And Eliza did not. She was much impressed by Brentham's appeal. The interview with John's father even ended in a kind of reconciliation. He heard from Brentham for the first time the whole story, so far as it was known, of the circumstances which led up to the attack on the station, John's death, and Lucy's journey to the coast; of how her baby had died and how ill she had been; of the Stotts, and of Ann Jamblin's obstinacy. Roger purposely prolonged the interview. It was doing the miserable father good, and was keeping Mrs. Baines a prisoner in her bedroom just when she wanted to be busy at house-work.
Maud on her return from visiting the Joslings tightened her lips and "went for" her father as he had never been truth-told before; so Mrs. Baines, if she did harm to Lucy's good name and gave her nervous system a nasty shock, also provoked good in other directions. A disturbance of the kind seldom fails to clear the air and create a fresher atmosphere. Maud reproached her father bitterly with his incivility to his eldest son's wife; with his general indifference to the well-being of his children, his selfish absorption in his archaeological work, his unfairness to them in lavishing on it funds which should have been their patrimony. She even issued a sort of ultimatum: the subsidies to the Silchester Excavation fund must cease; the curate at Farleigh must be given his conge and the Vicar--still able-bodied--carry out his own Church duties: _or_ she would go away and earn her own living as a secretary or something or other. And she was at once, and on his authority, to ask Lucy to stay--with Roger, of course--for at least a month. He gave in. Maud had deeper plans hidden under this surface wrath. Roger was in difficulties with the Foreign Office, she guessed. He had resigned from the Indian Army. He might at any time have to forge a new career for himself and would want a little capital to start with. She reckoned that her father having originally been a well-to-do man and her mother having come to him with a substantial dowry, there ought to be a least twelve thousand pounds to be divided between the four of them. If that left her father almost entirely dependent on his income--about five hundred a year--from the twin benefices of Farleigh and Cliddesden, that would serve him right. He had no business to squander his children's money--as it really was--on a work of excavation which the County or the Nation should finance.
A little repentant and more than a little rheumatic--(besides, Roman Silchester was turning out so distressingly Christian and so little Pompeian and Pagan)--he agreed at any rate to look into the matter. The letter was sent to Lucy, and she came, now quite restored to health. She found in Maud the selfless friend and good adviser she had long needed. All she begged and prayed of Roger was that he might leave her at Farleigh for a time and not frighten her and upset her nerves by requiring of her the going out into smart Society, where she was ever on the twitter for fear of being questioned as to her birth and bringing-up and the circumstances of her life in Africa.
Roger rather ruefully consented. Maud would gradually cure her of her nerves and her rusticity. Meantime he would now tackle Sibyl. Sibyl had taken no notice of his card and call; but about three weeks afterwards had written to Maud, picturing herself as having now emerged from a swoon of grief and being ready to see Roger for a _few_ minutes if he would _promise_ to move gently and speak in a level voice, as _the least thing_ upset her. Pressed to be more definite, she consented to see him--and him only--at Engledene on a certain Wednesday afternoon at three o'clock.
He found her in a little boudoir, which was draped with pleated lavender-mauve cashmere and shaded to a dim light. She was dressed in black, not having as yet the hardihood to discard widows' weeds, still less some diaphanous, filmy _coiffe_, some ghost of a widow's cap. Queen Victoria was still a great power in Society and kept Peeresses in order. If you were too daring you might be banned at Court and then where would your social and political influence be?
"Wheel up, or better still _lift_ up--I can't bear the _slightest_ jar, just now--that small armchair, Roger--the purple velvet one--and put it near enough for me to hear and speak without effort; but not _too_ near, because I notice you have a very powerful aura. I've only just learnt about auras, and I realize now _what_ a difference they make!..."
"All right," said Roger, obeying these instructions, "but what's an aura? Is it the smell of my Harris tweeds, or do you doubt my having had a bath this morning?"
