Success
clear either. She had but a vague idea herself of what had really
occurred to Michael: what she told her daughters was mixed and obscure
and hardly enough to justify the sense of disaster in her tone and
manner.
“Is that all?” Mabel said. “Michael has just got himself into a bother
with the Galhardy people; nothing more than that?”
“All!” Mrs. Annarly said. “I don’t know how much more you want! I
am sure it is bad enough: they have dismissed him, discharged him,
whatever you call it.”
“I dare say it won’t turn out to be so bad as it sounds,” Rosalind
looked up from a fashion paper to say comfortably. “I dare say it will
soon blow over. Sit down and tell us all about it, mother dear. Mab,
pull that chair up for her.”
Mrs. Annarly sat down, though not much encouraged by the reassuring
words. Rosalind’s reassuring words did not always carry weight, she
rather taking after the people in the Bible who found solace for
their momentary discomfort at a disturbing sight in saying, “Be ye
clothed and fed,” whether or no there was much chance of the agreeable
consummation taking place.
“I really don’t understand about it,” Mrs. Annarly said. “I saw the
letter from the Galhardy people, and it seemed final: but perhaps you
are right; perhaps they mean to reconsider it later on.” (She had done
similar things herself in domestic difficulties.) “But even if they do,
I don’t see how Michael is to be any real use to Giles.”
Giles, it had been recently decided, was to follow his stepbrother’s
profession—for which he had little taste—largely on account of the
influence that brother should have been able to exert on his behalf.
The recent affair at Galhardy’s would make a considerable difference;
in all probability make the idea of Giles entering the engineering
profession unwise, if not out of the question altogether.
“Your father has definitely refused Giles,” Mrs. Annarly complained,
now referring, not to her son, but to her bachelor brother, that son’s
godfather, who, before the recent plan, had been looked to place his
nephew advantageously in the City.
“I suppose he can get back?” Mabel suggested. “The governor, I mean; he
can get back with Uncle G., if he wants to?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Annarly said. “It was about the time of the
Budget: he was so angry that he declared he would never speak to him
again. So was Giles. I am sure I don’t know what is to be done.” She
was a little obscure, but very distressed. She dabbed her eyes once or
twice before she went on.
“Your father seems to think very seriously of what Michael has done. I
am quite certain he does not for a moment think he will ever be able to
go back; neither does Michael himself. Your father says he may think
himself lucky to get off without prosecution——”
“Prosecution?”
All three sisters sat up startled. It was something which had not
occurred to them, and which struck sharply. Prosecution, trial, reports
in the newspapers; friends and acquaintances reading, recognising the
name, looking or expressing sympathy; servants even talking about it,
and other people—the people one did not know—chattering and possibly
enjoying the scandal!
“How awful!” Constance exclaimed. “It won’t, it surely won’t come to
that!”
“Just when we are beginning to think about my wedding,” Rosalind cried.
“What would the Whartons say!”
“Michael would have to emigrate afterwards,” Mabel said decidedly;
“there’d be nothing else for it, and it would be bad enough then in all
conscience.”
They spent a very distressing evening together, talking over the
affair and all likely and unlikely contingencies arising therefrom.
Each in turn suggested fresh possibilities and followed them and their
consequences into depressing ramifications, as remote as the question
whether Mary, the parlour-maid, would stop, if Michael came to live
at home, and so made one more in family; and the unpleasantness of
explaining his return to the select, and slightly curious, bridge club
which Constance had recently joined.
They did not, however, say anything of this to Michael when they met
him at the supper-table. The Annarlys dined in the middle of the day
on Sundays, and had cold supper at eight; a rather depressing meal
usually, partly because the one servant remaining in, having spent
the evening in repose, had not sufficiently woke up to set the table
properly; and partly because the family, having had too little to do
and too much of each other’s society, were rather poor company by that
time. This particular Sunday supper was worse than usual. It is true
no one mentioned the matter in everyone’s mind, but spoke, when they
did speak, of indifferent topics, as if strangers had been present.
But there was a feeling of gloom, which, while being general, somehow
seemed to centre round Michael and point him out as being the cause of
it. No one was sorry when the meal was over, no one was sorry when it
was bedtime; they went to bed rather earlier than usual, Rosalind went
almost directly after supper.
* * * * *
Hurstbury was one of those places where, during the waking hours of
five and a half days of the week, practically no men are to be seen.
The doctor, the clergyman, and the policeman were occasionally to
be met with in pursuit of their several avocations, but one regards
them more as local institutions than mere men: tradesmen, coachmen,
and gardeners might also be discovered, if sought for in their proper
places, but they, again, seem rather fixtures or accessories. Men
proper, that is, belonging to the women who lived in the houses
fronting the well-kept roads, were invisible for those hours of the
five and a half days. They were not to be seen issuing from the houses
to go to the shops, even the tobacconist’s or newspaper shop; they were
not to be met on the roads, or even on the nearest golf course. Except
for a week or two in holiday time, when schoolboys and college boys
came home, the visible male population of the place consisted in the
daytime of infants, invalids, and the aged; the rest having all gone
to the City. An able-bodied man, unless a corner loafer, who was at
large in Hurstbury during the hours of the working day, seemed almost
misplaced, and quite as much an object of observation as one who has
strayed into a baby-linen shop.
