‘Thank heaven, Joyce, my dear,’ said the Colonel piously, ‘we have got away without any pledge. If Elizabeth had only been there! but I don’t think she is very sure herself which side she is on. The Canon is the head of the parish, to be sure, and a sort of an old friend besides; but these young people take a great deal of trouble. And we were all instrumental in getting this new church built, so I think we ought to stand by them. But, thank goodness, we neither said one thing nor another. So we can’t be blamed, my dear, neither you nor I.’
CHAPTER XXIII
As it turned out, they all went to the school feast.
Mrs. Hayward was not quite sure, as the Colonel had said, which side she was on. The Canon had a great influence over her, as he had over most of the ladies in the parish; but the Canon had a way of making jokes about India and her husband’s youth, which were apt to turn Mrs. Hayward sharply round to the other side. When the Colonel reported to her all that happened, and the meeting in the road, and Canon Jenkinson’s questions, Elizabeth’s suspicions were at once aroused. ‘What did you tell him?’ she said.
‘I said exactly what you told me, my dear. I don’t quite approve of it—but I wouldn’t run the risk of contradicting you——’
‘And what did he say?’
‘Well, my dear,’ said Colonel Hayward, a little flushed by this rapid questioning, ‘he said something about “your first poor wife"—which was quite natural—for he knows that we have no——’
‘Yes, yes,’ Mrs. Hayward cried indignantly. ‘I knew he was just the man to make references of that sort.’ And after a few minutes she added, ‘I think we’ll go to the school feast. It will please the Sitwells, who have a great many difficulties, and who do the very best they can for their people; and it will show the Canon——’
‘But I assure you, my dear——’
‘You have no occasion to assure me of anything, Henry—I hope I know him well enough. He is just the sort of man,’ Mrs. Hayward said. And on the next afternoon she dressed very well indeed, as for one of the best of her afternoon parties, and went to the school feast. To see her going in at the swinging-gate, with Joyce and the Colonel following in her train, was a very fine sight. But the group was not so conspicuous as it might have been, from the fact that a great many people equally fine had already gathered in Wombwell’s field, where the Sitwells, though they were poor, had gone to the expense of having a tent put up,—an extravagance which the people who shared their humble hospitalities did not forget for many a long day. It was not a school feast only, but a demonstration of the faction of St. Augustine’s as against the parish. Mrs. Sitwell had worked for this great end with an energy worthy of the best of causes. She had not neglected any inducements. ‘The Haywards are coming,’ she said, ‘with their daughter, you know,—the young lady whom no one ever heard of before. I am sure there is some mystery about that daughter.’ This was how it was that she had been so anxious and importunate with Joyce.