"Don't be so perfectly horrid ... and coarse.... You never _used_ to be coarse, whatever you were--I suppose it comes from marrying a farmer's daughter; but for the matter of that, what am _I_? My poor dear dad is trying hard to be a farmer after spending his best years in the Army. I didn't mean anything much about your 'aura,' except, I suppose, that as I'm only recently widowed all my relations with men-visitors should be a little frigid. But I'm simply talking nonsense to gain time, to remember what I wanted to say to you." (A pause.) ... "Roger! Your _dreadful_ letter from that Gouging place, coming just on top of poor Francis's death, _knocked me over_. The doctors put it all down to Francis, of course ... I don't deny that his death _did_ upset me.... But I'd been expecting _that_ any time within the last six months.... The doctors told me _definitely_ last winter his heart was very unsound and that he must not over-exert himself in any way or be contraried or argued with.... _That_ was why I gave up the orange-velvet curtains and general redecoration of the dining-room at 6A, Carlton House Terrace--which is dingy beyond belief. I shall do it now.... It's too early for tea ... won't you smoke?" (Roger: "Thank you.") "Well, there's everything on that little table.... No. Not those ones; they've got the wee-est flavour of opium.... Obliged to do _something_ for my nerves.... Well, now, about your Gouging letter.... I mean about your marriage.... My _dear_ Roger! _What_ a _gaffe_! I mean, how _could_ you?"
"Could I what?"
"_Ruin_ your hopes and mine?"
"Well, I did hope to marry Lucy ... for at least six months before the knot was tied.... Ever since her husband's death. So _my_ hopes were fulfilled. And as to you, I never prevented you from marrying Lord S. So where the ruin comes in, I can't see."
"Oh," wailed Sibyl, "_why_ beat about the bush? You must have known that I always hoped if anything happened to poor Francis--and anything _might_ well have done so--after all, you or I might be in a railway accident or break our necks out hunting. In such case you _must_ have known I _counted_ on you ... I mean, on our being happy _at last_.... Don't interrupt! ... And just think! Francis loved me awfully. I really _was perfectly sweet_ to him and did my duty to him _in every way_. His gratitude for that boy ... for a direct heir! ... Well, after Clithy was born he made his will! ... Don't be silly ... and don't joke about things I regard almost as sacred.... I mean _Francis_ re-made his will; and left me sole guardian of the boy and sole trustee, sole _everything_; and mistress for my life of Engledene, and of 6A, till Clithy came of age ... and a jointure of L10,000 a year to keep them up. Clithy has also the Silchester house which is let and which I intend to _keep_ let till he comes of age, the moors in Scotland _and_ the shooting lodge. Of course he has the reversionary rights of _everything_ after my death. And equally of course he has fifteen thousand a year, which I control till he is twenty-one or until he marries....
"Just _think_ what I could have done for you, out of all this--if you'd _waited_! If _only_ you'd waited!..." (buries her face in the mauve silk cushions and cries a little or pretends to). (Roger fidgets on his chair. An exquisite little purple Sevres clock on the white mantelpiece ticks ... ticks ... ticks.)
_Roger_: "Look here, Sibyl. You're altogether on the wrong tack, believe me. You might have married me in '86. I was quite ready then and fancied myself in love with you. But if you had we mightn't have got on. My seven hundred a year would have been nowhere to give you surroundings like this...." (And he looks round the boudoir "done" in white, lavender, mauve and purple, with its exquisite bits of furniture, its velvet-covered armchair and Charles II day-bed, and pillow covers of mauve silk; and looked also at the sinuous figure of the woman coiled on the day-bed in her filmy black dress, with her face half buried in the silk cushions, and one disconsolate arm lying listlessly along her side, and at the magnificent rings of emeralds and diamonds on the pink fingers.) "You were _quite_ right: you could _never_ have stood the strain of Africa. I'll tell you by and bye some of the things Lucy and I went through." (At this hint of comradeship with Lucy, the little black velvet shoes gave angry thumps on the frame of the day-bed.) "I know," continues Roger, "you used to throw out mysterious hints after you were married that I might wait till some far-off date when you were free; I mean after Lord Silchester was dead. But what decent man would have taken you at your word? Why, Silchester might well be alive now. He did not die of old age...."