and bread and butter. All of which was highly agreeable and indeed intensely exciting to Beatrice and Muriel, who had little round red spots in THEIR cheeks when they came away. Adela quivered with the sense that her mother’s children were now Mrs. Churchley’s “chicks” and a part of the furniture of Mrs. Churchley’s dreadful consciousness.
It was one thing to have made up her mind, however; it was another thing to make her attempt. It was when she learned from Godfrey that the day was fixed, the 20th of July, only six weeks removed, that she felt the importance of prompt action. She learned everything from Godfrey now, having decided it would be hypocrisy to question her father. Even her silence was hypocritical, but she couldn’t weep and wail. Her father showed extreme tact; taking no notice of her detachment, treating it as a moment of bouderie he was bound to allow her and that would pout itself away. She debated much as to whether she should take Godfrey into her confidence; she would have done so without hesitation if he hadn’t disappointed her. He was so little what she might have expected, and so perversely preoccupied that she could explain it only by the high pressure at which he was living, his anxiety about his “exam.” He was in a fidget, in a fever, putting on a spurt to come in first; sceptical moreover about his success and cynical about everything else. He appeared to agree to the general axiom that they didn’t want a strange woman thrust into their life, but he found Mrs. Churchley “very jolly as a person to know.” He had been to see her by himself—he had been to see her three times. He in fact gave it out that he would make the most of her now; he should probably be so little in Seymour Street after these days. What Adela at last determined to give him was her assurance that the marriage would never take place. When he asked what she meant and who was to prevent it she replied that the interesting couple would abandon the idea of themselves, or that Mrs. Churchley at least would after a week or two back out of it.
“That will be really horrid then,” Godfrey pronounced. “The only respectable thing, at the point they’ve come to, is to put it through. Charming for poor Dad to have the air of being ‘chucked’!”
This made her hesitate two days more, but she found answers more valid than any objections. The many- voiced answer to everything—it was like the autumn wind round the house—was the affront that fell back on her mother. Her mother was dead but it killed her again. So one morning at eleven o’clock, when she knew her father was writing letters, she went out quietly and, stopping the first hansom she met, drove to Prince’s Gate. Mrs. Churchley was at home, and she was shown into the drawing-room with the request that she would wait five minutes. She waited without the sense of breaking down at the last, and the impulse to run away, which were what she had expected to have. In the cab and at the door her heart had beat terribly, but now suddenly, with the game really to play, she found herself lucid and calm. It was a joy to her to feel later that this was the way Mrs. Churchley found her: not confused, not stammering nor prevaricating, only a little amazed at her own courage, conscious of the immense responsibility of her step and wonderfully older than her years. Her hostess sounded her at first with suspicious eyes, but eventually, to Adela’s surprise, burst into tears. At this the girl herself cried, and with the secret happiness of believing they were saved. Mrs. Churchley said she would think over what she had been told, and she promised her young friend, freely enough and very firmly, not to betray the secret of the latter’s step to the Colonel. They were saved—they were saved: the words sung themselves in the girl’s soul as she came downstairs. When the door opened for her she saw her brother on the step, and they looked at each other in surprise, each finding it on the part of the other an odd hour for Prince’s Gate. Godfrey remarked that Mrs. Churchley would have enough of the family, and Adela answered that she would perhaps have too much. None the less the young man went in while his sister took her way home.
CHAPTER III
She saw nothing of him for nearly a week; he had more and more his own times and hours, adjusted to his tremendous responsibilities, and he spent whole days at his crammer’s. When she knocked at his door late in the evening he was regularly not in his room. It was known in the house how much he was worried; he was horribly nervous about his ordeal. It was to begin on the 23rd of June, and his father was as worried as himself. The wedding had been arranged in relation to this; they wished poor Godfrey’s fate settled first, though they felt the nuptials would be darkened if it shouldn’t be settled right.
Ten days after that performance of her private undertaking Adela began to sniff, as it were, a difference in the general air; but as yet she was afraid to exult. It wasn’t in truth a difference for the better, so that there might be still a great tension. Her father, since the announcement of his intended marriage, had been visibly pleased with himself, but that pleasure now appeared to have undergone a check. She had the impression known to the passengers on a great steamer when, in the middle of the night, they feel the engines stop. As this impression may easily sharpen to the sense that something serious has happened, so the girl asked herself what had actually occurred. She had expected something serious; but it was as if she couldn’t keep still in her cabin—she wanted to go up and see. On the 20th, just before breakfast, her maid brought her a message from her brother. Mr. Godfrey would be obliged if she would speak to him in his room. She went straight up to him, dreading to find him ill, broken down on the eve of his formidable week. This was not the case however—he rather seemed already at work, to have been at work since dawn. But he was very white and his eyes had a strange and new expression. Her beautiful young brother looked older; he looked haggard and hard. He met her there as if he had been waiting for her, and he said at once: “Please tell me this, Adela—what was the purpose of your visit the other morning to Mrs. Churchley, the day I met you at her door?”
She stared—she cast about. “The purpose? What’s the matter? Why do you ask?”
“They’ve put it off—they’ve put it off a month.”
“Ah thank God!” said Adela.
“Why the devil do you thank God?” Godfrey asked with a strange impatience.
She gave a strained intense smile. “You know I think it all wrong.”
He stood looking at her up and down. “What did you do there? How did you interfere?”
“Who told you I interfered?” she returned with a deep flush.
“You said something—you did something. I knew you had done it when I saw you come out.”
“What I did was my own business.”
“Damn your own business!” cried the young man.
She had never in her life been so spoken to, and in advance, had she been given the choice, would have said that she’d rather die than be so handled by Godfrey. But her spirit was high, and for a moment she was as angry as if she had been cut with a whip. She escaped the blow but felt the insult. “And YOUR business then?” she asked. “I wondered what that was when I saw YOU.”
He stood a moment longer scowling at her; then with the exclamation “You’ve made a pretty mess!” he turned away from her and sat down to his books.
They had put it off, as he said; her father was dry and stiff and official about it. “I suppose I had better let you know we’ve thought it best to postpone our marriage till the end of the summer— Mrs. Churchley has so many arrangements to make”: he was not more expansive than that. She neither knew nor greatly cared whether she but
