“Serve him jolly well right,” declared one of the listeners, and his opinion was universally seconded, for Bracebrydge was not popular among those who roosted on the railing.
“I think Miss Cheriton’s the prettiest of the two,” said the youth who had first spoken. “She’s one of the most fetching girls I ever saw in my life.”
“Then why don’t you make hay while the sun shines?” rejoined another. “Go and make yourself agreeable—if you can, that is. They’ve just gone into the library. Go and ask her to play tennis, or something, chappie.”
“I think I will.” And sliding from the rail with some alacrity, away he went. Those remaining continued their subject.
“Bracebrydge must have been a double-dyed ass to have hit that particular nail on the head. It’s my belief he couldn’t have hit the wrong one harder, anyway.”
“The devil he couldn’t!”
“Well, I don’t know, mind. Only look at the opportunities they had, thrown almost entirely upon each other up there, for old Jermyn doesn’t count. If they hadn’t altogether set up a bundobust, it was most likely only a question of time.”
“Miss Wymer hasn’t been to a dance since that affair,” struck in another oracle of the rail. “Looks as if there was some fire beneath the smoke. What?”
“That don’t follow, either. Mind you, the chap deliberately went to have his throat cut so that the others should be let go, and while his fate is a matter of uncertainty it is only what a nice girl like that would do to keep a bit quiet. She wouldn’t care to think, while she was frisking about at dances, that at that very moment they might be hacking the poor chap to pieces.”
It so happened that the theory set forth by the last two speakers expressed with very fair accuracy the real state of affairs. Naturally self-contained, and with immense power of control over her feelings, Vivien was able to support the terrible strain of those weeks without—in popular parlance—giving herself away. And it was a strain. Day and night his image was with her, but always as she had seen him last; calmly and cheerfully delivering himself into the merciless hands of these cruel, marauding fanatics, giving his life for her and hers. Of the old days she dared not even think—and, since this tragedy had come between, they seemed so far away. Small wonder, then, if she refrained from joining in the ordinary round of station gaieties, yet not too pointedly, and she was the better able to do this that, being a comparative stranger in the place, her abstention was ascribed to a natural seriousness of temperament. Even thus, however, it could not entirely escape comment, as we have seen.