EASTER, as those who survive will know, fell early in 1915—to be exact, upon April 4th; Ole Man Benson had returned on the 11th; on the 12th Mary had seen Dolly; and the week after Ole Man Benson’s return to these shores, the week after he had delivered his important and somewhat depressing news to the young household, the week after Mary and Dolly had conferred at the Petheringtons’—was the week in which Parliament met after the Recess, the third week in April.
In that week also there began to crop up here and there unexpectedly, beautifully, like the spring flowers, short newspaper notes upon George Mulross Demaine.
They were notes of where he had been, whether he had been there or not,—at least at first they were notes of that kind. There had always been some such notes on him in the papers, but they seemed to be getting numerous.
The public would hear that George Mulross loved his great poodle dog; next that the pressure of his engagements forbade him to open an Enormous Institution for the Cultivation and Study of Virulent Diseases, and in connection with this news the Institution was described at great length, and the passionate regrets at the absence of George Mulross Demaine sounded like a small but perceptible dirge in the corners of the daily press.
He was attacked gently but cleverly in a paper upon his own side of politics; short biographical notes, only a few among several score, gave details of his happy little ways. He was fond of riding, said one author who can have had but little intimacy with her subject; he was fond of children, said another who had even less. He had “an eye for black game,” said a third, whose lack of intimacy included not only George himself but certainly black game as well.
Later came anecdotes of his goodness of heart; how he had run over a boy in the Park with his motor and had then picked him up; and how he had good-humouredly refrained from telling people who he was in the railway accident, and had permitted the wounded to be taken to hospital before he himself would accept conveyance.
Finally, as the month ended, and as May brought in the London season, George Mulross began to find himself uncomfortably prominent. For he very sincerely and very heartily hated fame. He could not so much as upset a glass of wine or stumble over public stairs without hearing his name whispered; and once when he had called at the wrong number, the servant, recognising him from some caricature in the papers, had mentioned his own name to him with reverence, though the door was the door of a house whose occupants he did not know.
Meanwhile the tiny balance at the bank had gone. The overdraft was large and at any moment there might come a note which he dreaded. And Mary Smith had compelled him to look for a small house in Westminster and to make every preparation for leaving Demaine House. He kicked feebly, but she insisted: and even Sudie gave way.
“You haven’t enough to keep the house dry,” Mary said. And she compelled them both to a sense of business which Theocritus himself would have failed to make them feel.
All this business was well advanced when Mary Smith proceeded to the next stage of the campaign.