There are houses, there were in Hurstbury, where something the same
feeling reigns; where a man, between the ages of, say, twenty and
sixty, seems a little out of place in the daytime, excepting, of
course, holidays. The Annarlys’ house was like that. Directly after
breakfast, Mr. Annarly left for the City, and Mrs. Annarly went to
superintend the management of her household. Constance went to her desk
to write letters, cast up accounts, and give attention to the affairs
of the various societies, charitable and otherwise, in which she was
interested. Mabel arranged the flowers and took the dogs for a run, and
Rosalind, having walked to the station with her father, if the day was
fine, retired to manicure her nails or practise, if she was in the mood
to sing. There was no place for a man in any of these occupations, and
nothing for him to do. Later, Mrs. Annarly might turn out a cupboard,
or mend a stocking; Constance might go to the shops or on some errand,
social or charitable; Rosalind might go to the dressmaker’s, and Mabel
might spend an hour pottering in the conservatory or gossiping with a
girl friend. Again there was no room for a man, and nothing for him to
do. In the afternoon the mother and daughters visited or were visited,
played hockey or bridge, read or did fancy work, according to age and
tastes. One way and another time was fully occupied until Mr. Annarly,
with the other able-bodied male inhabitants of the place, came back
from the City.
It was to Hurstbury, and to this house there, that Michael came home
that October. Not but what he was made welcome; he was, or, at least,
not unwelcome. The mother and daughters were really very nice to him
considering how his downfall necessarily touched them; how the collapse
of his future entailed the collapse of that planned for Giles; how
his loss of income lessened the amount his father felt able to spend
on them; and how their position and prestige were slightly, and might
be seriously, affected by what had deprived him of his. They were,
in spite of all, quite nice, saying little about the situation, and
behaving, so far as possible, as if nothing had happened; but they
naturally could not make ordinary days holidays, or alter the whole
routine and tenor of already full lives on his account. And as it
was likely he might be at home some time, they naturally expected him
to conform to the ways of the household; to be punctual at meals, not
to smoke in the house before lunch, to use only such sitting-rooms as
were customarily used, and to discreetly disappear if friends, social
engagements, or other of their affairs occupied the rooms.
They did not mention any of these things; they took it as a matter of
course that he would do them. And he did them. On the whole, as Mrs.
Annarly said, they really got through the first month better than she
expected.
CHAPTER VI
On the last Thursday in October, Nan Barmister came to Hurstbury. The
Annarlys usually asked her to lunch about that time; they might have
done so this year, though possibly not as the invaluable Mary had given
notice, and Michael was at home. Michael had never mentioned his brief
sojourn in Soho; there had been no necessity, and somehow it had not
occurred to him to do it, so the family concluded Nan knew nothing of
his being home, when she proposed to come and see them. They had often
told her to write and propose coming when she was able, but she had
never done it before; to tell the truth, they were not very pleased
that she did now; they felt it to be an ill-chosen time. However, they
decided that it would not be kind to refuse her, although all three
sisters had engagements of some sort for the afternoon.
“Michael can entertain her,” Mabel said; “he and mother can look after
her for the afternoon. We shall all be in to lunch, and some of us to
tea, if she stops till then. After all, she is his relation really, not
ours.”
Constance hesitated. “Wouldn’t it be too tiresome for him?” she said.
Rosalind was of opinion it would. “It really isn’t fair to ask him,”
she said; “he’d simply be bored to death. She’ll be all right with
mother, and mother doesn’t mind; she will be able to tell her all about
Mary’s delinquencies. They really get on awfully well alone together,
better than if we are there. I am sure Nan likes it better.”
It is a great help towards comfort and well-being to be able to be
sure that what you wish is so by the mere fact of saying it; quite a
number of people have this creative faculty—where the tastes of others
are concerned. Rosalind had largely; her sisters may not have entirely
believed in it, but they did not contradict her now. The question
of who was to entertain Nan was left unsettled, but she herself was
informed they would be pleased to see her on the suggested Thursday.
And on that day she came.
The Annarlys’ drawing-room was a nice-sized room, with a thick pale
green carpet and rosewood cabinets, where Worcester china and Venetian
glass stood in well-kept array. There were polished tables with books
and photographs and magazines on them, quantities of fresh flowers
everywhere, and many brocade upholstered chairs—mostly looking too
large and stuffed for Nan. The whole room looked, if not that, in some
way incongruous with her. Even the recently lit fire, lit thus early on
her account, seemed to emphasise the fact that she was out of place.
And Constance, the only member of the family ready to receive her when