THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ETHEL LINA WHITE. Ethel Lina White
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expression was stern with the bleak spiritualism of one who had burnt away all gross elements in the fires of martyrdom. Her response to the general homage was so gently indifferent that it was plain that she did not care a fig for popularity.
Then—once again—came the jar of an ugly little incident. Miss Corner, like an overblown pink rose, rushed across the lawn to speak to her guest.
"My goodness, Decima, I never noticed before that you've not brought Miss Mack? Where is she?"
"In bed, I hope," was the quiet reply. "I was going to make her apologies when you were called away. We are both of us so sorry that she is unable to come. But she has violent neuralgia."
Everyone accepted the explanation, with one exception. Although there was now a gap in the ranks of Miss Asprey's court, Joan turned away and stood gazing at the scene, as though it had suddenly grown unreal.
It was a charming spectacle of shaven lawns, roses, and the best people. The hired waiters rushed round with plates of strawberries and pitchers of cream. A trellis covered with clusters of mauve wistaria provided touches of tender colour on the soft prevailing green.
Everything was beautiful—yet what did it conceal? The novelist, Purley, had talked of flowers growing on slime. Joan remembered the smile as horribly apposite to her suspicion.
For she could not square Miss Asprey's excuse with her own knowledge of facts.
Only fifteen minutes previously, when she had passed the garden of 'The Spout', in Lady d'Arcy's car, she had waved to Miss Mack, who was standing behind the gate. There was no sign of pain or illness about the little companion's smiling face; yet, probably because of the iron bars, she again managed to convey a pathetic impression of a prisoner.
Joan was gritting her teeth—a survival of a bad nursery habit—when the Rector came up, balancing a plate of strawberries in either hand.
"Why aren't you mopping up strawberries?" he asked. "It's what we're here for. Come along with me. This looks like our table. Reserved for us, isn't it, John?"
The waiter beamed, for the Rector was the prince of good mixers, and Joan sat down, in the shade of a copper-beach, with a sense of relief. Unlike the doctor, the Rector had come to refresh her body, and not to pick her brain. He, too, was a comparative new-comer, so that she felt removed to a more familiar plane.
"Saw you talking to the doctor," remarked the Rector. "Nice fellow, but a bit precious."
The first drop of poison had established a small but definitely inflamed area, for the relationship of the two men was now on a different basis. They no longer smoked in the fraternal silence of Freemasons, but talked with the geniality of two men-of-the-world.
"My stock's down with him," confessed Joan. "Just because I tried to thrill him by telling him that we had a murderer in our family."
"You should have called him an assassin. That sounds historical. He'd have gone down all right as an ancestor."
It was the most uncharitable remark that Joan had heard from the Rector, but it made her feel at ease, so that she was betrayed to fresh indiscretion.
"The fact is," she said, "the doctor's family is older than the Peerage, and his stock must be played out. It's time it was extinct, in the cause of Progress. A real modernist would say that he ought to collect his entire family in the oven, and turn on the gas."
Her clear voice carried to the next table, where the Scudamores were presenting a Darby and Joan idyll, as they had tea together. Mrs. Scudamore, who was very impressive in purple, looked up and stared at Joan—her lips set and her eyes startled, as though she could not believe her ears. Even the Rector pulled down his mouth.
"Look here, my dear," he said, "I can understand your modern language, although I cannot speak it, but do remember that these people understand only King's English."
"I'll remember. Sorry."
As Joan gazed at the Rector, for the first time she believed the story of his crash. Usually, he looked as though he would be better for a little blood-letting, in order to drain off his surplus energy; but, today, his eyes were tired and his mouth sunken.
"You look rather dissipated about your eyes," she remarked.
"Poached eggs?" asked the Rector. "They come from a bad night. I still get them, sometimes. I had supper with the Jameses last night, at the Constabulary, and Mrs. James is a clinking cook. Sausages and mash—supreme. I gorged, so when I got to bed I had a sort of recurring dream, which took it out of me."
"One of the embarrassing kind?"
"No. I dreamed I was having a fight with someone—I used to be an amateur heavy-weight—and I was taking terrific punishment. I was furious at getting licked, but, what maddened me most, was the fact, that—somehow—I couldn't see whom I was fighting with. The chap kept ducking and dodging, to hide his face. Yet I had a feeling it was someone I knew, that made it seem rather horrible. Anyway, I got so worked up that I woke up in a shocking state."
"You still are," sad Joan. "You're holding your plate crooked."
The Rector absently wiped the trickle of cream from his coat, as he looked around him.
"Is it my fancy?" he asked. "Or is this party not quite a blazing success."
He did not know that the dark huddle outside the gate had now crashed the party. Hiding in its corner, it only waited a signal from the hostess, to mingle with her guests.
But it seemed to the Rector that there was a slight general atmosphere of constraint. Miss Asprey had reminded the company of the anonymous letter. While its authorship was still unknown, there was bound to be some uneasiness. So there occurred those little frosted pauses in the conversation which were heralds of the fatal ice-jam.
Miss Corner, however, was unaware of any blight. She was a dynamic hostess—rushing from group to group, with gales of laughter, and a balloon inflation of her rosy flounces—organising competitions, compelling people to play croquet, and lighting fresh cigarettes as fast as she threw them away.
Dr. Perry watched her, as the party wore on, and cup and ices succeeded tea. She called to the orchestra to play the waltz from 'Congress Dances', and executed a few steps of a solo, as she exhorted her guests to live, love, and laugh.
Finally, she threw herself down, panting, on a garden chair. It was the first time she had sat down, that afternoon, and Dr. Perry took the chance to bring her iced cider-cup.
She beamed on him as she wiped her heated face.
"Here comes my hero," she shouted. "Did you know that the doctor is the hero of every one of my novels?"
No one could possibly know, as Miss Corner's books were unread in the village, but she went on to explain.
"I've written twelve novels, and I've put an entirely different kind of hero in each. But it's always the doctor. For he's, really, a dozen different men, and he covers the lot with one hat."
Everyone laughed politely, while the doctor gave a deprecating smile.
"That should make me sound interesting, even to my wife," he sad.
At the sound of her name, Marianne Perry, who was refastening the Squire's buttonhole, suddenly jabbed in the pin, and turned away abruptly, to join another group. Her thin, scarlet lips were quivering and her eyes smouldering with rage, as she whispered huskily to the Squire's wife.
"How dare she say that of my husband?"
Kindly Mrs. Sheriff was surprised by her vehemence.
"But, my dear," she explained, "it was only a joke."
"A joke that goes too far," declared Marianne. "A doctor must inspire confidence, because he holds a position of trust. I don't call it a joke to imply that my husband isn't quite what he seems to be, but a bit more. We—we've babies to think of."
She added, "especially now."
"Why—now?"
"Oh,