II
After spending nearly a week at home, John came up to London on the first Friday of his leave. He was to stay with the Fane-Herberts, who were giving a dance on the following day, and before he returned to the country he and Hugh were to go together to Mr. Reeve’s London branch and order the clothes they would need in China.
“I am afraid it is no good,” Hugh told him. “It seems to be definitely fixed that Margaret is to remain in England.”
But at dinner that night they were thrown once more into perplexity. Mr. Fane-Herbert was away in the North, and was not expected home until Saturday afternoon, when he would bring Mr. Ordith with him.
“I believe Mr. Ordith is a wonderful dancer,” Mrs. Fane-Herbert said.
“From all accounts,” Hugh replied, “he must be wonderful at everything.”
“My dear Hugh, you speak as if you disliked him already, without ever having seen him.”
“I don’t dislike him, but I can’t see what he has to do with our affairs.”
“Our affairs?”
“Margaret’s going to China. It was all fixed up before Ordith came on the scene.”
Mrs. Fane-Herbert smiled. This was a chance better than she had hoped for. “Now,” she said, “shall I show you how wrong you are? I had a letter from father this afternoon, and, so far as I can judge, for he is not at all definite, he has been thinking it all over, and has come to the conclusion——”
“That I am to go after all, mother?” Margaret interrupted. “Do say I am to go!”
“Well, dear, I don’t want you to be disappointed again, but I must say that father seems to incline more towards taking you.... So you see, Hugh, how little Mr. Ordith had to do with the matter. It is very foolish to make rash judgments.”
“But why has father changed his mind?”
“It doesn’t matter why,” said Margaret. “The point is that he has changed it.”
Hugh shrugged his shoulders. “It beats me, I confess.”
His mother allowed Hugh’s suspicion to fade into silence. To have attempted to remove it would have been to emphasize it, and this she wished to avoid. Her husband’s letter had given her two pieces of information, the last of which explained the first. “I think,” he had written, “that, after all, Margaret had better come with us when we leave England. Edith might not wish to be burdened with her. I know you would like to have her with you, and that she herself is anxious to come. There are many obstacles, but, if you have really set your heart on taking her, none that I am not prepared to overcome if I can. We will talk it over when I reach home.” Mrs. Fane-Herbert, when she read this, was as astonished as Hugh had been when he heard of it; but at the end of the letter, separated from her husband’s decision by more pages than he usually troubled to write to her, was a brief announcement which made all clear: “Ordith has been appointed to the Pathshire as an additional Gunnery Lieutenant. Isn’t it a strange coincidence in connection with Hugh?” To Mrs. Fane-Herbert it was an illumination uncomfortably brilliant.
She established at once the connection between her husband’s change of mind and Mr. Ordith’s change of plan. But would Margaret establish it? If possible, that must be prevented. Mrs. Fane-Herbert was tempted to say nothing of the contents of her letter, to leave her husband to make the best of it on his return. But his best, in this instance, would, she knew, be bad indeed. He thought of Margaret as of a child without perception. He would not trouble to deceive her.
Mrs. Fane-Herbert realized that she herself must give these two pieces of information to Margaret in such a manner as might prevent their being connected with each other. The responsibility and the chance of failure made her nervous and troubled. Dinner was to be an ordeal. She wished that her husband was not so successful a man—at any rate, that success had not blinded him to so many things she would have liked him to see and value. She wished that Mr. Ordith had not so much ability and charm; that she could bring herself to dislike him frankly, and so to form a clear policy with regard to him. He might make an admirable husband. She did not think so. But what was there against him? Nothing but her instinct and Mr. Alter’s saying that the young man had a systematized soul. Her husband wanted him in Ibble and Company. She had seen, scribbled on a blotting-pad in the writing that, years ago, had filled her love-letters, the words “Ibble and Ordith—Ordith and Ibble,” as if the amalgamation was already accomplished and a dispute about the nomenclature had begun. Mr. Ordith would leave the Service and succeed his father, Sir George Ordith, as head of Ordith and Co. The plan was cut and dried, as were all Mr. Fane-Herbert’s plans. But she hated the whole project. Even if the result were excellent, she hated this involving of Margaret in the affairs of Ibble and Co., for Ibble and Co. had already robbed her husband of the qualities she had loved best in him. She disliked it the more because her husband had never dared speak openly of it, and because she had never dared mention it to him. She knew how he would answer. Was he trying to force the girl? Absurd! He was trying to give a fair chance to a young man whom he liked—surely a reasonable and proper course? Oh yes, reasonable and proper! Mrs. Fane-Herbert thought helplessly. But wrong, she felt—wrong in motive and bad in effect. If it were not wrong, why did it already compel her to fence with her own children?
Hugh had helped her at the beginning of dinner. The first piece of information had been naturally given, she thought. Now for the second, which was the test. She led the conversation into new channels, and talked much and well—just as Mr. Fane-Herbert had written those intermediate pages in his letter. But too long a delay would draw attention to itself. Margaret would wonder why she had put off speaking of Mr. Ordith. When should she speak?
She waited until dinner was ended. Then she paused in the open doorway.
“Oh, and Hugh, father said in his letter something of Mr. Ordith’s being appointed as additional Gunnery Lieutenant to the Pathshire. Isn’t that an odd chance?”
“Ordith, too, going to China?”
“I suppose so.”
Mrs. Fane-Herbert made her way towards the drawing-room. She knew Margaret was watching her. Why, oh why, had Hugh said, “Ordith too?” Or was it her imagination and not his voice that had so laid the emphasis? She did not look round to search Margaret’s face, though her desire to do so was almost too strong for her. In a moment Margaret would speak, and her tone, even more clearly than her words, would indicate how much she had guessed.
But as they entered the drawing-room Margaret said: “If I am to go East, mother, I shall want dozens of new frocks, shan’t I?”
And Mrs. Fane-Herbert was left without enlightenment.