Bridge had not then reached Great Britain. Where they would have played Bridge ten years ago they played Baccarat, or Unlimited Loo, or Nap, or Poker. Lucy only knew "Pope Joan" and had a horror of losing money over cards and no capacity for mastering any card game, not even Snip Snap Snorum. The Rev. Stacy Bream--who as much as any cleric might, stood in lieu of a Spiritual director to Lady Silchester--called Lucy once or twice "My dear che-ild" and then found her so uninteresting and inexplicable that he ceased to study her any more.
So Lucy at last, in dread of snubs if she entered the battledore and shuttlecock conversation or of revealing her utter ignorance of the ways of smart society, fell silent at meal-times and after meals. When the others played cards or roulette on a miniature green table, she would read a book in a corner or steal away up to bed before the maids had done her room for the night. And gradually she developed the red, moist nose that comes to a woman who cries in secret, and there were wrought other changes in good looks and figure attend ant on her condition. And then one day, early in September, Roger, returning to his dressing-room for a cigarette-case and to ascertain if Lucy was ready to start on an excursion, found her on her bedroom sofa in a crisis of weeping. Sibyl had summed up her makeshift costume--for a day's yachting--in one short phrase.... This on top of having completely overlooked her existence at yesterday's picnic lunch, and left her cupless and tealess at the late tea which followed their return. "R--Ro--ger, oh dear Roger, _let_ me go home! I'm only in _every one's_ way here. I never felt so stupid in my life before. _I can't_ think what's the matter with me--it's the feeling they all _despise me_--and--and--pity you for having made a fool of yourself. Let me go home to mother--and Maud!..."
Roger consented at once. He felt full of remorse and pity, promised soon to join her in the south, escorted her as far as Carlisle, and arranged that kind Maud should meet her at Euston and take her home to Aldermaston. The others were too utterly uninterested in her to listen much to his explanation with its discreet allusion. She was a bore and a wet blanket out of the way, and they could now settle down to enjoy themselves. Sibyl, to keep up the fiction of being in mourning, wore black and absented herself from most of the pleasure outings; going about instead alone with Roger, to show him the ins and outs of the estate and enable him to formulate plans for its profitable development.
Early in October, Captain Brentham saw young Lord Tarrington (heir to the Earldom of Pitchingham and precis-writer to Lord Wiltshire). He was told that Lord W. had given careful attention to his case. His Lordship thoroughly appreciated his painstaking work for a year or more as Acting Consul-General, but thought that under the circumstances it was better he should not return to the scene of his former labours on the mainland. H.L., however, though Captain Brentham had scarcely been more than an officer selected for special service in Africa, would be pleased to consider him favourably for the consular posts of Bergen or of Baranquilla.
"I suppose you know where Bergen is?" added Lord Tarrington. "A little bit near the North Pole--or is it North Cape? I always mix the two. But it's in _Norway, very_ bracing climate, _awfully_ good sea-fishing, and L350 a year. Or if you prefer heat, there's Baranquilla, northern South America, _not_ a good climate, but the last man stood it for two years before he succumbed to yellow fever ... and it's L550 a year and two years count for three in service. Which is it to be? Make up your mind soon, 'cos lots of fellows are on the waiting list--snap at either."
Tarrington's tone, for all its bluff good nature sounded final. Roger seeing his dreams of an African empire fade in that dingy room, all its tones having sombred with twenty years' fog and smoke into shades of yellow white and yellow brown, felt at first inclined to refuse haughtily either consolation for the loss of Zangia. But a married man and prospective father with very slight resources cannot permit himself the luxury of ill-temper. So he replied civilly that he would think if over and let Lord Tarrington know.
As he left the first floor of the building he crossed the path of the august Secretary of State himself walking probably round the quadrangle to the India Office. There was no look of recognition in his deep-set eyes. How different from two and a half years ago when he had been hailed by this statesman as an authority on East Africa far better worth listening to than Mr. Bennet Molyneux, now noting down complacently in his room below the fact that the Consulate at Zangia with its seven hundred pounds a year was to be offered to the acting man, Mr. Spencer Bazzard.
