Tension (eBook)

I

"Auntie Iris has written a book!"

"A book!" echoed both auditors of the announcement, in keys varying between astonishment and dismay.

"Yes, and it's going to be published, and put into a blue cover, and sold, and Auntie Iris is going to make heaps and heaps of money!"

"What is it to be called?" said Lady Rossiter rather gloomily, fixing an apprehensive eye on the exuberant niece of the authoress.

"It's called, 'Why, Ben!' and it's a Story of the Sexes," glibly quoted that young lady, unaware of the shock inflicted by this brazen announcement, delivered at the top of her squeaky, nine-year-old voice.

"Good God!" said Sir Julian Rossiter.

His wife said, "Hush, Julian!" in a rather automatic aside and turned again to the herald of "Why, Ben!" now hopping exultantly round and round the breakfast-table.

"Did you get a letter from Aunt Iris this morning, Ruthie?"

"Daddy did, and he said it was a secret before, but now the publishers had accepted the book and everybody might know, and I said—I said——"

Ruthie consecrated the briefest possible instant to drawing a sufficiently deep breath to enable her to resume her rapid, high-pitched narrative. "I said, 'Me and Peekaboo must come and tell you and Sir Julian, because you'd be so pleased and so excited, and so surprised!'"

"Is your little brother here as well?" said Sir Julian, gazing distastefully through his eye-glasses at Ruthie, heated, breathless, hopping persistently on one leg, and with a general air of having escaped from the supervision of whoever might have charge of her morning toilette before that toilette had received even the minimum of attention. Ruthie cast a look of artless surprise about her.

"I thought he was here. He came with me—but you know how he dawdles. He may be still in the drive."

A slow fumbling at the door-handle discredited the supposition.

"There he is!" shrieked Ruthie joyfully, and violently turning the handle of the door. "Ow! I can't open the door!"

"Of course you can't, if he is holding the handle at the other side. Let go."

"He won't be able to open it himself, he never can—and besides, his hands are all sticky, I know, because he upset the treacle at breakfast. Let go, Peekaboo!" bawled his sister through the keyhole.

"H'sh—sh. Don't shriek like that, he can hear quite well."

"But he won't let go——"

"Come away from the door, Ruthie, and don't make that noise."

Lady Rossiter herself went to the door of which the handle was being ineffectually jerked from without, and said with that peculiar distinctness of utterance characteristic of exasperation kept consciously under control:

"Is that you, Ambrose? Turn the handle towards you—no, not that way, towards you, I said—right round——"

"Turn it towards you, Peekaboo!" shrieked Ruthie, suddenly thrusting her head under Lady Rossiter's arm.

"Be quiet, Ruthie. There, that's right."

The door slowly opened, and a rather emaciated, seven-year-old edition in knickerbockers of the stalwart Ruthie advanced languidly into the room.

"How do you do?" he remarked, extending a treacle-glazed hand for the morning greetings entirely omitted by his excited elder sister.

"Good morning, Ambrose dear. You're paying us a very early visit."

"Auntie Iris has written a book!" announced Ambrose, more deliberately than, but quite as loudly and distinctly as, his senior. "And it's called, 'Why, Ben! A Story of the Sexes.'"

"Yes, dear, Ruthie told us," said Lady Rossiter, a rather repressed note in her voice indicating a renewed sense of outrage at the singular title selected by Ambrose's aunt for her maiden attempt at literature.

Ambrose turned pallid eyes of fury behind a large pair of spectacles upon his sister.

"You said you wouldn't tell them till I came.... It's very, very mean of you.... I'll tell Daddy the minute I get home ... I ... I...."

His objurgations became incoherent, through none the less expressive for that, and gaining steadily in volume as he sought, in vain, to overpower the torrent of self-defence instantly emitted from Ruthie's lungs of brass.

Sir Julian Rossiter laid down his paper, opened the French window, and thrust both his visitors into the drive.

"Bolt the window, Julian," said his wife hastily. "And I will tell Horber not to let them in at the front door. Much as I love children, I can't have them rushing in on us at breakfast; it's really too much."

"Do you suppose all their morning calls end like this?" remarked Sir Julian, as he watched their departing guests stagger down the drive, Ambrose's large head still shaking with his wrath, and the voice of his sister still audibly browbeating and calling him "Peekaboo."

