第42章

There was no peace now for Colonel and Mrs.Ercott.They felt themselves conspirators, and of conspiracy they had never had the habit.Yet how could they openly deal with anxieties which had arisen solely from what they had chanced secretly to see? What was not intended for one's eyes and ears did not exist; no canon of conduct could be quite so sacred.As well defend the opening of another person's letters as admit the possibility of making use of adventitious knowledge.So far tradition, and indeed character, made them feel at one, and conspire freely.But they diverged on a deeper plane.Mrs.Ercott had SAID, indeed, that here was something which could not be controlled; the Colonel had FELT it--a very different thing! Less tolerant in theory, he was touched at heart; Mrs.Ercott, in theory almost approving--she read that dangerous authoress, George Eliot--at heart felt cold towards her husband's niece.For these reasons they could not in fact conspire without, in the end, saying suddenly: "Well, it's no good talking about it!" and almost at once beginning to talk about it again.

In proposing to her that mule, the Colonel had not had time, or, rather, not quite conviction enough as to his line of action, to explain so immediately the new need for her to sit upon it.It was only when, to his somewhat strange relief, she had refused the expedition, and Olive had started without them, that he told her of the meeting in the Gardens, of which he had been witness.She then said at once that if she had known she would, of course, have put up with anything in order to go; not because she approved of interfering, but because they must think of Robert! And the Colonel had said: "D--n the fellow!" And there the matter had rested for the moment, for both of them were, wondering a little which fellow it was that he had damned.That indeed was the trouble.If the Colonel had not cared so much about his niece, and had liked, instead of rather disliking Cramier; if Mrs.Ercott had not found Mark Lennan a 'nice boy,' and had not secretly felt her husband's niece rather dangerous to her peace of mind; if, in few words, those three had been puppets made of wood and worked by law, it would have been so much simpler for all concerned.It was the discovery that there was a personal equation in such matters, instead of just a simple rule of three, which disorganized the Colonel and made him almost angry; which depressed Mrs.Ercott and made her almost silent....These two good souls had stumbled on a problem which has divided the world from birth.Shall cases be decided on their individual merits, or according to formal codes?

Beneath an appearance and a vocabulary more orthodox than ever, the Colonel's allegiance to Authority and the laws of Form was really shaken; he simply could not get out of his head the sight of those two young people sitting side by side, nor the tone of Olive's voice, when she had repeated his regrettable words about happiness at home.

If only the thing had not been so human! If only she had been someone else's niece, it would clearly have been her duty to remain unhappy.As it was, the more he thought, the less he knew what to think.A man who had never had any balance to speak of at his bank, and from the nomadic condition of his life had no exaggerated feeling for a settled social status--deeming Society in fact rather a bore--he did not unduly exaggerate the worldly dangers of this affair; neither did he honestly believe that she would burn in everlasting torment if she did not succeed in remaining true to 'that great black chap,' as he secretly called Cramier.His feeling was simply that it was an awful pity; a sort of unhappy conviction that it was not like the women of his family to fall upon such ways; that his dead brother would turn in his grave; in two words that it was 'not done.' Yet he was by no means of those who, giving latitude to women in general, fall with whips on those of their own family who take it.On the contrary, believing that 'Woman in general' should be stainless to the world's eye, he was inclined to make allowance for any individual woman that he knew and loved.A suspicion he had always entertained, that Cramier was not by breeding 'quite the clean potato' may insensibly have influenced him just a little.He had heard indeed that he was not even entitled to the name of Cramier, but had been adopted by a childless man, who had brought him up and left him a lot of money.