IX
Perhaps the closest bond of union between Julian Rossiter and his wife now consisted in the common dismay which invaded them when Ruthie and Ambrose Easter thought fit to inflict themselves, uninvited, upon the Culmhayes establishment.
On the morning after Edna's return from London, she was writing in the morning-room, when a respectfully resentful servant informed her that Miss Ruthie and Master Ambrose were at the front door, declaring an urgent necessity for seeing Lady Rossiter.
"Tell them I am busy writing," said Edna hastily, certainly not pausing for the application of her favourite, "Is it kind, is it wise, is it true?" since it was neither the first nor the last, and eventually turned out to be far from compliant with even the second regulation, since the visitors, accepting Horber's rebuff with deceptive quiet, immediately made their way round to the window of the morning-room, where they startled Lady Rossiter considerably by suddenly appearing, with flattened noses and glaring eyeballs, against the pane.
She made imperious signs at them with an ivory penholder, without avail. Unable to contemplate the prospect of pursuing her morning avocations under the mouthing pantomime by which Ruthie sought to convey her desire for immediate admission, Lady Rossiter flung open the window, shivering at the rush of the raw morning cold.
"Good morning, children," she said forbearingly.
All Lady Rossiter's Christianity was required to induce her to accept as even faintly probable the ultimate evolution of a Divine Spark from the personality of Ruthie. But she always felt bound to act upon such an assumption, if only because Sir Julian so firmly and completely rejected it.
"I thought Horber told you I was busy, Ruthie. I can't see either of you now, you must run home again."
"Auntie Iris is here, too," said Ruthie triumphantly.
Lady Rossiter did not relegate the value of Auntie Iris' society to the abysmal depths of contempt to which Sir Julian had long since uncharitably consigned it, partly because her principles never allowed her any point of view other than one consciously superior to that of her husband's, and partly because Auntie Iris had always been prone to seek her advice with a certain gushing deference that was not without its appeal. Nevertheless, she received with a very apparent absence of elation the announcement of her young neighbour's proximity.
"Where is Auntie Iris?"
"She is with Sir Julian. He met us all in the drive."
"Did he tell you to come up to the house and find me?"
"Oh, no, we came all of ourselves. We've got such a piece of news."
Lady Rossiter was reminded of an earlier occasion, when the heralds of Auntie Iris had thrust themselves unbidden into her presence.
"Has 'Why, Ben!' gone into a second edition?"
She had not reckoned with the proneness of a new interest to oust an old one from youthful minds.
Ambrose and Ruthie both looked at her with the lacklustre gaze and hanging under-jaw of utter unresponsiveness.
"I can't keep the window open any longer, it's too cold. Run back to Auntie Iris, now."
"But we haven't told you the news."
"Quick, then."
"You must guess first," said Ruthie loudly and inexorably.
Ambrose thrust his large pale face forward and unexpectedly snatched the dallying announcement from the lips of his sister, perhaps from a well-grounded fear that it must otherwise be uttered from without an abruptly-closed window.
"Auntie Iris is going to marry Mr. Garrett!"
Lady Rossiter was left no time in which to utter possible congratulations, as the momentary advantage reft from his senior by Ambrose was dearly paid for by him in the gale of buffetings to which she instantly subjected him.
"Ruthie! Let go of your little brother this moment! How dare you?"
Slap!
Scream!
Bang! Slap!
"Ruth!I am ashamed of you."
Lady Rossiter clung to the curtains with one strong white hand and endeavoured to reach and to separate these makers of a hideous brawl with the other, but was placed at a disadvantage by the extreme probability of overbalancing herself and contributing an anti-climax to the situation.
"I'll pay you out, Peekaboo, I will," bellowed Ruthie viciously, and abundantly making good the threat as she uttered it.
Nor did she cease belabouring her victim until he had torn himself from her grasp and fled back to the security of the avenue as fast as his short legs could cover the ground.
Edna raised her person from its attitude of perilous incline.
A more unprecedented opportunity for preaching the great rule of love, with the text, as it were, under her own window, had never yet come to rouse that passion for propaganda which is so vital a characteristic of those who know least of human nature.
