Adela was this day gifted with an extraordinary insight. Emilia alone of the party was as a blot to her; but the others she saw through, as if they had been walking transparencies. She divined that Edward and Freshfield had both come, in concert, upon amorous business--that it was Freshfield"s object to help Edward to a private interview with her, and, in return, Edward was to perform the same service for him with Cornelia. So that Mr. Barrett was shockingly in the way of both; and the perplexity of these stupid fellows--who would insist upon wondering why the man Barrett and the girl Emilia (musicians both: both as it were, vagrants) did not walk together and talk of quavers and minims--was extremely comic. Pa.s.sing the withered tree, Mr. Barrett deserved thanks from Freshfield, if he did not obtain them; for he lingered, surrendering his place. And then Adela knew that the weight of Edward Buxley"s remonstrative wrath had fallen on silent Emilia, to whom she clung fondly.
"I have had a letter," Edward murmured, in the voice that propitiates secresy.
"A letter?" she cried loud; and off flew the man like a rabbit into his hole, the mask of him remaining.
Emilia presently found Mr. Barrett at her elbow. His hand clasped the book Cornelia had placed in the tree.
"It is hers," said Emilia.
He opened it and pointed to his initials. She looked in his face.
"Are you very ill?"
Adela turned round from Edward"s neighbouring head. "Who is ill?"
Cornelia brought Freshfield to a stop: "Ill?"
Before them all, book in hand, Mr. Barrett had to give a.s.surance that he was hearty, and to appear to think that his words were accepted, in spite of blanched jowl and reddened under-lid. Cornelia threw him one glance: his eyes closed under it. Adela found it necessary to address some such comforting exclamation as "Goodness gracious!" to her observant spirit.
In the park-path, leading to the wood, Arabella was seen as they came out the young branches that fringed the firs. She hurried up.
"I have been looking for you. Papa has arrived with Sir Twickenham Pryme, who dines with us."
Adela unhesitatingly struck a blow.
"Lady Pryme, we make place for you."
And she crossed to Cornelia. Cornelia kept her eyes fixed on Adela"s mouth, as one looks at a place whence a venomous reptile has darted out.
Her eyelids shut, and she stood a white sculpture of pain, pitiable to see. Emilia took her hand, encouraging the tightening fingers with a responsive pressure. The group shuffled awkwardly together, though Adela did her best. She was very angry with Mr. Barrett for wearing that absurdly pale aspect. She was even angry with his miserable bankrupt face for mounting a muscular edition of the smile Cornelia had shown.
"His feelings!" she cried internally; and the fact presented itself to her, that feelings were a luxury utterly unfit for poor men, who were to be accused of presumption for indulging in them.
"Now, I suppose you are happy?" she spoke low between Arabella and Edward.
The effect of these words was to colour violently two pair of cheeks.
Arabella"s behaviour did not quite satisfy the fair critic. Edward Buxley was simply caught in a trap: He had the folly to imagine that by laughing he released himself.
"Is not that the laugh of an engaged?" said Adela to Freshfield.
He replied: "That would have been my idea under other conditions," and looked meaningly.
She met the look with: "There are harsh conditions in life, are there not?" and left him sufficiently occupied by his own sensations.
"Mr. Barrett," she inquired (partly to a.s.sist the wretch out of his compromising depression, and also that the question represented a real matter of debate in her mind), "I want your opinion; will you give it me? Apropos of slang, why does it sit well on some people? It certainly does not vulgarize them. After all, in many cases, it is what they call "racy idiom." Perhaps our delicacy is strained?"
Now, it was Mr. Barrett"s established manner to speak in a deliberately ready fashion upon the introduction of a new topic. Habit made him, on this occasion, respond instantly; but the opening of the gates displayed the confusion of ideas within and the rageing tumult.
He said: "In many cases. There are two sorts. If you could call it the language of nature! which anything... I beg your pardon, Slang! Polite society rightly excludes it, because...."
"Yes, yes," returned Adela; "but do we do rightly in submitting to the absolute tyranny?--I mean, I think, originality flies from us in consequence."
The pitiable mortal became a trifle more luminous: "The objection is to the repet.i.tion of risked phrases. A happy audacity of expression may pa.s.s. It is bad taste to repeat it, that is all. Then there is the slang of heavy boorishness, and the slang of impatient wit..."
"Is there any fine distinction between the extremes?" said Cornelia, in as clear a tone as she could summon.
"I think," observed Arabella, "that whatever shows staleness speedily is self-condemned; and that is the case with slang."
"And yet it"s to avoid some feeling of the sort that people employ it,"
was Adela"s remark; and the discussion of this theme dropped lifelessly, and they walked on as before.
Coming to a halt near the garden gate, Adela tapped Emilia"s cheek, addressing her: "How demure she has become!"
"Ah!" went Arabella, "does she know papa has had a letter from Mr.
Pericles, who wrote from Milan to say that he has made arrangements for her to enter the Academy there, and will come to fetch her in a few days?"
Emilia"s wrists crossed below her neck, while she gave ear.
"To take me away?" she said.
The tragic att.i.tude and outcry, with the mournful flash of her eyes, might have told Emilia"s tale.
Adela unwillingly shielded her by interpreting the scene. "See! she must be a born actress. They always exaggerate in that style, so that you would really think she had a mighty pa.s.sion for Brookfield."
"Or in it," suggested Freshfield.
"Or in it!" she laughed a.s.sentingly.
Mr. Pole was perceived entering the garden, rubbing his hands a little too obsequiously to some remark of the baronet"s, as the critical ladies imagined. Sir Twickenham"s arm spread out in a sweep; Mr. Pole"s head nodded. After the ceremony of the salute, the ladies were informed of Sir Twickenham"s observation: Sir Twickenham Pryme, a statistical member of Parliament, a well-preserved half-century in age, a gentleman in bearing, pa.s.sably grey-headed, his whiskers brushed out neatly, as if he knew them individually and had the exact amount of them collectively at his fingers" ends: Sir Twickenham had said of Mr. Pole"s infant park that if devoted to mangold-wurzel it would be productive and would pay: whereas now it was not ornamental and was waste.
"Sir Twickenham calculates," said Mr. Pole, "that we should have a crop of--eh?"
"The average?" Sir Twickenham asked, on the evident upward mounting of a sum in his brain. And then, with a relaxing look upon Cornelia: "Perhaps you might have fifteen, sixteen, perhaps for the first year; or, say--you see, the exact acreage is unknown to me. Say roughly, ten thousand sacks the first year."
"Of what?" inquired Cornelia.
"Mangold-wurzel," said the baronet.
She gazed about her. Mr. Barrett was gone.
"But, no doubt, you take no interest in such reckonings?" Sir Twickenham added.
"On the contrary, I take every interest in practical details."
Practical men believe this when they hear it from the lips of gentlewomen, and without philosophically a.n.a.lyzing the fact that it is because the practical quality possesses simply the fascination of a form of strength. Sir Twickenham pursued his details. Day closed on Brookfield blankly. Nevertheless, the ladies felt that the situation was now dignified by tragic feeling, and remembering keenly how they had been degraded of late, they had a sad enjoyment of the situation.
CHAPTER XVIII