THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ETHEL LINA WHITE. Ethel Lina White
a professional man, who has two little children dependent on him?"
Joan had ceased to shout down the ear-trumpet, for this was not the static At Home. Thrilled with excitement, she looked around her, at the guests, from Mrs. Scudamore—wrapped in the non-committal calm of 'good form'—to Vivian Sheriff, who was sitting in the window.
Under the brim of her mushroom hat, Vivian's face looked pinkly infantile, and her frock was frilled baby-blue. But her eyes held almost painful tension, as she spoke.
"Perhaps, it's as well, for us to be on our guard."
"Guard against what?" asked Mrs. Scudamore, speaking for the first time. "No harm has been done."
"Not yet. But this may be only the beginning."
As Vivian spoke, once again a black flicker quivered across the sun-drenched garden.
Marianne was first to respond to the toxic quality of Fear. Her voice was sharp as she broke into a nervous tirade.
"I think anyone who writes an anonymous letter is a real danger. Whenever there's been some terrible crime—a little child murdered—there's always a pest of these letters. I suppose it's some warped sense of humour—Heaven help them—but they all add to the mental torture of the parents. I—I speak as a mother. Besides, they confuse the real clues and hinder the Police. Personally I should have no mercy on an anonymous letter-writer."
"I agree." Mrs. Scudamore's voice was so low as to be almost inaudible. "The idea of any kind of cruelty repels me. But—in such a case—I should be ruthless, so that good might result."
Everyone gasped, for the social oracle had spoken. Then Vivian broke the pause, with a nervous giggle.
"Miss Corner's coming up the drive."
Instantly, Lady d'Arcy gave Joan the first direct order she had received.
"Miss Brook, will you please tell William I am not at home?"
Hardly able to credit her ears, Joan slipped out into the hall, paved like a chess-board, with black-and-white marble flags. Unfortunately, the front door was open, so that she could see Miss Corner—red and beaming—wiping her heated face, as she waited in the porch. But she was too short sighted to recognise the girl, who kept in the shadow of the wall, as she whispered Lady d'Arcy's instruction to the footman.
Joan returned to the drawing-room, just as the bell pealed through the hall. She heard a murmur of voices, followed by an ominous silence. And then the gravel crunched once more under Miss Corner's footsteps.
Looking through the window, Joan saw the back of her broad figure trudging down the drive.
Perhaps a front view of the lady might have salved Joan's troubled mind, for Miss Corner's face was still red and beaming.
"Fools," she remarked to a passing bumble-bee. "But it's typical of a mentality that accepts her."
The sun beat down fiercely, but she deliberately rejected the shade-dappled park for the long tramp through the fields. Swinging her arms, she pounded along the ribbon of bumpy path, inhaling the scents of hot pollen and dog-roses. Beads of moisture gathered on her forehead, and trickled down her neck and cheeks, but she did not wipe them away, when she reached the dark tunnel of the Quaker's Walk.
The cooler temperature made her shiver slightly, so that she walked still faster, until a familiar voice behind her caused her to stop.
"Is this a dirt-track? I've had to run to catch you up."
In spite of his statement, Dr. Perry looked cool and composed, as usual, in his light summer suit. As he remarked Miss Corner's distressed condition, his expression was both pained and pleased, for, allied with his compassionate nature, was the zeal of the collector who spikes his bug.
"You've got too hot," he said reproachfully.
"I've been trying to disperse my atoms," explained Miss Corner. "But they're the most faithful ever. I lose them, only to find them somewhere else. I'm told I'm composed of a pound of chemical dirt and a pail of water. Well, I find it hard to believe."
"But you should really keep in the shade," persisted the doctor.
"I hate the shade. This avenue gives me a churchyard chill. And I hate to think of death."
Her loud laugh rolled down the avenue.
"The people here take that as proof that I'm not sure of my future abode. But I don't go to church, because I can't stand the rubbish that young man preaches. He's all delivery—and not one original idea."
Dr. Perry did not hide his pleasure.
"You—and I—are in the minority," he smiled.
"Very much so. Of course the village raves about him. All the same, when they go to book the best seats I think they'll be rather surprised to find there's no Box-Office in Heaven. Blow them."
"Anything special the matter?" asked the doctor curiously.
"Nothing. Only, tell me a funny story. A pathological one, all about things not mentioned in polite society."
"Medical facts are never gross, Julia. But you sound as if you'd been having an overdose of refinement. My Marianne suffers from the same complaint. She was groaning all through lunch. I suppose you've just come away from Lady d'Arcy's At Home?"
"Yes, come away, but I never went to it. I was informed, at the door, that Lady d'Arcy was not at home."
For once Dr. Perry was startled out of his composure.
"Well, well, Julia," he said, gently patting her big shoulder. "You had all the luck."
"Don't I know it?...Horatio, you really are a friend. I want you to know something...I've left you all my money."
CHAPTER IX — COVENTRY
Even though the lethal quality was absent, there was fresh evidence that the poison of the anonymous letter had spread, when Dr. Perry and his wife decided to give their bi-seasonal tennis-party. It was always the second event on the social programme, according to precedent.
When they discussed their list of names, Marianne mutinied against Miss Corner's name being included, but—rather to her surprise—Dr. Perry made no protest.
"Leave her out, certainly," he said, "if you think it wise."
As he spoke, he looked down at the tow head of the elder baby, Micky, who was frogging round the dining-room. Even his blue rompers bore traces of Marianne's maternal devotion, in their small sprays of hand-embroidery; and, as her black-ringed eyes followed his course, which jagged like a temperature-chart, her expression changed.
"No," she said. "She's as good as an annuity to us. We can't risk offending her."
"I don't think there's any real risk of that," said the doctor quietly. "Julia's too big to nurse a grudge."
The invitations were finally sent out, after several unimportant names had been struck off the list; for the doctor's wife was selective, and also an alien, so had not acquired that spirit of wholesale kindliness which animated village hospitality.
But, when the acceptance came in, she was aghast by one important refusal. Miss Asprey regretted being unable to attend, as she had arranged a picnic on the Downs, as a little treat for Miss Mack.
"That's a dig at me," declared Marianne, "just because I didn't invite her companion. Hang it, why should I? Miss Mack doesn't play tennis. I don't want any paper at my shows."
The doctor went on tying flies, in silence, but his wife knew what was in his mind. Miss Asprey's absence would be noticed.
"They'll think she wouldn't come because of Miss Corner," she said. "It'll look as if we were taking sides—and a doctor's position should be impersonal. The truth