"Why does she call her brother by that senseless and revolting nickname?"

"I don't know. I think it's a nursery relic, and dates from the days of their unfortunate mother."

"The dipsomaniac?"

Lady Rossiter said nothing. She was aware that Mrs. Easter's enforced retirement into a home for inebriates was an ancient scandal, and that Julian had only introduced a reference to it in the idle hope of trapping her into disregarding her favourite touchstone in conversation—"Is it kind, is it wise, is it true?"

Unlike his wife, but in common with many people less apt at analysing the idiosyncrasy than himself, Sir Julian habitually preferred silence to speech, unless he had anything unpleasant to say. It was one of the many differences which did not make for unity between them.

"I wonder," Sir Julian presently observed, "what publisher is undertaking the responsibility of 'Why, Ben!' How exactly like Auntie Iris to choose such a preposterous name, and to call it 'A Story of the Sexes' into the bargain! She can't be more than twenty."

"It rather made me shudder when those two poor children spoke the name so glibly. 'A Story of the Sexes'—imagine their knowing such a word at all, at their age!"

Sir Julian shrugged his shoulder. "Nothing could surprise me, from the egregious Ruthie. I suppose I shall have to congratulate Mark Easter on his half-sister's achievement this morning."

"Are you going to the College?"

"I must. There is a meeting of the directors, and I have to take the chair."

"Not a General Committee meeting?" said Lady Rossiter quickly.

"No, Edna," replied her husband, with a great finality. "Not a General Committee meeting."

If he did not add an ejaculatory thanksgiving aloud to the statement, his wife was none the less aware that he regarded with the extreme of disfavour her presence at the general meetings of the committee which presided over that venture known as the "Commercial and Technical College for the South-West of England." On this reflection, Lady Rossiter infused as much proprietary interest as possible into the tone of her next enquiry.

"Have we got a Lady Superintendent yet? I can't bear to think of all my girls without a woman to look after them. There are so many little things for which women need a woman."

"One of the subjects before the meeting to-day is to discuss an application for the post. Fuller thinks he has found some one."

Edna Rossiter raised her well-marked, dark eyebrows.

"Surely Mr. Fuller is hardly qualified to judge?"

"Probably not. That's why the question is to be laid before the directors," said her husband drily.

Lady Rossiter, tall and beautiful, with the maturity of a woman whom the years had left with auburn hair unfaded and opaque white skin almost unlined, moved restlessly about the room.

Sir Julian, aware instantly that she was anxious to pursue the subject, perversely remained silent behind the newspaper.

"Do you know anything about this woman? Is she a lady?"

"I have not the least idea."

"Is she from the West Country?"

"She writes from London."

"Ah, our Devonians won't take to her if she's a Cockney. I should prefer some one de nous autres, Julian."

"So she may be, for all we know."

"You had better tell me her name, Julian."

"Why?" enquired Sir Julian childishly, and also disconcertingly.

"Why?" echoed his wife, momentarily nonplussed.

She looked at him for a moment with black-fringed, amber-coloured eyes.

"Why not?" she demanded at last.

"It would convey nothing more to you than to the rest of us."

"Oh, the perversity of man!" cried Lady Rossiter playfully. "Here am I backing up the great venture heart and soul, knowing every member of the staff individually and offering prizes to every class in every subject, and even putting all my savings into the concern—and then I'm not allowed to hear what the high and mighty directors are going to talk about! Really, Julian, you men are very childish sometimes."

"She is a Miss Marchrose."

"Marchrose!"

Sir Julian, perceiving recognition in the tone of the exclamation, and recollecting his own prediction that the name would convey nothing to his wife, looked annoyed.

"It is a most uncommon name."

Julian carefully refrained from questioning.

"I told you I might know something about her! The girl who jilted poor Clarence Isbister in that abominable way was a Miss Marchrose."

"It doesn't seem probable that this girl could have any connection with the woman who jilted your cousin Clarence; she is a certified teacher of shorthand and typewriting."

"Well, Clarence's girl was nobody at all, and she was older than he, poor boy—the Isbisters were not at all pleased about it, I remember. But they'd made up their...