her hand, and said 
 in a small, hushed voice : 
 
 " Just think of the vistas and vistas and vistas that 
 it opens up ! " 
 
 Sir Julian did so, and barely suppressed a visible 
 shudder at the phalanx of journalistic luminaries, of 
 whom he felt certain that the great thinkers of the day, 
 as known to Mr. Garrett, consisted. 
 
 " How is your book going? " 
 
 * The sales haven't been very large, but it's been 
 tremendously noticed, for a first novel," said Iris hope- 
 fully. 
 
 ' You must help me to persuade Iris," said Mr. 
 Garrett, also adding his mite to the quota of appeal 
 so ill responded to by the unfortunate Julian. ' You 
 must help me to persuade this little woman, that big 
 sales matter very little in comparison with the meed 
 of recognition that ' Ben ' has received from the think- 
 ing section of the .reading world." 
 
 " Ruthie is up that tree," announced Ambrose 
 loudly and suddenly, thereby for the first time becom- 
 ing the unconscious object of Sir Julian's brief and 
 passionate gratitude. 
 
TENSION 209 
 
 Iris, Douglas and Sir Julian all gazed upwards and 
 became aware of Miss Easter, perilously grappling the 
 bare limb of a leafless tree. 
 
 Followed Ruthie's inevitable discovery that the po- 
 sition so recklessly attained was both uncomfortable 
 and insecure, her proclamation of immediate and exces- 
 sive peril, and the issuing of annoyed ejaculations and 
 peremptory advice from the upgazers gathered below. 
 
 " Better fetch a step-ladder at once. She'll only fall 
 and hurt herself," said Iris. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " Oh," said Iris distractedly, " I don't think we've 
 got one anywhere." 
 
 " Better abandon the project, then," Mark observed 
 mildly. " I'll go up after her." 
 
 " The tree will break," wailed Iris. 
 
 " Not it ! Wish it would, and give the kid a lesson. 
 Sorry to treat you to such a series of domestic calami- 
 ties, Lady Rossiter." 
 
 " No, no," said Edna, smiling. " You know I take 
 things as I find them." 
 
 They waited to see the rescue effected, and left Mr. 
 Garrett serenely observing, " You should remember to 
 look up, and not down, when you climb, lassie." 
 
 " What a household! " said Julian. 
 
 " One wonders what those unfortunate, motherless 
 children will grow up into," his wife responded 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 " It doesn't seem to me that there's much room for 
 wonder." 
 
 " When this wedding is over I shall talk to Mark 
 again about sending Ruthie to school. It would really 
 be a great mercy if the boy could go too." 
 
210 TENSION 
 
 "Why shouldn't he?" 
 
 " He's really not at all strong, I believe. But I'll 
 talk to Mark," repeated Edna. 
 
 Some subtle hint of complacency in her voice kept 
 Sir Julian obstinately silent. He really did not know 
 whether or not his wife's influence with Mark Easter 
 was as strong as she assumed it to be. Mark was of 
 all things easy-going, and Julian did not know that the 
 question of his children preoccupied him very deeply. 
 Not improbable that he might even sacrifice Ambrose 
 and his problematical delicacy of constitution for the 
 sake of peace, and the satisfaction of Lady Rossiter. 
 
 It remained to be seen, Julian thought, whether 
 there were anything to which Mark attached sufficient 
 importance to fight for it. Julian was oddly obsessed 
 by the conviction that contest was in the air. 
 
XVI 
 
 IT was always felt that the great disappointment in 
 connection with Iris Easter's wedding was the shock 
 unconsciously caused by Mr. Douglas Garrett's father. 
 
 The representative of the Clan appeared in the guise 
 of a stout, handsome old man with waxed moustache, 
 in rather smart, tight, black clothes, wearing a top-hat, 
 a white carnation buttonhole, and white spats, and 
 speaking with an accent that, though exceedingly pro- 
 nounced, was not to be recognised as that of any known 
 part of Scotland. 
 
 The conviction gradually filtered through the assem- 
 bled guests that Mr. Garrett senior spoke with the 
 tongue of Swindon. The blurred vowels and resonant 
 r were unmistakable. 
 
 But old Mr. Garrett made no pretence at the Keltic 
 atmosphere so fondly affected by his son. 
 
 " My dearr boy," he affectionately apostrophised 
 the bridegroom, " I've left the business to take cayurr 
 of itself, for the first time in nearly twenty years. 
 You don't know what business is, loafing about Lon- 
 don doing a little scribbling heerr and therre the way 
 you do, otherwise you'd appreciate my presence heerr 
 to-day at its full value." 
 
 Douglas Garrett made no audible response that could 
 be interpreted into the required assurance, but old Mr. 
 Garrett spoke so loudly and confidently that it was 
 almost impossible to believe his observation to be any- 
 
 211 
 
212 TENSION 
 
 thing but a sort of impromptu rehearsal of the speech 
 that he would deliver at the wedding-breakfast. 
 
 The interval of waiting in the church appeared likely 
 to be of indefinite duration, and everybody heard old 
 Mr. Garrett express to his son the hope that the 
 " gurrel " hadn't thought better of it at the last minute. 
 
 " Therre have been such cases known, my dearr boy," 
 he dispassionately remarked, " and your I-ris looked 
 to me a highly nervous sort of gurrel." 
 
 Lady Rossiter, in the front bench, sank onto her knees, 
 less from a sudden access of prayerfulness than from 
 a very obvious desire to make evident the unsuitability 
 of old Mr. Garrett's behaviour to his surroundings. 
 
 "You're not feeling hysterical, are you?" suspi- 
 ciously demanded Mr. Garrett, whisking round on the 
 instant at this demonstration. " I know what you 
 ladies are. It's a very trying wait for all of us, and 
 I'm afraid my poorr boy may break down if it goes 
 on much longer. Don't let yourself get upset on any 
 account." 
 
 At last the sounds of arrival made themselves heard 
 without the church, the bridegroom's expression re- 
 laxed, and his father gave a loud gasp of relief. 
 
 An explanatory murmur, of the kind that has an 
 origin destined to remain for ever unknown, pervaded 
 the church. 
 
 " She's been crying dreadfully upset no mother 
 poor little thing. All right now." 
 
 " I said the gurrel looked to me nervous," remarked 
 the elder Mr. Garrett, with conscious triumph in his 
 own omniscience. 
 
 " How like Auntie Iris ! " thought Julian, for the 
 hundredth time. 
 
TENSION 213 
 
 At all events, the bride's pretty little face showed no 
 trace of tears now, as she came slowly up the aisle on 
 her brother's arm. 
 
 Following her, and casting triumphant and self -sat- 
 isfied glances from left to right, was the solitary brides- 
 maid. 
 
 Ruthie was a plain little girl, and it was impossible 
 not to feel that attempt at embellishment had done 
 much towards making her still plainer. 
 
