In fact that poor professor was having a very trying time at home, for Mrs. Armitage furiously resented the fact that he had contributed the utmost amount he could raise to the fund for Roger’s defence, and on the rare occasions when she saw her daughter made Grace writhe under the sense of obligation, that was far more distressing than any consideration of her mother’s utter lack of sympathy; she had been accustomed to that from her early childhood, and it had long ceased to hurt her.
It did seem hard that she should feel more humiliation in accepting this loan from her own people than in accepting those from friends—Austin Starr and the Winstons and the dear jolly padre, Mr. Iverson, who had all been as good as their word. But she never let Roger have a hint of this; kept from him, so far as she could, everything disquieting, even the fact that there was still a lot of money needed, and had begged Mr. Spedding, the lawyer, not to reveal this to him.
“We shall have quite sufficient in good time, by the New Year,” she assured Spedding, on such occasions as the point was raised in the course of their many conferences.
She had already made arrangements to raise the utmost possible on their wedding presents, and everything else of value that they possessed; also, if necessary, to sell up the furniture they had bought so gaily and lovingly in the months before their marriage, and so break up the home which, to “get ready for Roger” had been her great solace in this awful interval; and where she was now living frugally as any nun, denying herself everything beyond the barest necessaries of life, in order that she might save.
And with all this there would not be enough. Where the balance was to come from she did not know, racked her poor brains to discover, sought to buoy her mind with the faith that her prayers would be answered, that help and guidance would come in time.
She brooded anxiously over it again to-day as she made her way back to Westminster. As usual, after parting with Roger reaction followed the joy of the meeting, and a sense of utter desolation was upon her. If Winnie had been at home she would have gone along to Chelsea before returning to the loneliness of the little flat at the very top of a big block. As it was, she lingered aimlessly outside the station, staring with sad, unseeing eyes into the nearest shop window, then made her way through to St. James’s Park, and sat down on the seat inside the gates by the bridge.
It was a chilly, wistful winter afternoon, the westering sun showing like a dim red ball through the haze. Very few people were about; near at hand there were but two strolling towards her—a young couple in earnest conversation.
She looked at them dully, then with quickened interest, as she recognized the man as Austin Starr, bending from his great height to listen attentively to his companion—a very attractive-looking girl, even in the distance, who was talking with animation. Any casual observer would have imagined them a pair of young lovers, and Grace felt an instant and curious sense of dismay.
It flashed to her mind that she had not seen Austin once at the Winstons’ flat during the few days’ interval when Winnie had been at home, though for months before their engagement, which had come about so suddenly in the midst of her own trouble, there was seldom a day that he did not turn up early or late, for a few minutes at least. Also that Winnie had been strangely reticent about him, though, absorbed in her own anxieties, she had not given a second thought to that.