Brentham went down that evening--pretending he didn't care in the least for this definite set-back--to Reading, and, chartering a fly, drove out to Engledene. A rather late little dinner with Sibyl and Aunt Christabel was followed by a long consultation with Sibyl in the Library.
Lady Silchester's plans had long been ready, though she seemed to develop them as she spoke. "Become my agent, Rodge-podge, in place of old Parkins. He's an out-of-date duffer. I'll either pension him off, or better still send him to live on the Staffordshire property. He's let that go down very much; it ought to yield twice its present rents. I'll give you L700 a year, and there'll be all sorts of legitimate pickings as well. You can have the Lodge at Englefield to live in. I'll do it up for you. Lucy can live there and go on having babies for the next ten years. I'm sure _I_ don't want to ask her to dinner or to anything else, if she doesn't want to come. She needn't curtsy to me if we meet, if it's _that_ she dislikes....
"But you've _great_ abilities, Roger. You've been _shamefully_ treated by Lord W.... He's always tried to snub _me_ ... _I_ don't know why ... I'll tell you _what_. I'll _run_ you. After all, I am a rich woman ... now. You shall get into Parliament ... and be a great Imperialist, as that seems to be going to become the fashion. What ... _what_ ... WHAT a pity you married like that, all in a hurry! And you see it's done you no good with the Nonconformist conscience and those stuffy old things at the F.O. However, it's no good crying over spilt milk. _I'll_ make a career for you!" And she looked at him with shining eyes, betraying her palpable secret....
"This is awfully good of you, Syb," said Roger, not meeting her look. "But do you think it is fair on others? Why not put in your father----? Or one of your brothers?"
"_Rubbish_! Dad would make just as great a mess of the Silchester estates--only on a far bigger scale--as he is doing over his three hundred acres at Aldermaston. I think we'll send him up to care-take at Glen Sporran and make him sell up the Aldermaston place. Helping him with loans is like pouring money into--what do you pour it into when it runs away? A sieve? And the two boys have both got jobs and are none too bright, at that. Besides, it's no fun working with brothers, and I'm going to throw myself heart and soul into the development of the Estate. It'll be ... it'll be ... what's two and a third from twenty-one? Well, at any rate, more than eighteen years before Clithy comes of age. In that time we'll have raised the annual value of the property to twice what it is now, and incidentally we'll have a glorious time, influencing people, don't you know, getting up a new opposition in Parliament, and making ourselves felt...."
"Well, in any case, it's awfully good of you ... _awfully_ ... somehow I don't deserve it...."
"You don't, after the way you threw me over. But stick to me now, through thick and thin, and"--she was going to have added impulsively, "Oh, _Roger_, I _do_ love you, I can't help it," and perhaps have flung herself on to a sofa with a burst of hysterical tears to salve all his scruples, but quickly thought better of this and added rather tamely, "And we'll make a great success of our partnership. And now we must go and play backgammon or bezique or something with Aunt Christabel, or she will come poking her nose in here to see what we're up to. How tiresome the old are! It's only on account of what the Queen would say that I keep her on here. She thinks you're 'dangerous' to my peace of mind, Roger. But if I had mother here instead she would be equally boring, and father can't bear to be separated from her, and the two of them would be _unthinkable_."
Though some instinct told Roger Sibyl's scheme would never work, without damage to his peace of mind and his conjugal relations, he felt her Circe influence already. He accepted her offer--at any rate for one year. At the end of that time she and he should be free to cancel the arrangement. He decided for the present to lodge with his wife's parents and ride backwards and forwards till Lucy had had her baby. At the utmost he would have a bedroom at the Lodge and the Parkinses--Mrs. Parkins, at any rate--should not vacate it definitely till Lucy was able to set up house there. He wrote civilly but briefly to Lord Tarrington declining to go either to Norway or to Colombia, and resigned "with much regret" his commission for Zangia.