It may definitely be assumed that Edna, gravely compelling the representative of a younger generation into the morning-room, and confronting her with earnest tenderness, was more bent upon delivering herself of beautiful truths than upon ascertaining their applicability or otherwise to the individuality of her exceedingly unpromising convert.
"Ruthie, Ruthie, do you know that cruelty and violence are the very worst sins that anyone can commit? To hurt somebody else is to hurt one's own soul.... You are sinning against the greatest law in the whole world when you behave as you did just now—the Law of Love."
Ruthie was silent, and Lady Rossiter, with a fleeting thought of what an admirable mother she would have made, drew the child gently to her.
"Don't you know that we all contribute, by everything we do and say, to the good and bad in the world? When you are angry, you send out black, ugly thoughts that help to destroy all the good and beautiful harmony that God has put into this lovely world."
Ruthie cast an enquiring glance out of the window at the bleak, grey sky, perfectly bare borders and rather uncompromising Scotch firs which were alone visible at the moment of this lovely world.
"When you have gentle, loving, beautiful thoughts," said Lady Rossiter eloquently, "they send out little wordless messages into the air and go to join the great Divine chorus of Love that is going on everywhere without stopping. You know we are all giving out something all the time?"
Ruthie for the first time looked faintly interested.
"Am I giving?"
"Yes, dear, that's what I'm trying to tell you about. That's why little Ruthie must——"
"Is Daddy?"
"Certainly."
"Is Peekaboo?"
"Yes," said Lady Rossiter, beginning to wonder if acatalogue raisonnéof the Easter family and its connections was to be unrolled before her.
"Even Ambrose is not too little to——"
"Do you give?"
"I try to do so, Ruthie, certainly."
"Does Sir Julian give?"
Lady Rossiter not impossibly struggled for a moment with an unhallowed impulse before answering:
"I hope so. But will you try to remember what I've been telling you, Ruthie? It is not our business to think about whether other people give out in the right way or not—never, never judge others," said Edna parenthetically. "But I do want you to remember about Love. That it is the biggest thing in all the world and that nothing is quite so bad and ugly as to be angry, or unkind, or unloving. Love is what matters most, always."
Miss Easter,more suâ, contrived to combine a sort of perverted relevance with indecent vulgarity in her bored reply:
"Mr. Garrett kissed Auntie Iris this morning. Me and Peekaboo were hiding in the cowhouse and we saw. Auntie Iris said it was love."
Lady Rossiter received in silence this singular application of the Divine Law which she had promulgated so often and so indiscriminately that she had long ago come to look upon it as her own production.
"What have the children been doing?" said Mark's voice at the window. "Lady Rossiter, I'm afraid they've been worrying you dreadfully. I'm ashamed of them."
"Come in, Mark," said Edna, not without relief. "I hope, after what I've been saying to her, that Ruthie is going to make it up with Ambrose at once."
Mark lifted his daughter out of the window and despatched her in immediate search of her injured junior.
He leant against the low sill of the open window as Lady Rossiter came towards it.
She had long ago formed the habit, which she would not have admitted as being exceedingly agreeable to her, of taking it as her right to advise and question Mark Easter on all personal matters connected with his wifeless household. She belonged, indeed, to the class of those women who have a perfectly genuine love of approaching any admittedlyscabreuxtopics which intimately and painfully touch the life of another—a form of prurience sometimes decorated with such titles as "the tender touch of a good, pure woman."
"Poor little Ruthie! I've tried to talk to her a little bit. It's motherhood that's lacking in their lives, Mark."
It might reasonably be supposed that such motherhood as the unfortunate victim to alcohol who had partnered Mark's few, unhappy years of matrimony had afforded to his children was as well out of their way, but Mark made no such unsympathetic rejoinder. He gazed at Lady Rossiter with the straight, candid look that had never held anything but honest gratitude and admiration for Sir Julian's beautiful wife.
"They are getting older," he said disconsolately, "and they do not seem to improve."
Mark paused, as though weighing this extremely lenient description of his objectionable family.
"Ambrose can go to school in a year or so," said Lady Rossiter hopefully.
