"Well, I'm in for it—here goes!" thought Arthur, as he requested Barber to find out from Mrs. Gates—who had been acting as nurse to her master as well as to his little girl—when Mr. Lisle could see him.
Gossip and giggles there may have been somewhere, probably there were, but not on the faces or in the demeanour of Barber and Mrs. Gates. Pomp, funereal pomp! They seemed sure that Bernadette was dead, and that her death was a suicide.
"I will ascertain immediately, sir," said Barber. He was really very human over it all—a mixture of shockedness and curiosity, condemnation and comprehension, outrage and excuse—for she certainly had a way with her, Mrs. Lisle had. But his sense of appropriateness overpowered them all—a result, no doubt, of the ceremonial nature of his vocation.
Mrs. Gates's humanity was more on the ample surface of her ample personality. She made no pretence of not understanding what had happened, and even went a little further than that.
"Lor, sir, well there!" she whispered to Arthur. "I've 'ad my fears. Yes, he can see you, poor gentleman! I've not said a word to 'im. And poor Miss Margaret!" She was bent on getting every ounce out of the situation. Arthur did not want to kill her—she was a good woman—but it would have relieved his feelings to jab a penknife into one of the wide margins around her vital parts. "Why is she so fat?" he groaned inwardly and with no superficial relevance. But his instinct was true; her corpulence did, in the most correct sense, aggravate the present qualities of her emotions and demeanour.
And so, in varying forms, the thing was running all through the house—and soon would run all through the village. Mrs. Lisle—Mrs. Lisle of Hilsey! Portentous, horrible—and most exciting! It would run to London soon. Mrs. Lisle of Hilsey was not such a personage there—but still pretty well known. A good many people had been at that party where the Potentates had met. One of them had abdicated now and gone—well, perhaps only as far as Elba!
All the air was full of her, all the voices speaking her name in unison. The sympathetic cousin had great difficulty in getting on the top of the defeated lover when Arthur entered Godfrey's room. And even anyhow—if one left out all the irony and all the complication—the errand was not an easy or a grateful one. If Godfrey had gone to bed sooner than witness a flirtation, what mightn't he do in face of an elopement?
The invalid was sitting up in bed, supported by several pillows, smoking a cigarette and reading yesterday's "Times." The improvement in his temper, manifest from the moment when he took to his bed, seemed to have been progressive. He made Arthur welcome.
"And I hope you've not come to say good-bye?" he added. Arthur had mentioned to him too the call to London and to work.
"No, I'm going to stay on a few days more, if you can put me up. I say, Godfrey——"