 Her short white skirts stuck out to ungraceful di- 
 mensions above brown-stockinged legs and strapped 
 shoes that, to Julian's disgusted perceptions, had never 
 appeared of more solid proportions, and the broad 
 sash tied firmly round her person was of a disastrous 
 shade of salmon pink. 
 
 A second edition of the sash reappeared round the 
 wide straw hat that Ruthie, more sua, wore upon the 
 extreme back of her head. 
 
 Her thick, stiff brown hair showed only too evident 
 manifestations of having been severely treated by 
 Sarah, in the manner known as " damp-plaiting " on 
 the previous evening. 
 
 The whole effect was rather that of a young South 
 Sea Islander introduced for the first time into Euro- 
 pean garb and aware of novelty. 
 
 The College staff was sufficiently well represented. 
 Iris had expressed a sort of whole-hearted wish to 
 see " all the dear people from Culmouth College " in 
 the church, and this rather reckless aspiration had not 
 been left without response. 
 
 Cooper was prominent in immaculate gloves, with 
 Miss Sandiloe beside him, coy and alert both at once 
 and poised first on one foot and then on the other, as 
 
214 TENSION 
 
 though her shoes hurt her feet. Julian saw Miss 
 Marchrose, looking better than he had ever seen her, 
 in a bench at the bottom of the church. She wore a 
 soft felt hat that became her, and her changeful face 
 was full of colour. 
 
 " She looks happier," thought Julian, and imme- 
 diately felt a doubtful foreboding as to the source of 
 that look. 
 
 He remembered that Miss Marchrose, on the day 
 before the wedding, had officiated at a small ceremony 
 at Culmouth College, when she had presented to Iris, 
 on behalf of the staff, a silver mirror. 
 
 Neither Sir Julian nor Lady Rossiter had been pres- 
 ent, but Mark had described the occasion afterwards to 
 Sir Julian alone. 
 
 " Fuller did all the speaking, and did it uncommonly 
 well, too. I didn't know he had it in him, but it was 
 just right awfully good little speech. Miss March- 
 rose presented the thing, and looked very pretty. 
 Blushed like anything, too, when Fuller began some- 
 thing about her having been chosen to represent the 
 staff. Fuller thinks she's his discovery, you know, and 
 he's no end proud of her." 
 
 Julian was not a little inclined to wonder whether 
 Fairfax Fuller, emphasising the claims of the Lady 
 Superintendent, had not taken his stand upon the 
 lines of championship. Nor did he care to dwell upon 
 the actual or threatened attacks which should have 
 aroused the never very deeply dormant combative in- 
 stincts of Mr. Fuller. If Miss Marchrose should need 
 an ally, she had at all events assured herself of one to 
 whom half -measures were unknown. Julian only re- 
 
TENSION 215 
 
 turned to the present when the bridegroom, in a voice 
 which seemed full of deep protest against the archaic 
 formula required of him, repeated after the clergyman 
 the vows appointed to him. Iris was inaudible. 
 
 The exodus to the vestry, and the usual rapturous 
 displays of enthusiasm therein, duly took place, and 
 Mr. Garrett gave his arm to his bride and conducted 
 her down the aisle to the triumphant strains of the 
 wedding-march from Lohengrin the characteristic 
 selection made by Iris on the grounds of originality. 
 
 There was to be no reception, and it was undeni- 
 able that a certain sense of anti-climax pervaded the 
 villa when old Mr. Garrett, Sir Julian and Lady Rossi- 
 ter, accompanied by Ruthie and Ambrose, found 
 themselves at the gates, over which a slightly perilous 
 triumphal arch wavered in the cold wind. 
 
 "Mr. and Mrs. Garrett is in the drawing-room!" 
 quoth Sarah excitedly at the entrance. 
 
 " My dearr children ! " exclaimed Mr. Garrett senior, 
 and thereafter carried off the whole situation with a 
 high hand. 
 
 He kissed Iris, clapped his son on the back, and 
 stood for some time with his large old hand kindly 
 and weightily gripping the younger man's shoulder; 
 he made jokes about " giving away the bride " that had 
 no merit save that of extreme antiquity, he became 
 exceedingly solemn and alluded to Douglas' sainted 
 mother, and then by a natural transition to Douglas' 
 probable offspring, which discomposed Iris to the ex- 
 tent of sending her into the dining-room forthwith 
 where luncheon awaited the party. 
 
 " That dearr child is the least little bit nervous, 
 
2i6 TENSION 
 
 rushing away like that," Mr. Garrett remarked in an 
 explanatory way, and paternally ushered them all out 
 of the room. 
 
 The wedding-breakfast in no way defeated him. 
 Mark, in something less than his usual radiant good 
 spirits, yet muttered to Julian under his breath, with 
 a laugh in his eyes : 
 
 "Ain't I volatile?" 
 
 Volatile Mr. Garrett certainly was. He made two 
 speeches, one when Iris tremulously cut her wedding- 
 cake, and another at a later stage of the proceedings, 
 when he judged the drinking of healths to be apropos. 
 
 " I am nearly seventy," he earnestly told them, with 
 a good deal of emphasis, " and the day may be with 
 us before some of us look for it, when my boy here, 
 and his wife and shall I say, I hope other rs as well? 
 will step into my shoes. And those shoes I say 
 it in all seriousness, although my speech may be a jest- 
 ing one, as it were those shoes, I hope, will not be 
 the proverbial shoes that pinch." 
 
 Mr. Garrett paused for a more lengthy appreciation 
 of his own humour, while everyone made polite and 
 rather mirthless sounds of amusement, with the excep- 
 tion of Iris, still blushing, and Douglas, wrapt in im- 
 penetrable gloom. Ruthie and Ambrose, indeed, 
 laughed loudly, and at sufficient length to draw 
 down upon themselves a reprehensive glance from 
 Lady Rossiter and a murderous one from the bride- 
 groom. 
 
 " The fact is, my dear son and daughter," said old 
 Mr. Garrett impressively, " that there is a future be- 
 fore you. Not only that future of domestic joy and 
 happiness which we see foreshadowed to-day that 
 
TENSION 217 
 
 circle of home faces " everybody looked apprehen- 
 sive " which I hope will gather round your hearth 
 as the yearrs go on, but also a future in business. Of 
 that future, / have laid the foundations for you. 
 Douglas, my dearr boy, you have seen the business at 
 Swindon ? " 
 
 Douglas looked infinitely depressed. 
 
 " That business," said his undaunted parent, " I have 
 built up from the very beginning. You will have noth- 
 ing to do but follow the lines I have laid down. 
 There's the old home waiting for you, the dear little 
 old house in Cambridge Road West that you know so 
 well, and that I hope that pretty creature here will soon 
 know as well as you do." 
 