"I suppose so, but the worst of it is that he really is delicate. Now, Ruthie is as strong as a horse, but then I never did like the idea of sending a little girl to school."
"I can't see any alternative," Edna said decidedly. "She will have to be properly educated, and a governess, in the circumstances, is out of the question."
"I suppose so," doubtfully answered Mark.
"It's very unlikely one could get a good daily one, down here, and a resident one—you're a young man still, Mark, and people would talk," said Edna, seizing instinctively on the aspect of the question that it would afford her the most enjoyment to discuss. Had Mark been less than extraordinarily single-minded, it would also have afforded him the maximum of discomfort in listening to her.
"You see, the circumstances are altogether exceptional, and make things very hard for you, I'm afraid. You are a married man still, and there are always dangers. Well, you know as well as I do that there are things one can't put into words," said Edna, with no intention of being takenau pied de la lettre.
"And Mark, there's another thing. Ruthie is old enough to begin asking questions about her poor mother. What are you going to do about telling her?"
"I don't know," Mark said simply. "I've never thought about it."
Lady Rossiter gave a sort of musical groan.
"For all one knows, servants and people may have told her already, and it should have been so tenderly, so delicately done!"
"No, no," said Mark. "Sarah is a good creature, though she's rough; she has always been loyalty itself."
"I'm sure she has; but after all, Mark, it is a thing which everybody round here knows. Ruthie may hear something any day. If ever she does, remember that you can always send her straight to me. Although it hurts so to dwell on those sad, ugly things, I would always put all that aside if I could help you or yours, Mark."
Edna eyed the recipient of these anticipated sacrifices with a long, compassionate look. If a deep, secret gratification held its place in that thoughtful gaze, Mark Easter was not likely to be any more aware of it than was Edna herself.
"Tell me," she exclaimed, as though struck by a sudden thought, "I'm right in thinking that everybody does know? There's no mystery, no conspiracy of silence about it all?"
"Not that I know of," said Mark, frankly astonished. "You know, you couldn't expect people to come up and ask me how I like it, or anything of that sort, could you?"
Edna's gravity did not for an instant relax at the rueful extravagance of the suggestion.
"I don't know if I ought to say this, Mark—but I think I must. One can't let one's friends risk ship-wreck just for lack of a little moral courage."
It might well have been supposed that any ship-wreck destined to Mark Easter had long since passed into the realm of accomplished fact, but it was evident that Edna had in view other and more pressing possibilities of disaster.
"You've thought of the trouble, the wretchedness that might be entailed on others, and the self-reproach to yourself, if there was any want of openness about the whole miserable question?"
"But I don't think there is any want of openness," said Mark blankly.
"Mark, forgive me. You don't resent my speaking about it all? You know I do it only because I'm so dreadfully sorry, and couldn't bear that there should be anything further...."
"You are everything that is kind," said Mark steadily, "and you and Sir Julian are the best friends I have in the world."
Edna could have dispensed with the inclusion of her husband's name.
It served, in fact, to stem her tide of warning, the more especially as she felt more or less convinced that Mark was not making the intended application of her words.
She gave smilingly graceful congratulations to the newly-betrothed Iris, the more strongly tinged with motherliness from her consciousness of recent success with Ruthie, and even endured a prolonged wringing of her hand from Mr. Garrett, who had followed his new lodestar to Culmhayes.
But that evening, after a silence more fraught with thoughtfulness even than usual, and in consequence even more studiously ignored than usual by Sir Julian, she said to him abruptly:
"Have you any idea whether Clarence Isbister's jilt knows the true facts of the case about Mark?"
Few things could be more designedly insulting than Lady Rossiter's practice of invariably alluding to Miss Marchrose in her capacity of a wrecker of hearts. Julian, however, replied imperturbably:
"Do you mean the dipsomaniac?"
Lady Rossiter liked the term no better than her husband liked that of "jilt," as applied to Miss Marchrose, and as she would not be guilty of making use of it, she merely inclined her head gravely.
"Because, Julian, if that woman knows into what she is drifting, then it will be a case of Clarence over again, and I am going to save my poor Mark from her. And if shedoesn'tknow, I am going to tell her, whatever it costs me to speak about it, that Mark is a married man."