When the rehearsal was over Serge went out and bought a bottle of port at the public-house next door but one to the church, a cake and some biscuits, and took them in to the actors assembled in the green-room—one of the two small class-rooms of the school. He found Gertrude in tears and threatening to throw up her part, Frederic shouting at her, Bennett Lawrie supporting her, and the whole company looking very odd and unreal with the paint thick on their faces or melting down into their collars. Francis was making himself amiable and telling everybody in turn that he had never enjoyed any performance so well.

Minna, wearing an absurd golden wig, said:

“I’m sure Serge didn’t like it.”

“I was interested,” he replied.

And indeed he had found it absorbing to see how much these people, when they were pretending to be some one else, revealed their characters as they rarely did in ordinary life. He was immensely sorry for them all without exactly knowing why. Without knowing why, he excepted Minna. He had a curious faith in Minna. In Gertrude he believed not at all. She was in love with Bennett Lawrie. That much was clear, but she was in love idiotically. In the green-room he heard her covering Bennett with gross flattery which he gulped down fatuously.

[XII
ANNETTE]

Hurrying wind o’er the heaven’shollowAnd the heavy rain to follow.
CHIMES.

ANNETTE in Westmoreland had the small happenings in the household in Fern Square week by week as far as her mother knew them. Every Friday evening Mrs. Folyat used to write five letters: a short one to Annette, a long one to Leedham because he was so far away, one to a friend in Potsham with whom she had corresponded ever since her marriage, and two to elegant relations. She had no power of consecutive thought, and her letters rambled and ambled, a queer mixture of narrative and comment, all things being equal in interest (or the lack of it)—“Just fancy, the verger’s son is married, and only eighteen! Did I tell you that Betsy, the new cat, had four kittens in the kitchen drawer? Your pa is very well, but the other day I had to go to the dentist and he made a face over the bill, and I said ‘I am your wife. You have to keep me in repair.’ He looked so surprised and I was surprised at myself. Was it not a fool thing to say? Frederic is working very hard, but Serge is making a dreadful litter in his room with his brushes and paint. I do hate untidiness and shiftlessness. You will be quite a stranger here when you come. Mary is getting on very well with her music-lessons. She plays the viola now, not the violin. It is easier to get into an orchestra if you play the viola. I hope you are doing your duty, &c., &c. . . .” The letter always wound up with a common form parental sermon, which Annette always skipped. She did not get many letters, and her mother’s regular epistles were a boon to her. She was dreadfully afraid of the servants at High Beck, and letters gave her a feeling of security against them, for they witnessed to the fact that she had ties with the world outside. Occasionally, when Mrs. Folyat mounted her gentility hobby-horse, she would leave her letters lying open in her room in the certain knowledge that they would be read and discussed below stairs.

She had never seen Serge, for she was born after his departure from St. Withans, but he had always been far more real to her than her other brothers and sisters. He was a romantic figure to her, and when he cropped up again in her mother’s letters she imagined him to herself as a being handsome beyond all other men and brave and strong. She used to regale her pupil with tales of his adventures, borrowing from Scott or Thackeray when her own invention gave out, and she made him so entrancing that her pupil announced her intention of marrying him when she grew up. She had first of all imagined him richer than anybody had ever been, but after a letter from Minna—a poor correspondent with excellent descriptive powers—telling of Serge’s homecoming she then imagined him poorer than anybody had ever been, and she invented a lady with boundless wealth who should marry him, restore the family fortunes, and take her (Annette) away from teaching.