 Sir Julian, aware that everyone in the room was by 
 this time obsessed by a vivid recollection of the flight 
 of imagination which had led Iris' husband to date his 
 ancestral reminiscences from Scotland, avoided meet- 
 ing the eye of anyone present. 
 
 This exercise, indeed, was freely indulged in by 
 the majority of those who sat and listened to the elo- 
 quent speech of Mr. Garrett senior. 
 
 It came to an end at last, and Iris ran away to change 
 her dress, a sudden access of skittishness superimposed 
 upon her shyness. 
 
 Douglas simultaneously took the opportunity of dis- 
 appearing, and Sir Julian found himself enabled to 
 put the question that had been making its way to his 
 mind almost irresistibly all the morning. 
 
 " What does your business in Swindon consist of, 
 Mr. Garrett?" ' 
 
 " Printing and stationery, Sir Julian," said the old 
 man, proudly and simply. " A go-ahead little con- 
 
218 TENSION 
 
 cern on the small scale, though I say it that shouldn't. 
 It's enabled me to give my only son an allowance, so 
 that he could see life in London for a while before 
 settling down in Swindon like his father and grand- 
 father before him." 
 
 " Your family has an old connection with Swindon, 
 then?" 
 
 Sir Julian, interested, had forgotten the Keltic as- 
 pirations of Douglas until they were recalled by Mr. 
 Garrett's answer. 
 
 ' Two generations, Sir Julian. My grandfather 
 came from the North, I believe, but he married a Lon- 
 don gurrel, and they settled in Swindon after a year 
 or two. Swindon is a fascinating town, I can assure 
 you, and if ever you make a visit there I shall be 
 happy to show you some of the glories of the dear old 
 place." 
 
 Mr. Garrett wiped his glasses and walked about the 
 room, talking gaily and persistently to while away the 
 time of waiting for the bride's reappearance. 
 
 " And what's your opinion of a wedding, my dearr 
 little fellow?" he genially enquired of Ambrose, who 
 wore a rather forlorn aspect. 
 
 "Eh?" said Ambrose, with more dejection than 
 usual in the delivery of his objectionable exclamation. 
 
 " What do you think of a wedding, now you've seen 
 one? This is your first experience, I presume?" 
 
 Ambrose looked absent-minded, gazed up enquir- 
 ingly through his spectacles for a moment, and then 
 said, " Eh? " all over again. 
 
 " My dearr child, don't say ' eh,' like that! " rather 
 testily exclaimed the old man, a prey to the universal 
 impulse of annoyance which almost invariably assailed 
 
TENSION 219 
 
 everyone entering into conversation with the unfor- 
 tunate Ambrose. 
 
 "What does your little sister say?" 
 
 " I like being bridesmaid," Ruthie announced in self- 
 satisfied tones. " Uncle Douglas gave me a bangle." 
 She thrust the trinket forward for inspection, and old 
 Mr. Garrett admired it gravely. 
 
 "I suppose that's what you call a sweet thing? 
 Isn't that the great word? Well, my dearr child, I'm 
 glad you're satisfied." 
 
 Ruthie looked at him intelligently. 
 
 " I only hope that Auntie Iris will have a baby soon, 
 because then Sarah says it will be my first cousin, and 
 I haven't got any." 
 
 On this delicate aspiration of Miss Easter's the con- 
 versation came to a rather abrupt conclusion. 
 
 "Iris ought to be ready now," said Mark; "they 
 won't have too much time to get to the station." 
 
 He went upstairs. 
 
 Presently the bridegroom wandered into the draw- 
 ing-room again, evidently self-conscious, and endeav- 
 ouring to conceal it by an excessive display of anxiety 
 as to the probability of missing the train. 
 
 "Here she is!" 
 
 ' The car is waiting," proclaimed Ruthie. 
 
 Old Mr. Garrett gazed at the white favours adorn- 
 ing the motor. 
 
 " Isn't there a shoe tied on behind ? " he demanded 
 sharply. 
 
 "I I don't see one," said Sir Julian, rather feebly, 
 and with an unaccountable sense of having been remiss 
 in omitting to provide this emblem of good fortune. 
 
 " Don't let them drive away without an old shoe ! " 
 
220 TENSION 
 
 pleaded Mr. Garrett. " My dearr child Ruth, if 
 that's your name run up to the bedrooms and see 
 what you can find. I couldn't let my boy go off on his 
 wedding trip without a shoe for good luck." 
 
 In eager obedience to this flight of sentiment, 
 Ruthie triumphantly rushed upstairs, the successive 
 sounds of burst-open doors, hasty explorations, and 
 triumphant pouncings conveying the rate of her prog- 
 ress with great accuracy to those in the drawing-room 
 below. 
 
 In the excitement which Mr. Garrett diffused round 
 the whole question, there was no possibility of an 
 emotional farewell. 
 
 Mark put Iris into the motor a radiantly pretty 
 bride and Douglas got in beside her, after mutter- 
 ing something about the old man being in extraordi- 
 narily good form to-day and inclined to get above his 
 boots. 
 
 "We of the younger generation " began Mr. 
 
 Douglas Garrett, quite in his old manner, and then 
 looked as though he had suddenly recollected the ad- 
 vanced years of Sir Julian himself, and subsided into 
 the shelter of the motor without another word. 
 
 His father, having already hurried to the back of the 
 car and affixed there a white satin shoe and a bedroom 
 slipper, with much boisterous assistance from Ruthie, 
 proceeded to deliver a valedictory harangue from the 
 step. 
 
 " God bless you, my two dearr children, and shower 
 upon you all the blessing of the married state. Send 
 the old man a postcard from your first stopping-place, 
 and, Iris, my dearr new daughter, you'll keep my son 
 up to writing, and I shall be ready for you both in the 
 
TENSION 221 
 
 dearr little house at home, whenever you like to come 
 there. Also/' said Mr. Garrett hopefully, " we shall 
 meet in London. I think nothing of running up there. 
 Good-bye good-bye bless you both." 
 
 He stood at the door waving a large clean handker- 
 chief delicately scented with eau-de-Cologne, his shiny 
 top-hat rather to one side and the ends of his beauti- 
 fully waxed moustaches standing out stiffly. His kind 
 old eyes shone with emotion. 
 
 " Yourr loss," he remarked, with simple sententious- 
 ness, to Mark Easter, " your loss is ourr gain. That's 
 a pretty gurrel and a good gurrel, I feel sure. I appre- 
 ciate my boy's good fortune, I assure you." 
 
 He shook hands with them all, begged them to visit 
 Swindon, thanked them again and again for their 
 kindness to himself and his dearr boy Douglas, and took 
 his leave. 
 
 " I will not intrude upon you any further," was all 
 his reply to Mark's cordial invitation to remain. 
 " You have been goodness itself to an old man. Good- 
 bye to you all, good-bye." 
 
 " I think, in Auntie Iris' place, I should have pre- 
 ferred the father to the son," said Julian, as he went 
 homeward with his wife. 
 
