Mr Billing’s honesty was spared by the announcement that the vicarage trap was at the door. The Reverend Cleveland rose without pause, and stood with his eyes on the floor, frankly awaiting his wife’s movement for departure. When this was made, he shook hands in silence with his fellow-guests, showing Mrs Cassell and Mrs Merton-Vane some courtliness, and Dr Cassell and Mr Billing some coldness. He then observed to Mrs Blackwood, “We have to thank you for an exceedingly pleasant evening”; and took up his stand near the door, in waiting for the ladies of his family to precede him from the room. Mrs Blackwood escorted her sister and Dolores upstairs; leaving Dr Cassell to enlightenment of Mr Billing, whose attitude did not henceforth waver from the gratefully receptive; and a sisterly talk enlivened the assumption of wrappings.
“So Cleveland and Bertram are going to walk on, dear,” said Mrs Blackwood.
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs Hutton. “They leave the trap to us feminine creatures. It does not hold more than two.”
“When we lived at Hallington,” said Mrs Blackwood, “we had a trap that only had room for one besides the man; and when Herbert and I went out, he used to wait to put me into it before he started himself. He used to say he felt so worried, when he thought of me clambering into it alone in the dark.”
“Oh, that was such a dangerous trap,” said Mrs Hutton. “It really was hardly safe.”
“Oh, no, dear,” said Mrs Blackwood; “it could not have been safer; it was only Herbert’s nervousness about me.”
“Ah, those were your early married days,” said Mrs Hutton, adjusting her hood before the glass.
“Oh, but Herbert has not altered in the least since then,” said Mrs Blackwood, her voice becoming a little higher pitched. “He fidgets so about me, that sometimes in company he makes me feel quite foolish.”
Mrs Hutton pulled out her strings without sign of accepting this statement; and Mrs Blackwood felt urged to its elaboration.
“I always think it is such a wrong theory that husbands are different after they are married. I think that as they begin, so they go on. You see Herbert worries about me just as much as ever; and Cleveland never has been anxious about you, has he? He does not let things like that disturb him.”
“My dear Carrie, it is rather absurd to talk about Herbert’s being worried,” said Mrs Hutton. “I do not remember seeing him worried in his life.”
“Oh, you do not understand him, dear,” said Mrs Blackwood. “He does not show his feelings on the surface. I often think what a sad thing it would have been for him, if he had married some one who did not believe in anything that was not under her eyes. I am so thankful that we were brought together.”
“Thankfulness on that point is a needless self-exaction, dear,” said Mrs Hutton. “As you were cousins, special providential arrangements to bring you together were not required.”
“My dear, our grandparents were second cousins,” said Mrs Blackwood. “People connected in that degree very often never meet. I always feel that Herbert and I were given to each other.”
“I remember you so well when you were engaged,” said Mrs Hutton, with a little laugh.
“I remember it too,” said Mrs Blackwood; “and how I used to pity you, for having no chance of getting married, though you were the elder sister. Girls are so amusing in the way they look at things.”
“I never can understand how women can marry boys,” said Mrs Hutton, surveying her reflection in the mirror.
“My dear, when a woman marries as young as I did, she naturally marries a young man,” said Mrs Blackwood. “Of course a man is getting on in years when he has one life behind him.”
“I meant I could not understand a woman’s accepting a man younger than herself,” said Mrs Hutton; “as though she would secure a husband at any cost.”
“My dear Sophia, Herbert is only a few months younger than I am. He was asking the other day which of us was the elder. The difference is so small, that he never remembers which way it is.”
“Is it really so small as that?” said Mrs Hutton. “It hardly seems possible, does it? Well, we must be going down, dear. Our menfolk must be nearly home. We have had such a pleasant evening. It has been quite a break for Dolores after her term’s work.”
In the drawing-room Dr Cassell was found seated on the edge of his chair, and leaning towards Mr Billing, with hand upraised; his wife’s eyes fastened on his face, and the Blackwood family listening in the background — that is to say, Lettice listening; Elsa exposing his mannerisms with silent mimicry; and Mr Blackwood twirling his moustache as an effort against sleepiness. Dolores and her stepmother drove to the parsonage in silence; and parted on the threshold for the night, the latter to win the Reverend Cleveland to some difficult mirth, by her sallies at the expense of her kindred.
Chapter IV
Before you is a room whose innocence of toy or draping holds it with the figures within it in subtle sympathy. Within it are some women who in some way stay your glance; who carry in their bearing some suggested discord with convention — a something of greater than the common earnestness and ease. Those who are laughing give unchecked heart to their laughter. The one who is distributing cups of some beverage, does it as the unobtrusive service of a comrade.
The scene has a meaning which marks it a scene of its day. It is the common room of the teaching staff in a college for women.
The dispenser of the beverage is crossing the room with movements of easy briskness. She is a woman of forty, older at a glance; with a well-cut, dark — skinned face, iron — grey hair whose waving is conquered by its drawing to the knot in the neck, and dark eyes keen under thick, black brows. That is Miss Cliff, the lecturer in English literature.
The companion to whom she is handing a cup — the lecturer in classics, Miss Butler, — and who takes it with a word in a vein of pleasantry, is a small, straight woman, a few years younger; whose parted hair leaves the forehead fully shown, and whose hazel eyes have humour in their rapid glancing.
“I cannot but see it as ungenerous to brew the coffee with such skill,” she is saying; “in purposed contrast to my concoction of last week.”
“A meanly revengeful comment on my general manner of brewing it,” said Miss Cliff. “Well, you may put its success down to my being out of practice. It is the only reason I can think of for it.”
“I remember the last time you made it,” said a genial, guttural voice at the side of Miss Butler — the voice of Miss Dorrington, the lecturer in German, and a strong illustration of the power of moral attractiveness over the physical opposite; which in her case depended on uncouth features, an eruptive skin, and general ungainliness. “It was that week when you kept getting ill, and at the end I had to make it for you.”
“Hoist with your own petard?” said Miss Butler, smiling at Miss Cliff.
“I think it is a great accomplishment to make good coffee,” said Miss Cliff, in a consciously demure tone; “a very seemly, womanly accomplishment. I cannot feel justified in relaxing my efforts to acquire it, if you will all be generous. Cookery, you know, is the greatest attainment for a woman.”
A short, quaint — looking, middle — aged lady, with a pathetic manner which somehow was comical in its union with her calling of mathematical teacher, looked up with a slow smile. “I fear we are but a boorish set, if that be true,” she said.
“Oh, I know it is true, Miss Greenlow,” said Miss Cliff, meeting Miss Butler’s eyes. “I read it in a book, so of course it was true.”
“Of course,” said Miss Dorrington, in her breathless guttural, no genial quality unsuggested in her face and voice.
“Do any of you remember when you first realised that things in books need not be true?” said Miss Cliff, with the half — philosophising interest in her kind, which was one of her characteristics. “Do you remember feeling the ground you were used to walk upon, slipping from under your feet, and a mist of scepticism rising around you?”