“There is the effect on the servants to be considered, my dear,” she said. “If we went about looking dishevelled and woe-begone, and refused to take our meals at the proper hours, we should have them deserting right and left. It will help the men, too, more than anything if they see us cheerful and apparently unconscious of danger. I believe that Mr Stratford and Major North would be almost heartbroken if they imagined that we knew as much about the state of things as we do.”
“But that is very foolish,” objected Georgia. “Why don’t they take us into their councils and let us all know authoritatively the worst we have to fear?”
“My dear, men are not made that way. They like to think that they have succeeded in hiding their apprehensions from us, and that we are pursuing our butterfly existence untroubled by thoughts of danger. And if it makes them happier to think so, we won’t undeceive them. We will dress for dinner, and talk cheerfully, and give them a little music in the evenings, and do our best to help them in whatever way we can.”
“But I don’t like it, Lady Haigh. They are treating us like babies.”
“Well, dear child, we know we are not babies. It is hard, I know, when you feel that you could give them valuable help—or, at any rate, moral support—if they would pay you the compliment of taking you into their confidence; but I believe that this is the way in which we can help them most, and sooner than add a finger’s weight to the burden those two dear fellows are bearing, I would take to bibs and a rattle again!”
And Georgia, while she marvelled, perceived that thirty years of married life teach some things about the other sex which are not included in the curriculum of any university or medical school. It was not without a certain degree of envy that she acknowledged to herself that she would have been willing to exchange a small portion—perhaps even an appreciable amount—of her medical knowledge for a share of that acquaintance with the world and with male human nature which lay behind Lady Haigh’s shrewd hazel eyes. For Dick was still obdurate and unapproachable, and after the enlightening which had come to her on the day of the signing of the treaty, she did not dare to make any of those overtures by means of which she had occasionally succeeded in re-establishing peace after their former quarrels. There was always the risk that he might misunderstand—or was it not rather that he might too well understand?—her motive.
“If it was merely an ordinary disagreement,” she said to herself, hopelessly, “I am not too proud to hold out a hand of friendship, but now!—I know I said some hard things to him, but he had said worse to me—though I shouldn’t mind now what he said if only I knew that he cared. And I thought he did care—that day when he called me Georgie—what could it have meant but that? It can’t be, oh! it can’t be, that he has been trying to lead me on, and make me care for him, in revenge for my refusing him long ago? I won’t believe it of him. It isn’t like him—he wouldn’t do it. If it was that—if he could be such a wretch, I would—yes, I could forgive him anything but that!”
Dick’s feelings during this period were scarcely more to be envied than Georgia’s. Having assured himself that nothing on earth could make him more miserable than he was already, he was fiercely eager that the crown should be given to his misery by Georgia’s engagement to Stratford, for the announcement of which he looked daily, but which did not take place. On the contrary, Stratford went about his work as usual, apparently unconscious that anything of the kind was or could be expected from him, while Georgia looked “about as wretched—well, as I feel!” said Dick to himself. He could not reasonably believe that Stratford cared for her, after his friend’s explicit denial of the fact; but it became abundantly clear to him that he ought to be made to do so, if Georgia’s happiness depended upon it. For a day or two he thought seriously of informing him that he must—under penalties which Dick did not specify to himself—ask her to marry him, since he had evidently been trifling with her feelings; but, happily, a vague impression that a marriage entered upon under such conditions was scarcely likely to turn out well restrained him. The more immediate certainty that Miss Keeling would bitterly resent such an interference in her affairs did not trouble Dick; it maddened him to see her looking as she looked now, and her happiness must be secured in spite of herself. In the meantime, he did his best to hate Stratford, both for his past conduct and his present callousness as to its results, and found it very difficult. The man was his friend and good comrade, and absolutely innocent of any wish to quarrel, and Dick would find himself sitting on the office table and talking familiarly to him as of old. Then he would call up the haunting remembrance of Miss Keeling’s pale face and reproachful eyes, and divided between the desire to avenge her wrongs and the fear of betraying her secret, become so snappish that any one but Stratford would have taken offence and demanded an explanation. But Stratford had a large fund of patience to draw upon, and he was sorry for Dick. He saw that things were not going well with him, and although he was too prudent to seek to interfere, he was determined not to make matters worse by taking up any of the gauntlets which his friend was perpetually flinging down.
Another person who viewed the state of things with much interest and uneasiness was Lady Haigh. During her long and philanthropic, if slightly autocratic, experience of English life in the East, she had engineered to a satisfactory conclusion a good many love affairs, and she had welcomed the first signs of this one as affording a fresh scope for the exercise of her particular talent. But she had now for some days been driven to the opinion that Dick and Georgia were playing at cross-purposes, a form of recreation which she regarded with the utmost horror, and she yearned to do something to set matters right.
“Nothing on earth shall induce me to interfere,” she assured herself. “Interference is a thing I abhor. But if either of them should give me the chance of saying a word, I shall certainly step in.”