I did my best to smooth things over, but if at lunch-time on the previous day I had felt that the gaiety of our party was forced and rang false, I had no doubt at all on this occasion, that the general feeling of irritation was genuine enough. The very flies seemed to have caught the disease and to be more persistent than usual in their attempts to annoy.
The Tundish was the only one of us to make the least attempt at general politeness, and he, I believe, was secretly amused at our united and childish ill-humor. Stella was positively rude when he reminded her of the medicine that he had had sent up to her room. First she refused to take it at all. Then she would take it at once, and there was another little scene before she could be persuaded to obey the doctor’s wishes and wait for an hour after her meal.
The two boys had left the room while we were pacifying Stella, but when Ethel suggested that the four of us should have a quiet game of bridge while The Tundish did some work in the dispensary and she and Margaret descended to the basement to tackle some ironing, the boys were nowhere to be found.
Ethel seemed absurdly put out over so trivial a matter. She went into the dispensary with The Tundish and I overheard her say: “It’s abominably rude of Kenneth to leave Francis alone with nothing to do, and I shall tell him so when he gets back,” and I must admit that I was childishly gratified that she should care enough about my comfort to risk having words with Kenneth. Truly, along with the rest, I was feeling the heat.
My ears must have been in a hypersensitive condition, for I had heard Ethel in the dispensary quite plainly, and a little time later as I stood at the telephone in the hall trying to get a connection through to Brenda, I heard The Tundish talking to Stella in the drawing-room though the door was half closed. It was a moment before I realized that I was listening to a confidential conversation and then it was too late.
It was the doctor speaking in his most persuasive voice: “Look here, Stella, I am most truly sorry about it, but until I saw you at the club, I really had no idea that the Stella Palfreeman Ethel spoke of was the ‘Dumps’ I used to know in Shanghai.”
Then I got my connection and heard no more for a short time, but Brenda was out and my conversation with the maid was brief, and they were still talking together when I put the receiver up. It was Stella speaking this time and she was not so clear. Her voice came and went in broken snatches as though some one were opening the door and closing it again; a few words clear and distinct and then a blank.
“——it’s as well I came . . . the Hansons certainly ought to be told . . . your abominable share . . . father’s death . . . I shall tell them!”
Evidently it was the end of the conversation, for as I was hurrying away from my embarrassing position, The Tundish came out of the drawing-room and met me in the hall on his way back to the dispensary. He smiled at me pleasantly, appearing quite unmoved by the words I had overheard, and I thought to myself that whatever else he may have learned by his long residence among the Chinese, he had certainly acquired their proverbial bland impassivity.
I wandered into the garden, where long evening shadows were creeping across the lawn, and sat down in one of the wicker chairs that stood beneath the cedar, my thoughts turning naturally to what I had overheard. Now I began to understand better why Stella had dropped her glass. The little scene in the luncheon tent came back to me. Stella’s momentary hesitation when the doctor held out his hand; the doctor, suave and unperturbed, taking the less convenient seat.