Ten days after that performance of her private undertaking4 Adela began to sniff5, as it were, a difference in the general air; but as yet she was afraid to exult6. It wasn’t in truth a difference for the better, so that there might be still a great tension. Her father, since the announcement of his intended marriage, had been visibly pleased with himself, but that pleasure now appeared to have undergone a check. She had the impression known to the passengers on a great steamer when, in the middle of the night, they feel the engines stop. As this impression may easily sharpen to the sense that something serious has happened, so the girl asked herself what had actually occurred. She had expected something serious; but it was as if she couldn’t keep still in her cabin—she wanted to go up and see. On the 20th, just before breakfast, her maid brought her a message from her brother. Mr. Godfrey would be obliged if she would speak to him in his room. She went straight up to him, dreading8 to find him ill, broken down on the eve of his formidable week. This was not the case however—he rather seemed already at work, to have been at work since dawn. But he was very white and his eyes had a strange and new expression. Her beautiful young brother looked older; he looked haggard and hard. He met her there as if he had been waiting for her, and he said at once: “Please tell me this, Adela—what was the purpose of your visit the other morning to Mrs. Churchley, the day I met you at her door?”
She stared—she cast about. “The purpose? What’s the matter? Why do you ask?”
“They’ve put it off—they’ve put it off a month.”
“Ah thank God!” said Adela.
“Why the devil do you thank God?” Godfrey asked with a strange impatience9.
She gave a strained intense smile. “You know I think it all wrong.”
He stood looking at her up and down. “What did you do there? How did you interfere10?”
“Who told you I interfered11?” she returned with a deep flush.
“You said something—you did something. I knew you had done it when I saw you come out.”
“What I did was my own business.”
“Damn your own business!” cried the young man.
She had never in her life been so spoken to, and in advance, had she been given the choice, would have said that she’d rather die than be so handled by Godfrey. But her spirit was high, and for a moment she was as angry as if she had been cut with a whip. She escaped the blow but felt the insult. “And your business then?” she asked. “I wondered what that was when I saw you.”
He stood a moment longer scowling12 at her; then with the exclamation13 “You’ve made a pretty mess!” he turned away from her and sat down to his books.
They had put it off, as he said; her father was dry and stiff and official about it. “I suppose I had better let you know we’ve thought it best to postpone14 our marriage till the end of the summer—Mrs. Churchley has so many arrangements to make”: he was not more expansive than that. She neither knew nor greatly cared whether she but vainly imagined or correctly observed him to watch her obliquely15 for some measure of her receipt of these words. She flattered herself that, thanks to Godfrey’s forewarning, cruel as the form of it had been, she was able to repress any crude sign of elation2. She had a perfectly16 good conscience, for she could now judge what odious17 elements Mrs. Churchley, whom she had not seen since the morning in Prince’s Gate, had already introduced into their dealings. She gathered without difficulty that her father hadn’t concurred18 in the postponement19, for he was more restless than before, more absent and distinctly irritable20. There was naturally still the question of how much of this condition was to be attributed to his solicitude21 about Godfrey. That young man took occasion to say a horrible thing to his sister: “If I don’t pass it will be your fault.” These were dreadful days for the girl, and she asked herself how she could have borne them if the hovering22 spirit of her mother hadn’t been at her side. Fortunately she always felt it there, sustaining, commending, sanctifying. Suddenly her father announced to her that he wished her to go immediately, with her sisters, down to Brinton, where there was always part of a household and where for a few weeks they would manage well enough. The only explanation he gave of this desire was that he wanted them out of the way. “Out of the way of what?” she queried24, since there were to be for the time no preparations in Seymour Street. She was willing to take it for out of the way of his nerves.
She never needed urging however to go to Brinton, the dearest old house in the world, where the happiest days of her young life had been spent and the silent nearness of her mother always seemed greatest. She was happy again, with Beatrice and Muriel and Miss Flynn, with the air of summer and the haunted rooms and her mother’s garden and the talking oaks and the nightingales. She wrote briefly25 to her father, giving him, as he had requested, an account of things; and he wrote back that since she was so contented—she didn’t recognise having told him that—she had better not return to town at all. The fag-end of the London season would be unimportant to her, and he was getting on very well. He mentioned that Godfrey had passed his tests, but, as she knew, there would be a tiresome26 wait before news of results. The poor chap was going abroad for a month with young Sherard—he had earned a little rest and a little fun. He went abroad without a word to Adela, but in his beautiful little hand he took a chaffing leave of Beatrice. The child showed her sister the letter, of which she was very proud and which contained no message for any one else. This was the worst bitterness of the whole crisis for that somebody—its placing in so strange a light the creature in the world whom, after her mother, she had loved best.
Colonel Chart had said he would “run down” while his children were at Brinton, but they heard no more about it. He only wrote two or three times to Miss Flynn on matters in regard to which Adela was surprised he shouldn’t have communicated with herself. Muriel accomplished27 an upright little letter to Mrs. Churchley—her eldest28 sister neither fostered nor discouraged the performance—to which Mrs. Churchley replied, after a fortnight, in a meagre and, as Adela thought, illiterate29 fashion, making no allusion30 to the approach of any closer tie. Evidently the situation had changed; the question of the marriage was dropped, at any rate for the time. This idea gave our young woman a singular and almost intoxicating31 sense of power; she felt as if she were riding a great wave of confidence. She had decided32 and acted—the greatest could do no more than that. The grand thing was to see one’s results, and what else was she doing? These results were in big rich conspicuous33 lives; the stage was large on which she moved her figures. Such a vision was exciting, and as they had the use of a couple of ponies34 at Brinton she worked off her excitement by a long gallop35. A day or two after this however came news of which the effect was to rekindle36 it. Godfrey had come back, the list had been published, he had passed first. These happy tidings proceeded from the young man himself; he announced them by a telegram to Beatrice, who had never in her life before received such a missive and was proportionately inflated37. Adela reflected that she herself ought to have felt snubbed, but she was too happy. They were free again, they were themselves, the nightmare of the previous weeks was blown away, the unity38 and dignity of her father’s life restored, and, to round off her sense of success, Godfrey had achieved his first step toward high distinction. She wrote him the next day as frankly39 and affectionately as if there had been no
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