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The Wear and Tear of Episcopacy8
Directly he met his wife he realized that he had to hear something important and unpleasant.
She stood waiting for him in the inner hall, looking very grave and still. The light fell upon her pale face and her dark hair and her long white silken dress, making her seem more delicate and unworldly than usual and making the bishop feel grimy and sordid.
"I must have a wash," he said, though before he had thought of nothing but food. "I have had nothing to eat since tea-time-- and that was mostly talk."
Lady Ella considered. "There are cold things.... You shall have a tray in the study. Not in the dining-room. Eleanor is there. I want to tell you something. But go upstairs first and wash your poor tired face."
"Nothing serious, I hope?" he asked, struck by an unusual quality in her voice.
"I will tell you," she evaded, and after a moment of mutual scrutiny he went past her upstairs.
Since they had come to Princhester Lady Ella had changed very markedly. She seemed to her husband to have gained in dignity; she was stiller and more restrained; a certain faint arrogance, a touch of the "ruling class" manner had dwindled almost to the vanishing point. There had been a time when she had inclined to an authoritative hauteur, when she had seemed likely to develop into one of those aggressive and interfering old ladies who play so overwhelming a part in British public affairs. She had been known to initiate adverse judgments, to exercise the snub, to cut and humiliate. Princhester had done much to purge her of such tendencies. Princhester had made her think abundantly, and had put a new and subtler quality into her beauty. It had taken away the least little disposition to rustle as she moved, and it had softened her voice.
Now, when presently she stood in the study, she showed a new circumspection in her treatment of her husband. She surveyed the tray before him.
"You ought not to drink that Burgundy," she said. "I can see you are dog-tired. It was uncorked yesterday, and anyhow it is not very digestible. This cold meat is bad enough. You ought to have one of those quarter bottles of champagne you got for my last convalescence. There`s more than a dozen left over."
The bishop felt that this was a pretty return of his own kindly thoughts "after many days," and soon Dunk, his valet-butler, was pouring out the precious and refreshing glassful....
"And now, dear?" said the bishop, feeling already much better.
Lady Ella had come round to the marble fireplace. The mantel-piece was a handsome work by a Princhester artist in the Gill style--with contemplative ascetics as supporters.
"I am worried about Eleanor," said Lady Ella.
"She is in the dining-room now," she said, "having some dinner. She came in about a quarter past eight, half way through dinner."
"Where had she been?" asked the bishop.
"Her dress was torn--in two places. Her wrist had been twisted and a little sprained."
"My dear!"
"Her face--Grubby! And she had been crying."
"But, my dear, what had happened to her? You don`t mean--?"
Husband and wife stared at one another aghast. Neither of them said the horrid word that flamed between them.
"Merciful heaven!" said the bishop, and assumed an attitude of despair.
"I didn`t know she knew any of them. But it seems it is the second Walshingham girl--Phoebe. It`s impossible to trace a girl`s thoughts and friends. She persuaded her to go."
"But did she understand?"
"That`s the serious thing," said Lady Ella.
She seemed to consider whether he could bear the blow.
"She understands all sorts of things. She argues.... I am quite unable to argue with her."
"About this vote business?"
"About all sorts of things. Things I didn`t imagine she had heard of. I knew she had been reading books. But I never imagined that she could have understood...."
The bishop laid down his knife and fork.
"One may read in books, one may even talk of things, without fully understanding," he said.
Lady Ella tried to entertain this comforting thought. "It isn`t like that," she said at last. "She talks like a grown-up person. This--this escapade is just an accident. But things have gone further than that. She seems to think--that she is not being educated properly here, that she ought to go to a College. As if we were keeping things from her...."
The bishop reconsidered his plate.
"But what things?" he said.
"She says we get all round her," said Lady Ella, and left the implications of that phrase to unfold.
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