 " Poor old man ! There's something very genuine 
 about him, in spite of his vulgarity," replied Lady Ros- 
 siter, with that leniency of tone that most successfully 
 drapes a rather disparaging utterance. 
 
 " I wonder," observed Julian, for once in a loqua- 
 cious mood, " what the next production will be from 
 Auntie Iris' pen? And whether the influence of Mr. 
 Douglas Garrett will be very obvious." 
 
 " That might not be a bad thing." 
 
222 TENSION 
 
 " It couldn't be a much worse thing than ' Why, 
 Ben ! ' was." 
 
 " Silly little girl ! I wish she would stop writing 
 altogether. I have locked up my copy of ' Why, 
 Ben! ' on account of the servants. I always hold that 
 one is so wholly responsible for the books one leaves 
 about, with either children or uneducated people in the 
 house, to whom they might do so much harm." 
 
 " I shouldn't have thought that Mason's head was 
 very easily turned," thoughtfully rejoined Sir Julian, 
 who was aware of his wife's protracted and unsuccess- 
 ful wrestlings with the recalcitrant spirit of Mason. 
 
 " I sometimes think that I shall have to get another 
 maid," sighed Edna. " One goes on so gladly and 
 willingly from day to day when there is the least little 
 sign of any response, but Mason is at a very, very 
 elementary stage. Of course it's all a question of soul- 
 growth hers is just a young, blind, struggling soul, 
 and there is only the most pitying tenderness to be felt 
 for that, but I suppose poor human nature is impatient, 
 and longs to see a little dawning of that Divine Spark 
 which one knows so well is there all the time." 
 
 But to this gently-spoken plaint Sir Julian, suddenly 
 become silent, made no reply whatever. 
 
 Edna went into the morning-room rather dejectedly. 
 An unsympathetic atmosphere, she often felt, wearied 
 her more than any physical strain. She was unaware 
 that this conviction is a singularly widespread one 
 amongst those who have never been called upon for 
 any excess of bodily toil. 
 
 Iris was married. There was no further occasion 
 for matronly tact and tenderness, nor for the beautiful 
 tolerance of maturity towards the crudities of youth. 
 
TENSION 223 
 
 Douglas Garrett had achieved his object, and re- 
 turned to London with his bride. The necessity there- 
 fore no longer existed either for overlooking and 
 graciously ignoring his many shortcomings, or for 
 dropping those little kindly sayings that should serve 
 to remind others, too rashly condemning Mr. Garrett, 
 of that great question, " Is it kind is it wise is it 
 true?" 
 
 Mr. Garrett's father, who might certainly have 
 served as a substantial peg upon which to hang many a 
 word of gentle forbearance, had gone away, and even 
 the most determined philanthropy could see no hope- 
 ful outlet in the direction of Ruthie and Ambrose 
 Easter. 
 
 Lady Rossiter began to think of Mark. This she 
 did almost instinctively whenever her sense of the need 
 for " giving out " was at a loss for an object. The 
 situation of Mark Easter was one of such obvious 
 tragedy, and daily reiterated pathos, that the consid- 
 eration of it could minimise the rather incongruous 
 light-heartedness with which he himself faced it. One 
 could always help Mark. 
 
 His children needed help. 
 
 His whole household required the supervision of a 
 feminine eye at the shortest possible intervals, and 
 Edna had for years regarded herself as the only woman 
 with eyes available for the purpose. Yet when, on 
 leaving the villa after the wedding, she had suggested, 
 with a very gentle hint of compassionate understand- 
 ing in her voice, that Mark should come and dine at 
 Culmhayes that night, he had replied, without con- 
 fusion, that he was going straight up to the College and 
 should remain there late. 
 
224 TENSION 
 
 It was tragically inevitable, Edna told herself, that 
 one should realise what this implied. 
 
 Edna sat in reflection for some time, her face shad- 
 owed and saddened, but with that absence of mobility 
 of expression that had left her smooth skin almost al- 
 together unlined throughout her life. 
 
 At dinner that night, notwithstanding, she met Sir 
 Julian with an unclouded brow. She often said that 
 part of her rule of life was to leave all her cares locked 
 up in her own room, so that she might always diffuse 
 serenity when with others. 
 
 By some perversity of fate, however, Edna's effect 
 upon her husband was never the one at which she so 
 carefully aimed. On this occasion the diffusion of 
 serenity engineered by Lady Rossiter appeared only to 
 leave Sir Julian rather more satirically ill-tempered 
 than it found him. 
 
 " Julian, you've thought about the question of send- 
 ing someone from the staff here to Gloucester, haven't 
 you? It will be rather a big responsibility." 
 
 "For Gloucester?" 
 
 " For the representative of our College," said Edna, 
 with a little low laugh, quite obviously meant to imply 
 that she thought it best to look upon Sir Julian's cap- 
 tiousness as having been humorously intended. 
 
 " There won't be very much in it. Only a question 
 of looking at the buildings, and answering anything 
 the local authorities may want to ask." 
 
 " Would that young Mr. Cooper be competent? " 
 
 "Anyone would be competent.'' 
 
 An all but imperceptible smile hovered on Lady Ros- 
 siter's lips. 
 
 " Then, Julian, why don't you send that unfortunate 
 
TENSION 225 
 
 Miss Marchrose? If a break is made, easily and natu- 
 rally, she can begin again at the College on a different 
 footing. You know there's a certain amount of talk 
 going on there? " 
 
 There was a long pause. Sir Julian did not ask, 
 "What about?" 
 
 Finally he said : " It's Fuller's business to decide 
 who's going to Gloucester. I'm not responsible for 
 the details of running the staff there in any way. Nor 
 is the question an important one/' 
 
 " Ah," breathed Edna, " you know that I can't quite 
 think with you there, Julian. To me, they are all im- 
 mortal souls." 
 
 " How will Gloucester affect the immortality of their 
 souls ? " Sir Julian enquired. 
 
 But his wife gazed at him very earnestly. 
 
 " A woman's instinct is not very often wrong. 
 There's tension in the air, and why shouldn't I speak 
 out ? I want to put out a helping hand to save 
 Mark, before things come to a head and he is faced 
 with a crisis." 
 
 " In that case," said her husband blandly, " I had 
 better arrange that Mark should be the person who goes 
 to Gloucester." 
 
XVII 
 
 " A VERY cold north wind," said Sir Julian, entering 
 the room set ready for a General Committee meeting. 
 
 " Damnably cold," said Mark Easter, who never 
 swore. 
 
 Sir Julian made an elaborate rearrangement of the 
 pencils and blotting-paper on the table in front of him 
 and then looked at Mark. 
 
 They were the first arrivals. 
 
 Mark's gaze met Sir Julian's, but it was unusually 
 clouded. 
 
 " I don't know what's the matter with the place," 
 he said irritably. 
 
