However, she wanted no announcing, no telling; there was such a horrible clearness in her mind that what she now waited for was only to be sure her father wouldn’t proceed as she had imagined. At the end of the minutes she saw this particular danger was over, upon which she came out and made her own way to her brother. Exactly what she wanted to say to him first, if their parent counted on the boy’s greater indulgence, and before he could say anything, was: “Don’t forgive him; don’t, don’t!”
He was to go up for an examination, poor lad, and during these weeks his lamp burned till the small hours. It was for the Foreign Office, and there was to be some frightful number of competitors; but Adela had great hopes of him—she believed so in his talents and saw with pity how hard he worked. This would have made her spare him, not trouble his night, his scanty rest, if anything less dreadful had been at stake. It was a blessing however that one could count on his coolness, young as he was—his bright good-looking discretion, the thing that already made him half a man of the world. Moreover he was the one who would care most. If Basil was the eldest son—he had as a matter of course gone into the army and was in India, on the staff, by good luck, of a governor-general—it was exactly this that would make him comparatively indifferent. His life was elsewhere, and his father and he had been in a measure military comrades, so that he would be deterred by a certain delicacy from protesting; he wouldn’t have liked any such protest in an affair of his. Beatrice and Muriel would care, but they were too young to speak, and this was just why her own responsibility was so great.
Godfrey was in working-gear—shirt and trousers and slippers and a beautiful silk jacket. His room felt hot, though a window was open to the summer night; the lamp on the table shed its studious light over a formidable heap of text-books and papers, the bed moreover showing how he had flung himself down to think out a problem. As soon as she got in she began. “Father’s going to marry Mrs. Churchley, you know.”
She saw his poor pink face turn pale. “How do you know?”
“I’ve seen with my eyes. We’ve been dining there—we’ve just come home. He’s in love with her. She’s in love with him. They’ll arrange it.”
“Oh I say!” Godfrey exclaimed, incredulous.
“He will, he will, he will!” cried the girl; and with it she burst into tears.
Godfrey, who had a cigarette in his hand, lighted it at one of the candles on the mantelpiece as if he were embarrassed. As Adela, who had dropped into his armchair, continued to sob, he said after a moment: “He oughtn’t to—he oughtn’t to.”
“Oh think of mamma—think of mamma!” she wailed almost louder than was safe.
“Yes, he ought to think of mamma.” With which Godfrey looked at the tip of his cigarette.
“To such a woman as that—after her!”
“Dear old mamma!” said Godfrey while he smoked.
Adela rose again, drying her eyes. “It’s like an insult to her; it’s as if he denied her.” Now that she spoke of it she felt herself rise to a height. “He rubs out at a stroke all the years of their happiness.”
“They were awfully happy,” Godfrey agreed.
“Think what she was—think how no one else will ever again be like her!” the girl went on.
“I suppose he’s not very happy now,” her brother vaguely contributed.
“Of course he isn’t, any more than you and I are; and it’s dreadful of him to want to be.”
“Well, don’t make yourself miserable till you’re sure,” the young man said.
But Adela showed him confidently that she was sure, from the way the pair had behaved together and from her father’s attitude on the drive home. If Godfrey had been there he would have seen everything; it couldn’t be explained, but he would have felt. When he asked at what moment the girl had first had her suspicion she replied that it had all come at once, that evening; or that at least she had had no conscious fear till then. There had been signs for two or three weeks, but she hadn’t understood them—ever since the day Mrs. Churchley had dined in Seymour Street. Adela had on that occasion thought it odd her father should have wished to invite her, given the quiet way they were living; she was a person they knew so little. He had said something about her having been very civil to him, and that evening, already, she had guessed that he must have frequented their portentous guest herself more than there had been signs of. To-night it had come to her clearly that he would have called on her every day since the time of her dining with them; every afternoon about the hour he was ostensibly at his club. Mrs. Churchley was his club—she was for all the world just like one. At this Godfrey laughed; he wanted to know what his sister knew about clubs. She was slightly disappointed in his laugh, even wounded by it, but she knew perfectly what she meant: she meant that Mrs. Churchley was public and florid, promiscuous and mannish.
“Oh I daresay she’s all right,” he said as if he wanted to get on with his work. He looked at the clock on the mantel-shelf; he would have to put in another hour.
“All right to come and take darling mamma’s place—to sit where she used to sit, to lay her horrible hands on her things?” Adela was appalled—all the more that she hadn’t expected it—at her brother’s apparent acceptance of such a prospect.
He coloured; there was something in her passionate piety that scorched him. She glared at him with tragic eyes—he might have profaned an altar. “Oh I mean that nothing will come of it.”
“Not if we do our duty,” said Adela. And then as he looked as if he hadn’t an idea of what that could be: “You must speak to him—tell him how we feel; that we shall never forgive him, that we can’t endure it.”
“He’ll think I’m cheeky,” her brother returned, looking down at his papers with his back to her and his hands in his pockets.
“Cheeky to plead for her memory?”
“He’ll say it’s none of my business.”
“Then you believe he’ll do it?” cried the girl.
“Not a bit. Go to bed!”
“I’ll speak to him”—she had turned as pale as a young priestess.
“Don’t cry out till you’re hurt; wait till he speaks to you.”
“He won’t, he won’t!” she declared. “He’ll do it without telling us.”
Her brother had faced round to her again; he started a little at this, and again, at one of the candles, lighted his cigarette, which had gone out. She looked at him a moment; then he said something that surprised her. “Is Mrs. Churchley very rich?”
“I haven’t the least idea. What on earth has that to do with it?”
Godfrey puffed his cigarette. “Does she live as if she were?”
“She has a lot of hideous showy things.”
“Well, we must keep our eyes open,” he concluded. “And now you must let me get on.” He kissed his visitor as if to make up for dismissing her, or for his failure to take fire; and she held him a moment, burying her head on his shoulder.
A
