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 alternatively morphomaniac, drug-taking inebriate or homicidally insane partner. To his own ever-increasing, 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 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 misnomer, 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 reflected, as Mark Easter was looking interested.
Fuller always put forward the same arguments: for a better class of teacher, for an extension of advertisement, always with the same implication of his own indispensability as managing Supervisor.
Alderman Bellew was tedious, obviously only speaking 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 formal, and Sir Julian gave it formal sanction.