 "What's happened?" 
 
 " Nothing at all, that I know of. It's just in the 
 air. Fuller's like a bear with a sore head, and those 
 two women Farmer and Sandiloe whispering to- 
 gether in corners and exchanging glances like conspira- 
 tors in a gunpowder plot. What on earth is the matter 
 with them all? " 
 
 There was silence, and then Mark said, still in the 
 same irritable voice : 
 
 " I suppose they think one's a perfect fool. If I've 
 had one of them into my office this morning, I've had 
 half a dozen on the flimsiest excuses you ever heard 
 of in your life. I don't know what they expected to 
 
 find there, I'm sure." 
 
 226 
 
TENSION 227 
 
 If Sir Julian could have enlightened his agent on the 
 point, he did not do so. 
 
 But he became himself very acutely aware of the state 
 of tension pervading the College during the course of 
 the committee meeting. Mark, contrary to his usual 
 habit, scarcely spoke at all ; Mr. Fuller sat with a face 
 like a thundercloud, a>nd, looking up occasionally un- 
 der his closely-knitted eyebrows, fixed inscrutable eyes 
 upon Miss Marchrose opposite. 
 
 She looked tired and nervous, and Sir Julian re- 
 membered that it was less than a week since he had 
 thought her looking beautiful at Iris Easter's wedding. 
 
 Edna, he noticed, did not glance at Miss Marchrose, 
 but from time to time her eyes rested thoughtfully upon 
 Mark Easter. 
 
 Even Alderman Bellew, far from susceptible to 
 shades of atmosphere, struck Sir Julian as being 
 vaguely and uneasily watchful. 
 
 The meeting was poorly attended, and when it was 
 over Mark said rather doubtfully to Lady Rossiter : 
 
 " You'll have some tea before you go, won't you? " 
 
 " Thank you," she said graciously. " Only if you're 
 quite sure that it wouldn't put anyone out, give any 
 extra trouble." 
 
 " I can find out the state of the commissariat first, if 
 you like," he rejoined, and left the room. 
 
 Miss Marchrose had gone already. 
 
 Edna's manner altered to one of businesslike deter- 
 mination on the instant. 
 
 " I'm going to make a little suggestion," she said 
 clearly. 
 
 The Alderman looked up, and at the same instant 
 Fairfax Fuller took two steps forward. 
 
228 TENSION 
 
 " 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 Superintend- 
 ent. 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 pres- 
 ent? Let her go at about four o'clock? " 
 
 The Alderman's prawn-like eyes were fixed admir- 
 ingly 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 un- 
 answered. 
 
 "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 
 
TENSION 229 
 
 early because a slack one didn't like the sight of 
 over- work." 
 
 " Come, come, Fuller," said the Alderman uncer- 
 tainly. 
 
 Fairfax Fuller turned a black gaze upon him that 
 actually caused the old man to move his chair back- 
 wards. 
 
 " 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 Rossi- 
 ter. " 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. 
 
2 3 o TENSION 
 
 " 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 dis- 
 jointed 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 im- 
 pulsive 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 in- 
 stantly. " It's an undesirable sort of element alto- 
 gether. And once people start talking especially a 
 lot of girls, if you'll excuse my saying so it's hope- 
 less. 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. 
 
TENSION 231 
 
 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 bet- 
 ter go. Don't you agree with me, Sir Julian?" 
 
 " It will probably end in that." 
 
 There was a certain surprise visible on Lady Ros- 
 siter'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 Col- 
 lege 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 sud- 
 denly : 
 
 " I should like to know what the girl is being ac- 
 cused 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 
 
232 TENSION 
 
 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 dog- 
 gedly. " 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, with- 
 out 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 al- 
 luded 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." 
 
TENSION 233 
 
 " Then my position here is a farce," the Supervisor 
 retorted. 
 
 " Anything but that, Mr. Fuller/' said Edna earn- 
 estly, and with the evident intention of laying a sooth- 
 ing 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 be- 
 fore 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 posi- 
 tion to know that a few years ago she broke off an en- 
 gagement 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 posi- 
 tion of that kind is liable to do the same sort of thing 
 again." 
 
 " She may get engaged to the whole office one after 
 
234 TENSION 
 
 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 im- 
 possible 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 
 
TENSION 235 
 
 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 ques- 
 tion. 
 
 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 con- 
 fusedly, her pale face colouring unmistakably. 
 
 Sir Julian felt vaguely disappointed. He had ex- 
 pected that the consciousness of antagonism in the air 
 would have roused in her a certain latent defiance al- 
 ready dimly foreshadowed in her erect bearing and 
 abrupt, defensive phraseology. But she was looking 
 
236 TENSION 
 
 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 en- 
 deavouring 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? " 
 
TENSION 237 
 
 " Come back with us, Mark/' repeated Lady Ros- 
 siter. 
 
 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 re- 
 sponse, 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 suscept- 
 ible 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. 
 
238 TENSION 
 
 " 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 distinc- 
 tion in the absence of those attributes, " but undoubt- 
 edly 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 oppos- 
 ing everything." 
 
 Edna gasped a little. 
 
 Her husband wondered so much whom she sup- 
 posed 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 
 
TENSION 239 
 
 swerving recklessly round the harp corner of Culm- 
 hayes 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. Some- 
 times 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 com- 
 pletely than he usually did, answered nothing. 
 
240 TENSION 
 
 " 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 en- 
 quired. " 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 ad- 
 vantage." 
 
 "Of what, exactly, has this hurling consisted?" 
 demanded Sir Julian, with an air of judicial impartial- 
 ity. 
 
 ' 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 de- 
 sirable if only Mark's dipsomaniac was in a better 
 world instead of in this one," was the thoughtful 
 resume of Sir Julian a resume of which the wording, 
 if not the substance, found so little favour in his wife's 
 
TENSION 241 
 
 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, alto- 
 gether. But, after all, I shall feel it's been worth any- 
 thing 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 defi- 
 nitely 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 appoint- 
 ment at the College, in order to discuss with Mark and 
 the Supervisor the question of the journey to Glouces- 
 ter, bit 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 hap- 
 pening." 
 
 Prophetic, reflected Julian, half amused. He made 
 his way slowly to Mark Easter's room. 
 
 A feminine voice, lowered to that penetrating sibi- 
 lance 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." 
 
 242 
 
TENSION 243 
 
 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 observa- 
 tion. 
 
 " 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 " con- 
 fronted him in the entrance hall, where he presently be- 
 took 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, 
 
244 TENSION 
 
 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 fever- 
 ishly, 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 ven- 
 ture " 
 
TENSION 245 
 
 " 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 sug- 
 gestion." 
 
 " Certainly," said Sir Julian, rather astonished. 
 
 " It has occurred to me," remarked Mr. Cooper, 
 with a certain pompousness, " that Miss Marchrose 
 w r ould 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." 
 
