And when at last, with a modest ring, the two ladies and the baby arrived and ascended the stairs with soft tread, and were ushered into the presence of the three hosts, one would have thought that they were three smug young curates or mild-mannered Y.M.C.A.’s, so trim and still and subdued were they after all the fuss and the fluster, the fuming and the shouting, the running about and the hiding away that had been going on for hours before.
The ladies, too, were very quiet and rather shy, and Mrs Bayre, in particular, kept her eyes fixed upon her little boy with maternal pride, which struck Southerley as being rather forced.
When the door and a window had been opened to cool the appalling atmosphere, however, and they had all sat down to tea, not in the orthodox fashion in twos and threes about the room, but upon Bayre’s advice, to an honest round table, they presently began to lose a little of the stiffness which had characterised the proceedings at the outset, and at last Jan Repton, suddenly plunging, as men do, from acute shyness to confidence even more acute, turned to Mrs Bayre and said,—
“Look here, Mrs Bayre, I don’t think it’s fair that I should be left out of the general post. If Miss Eden takes Bayre, and Southerley takes you, I must have the baby!”
For one moment the consternation which followed this audacious and awful speech was too deep for words. For, be it noted that Southerley and Mrs Bayre had conducted themselves from the outset as strangers of the deepest dye, and no one ignorant of recent events would have thought it possible that there was any feeling in either of them of a sentimental nature towards the other.
These terrible words, however, caused them to look up, to catch each other’s eye, to look down, to laugh feebly, to “give themselves away” in a manner which would have tortured a person of finer feelings than Repton.
The artist, however, was conscious only of a pause, a ghastly silence, and he went on, with the utmost cheerfulness,—
“Come, Bayre, come, Southerley, that’s fair, isn’t it?”
For one moment Southerley’s fresh-coloured face showed symptoms of apoplexy. The next, an inspiration seized him.
“Mrs—er—Bayre,” he said solemnly, “let us discuss the proposition of this frivolous person.”