SEVENTEENTH
ADY DOVER put into instant execution her promise to ask Madge and her husband to come and stay, and half an hour later set off with Mr. Dennison up the glen to the scene of his picture; the “original,” as she called it. As usual, in her interview with Lady Ellington she had behaved quite straightforwardly, and had expressed and acted on the view which she believed to be right, and though she could not help feeling that Lady Ellington had referred to her rather as an oracle, whose slightest word was a thing to be treasured up and reverently commented on, she was not naturally at all self-conscious, and did not dwell on the fact with any elation. Elation indeed she could not possibly have felt, since, had she been pressed to say how highly she valued Lady Ellington’s opinion, she would have been forced to confess that, without wishing to be unkind, she did not value it at all. Secretly, indeed, her estimate was that poor Margaret wanted very much to be a woman of the world, and only succeeded in being a worldly woman; she schemed (she had no doubt schemed in the matter of Madge’s marriage) and span threads in all directions, with the unfortunate result that she only succeeded in getting entangled in them herself. Lady Dover, on the other hand, never schemed at all; she walked calmly along a broad highroad and admired the flowers by the wayside. Consequently she was invariably free from preoccupations, and could talk with the artist about the exquisite lights and shadows on the hillside and the wonderful contrast of the purple heather against the golden gorse with sincerity and attention. It was quite possible also that they might see an eagle; one had been seen at the top of the glen several times that year.
Lady Ellington as she went down with Gladys to the river felt more herself than she had felt ever since that stormy interview with Madge in the New Forest. A sense of imperfect mastery had begun then, terminating, on Madge’s visit to the studio, in a terribly certain conviction that she had no mastery at all. Madge, in fact, had made a fool of her, and her resentment at it was impotent. She felt, too, that the world very likely regarded her with a sort of amused pity, which was hard to bear. But she felt sure now after this interview that the world was going to forgive Madge and her husband, and welcome them to its midst. Her own course of conduct therefore was clear, she must quite certainly do the same, and if possible let it be understood that she had, though sorry for Philip, realised that this marriage was inevitable. Lady Dover had put this so plainly; how much better that their mutual love should be discovered before the irremediable mistake of Madge’s marriage with Philip had been made. And since she was a woman who never wasted time or anything else, she began immediately to lay the foundations of this remarkably imaginative structure before Gladys.
“Poor Mr. Dennison,” she said, “I was so sorry for him at breakfast when he said he thought we had heard the last of Evelyn. I am always sorry for people who put their foot in it. But I suppose that would be the middle-class view of poor Madge’s marriage. It is easy to see that Mr. Dennison is not quite a gentleman.”
This was so calm and glorious a disregard of all that she had previously said, thought, and felt, that the very completeness of it roused Gladys’s admiration. Lady Ellington took her previous attitude off, like a pair of gloves, just threw it into the gutter, and walked on. Gladys knew it must have been Lady Dover’s pronouncement that had caused this change, for she too was aware that the social Greenwich time was largely taken from Glen Callan, and had made a mental note, just as Madge’s mother had done, that she must also alter her own time by this. It clearly would be too ridiculous if all London welcomed them back with open arms, and only Madge’s family turned their backs on her. But she had a certain Puck-like sense of malice, particularly when she could exercise it on Lady Ellington, and she could not resist a little tap or two now.
“I am so glad you take it like that,” she said, “and see it as Lady Dover does. At first, you know, I thought you were being too bitter about it, and really, to tell you the truth, I had no idea that you were taking Madge’s part. Dear Madge; I hope they will ask her soon, while I am still here.”