246 TENSION 
 
 There was a pause, during which Julian recollected 
 Mr. Coopers 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 sup- 
 posed 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." 
 
 " 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 unfor- 
 tunate young lady has forgotten the circumstances 
 
TENSION 247 
 
 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 denouement could be hoped for. 
 
 "And do you suppose that he has done so?" en- 
 quired 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 con- 
 straint, 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 ob- 
 jectionable." 
 
 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 in- 
 evitability 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 up- 
 setting everyone." 
 
 " That is so, Sir Julian. It's the talk that's doing 
 the harm," said Mr. Cooper solemnly. 
 
248 TENSION 
 
 " Certainly it is. I hope there will be no more of 
 it." 
 
 Sir Julian's hope was uttered for rhetorical pur- 
 poses 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 sa'd, with 
 evident nervousness. 
 
 " Are you giving another test there ? " 
 
 " Oh, no. We're very slack at present. The last 
 
TENSION 249 
 
 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 some- 
 thing further. 
 
 " What is it? " he asked, almost involuntarily. 
 
 " Nothing," said Miss Marchrose, her voice catch- 
 ing 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 com- 
 ing 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 an- 
 noyance and compassion. He had not expected her to 
 
250 TENSION 
 
 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 resig- 
 nation," she said at last, in a sort of rush. 
 
 11 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 think- 
 ing 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 under- 
 stood her. 
 
 " I know that it has afforded a rather poignant ex- 
 ample 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 move- 
 ment. " 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 
 
TENSION 251 
 
 is in a position to say a word to you, except officially 
 Mr. Fuller as Supervisor." 
 
 11 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 per- 
 fectly 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, in- 
 voluntary movement of her fingers betrayed the ten- 
 sion 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 un- 
 
252 TENSION 
 
 aware, had entered the lists against her, and definitely 
 defeated her. 
 
 " It's no business of mine," he reflected to him- 
 self, almost violently. 
 
 Nevertheless, he had more to hear upon the sub- 
 ject that same afternoon. 
 
 He met Alderman Bellew, whose discursive com- 
 ments 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 yes- 
 terday, now? I can assure you that he didn't look 
 himself, to me. He looked "- the Alderman low- 
 ered his voice in a very impressive and mysterious 
 manner " he looked ivorried." 
 
 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." 
 
TENSION 253 
 
 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 March- 
 rose's antecedents, so far as Alderman Bellew's knowl- 
 edge 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 Al- 
 derman 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 fight- 
 ing 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, 
 
254 TENSION 
 
 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 an- 
 swer 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 con- 
 ventional 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. 
 
TENSION 255 
 
 " 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 implica- 
 tions, 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 ac- 
 curacy of her statement. " But, thank God, I believe 
 I have made certain that there will be no debacle 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 resigna- 
 tion 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?" 
 
256 TENSION 
 
 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 in- 
 stant'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 March- 
 rose. 
 
 257 
 
258 TENSION 
 
 Mark had gone, and she herself would leave the Col- 
 lege, 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 understand- 
 ing, 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. 
 
TENSION 259 
 
 " 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 be- 
 lieve 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 of- 
 fice, 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 
 
2<5o TENSION 
 
 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 re- 
 mained 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 undersand, 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." 
 
TENSION 261 
 
 " 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. Some- 
 how 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 list- 
 less 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 what- 
 ever 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. 
 
262 TENSION 
 
 " Do you know what that would have involved, al- 
 together?" 
 
 " Perhaps I do and perhaps I don't," she said in- 
 differently. " 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. 
 
 " I don't know, quite, when I first realised that I 
 I had been making the people at the College talk," she 
 said, and again she coloured. " It was only a few days 
 ago that it began, and then I had that horrible feeling 
 that everything was soundlessly working up to a crisis, 
 and that sooner or later something must snap. You 
 know?" 
 
 " Yes, I know." 
 
 " It was after Iris Easter's wedding, I think. And 
 at first I was glad that it had come. Oh, you don't 
 know, you can't imagine, what fools girls can be. 
 How they can imagine and fancy and plan things, till 
 it all seems true, and they try to go on into real life 
 
TENSION 263 
 
 with the romance that they've been living in their 
 dreams and fancies. And it doesn't come true. Mine 
 didn't come true. Even if I was wrong and absolutely 
 wicked even to let myself imagine what I did imagine, 
 it was just as real to me as if things had been all right. 
 It meant just as much to me as it does to a girl like 
 Iris Easter, who knows that the man she cares for can 
 ask her to marry him." 
 
 " Perhaps it meant more," said Sir Julian. 
 
 She gave him a glance of gratitude out of her 
 shadow-encircled eyes. 
 
 " But when the people at the College suddenly began 
 to watch and talk and look at me then I 
 thought that it was going to to well," said Miss 
 Marchrose desperately, " to give me my chance." 
 
 " Tell me what happened." 
 
 " Nothing happened. Only, you see, at the end of 
 twenty- four hours I saw that he was well, just 
 frightened. He didn't want there to be a crisis. He 
 never had wanted it." 
 
 Sir Julian, who was Mark's friend, involuntarily 
 paid tribute to the truth of her description. Mark had 
 been afraid. 
 
 No wonder that Miss Marchrose had capitulated, 
 after all. The citadel for which she had been prepared 
 to stand siege had been only the flimsiest of castles in 
 the air. The cause for which she had held that no cas- 
 ualties could be too heavy had no existence outside her 
 own imagination. 
 
 She spoke again. 
 
 " So, though I know I've been crying, in a little 
 while I shall be glad that he's gone. Nothing can ever 
 be worse than the last few days. They're over now." 
 
264 TENSION 
 
 " They're over now," repeated Sir Julian. " Do 
 you want to stay on at the College next week, or had 
 you better not go back on Monday at all? " 
 
 " I don't know," she said, in a bewildered way. 
 " Mr. Fuller has been extraordinarily kind to me. 
 And, anyhow, I shall be gone before Mr. Easter comes 
 back. I told him that yesterday." 
 
 " You saw him, then ? " 
 
 " He came to my office to say good-bye to me." 
 
 She waited a little and then said, with something that 
 was half a laugh in her voice, although the tears had 
 welled into her eyes again: 
 
 " He said, ' Good-bye, Annie Laurie.' ' 
 
 " Poor Mark ! " said Julian in a low tone. 
 
 Presently he made her walk, afraid of the sunless 
 spring afternoon for her. 
 
 " Where are you going to, when you leave?" he 
 asked her. 
 
 " London, I suppose. I can get another post there 
 and this won't affect my references," she answered, un- 
 consciously using Alderman Bellew's phrase. 
 
 " Let me know if there is anything that I can do for 
 you," said Sir Julian rather hopelessly, neither think- 
 ing that there was likely to be anything that he could 
 do, nor that there was much probability of her apply- 
 ing to him. 
 
 She made reply with candour. 
 
