“Yes,” said Mary, “and you’ll stay young, please. You’ll keep your hope, my faith, your youth.”
“I’m young all right,” he said. “Listen to me if you doubt it. ‘I’ll add humanity.’ Did I say that? With a voice beautifully vibrant with earnestness? Young enough to be capable of anything. But I will add it,” he finished as he drew up at the door of the Hall.
Hope burnished them as they came into the old home of the Hepplestalls; they were the keepers of a great light lit on Staithley Edge; they had a radiance which seemed to Gertrude a personal affront to her chatelainship. They came with the insolence of conquerors into the somber scene of her defeat, but she was on guard against revealing her feelings to the actress woman who was Lady Hepplestall. She had failed, she was doomed to Staithley, she had to explain away to her friend the letter she had written announcing that she was coming to live in London, she was to be evicted from the Hall by a saucy baggage out of a musical comedy; but even if the baggage proved as bad as her worst anticipations she would not lower to her by the fraction of an inch her flag of resolutely suave politeness.
She went upstairs to change her face after a tempestuous interview with William, and, expectant of a Mary strident in jazz coloring, changed also her frock to a sedate gray which should contrast the lady with the Lady. Then Mary came, with hair wind-tossed, and round her lips were marks as if she were a child sticky with toffee (but that was because when you pluck grass on Staithley Edge and press it to your cheek and kiss it, it leaves behind traces of the smoky livery it wears), apologizing for her plain traveling dress, looking so unlike Gertrude’s idea of the beauty-chorus queen who had captured Rupert that immediately she was off on a new trail and saw in Mary a tool made for her through which to work on Rupert and after all to bring about the sale of Hepple-stall’s. She could manage this smudge-faced piece of insignificance and she could manage a Rupert who had been caught by it. Her spirits rose, and their happiness seemed to her no longer offensive but imbecile.
Later on, she wondered why she forgot that the business of an actress was to act. She meditated ruefully upon the vanity of human hopes and the fallibility of first impressions, and she had no doubt but that Mary, for some dark purpose of her own, had counterfeited insignificance.
Mary hadn’t, as a fact, acted, but she had thought of Mary Ellen Bradshaw and of Jackman’s Buildings and Staithley streets as the door of the Hall opened to her, and she had continued to think of Mary Ellen Bradshaw through the few moments when Gertrude was greeting her. She didn’t know that the mourning grass of Staithley Edge had left its mark on her face; if she had known, she would have felt more insignificant still, but she had washed since then, she had kissed Rupert in their bedroom in Staithley Hall and her effect now upon Gertrude was that of the bottle marked “Drink me” upon Alice in Wonderland. Gertrude had drunk of no magic bottle, but she dwindled before Mary. It was disconcerting to an intriguer who had so lately seen Mary as her pliant instrument, but “Pooh! some actress trick,” she thought, making an effort to believe that she dominated the table.
“I’m afraid you will find Staithley very dull,” she said, “but we shall all do our best for you.”
“Thank you,” said Mary. “It’s exciting so far.”
“Yes. It must be strangely novel to you. Of course, I never go into the town. One needn’t, living in the Hall; but I’m forgetting. I shan’t be living here.”
“Oh, you will, aunt,” said Rupert. “We went up on the Edge to have a look at it all, and we decided—it arose out of a suggestion of Mary’s—to build a house up there. You see, uncle, you’re the Head. The Hall is naturally yours and aunt’s.”