“What, you can’t all be going at once?” and he had heaved a great sigh of relief. But in the dead silence that followed Mr. Balestier’s words, whilst Robert Grimshaw was wondering whether Balestier had merely and colossally put his almost ox-like foot into it, or whether this actually was a “try on,” Pauline’s voice came:
“Oh, not just yet. I’m in mourning, you know. I think I go out a little too much as it is.”
“Oh, she’s saved the situation again!” And then irresistibly it came over him to ask what was the good of this eternally saving the situation that neither of them really wanted to maintain. “She should,” he said to himself fiercely, “give it up.” He wasn’t going to stand by and see her tortured. Dudley Leicester had given in, and serve him right, the cad! For all they could tell, he was having the time of his life. Why shouldn’t they do the same?
“Oh, isn’t she wonderful!” Ellida exclaimed suddenly. “I don’t wonder....” And then she gazed at him with her plaintive eyes. The slim, dark Mr. Held brought out suddenly:
“It’s the most wonderful ...” but his voice died away in his jaws. “After all,” he continued as suddenly, “perhaps she’s holding the thought. You see, we Christian Scientists ...” But again his voice died away; his dark eyes gazed, mournful and doglike, at Pauline’s dimly-lit figure.
The tall, small room, with its large white panels, to which the frames of pale-tinted pictures gave an occasional golden gleam, had about it an air of blue dimness, for the curtains, straight at the sides, and half concealing the very tall windows, were of a transparent and ultramarine network. The little encampment around Dudley Leicester occupied a small back drawing-room, where the window, being of stained glass that showed on its small, square panels the story of St. George, was, on account of its tall, dark furniture, almost in gloom. Little, and as it were golden, Pauline stood motionless in the middle of the room; she looked upon the floor, and appeared lost in reflection. Then she touched one side of her fair hair, and without looking up she came silently towards them. Ellida was upon the point of running towards her, her arms outstretched, and of saying: “You are wonderful!” but Pauline, with her brown eyes a little averted, brought out without any visible emotion, as if she were very abstracted, the words: “And how is your little Kitty? She is still at Brighton with Miss Lascarides? Robert dear, just ring the bell for the tea-things to be taken away.”
It was as if the strain upon her rendered her gently autocratic to Robert Grimshaw, who watched her from another point, having settled himself down in the arm-chair before the window looking into the little back room. Against the rows of the stained-glass window Ellida Langham appeared all black, impulsive, and ready as it were to stretch out her arms to enfold this little creature in her cloak, to hide her face under the great black hat with the drooping veil and the drooping feathers. But as he understood it, Pauline fended off these approaches by the attentive convention of her manner. They were in face of Dudley Leicester’s condition; they had him under their eyes, but Pauline was not going—even to the extent of accepting Ellida’s tenderness—to acknowledge that there was any condition about Dudley Leicester at all. It wasn’t, of course, that Ellida didn’t know, for Robert Grimshaw himself had told her, and Ellida, with her great and impulsive tenderness, had herself offered to come round and to play at animated conversations with Dudley and Mr. Held. But except by little pressures of the hand at meeting or at parting, and by little fluttering attentions to Ellida’s hats and toilets when she rose to go, Pauline was not going to show either gratitude or emotion for the moment. It was her way of keeping her flag flying. And he admired her for it as he admired her for everything, and looking down at Peter between his feet, Robert shook his head very sadly. “Perhaps,” he thought to himself, “until she knows it’s hopeless, she’s not going to acknowledge even to herself that there’s anything the matter at all.”
II
BETWEEN his feet Peter’s nostrils jerked twice, and a little bubble of sound escaped. He was trying to tell his master that a bad man was coming up the stairs. It was, however, only Sir William Wells who, with his brisk straightforwardness and his frowning authority, seemed to push himself into the room as its master, and to scatter the tables and chairs before him. In his harsh and minatory tones he informed them that the Marchioness of Sandgate had gone to Exeter with Mrs. Jjohns, and then he appeared to scatter the little group. It was, indeed, as if he had thrown Ellida out of the room, so quickly—whilst she exclaimed over her shoulder to Grimshaw: “Well, you’ll be round to dinner?”—did she disappear.
With his rasping voice, shaking his glasses at her, Sir William continued for some minutes to inform Pauline of the movements of those of his patients who were of political prominence. They were his patients of that class uneasily dispersing over the face of the country, opening bazaars, bowling the first balls of cricket-seasons, devising acts of graciousness all night, putting them into practice all day, and perpetually shaking hands that soiled their delicate gloves. For that particular world was full of the whispered words “General Election.” When it was coming no one seemed to know, for the Prime Minister with his amiable inscrutability very reasonably distrusted the great majority of his followers. This disconcerted innumerable hostesses, for no one knew when they wouldn’t have to pack up bag and baggage and bolt like so many rabbits back to their burrows. This febrile condition gave occupation of a secretarial kind to great numbers of sleek and smooth-haired young gentlemen, but it was very hard upon the London tradesman.