“I can’t do that, Mrs. Germain. I mean, I must return the call.”
“Ah? It will be against my recommendation.”
“I am very sorry. I asked Mrs. Burgess to call when I met her the other day at Waysford.”
“Really? Waysford? One would meet her there, I suppose. A Sale of Work?”
“Yes. But I asked her to call upon me. It was kind of her to come so soon.”
Mrs. James pressed her lips together. So soon! Why, the woman would fly! “Does my brother know of this, may I ask?”
“I don’t know,” said Mary, out of breath. She was scared, but meant to go on.
“It will be better that he should be told.”
“If you think it will interest him—yes,” Mary said, and went upstairs—to stare out of window, clench and unclench her hands. Mrs. James reported the case to her brother-in-law, and Mary drove, the next day, to Farlingbridge—her husband with her—and returned the call. Nothing more was said; nor, when the visit of a Colonel Dermott, V.C., and his lady, townspeople, too, had to be witnessed, was a word of warning uttered. But Mrs. James left within a fortnight of her rout, staying only for the first dinner-party at Southover. That was how she learned that Mary Middleham had character. It shocked her; and it was annoying, too, that she could expect no sympathy from James.
The house-parties for the winter shooting, and those dinner-parties for the county had to be gone through with somehow. She set herself squarely to the task, and was glad enough to believe towards the end of her two years that she was learning the business. There was little to do, indeed, but be agreeable, but she found that more than enough. Agreeable she could be when she felt happy; her nature was as sweet as an apple. But if she felt hurt she must show it, and she discovered that that was a cardinal sin. Then there was the language to master, the queer, impertinent, leisurely laconics of these people—expensive, perfectly complacent, incredibly idle young men, old men without reticence, airy, free-spoken women, and girls who unaffectedly ignored her. To cope with such as these she must be even as they were, or seem so. The quickness of their give-and-take in conversation, the ripple and flow, the ease of the thing, asked an alertness of her which excited while it tried her to death. Perpetually flagging at the game, she spurred herself perpetually; for she discovered that there is no more deadly sin in the code than an awkward pause, that being all of a piece with the end and aim of living—which is smooth running. A woman should die sooner than drop a conversation, or murder it.