Turner looked at his brother-in-law, Kenyon, who shrugged his shoulders, but made no further comment; and they had returned to their discussion with an effect of rather desperate resignation before Arthur was fairly out of the room.
He wondered if there were some sort of affair, perhaps an engagement, between Eleanor and young Turner; and if the family as a whole objected on account of the nearness of the relationship? He decided that if they consulted him, as they generally did on any matter presumed to be within his province as a medical man, he would make it clear that a marriage of first cousins was not necessarily dangerous. Nevertheless, he despised Eleanor for her choice.
The function of dinner was even more formal than usual that night, and old Mr Kenyon had a prolonged lapse of consciousness that kept them all waiting for more than five minutes. These solemn intervals of suspense always produced in Arthur an effect of being present at some religious observance, and to-night he was more aware of it than usual. He remembered how, as a youth, he had been half-awed and half-exasperated when he attended the Sacrament at home by the ceremonial deliberation of his father. He had had an evangelical tendency, but in this service he had favoured quite an elaborate ritual of his own, and his bearing of the chalice and the paten from the ambry to the altar, and the subsequent presentation consecration, and personal acceptance of the elements had been conducted in a low, scarcely audible voice, and with an air of almost exaggerated reverence. Once or twice Arthur had sacrilegiously wondered if his father had found an unusual satisfaction in being the sole human instrument and representative of this mystery of the consecration, and had unduly prolonged the periods of silence involved? And to-night, the same thought crossed his mind with regard to old Kenyon. Was he, perhaps, extending the interval of waiting after he had recovered consciousness, exulting in the exercise of his power?
Instinctively Arthur glanced across the table at Eleanor. She was sitting very still, her hands in her lap, her eyes downcast, but he fancied that her expression conveyed something of impatience and revolt. Did she know? he asked himself. Was she inclined to be critical of her grandfather's whims? Was she, perhaps, desperately ready to marry young Turner in order to escape from Hartling?
As soon as the service was released again, he turned for information to Elizabeth.
"Is anything up?" he asked in an undertone. "Anything out of the ordinary?"
She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes and softly blew her relief. "We got a good dose to-night," she whispered, and continued, "That means there's going to be a fuss."
"About young Turner and Eleanor?" he tried.
"Eleanor? Where does Eleanor come in?" was her surprised response.
"I don't know. I thought possibly...." He hesitated, finding an unexpected difficulty in putting his guess into words.