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 compa.s.sionate gaze.

Sir Piers, who subst.i.tuted 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 Depot, Mrs. Willoughby paid a call at Plessing.

She was followed into the room, with almost equal unwillingness, by her husband and a small, immensely stout Pekinese dog, with bulging eyes and a quick, incessant bark that only Mrs. Willoughby's voice could dominate.

"Darling Joanna!" she shrieked. "Puffles, wicked, wicked boy, be quiet!

Isn't this an invasion? But my Lewis did so want--I shall smack 'oo if 'oo isn't quiet directly. _Do_ you mind this little brown boy, who goes _everywhere_ with his mammy? I knew you'd love him if you saw him--but _such_ a noise! Lewis, tell this naughty Puff his mother can't hear herself speak."

"Down, sir!" said Lewis, in tones which might have quelled a mastiff with hydrophobia.

Puff waddled for refuge to his mistress, who immediately gathered him on to her lap as she sank on to the sofa.

"Did 'oo daddy speak in a big rough voice, and frighten the poor little manikin?" she inquired solicitously. "Isn't he _rather_ twee, Joanna?"

"I've not seen it before," said Joanna, in tones more civil than enthusiastic.

"It!" screamed Lesbia. "She calls 'oo _it_, my Puffles! as though he wasn't the sweetest little brown boy in the whole world. It! You've hurt his little feelings too dreadfully, my dear--look at him sulking!"

Puff had composed himself into a sort of dribbling torpor.

"That dog doesn't get enough exercise," said Major Willoughby suddenly, fixing his eyes upon his hostess.

"Surely it--he--is too small to require a great deal," said Lady Vivian languidly. Lap-dogs bored her very much indeed, and she turned away her eyes after taking one rather disgusted look at the rec.u.mbent Puff through her eyegla.s.ses.

"Train up a dog in the way it should go. Now, this little fellah--you'd hardly believe it, Lady Vivian, if I were to tell you the difference in him after he's had a good run over the Common."

"Lewis!" cried Lesbia, opening her eyes to an incredible extent, as was her wont whenever she wished to emphasize her words. "I _can't_ have you boring people about Puff. Lewis is a perfect slave to Puffles, and tries to hide it by calling him 'the dog' and talking about his training."

Lewis looked self-conscious, and immediately said: "Not at all; not at all. But the dog is an intelligent little brute. Now, I'll tell you what happened the other day."

Major Willoughby gave various instances of Puff's discrimination, and Lesbia kissed the top of Puff's somnolent head and exclaimed shrilly at intervals that "it was too, too bad to pay the little treasure so many compliments; it would turn his little fluffy head, it would."

Lady Vivian reflected that she might certainly absolve herself from the charge of contributing to this catastrophe. The language of compliment had seldom been further from her lips; but in any case her visitors left her little of the trouble of sustaining conversation.

It was evident that Puff was a recent acquisition in the Willoughby _menage_.

"Where's your dear girl?" Lesbia presently inquired fondly of her hostess.

"In Questerham, at the Depot."

"Now, Joanna, I'm going to be perfectly candid. You won't mind, I know--after all, you and I were girls together. What Char needs, my dear, is _flogging_."

Lady Vivian was conscious of distinct relief at the thought that her secretary did not happen to be within earshot of this startling expression of opinion.

"You are certainly being perfectly candid, Lesbia," she said dryly.

"What has poor Char been doing to require flogging, may I ask?"

"You ask me that, Joanna! Lewis, hark at her!"

Lewis, thus appealed to, looked very uncomfortable, and said in a non-committal manner: "H'm, yes, yes. Hi! Puff!--good dog, sir!" thus rousing the Pekinese to a fresh outburst of ear-piercing barks.

When this had at length been quelled by the blandishments of Lesbia and the words of command repeatedly given in a martial tone by her husband, Lady Vivian repeated her inquiry, and Mrs. Willoughby replied forcibly: "My dear, nothing but flogging would ever bring her to her senses. The way she's treating you and poor dear Sir Piers! He's looking iller and older every day, and tells me himself that he never sees her now; it's too piteous to hear him, dear old thing. It would wring tears from a stone--wouldn't it, Lewis?"

"Down, sir, down, I say!" was the reply of Major Willoughby, addressed to the investigating Puff.

"Oh, naughty boy, leave the screen alone. Now, come here to mother, then. What was I telling you, Joanna? Oh, about that girl of yours.