 " I think you've done everything that you can do, 
 Sir Julian. I'm '- I'm not trying to thank you. Will 
 you leave me here, when you go back? " 
 
 " I can take you to the farm, or wherever you want 
 to go." 
 
 " I would rather stay here a little while longer, by 
 
TENSION 265 
 
 myself. Then I shall be all right," she said, like a 
 child. 
 
 He left her. 
 
 " Perhaps," said Sir Julian to himself, as he climbed 
 the sand slopes with long strides, " perhaps I ought to 
 have said ' Good-bye,' or ' Remember,' or ' God bless 
 you/ or something like that to her. But whatever the 
 rights or the wrongs of her point of view, her sincerity 
 is worthy of respect. And I will mock her unhappi- 
 ness with no catchwords, poor child." 
 
 As he went towards Culmhayes in the gathering dusk, 
 he met a frantically-bicycling figure violently urging 
 forward a machine that was devoid of lights. 
 
 "Fuller!" 
 
 "Sir Julian?" 
 
 Fairfax Fuller came to attention, as it were, with a 
 promptitude that nearly sent him over his handle-bars 
 head foremost. 
 
 " You had better not go through Culmouth at that 
 rate and without a light, surely?" said Sir Julian 
 mildly. " Can I give you a match? " 
 
 "Are my lamps out?" enquired Mr. Fuller negli- 
 gently. 
 
 Sir Julian felt convinced that they had never been 
 lit, but he handed the Supervisor a box of matches 
 without observation. 
 
 " Thank you, Sir Julian. The fact is," said Fuller, 
 with an air of candour, " that I'm upset and I hardly 
 know what I'm doing." 
 
 "What's wrong?" 
 ' This resignation," elliptically said the Supervisor. 
 
 " My dear chap, I'm very sorry about it, but we've 
 got to make the best of it. I've told Miss Marchrose 
 
266 TENSION 
 
 that we accept her resignation from a week yester- 
 day." 
 
 Mr. Fuller groaned. 
 
 " May I ask, Sir Julian, whether you have any idea 
 where the girl is now ? " 
 
 "Isn't it Saturday afternoon?" was Sir Julian's 
 rather pointed reply. 
 
 Mr. Fuller brushed aside this suggestion of the lib- 
 erty of the individual. 
 
 "I'm uneasy about her. I tell you quite frankly, 
 Sir Julian, that I didn't like her looks this morning. 
 One never knows." 
 
 " She strikes me as level-headed enough, you know, 
 Fuller." 
 
 Mr. Fuller bent down and examined his rear light, 
 but Sir Julian knew very well by the mere set of his 
 shoulders that he remained, and would continue to re- 
 main, entirely of his own opinion. 
 
 " I think that's all right now. Just as well not to 
 run any risks, perhaps," easily observed Mr. Fuller, 
 once more preparing himself to bestride his machine. 
 " Good evening, Sir Julian." 
 
 " Good evening." 
 
 He watched the red glimmer of Fuller's rear light 
 shoot away into the dusk, and then descry a sudden 
 curve. 
 
 " By Jove ! " said Sir Julian. 
 
 Mr. Fairfax Fuller, guided by some unexplained in- 
 stinct, had swept away from the road and taken the 
 path that led down to the sea-wall. The incident, for 
 reasons which he did not seek to analyse, rather amused 
 Sir Julian as he went on his way. 
 
TENSION 267 
 
 His thoughts remained occupied round the subject 
 until he entered his own house, to find it in possession 
 of the two most unwelcome guests possible, in the per- 
 sons of Miss and Master Easter. 
 
 " Daddy went away at lunch-time and we're all 
 alone," proclaimed Ruthie with pathos. " And Sarah 
 said, she said Sarah said, to come and see if Lady 
 Rossiter wouldn't like to invite us to tea." 
 
 Sir Julian had his own opinion to the amount of 
 liking bestowed by his wife upon the suggested festiv- 
 ity, but evidently she had fallen a prey to Sarah's un- 
 blushing design for dispensing for a while with the so- 
 ciety of her charges. 
 
 " We'll all sit round the table and have nursery tea," 
 said Lady Rossiter, brightly endeavouring to make the 
 best of a situation that, from the Rossiters' point of 
 view, left much to be desired. 
 
 " Have you any of you heard from Auntie Iris? " en- 
 quired Julian. 
 
 " She wrote to Daddy, and she sent her love to us. 
 She didn't say anything about that baby," remarked 
 Ruthie in a tone of regret. 
 
 Sir Julian felt that Edna could have dealt with Miss 
 Easter's tendency to call a spade a spade a good deal 
 more fully had he not been present. He could almost 
 hear the few strong, tender phrases in which she would 
 have bade the child refrain from the public considera- 
 tion of such matters of eugenics as now appeared to be 
 engaging her attention. 
 
 Proceedings varied but little when Mark Easter's 
 children were entertained at Culmhayes. Sir Julian 
 began by indifference, proceeded to annoyance, and 
 
268 TENSION 
 
 ended in a mood but little removed from infanticide. 
 Edna remained forbearing throughout, but became less 
 maternal and more repressive as the necessity for re- 
 pressment increased. 
 
 Ruthie monopolised the conversation with as much 
 determination as ever ; Ambrose whined quite as much 
 as usual, and surpassed himself in the degree of stick- 
 iness to which he attained; and the seance ended with 
 the usual violent quarrel between the two and their 
 eventual expulsion from the room and from the house 
 Ruthie rampant and Ambrose in tears and the 
 inevitable valedictory wish expressed by the host that 
 they should never be permitted to return. 
 
 Edna said, " Poor motherless children," in a tone 
 that sounded rather more evidently exasperated and less 
 compassionate than she had intended it to sound, and 
 Sir Julian retired to the smoking-room. 
 
 He remembered presently that Edna probably knew 
 nothing of the complete victory signalised by Miss 
 Marchrose's resignation from the College staff ; but he 
 realised that the episode, in all essentials, was already 
 past. 
 
 That which he termed " atmosphere " was dissipated, 
 and he knew that it was almost as an afterthought that 
 Edna, that evening, asked him whether Miss March- 
 rose was going. 
 
 " Yes, she is." 
 
 "At once?" 
 
 "I don't know. I've left her to settle that with 
 Fuller." 
 
 " She must go before Mark comes back. It's far 
 better so." 
 
 " I think probably she will." 
 
TENSION 269 
 
 " Julian, I've been thinking about her. And it seems 
 to me," said Edna, " that we must help her. God 
 knows, I can judge no one, least of all to condemn, but 
 I think that her weakness and recklessness are going 
 to make life terribly, terribly hard for her. And I, for 
 one, can't see her drift away like that without one effort 
 to help." 
 
 The depth of Sir Julian's disapproval for the sug- 
 gested scheme of philanthropy left him bereft of speech. 
 Finally he observed: 
 
 " In my opinion, Edna, you have done rather too 
 much already. Leave her alone." 
 
