Consequences & The War-Workers. E. M. Delafield
girl does look tired. I hope she gets into bed quickly," observed Mrs. Potter, pulling off her hat and exposing a rakishly décoiffé tangle of wispy hair.
"Not she—she'll dawdle for ages," prophesied Miss Marsh. "Still, it's something if she gets into her dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, out of her corsets, you know."
Miss Delmege put down her cup of tea.
"Rather a strange subject we seem to be on for mealtime, don't we?" she remarked detachedly to Grace.
"Meal-time?" exclaimed Miss Henderson derisively.
"That's what I said, dear, and I'm in the habit of meaning what I say, as far as I know."
"I really don't know how you can call it meal-time when we're not even at table. Besides, if we were, there's nothing in what Marsh said—absolutely nothing at all."
"Oh, of course, some people see harm in anything," burst out Miss Marsh, very red. "The harm is in their own minds, is what I say, otherwise they wouldn't see any."
"That's right," agreed Miss Henderson, but below her breath.
Miss Delmege turned with dignity to her other neighbour.
"I may be peculiar, but that's how I feel about it. I imagine that you, as a married woman, will agree with me, Mrs. Potter?"
Mrs. Potter did not agree with her at all, but something in the appeal, some subtle hint of the dignity of Mrs. Potter's position amongst so many virgins, caused her to temporize feebly.
"Really, Miss Delmege, you mustn't ask me. I—I quite see with you—but at the same time—there wasn't anything in what Miss Marsh said, now, was there? I mean, really. Simply corsets, you know."
Nearly every one had by this time forgotten exactly what Miss Marsh had said, and only retained a general impression of licentiousness in conversation.
"We're all girls together," exclaimed Miss Marsh furiously.
"Gentlemen in the room would be a very different thing," Miss Henderson supported her.
"I'll take a second cup, Mrs. Bullivant, if you please," said Miss Delmege with dignity.
"There!" exclaimed Miss Henderson.
Miss Marsh had suddenly begun to cry.
Mrs. Bullivant hastily poured out more tea, and said uncertainly: "Come, come!"
"There's no call for any one to cry, that I can see," observed Miss Delmege, still detached, but in a tone of uneasiness.
"The fact is, I'm not myself today," sobbed Miss Marsh.
"What is it?" said Gracie sympathetically. She slipped a friendly hand into her room-mate's.
"I had a letter which upset me this morning. A great friend of mine, who's been wounded—a boy I know most awfully well."
"Why didn't you tell me, dear?" asked Miss Henderson. "I didn't even know you had a boy out there."
"Oh, not a feawncy—only a chum," said Miss Marsh, still sniffing.
"Is he bad, dear?"
"A flesh-wound in the arm, and something about trench feet."
"That's a nice slow thing, and they'll send him to England to get well," prophesied Grace.
Miss Delmege rose from her seat.
"I'm sorry you've been feeling upset," she said to Miss Marsh. "It seems rather strange you didn't say anything sooner, but I'm sorry about it."
"Thank you," Miss Marsh replied with a gulp. "If I've been rather sharp in my manner today, I hope you won't think I meant anything. This has rather upset me."
Miss Delmege bowed slightly, and Grace, fearing an anticlimax, begged Miss Marsh to come up to bed.
The final amende was made next morning, when Miss Delmege, in a buff-coloured drapery known as "my fawn peignwaw," came to the door and asked for admittance.
Grace opened the door, and Miss Delmege said, in a voice even more distinct than usual: "I know Miss Marsh was tired last night, dear, so I've brought her a cup of our early tea."
VII
"Mother, are you coming to the Canteen again tomorrow? You remember what a rush it was last Monday, and it'll be just as bad again."
"No, Char, I am not," was the unvarnished reply of Lady Vivian.
Char compressed her lips and sighed. She would have been almost as much disappointed as surprised if her mother had suddenly expressed an intention of appearing regularly at the Canteen, but she knew that Miss Bruce was looking at her with an admiring and compassionate gaze.
Sir Piers, who substituted chess for billiards on Sunday evenings because he thought it due to the servants to show that the Lord's Day was respected at Plessing, looked up uneasily.
"You're not going out again tomorrow, eh, my dear? I missed our game sadly the other night."
"No, it's all right; I'm not going again."
Joanna never raised her voice very much, but Sir Piers always heard what she said. It made Char wonder sometimes, half irritably and half ashamedly, whether he could not have heard other people, had he wanted to. The overstrain from which she herself was quite unconsciously suffering made her nervously impatient of the old man's increasing slowness of perception.
"And where has Char been all this afternoon? I never see you about the house now," Sir Piers said, half maunderingly, half with a sort of bewilderment that was daily increasing in his view of small outward events.
"I've been at my work," said Char, raising her voice, partly as a vent to her own feelings. "I go into the office on Sunday afternoons always, and a very good thing I do, too. They were making a fearful muddle of some telegrams yesterday."
"Telegrams? You can't send telegrams on a Sunday, child; they aren't delivered. I don't like you to go to this place on Sundays, either. Joanna, my dear, we mustn't allow her to do that."
Char cast up her eyes in a sort of desperation, and went into the further half of the drawing-room, where Miss Bruce sat, just hearing her mother say gently: "Look, Piers, I shall take your castle."
"Brucey," said Char, "I think they'll drive me mad. I know my work is nothing, really—such a tiny, infinitesimal part of a great whole—but if I could only get a little sympathy. It does seem so extraordinary, when one has been working all day, giving one's whole self to it all, and then to come back to this sort of atmosphere!"
Miss Bruce was perhaps the only person with whom Char was absolutely unreserved. In younger days Miss Bruce had been her adoring governess, and the old relations still existed between them. Char knew that Miss Bruce had always thought Lady Vivian's management of her only child terribly injudicious, and that in the prolonged antagonism between herself and her mother Miss Bruce's silent loyalty had always ranged itself on Char's side.
"It's very hard on you, my dear," she sighed. "But I have been afraid lately—have you noticed, I wonder?"
"What?"
"Sir Piers seems to me to be failing; he is so much deafer, so much more dependent on Lady Vivian."
"He's always that," said Char. "I think it's only the beginning of the winter, Brucey. He always feels the cold weather."
But a very little while later Miss Bruce's view received unexpected corroboration.
Three Sundays later, when the weather had grown colder than ever, and Char was, as usual, spending the afternoon and evening at the Depôt, Mrs. Willoughby paid a call at Plessing.
She was followed into the room, with almost equal unwillingness,