The impossibility of escape until the term's triumphant conclusion made what might, in a wider and finer hemisphere, have been simply malicious conversation that sprang up and disappeared without result, a perpetual battle of death and disaster. No slightest word but had its weightiest result, because everyone was so close upon everyone else that things said rebounded like peas flung against a board.
Mrs. Comber, at her tea-parties, had long ago ceased to consider the safety or danger of anything that she might say. It seemed to her that whatever she said always went wrong, and did the greatest damage that it was possible for any one thing to do; and now she counted her Tuesdays as days of certain disaster, allowing a dozen blunders to a Tuesday and hoping that she would “get off,” so to speak, on that. But on occasions like the present, when there was really something to talk about, she shuddered at the possible horrors; her line, of course, was strong enough, because it was Isabel first and Isabel last; and if that brought her into conflict with all the other ladies of the establishment, then she couldn't help it. Had it been merely a question of the Umbrella Riot, as some wit had already phrased it, she knew clearly enough where they were all likely to be; but now that there was Isabel's engagement as well, she felt that their anger would be stirred by that bright, young lady having made a step forward and having been, in some odd, obscure, feminine way, impertinently pushing.
She wished passionately, as she sat in glorious purple before her silver, tea-things, her little pink cakes, and her vanishingly thin pieces of bread-and-butter, that the “town” would, on this occasion at any rate, put in an appearance, because that would prevent anyone really “getting at” things; but, of course, as it happened, the “town” for once wasn't there at all, and the battle raged quite splendidly.
The combatants were the two Misses Madder, Mrs. Dormer, and Mrs. Moy-Thompson, and it might seem that these ladies were not numerically enough to do any lastingly serious damage; but it was the bodies that they represented rather than the individuals that they actually were; and poor Mrs. Comber, as she smiled at them and talked at them and wished that the little pink cakes might poison them all, knew exactly the reason of their separate appearances and the danger that they were, severally and individually.
The Misses Madder represented the matrons, and they represented them as securely and confidently as though they had sat in conclave already and drawn up a list of questions to be asked and answers to be given. Mrs. Dormer represented the wives and also, separately, Mrs. Dormer, in so far as her own especial dislike of Mrs. Comber went for everything; Mrs. Moy-Thompson, above all, faded, black, thin, and miserable, represented her lord and master, and was regarded by the other ladies as a spy whose accurate report of the afternoon's proceedings would send threads spinning from that dark little study for the rest of the term.
The eldest Miss Madder, stout, good-natured, comfortable, had not of herself any malice at all; but her thin, bony sister, exact in her chair, and with eyes looking straight down her nose, influenced her stouter sister to a wonderful extent.
The thin Miss Madder's remark on receiving her tea, “Well, so Miss Desart's engaged to Mr. Traill!” showed immediately which of the two pieces of news was considered the most important.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Comber, “and I'm sure it's delightful. Do have one of those little pink cakes, Mrs. Thompson; they 're quite fresh; and I want you especially to notice that little water-color over there by the screen, because I bought it in Truro last week for simply nothing at Pinner's, and I believe it's quite a good one—I'm sure we 're all delighted.”
Mrs. Dormer wasn't so certain. “They 're a little young,” she said in so chilly a voice that she might have been suddenly transferred, against her will, in the dead of night in the thinnest attire, into the heart of Siberia. “And what's this I hear from my husband about Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill tumbling about on the floor together this morning—something about an umbrella?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Thompson, moving her chair a little closer, “I heard something this morning about it.”