 " What do you mean ? Julian, you carry your mania 
 against officiousness too far. Indeed you do. What 
 are we here for, unless it is to help one another? " 
 
 Sir Julian shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " I knew the character of this woman before she 
 ever came here I couldn't help knowing it I saw 
 her trying to wreck Mark, as she nearly wrecked poor 
 Clarence. I believe that I have saved Mark and I 
 thank God for it, very humbly, and very proudly. As 
 for her, I hold no brief against her. I condemn no 
 one, and I seek only to help her. ... If she cares to 
 turn to me now, all the love that I can give that poor, 
 struggling, feeble soul is waiting for her." 
 
 " I don't think she will ask you for it, Edna." 
 
 Sir Julian thought of many things. For a moment 
 he wondered whether he should say them aloud. Then 
 the habit of apathy that had possessed him for a num- 
 ber of years asserted itself anew, and he did as he 
 had almost always done he left things alone. 
 
 The episode was past. 
 
 He told himself so again, with a faint sense of 
 
270 TENSION 
 
 surprise that already it should rank as an episode 
 merely. 
 
 There had been no calamity, and, as Edna had said, 
 nothing had been put into words. 
 
 He revised the collection of infinitesimal ripples that 
 had momentarily disturbed the atmosphere common to 
 the little groups of people with whom he was concerned. 
 
 Almost each one had contributed vibrations in a 
 greater or lesser degree. 
 
 Miss Farmer, Miss Sandiloe, young Cooper each 
 and all of them had tittered a little, wondered a little, 
 talked foolishly. 
 
 Auntie Iris for the life of him, Julian could not 
 feel as angry with pretty, ridiculous Iris as he thought 
 that her folly deserved Iris, too, had played out her 
 little comedies, her childish attempts at directing the 
 hand of fate. 
 
 Old Alderman Bellew Julian gave only an in- 
 stant's half-amused recollection to the dogmatic con- 
 demnations and assertions of old Alderman Bellew. 
 He had merely found it easy to follow the lead given 
 him, after all. 
 
 On the thought of Edna's many activities Sir Julian 
 dwelt not at all. Somewhere at the back of his mind 
 lingered the echo of her specious gospel, her creed of 
 " giving out." 
 
 For himself, he preferred to think that the trend of 
 events had been in no way deflected by all that Edna 
 had done and said. 
 
 The whole had been fated to remain an episode, de- 
 void of climax. 
 
XX 
 
 NEVERTHELESS the last word remained to be spoken, 
 and it was destined to be heard by Sir Julian when he 
 made casual enquiry of Fairfax Fuller on Monday 
 morning. 
 
 " Have you settled the day that Miss Marchrose 
 leaves us? " 
 
 " Yes, Sir Julian." 
 
 "Well?" enquired Sir Julian, after a moment, as 
 his subordinate appeared quite indisposed to make any 
 further communications. 
 
 " She's not coming back here at all." 
 
 " Is that with your sanction?" said the surprised 
 Julian. 
 
 " I talked it over with her on Saturday evening, 
 Sir Julian." 
 
 "Then you did find her?" 
 
 " Down by what they call the sea-wall." 
 
 Fuller, his dark face marvellously heated, looked 
 full at his chief. 
 
 " I've asked the girl to marry me, Sir Julian," he re- 
 marked. 
 
 Some weeks later, Julian wrote a letter, and ad- 
 dressed it to Miss Marchrose in London. 
 
 My dear Pauline Marchrose, 
 
 Since you ask for my opinion, I send it to you 
 for what it is worth, admitting that, as you say, I stand 
 
 271 
 
272 TENSION 
 
 committed to a certain degree of officiousness already. 
 That, hoivever, is not the word of which you made use. 
 Thank you, on the contrary, for the expressions that 
 you have selected. 
 
 I am glad that you are marrying Fuller. He is a 
 good fellow through and through, and the other side of 
 his bull-dog tenacity is a very real and dependable loy- 
 alty. I think that that loyalty zvill be of great service 
 to you. And don't think that you are relinquishing 
 the abstract ideal of which we spoke one afternoon 
 down by the sea-wall. You were never false to your 
 standards for a moment, and to recognise defeat is 
 not ahvays an implication of weakness. It may, as in 
 your case, denote the courage of a perfectly sincere 
 outlook. Humbug is the only thing to be afraid of. 
 You have eliminated that, and Fairfax Fuller is not 
 prone to illusion or self-deception. Besides, your in- 
 tercourse took place at a time and in circumstances 
 which admitted of the luxury of sincerity. For that, 
 and for the fact that Fuller knows something of the 
 extent of his incredible good fortune, I send you my 
 congratulations and I wish you luck. 
 
 Sir Julian paused for a long while. 
 
 The episode was over. His letter was a postscript 
 merely. 
 
 "Are you coming upstairs, Julian?" said Edna's 
 most forbearing tones, full of fatigue. 
 
 "Is it late?" 
 
 " It's nearly twelve. It's the servants that I'm 
 thinking of. I hate keeping them up." 
 
 " It's quite unnecessary to keep any of them up. I 
 
TENSION 273 
 
 am perfectly capable of putting out the lights in the 
 hall without Horber's assistance." 
 
 " I shall not ring for Mason. I never do ring for 
 her if I'm later than eleven o'clock. After all, it's a 
 very little thing, when once one realises that a maid is 
 a sister-woman, when all's said and done. . . ." 
 
 All was so far from being said that Julian, taking 
 up his pen again, slowly added the final sentence to his 
 letter, unconsciously adjusting his speed to words that 
 struck upon his hearing and penetrated hardly at all 
 to his thoughts. 
 
 " I believe so much in little things, in the immense 
 power of a thought, of a kind glance, of a smile . . ." 
 
 // the Colonial scheme materialises rapidly, as I 
 think it will, I shall send Fuller out. It is largely 
 owing to his management that we have the funds in 
 hand to extend the branches of the College, and I can 
 see both you and him as pioneers, in the near future. 
 
 " Sometimes I think that when one has not received 
 very much oneself, it only makes one readier to give. 
 One knows the lack " 
 
 Keep up a very good courage but that I believe 
 you will always do. You have got your scale of rela- 
 tive values clear, and, once that's done, you can afford 
 to accept truth. Nothing else matters. 
 
 " Perhaps one would be less tired at the end of the 
 day if one gave out less, but after all, it's all part of 
 the great, wonderful, Divine plan." 
 
274 TENSION 
 
 " Have you finished writing, Julian ? ' Jorrocks ' is 
 on the table." 
 
 " Yes, quite finished," said Sir Julian, and, first 
 signing his name, he sealed his letter. 
 
 Cornwall, Jan., 1919. 
 Surrey, June, 1919. 
 
 THE END 
 
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