Carol Mayne passed all that day in a state of feverish anxiety. In the evening he suggested to Lance that they should go round to Collis Square. It was late, but it was their only chance to call upon Mrs. Helston before leaving town. They arrived about half-past eight, and found Brenda in the drawing-room, and with her Theo Cooper, who was a frequent visitor.
It was now twelve months since this young lady had defied parental authority and gone on the stage.
She was conspicuously unfitted for such a life, being pretty in a showy way, forward and giddy. But her parents' very natural opposition did not weigh at all with her. They had so often objected to what was wholesome, reasonable, and harmless, that their opinion had no weight with any of their children. With their habitual reserve, they suppressed entirely their deeper reasons for objection, and the only one they ostensibly urged was: "What will people say?" To a girl whose one hope was to be notorious, this was no deterrent.
The affair of Gwendolen and young Freshfield had produced a curious effect in the Vicarage family. The strenuous efforts of Mr. and Mrs. Cooper to hush it up had been successful as regards their neighbours; but this success had been dearly purchased at home at the cost of lowering their children's estimate of them. These merciless critics had now discovered that whatever they did would be condoned, sooner than let the world suspect a family breach, or a family scandal. Mrs. Cooper's own theory of her perfection, and of her success as a wife, mother, and leader of conduct in the village, must be preserved at any sacrifice of truth.
Gwendolen and Madeline were despatched to school, the governess was dismissed, and all went on as usual. But from that moment each child took his or her own line.
George, the eldest, whose sulky protest against taking orders had been wholly ignored by his father, ran into debt at Oxford, failed to take his degree, and finally bolted to America, whence he wrote for funds at frequent intervals.
Willie, the next boy, who had some ability, after various letters and conversations which left the vicar enraged, humiliated, well-nigh heart-broken, had gone to reside with an agnostic community in East London. He was just the man they wanted—his intellect exactly of the calibre which quickly assimilates specious argument, and reproduces it in an attractive form; and the Fraternity of Man paid him one hundred pounds per annum to teach men brotherhood, while denying meanwhile the one great antecedent fact of common Fatherhood.
Gwendolen, on leaving school, found herself unable to live at home, and had gone to teach English in a Russian family at St. Petersburg. Madeline remained at the Vicarage, nominally as governess to Barbara and Beatrice; she was the weakest of the five, and the most deeply influenced by her mother.
Theo would have been a very pretty girl, with a little good taste to guide her. But, coming up from the lonely spot where her life had been spent, she, with quick receptive capacity, imbibed notions of dress and coiffure from the girls in the omnibuses in which she travelled. She wore, as Melicent once remarked, a quantity of cheap clothes, extravagantly put on.
A bright-coloured silk blouse, low in the neck, beads, artificial flowers, a becoming hat, but too large—atrocious boots and a reek of scent—these must have convinced anybody of the good ground Theo's parents had for thinking her unsuited to go about London independently. Without conscious intent, her whole appearance laid her open to the chance of being mistaken for quite other than she was; and she had all the vain-glorious self-confidence of a very young, very ignorant girl. If she came off scatheless, it would be because her type is so plentiful, and by no means because of her discretion.