"It wasn't a matter of entertaining. I would have been perfectly happy with a tray in the sick room."
"He did say that was out of the question ... A guest in his house and all that."
"He seems to have gone into the matter pretty thoroughly."
"Of course he would enjoy your company. He likes intelligent women ... if they are pretty as well, which you undoubtedly are, Miss Grant."
"Thank you."
"I understand Jason very well. In fact when he comes back ... Well, there is an understanding you see. There is the child, of course, and his poor wife ... That's over now..."
I understood that she was telling me I was not to take seriously the attention Jason Verringer had bestowed on me. I wanted to tell her not to worry. I should certainly not attempt to be a menace to her and I was really quite indifferent to the plans she had made with the odious man.
I said coolly: "I am absorbed in my career. I was going in with my aunt at one time but that came to nothing. The Abbey is a most interesting school and Miss Hetherington a wonderful woman to work with."
"I am so glad you are happy. You are different from the, others."
"Which others?"
"The mistresses."
"Oh, you know them?"
"I have seen them. They look like schoolmistresses. You don't exactly."
"I am one, nevertheless. Tell me about the parts you played."
She was nothing loth. Her greatest success had been Lady Isabel in East Lynne. She stood up and burying her face in her hands declaimed: "Dead. Dead. And never called me Mother."
"That was the deathbed scene," she told me. "It used to entrance the house. There wasn't a dry eye in the place. I played Pinero's Two Hundred a Year. Lovely. I liked drama best. But there was nothing to touch East Lynne. That was a certain success."
She then gave me little extracts from other parts she had played. She seemed quite a different woman from the one I had first seen on the lawn with the child or in the draper's shop. In fact she seemed to change her personality every few minutes. The quiet fond mother; the lonely woman pleading for a visit; the heart-broken mistress of the courtyard scene; the charming hostess; and now the versatile actress. She slipped from role to role with perfect ease.
We talked about Cinderella which we were doing at school. She had played in it once. "My first part," she cried ecstatically, clasping her hands about her knees and becoming a little girl. "I was Buttons. You must have a good Buttons. It's a small but effective role." She looked upwards with adoration at an imaginary Cinderella. "I was a very good Buttons. It was then people began to realize I had a future."
The door opened and Mrs. Gittings came in leading a little girl by the hand.
"Come and say Hello to Miss Grant, Miranda," said Marcia slipping easily into the part of fond parent.
I said Hello to the child who surveyed me solemnly. She was very pretty and had a look of her mother.
We talked about the child and Marcia tried to make her say something but she refused, and after a while I looked at my watch and said I should have to be back at school in hall' an hour. I was sorry to hurry away but she would understand.
She was the gracious hostess. "You must come again," she said, and I promised I would.
Riding back to the Abbey I thought how unreal everything had seemed. Marcia Martindale appeared to be acting a part all the time.
Perhaps that was to be expected since she was an actress. I wondered why Jason Verringer had become enamoured of her and what part he could play in such a household. I felt there was something very unpleasant about the whole matter and I wanted to put them both out of my mind.
The term passed with greater speed than the previous one, which might have been because I was becoming so familiar with the school. Lessons, rehearsals, gossip in the calefactory, little chats with Daisy ... I found it all absorbing.
There was no doubt that I was a favourite with Daisy who, I knew, congratulated herself on having imported a Schaffenbrucken product into the establishment; and I really believed she attributed the growing prosperity to my presence.
She would ask me to her sitting room and over cups of tea talk about the school and the pupils. She was delighted in the change in Teresa Hurst and was relieved that I could be relied upon to take her off her hands when the cousins defaulted.
As the terra progressed the main item of conversation was the coming pantomime.
"The parents come to see it, so it is very important that we have the right kind of entertainment," Daisy said. "Parents are not very perceptive where their own daughters are concerned and are apt to think that they are budding Bernhardts - but they can be highly critical of others. I want them to notice how well all the girls enunciate, how they move with a particular grace, how they enter a room and are free from any gaucherie. You know what I mean. I should think a good many parents will come to see the pantomime. They will have to make their own arrangements, of course. The hotel in Colby will be full, but some of them can stay a few miles off at Bantable. There are some big hotels there. They can then travel back with their daughters. We have never had as many as we did for the Abbey Festival. That was last year. We'll do it again next. It should be in June. Midsummer Night is the best. It's light then and of course it is so effective among the ruins. Such a wonderful setting. It was most impressive ... quite uncanny in fact. The seniors were in their white robes. You really would have thought the monks had come to life again. We had some lovely singing and chanting. It was a great occasion. I daresay we have some of the costumes put away somewhere. I must ask Miss Barston."
"An Abbey Festival with the girls dressed as monks. That must have been really exciting."
"Oh it was. The Cistercian robes ... and I remember we had torches. I was terrified of those torches-though I must say they did add something to the scene. Girls can be so careless. We came near to having an accident. It would be better if we could do it in the light of a full moon. But that's for the future. Now let us concentrate on Cinderella. I hope Charlotte will not show off. Other parents won't like it."
"I am sure she will do very well. And Fiona Verringer is going to make a charming Cinderella." And so we went on.
The term progressed and I did not see Marcia Martindale during it, but I did on two occasions meet Mrs. Gittings wheeling the child through the lanes. I stopped and talked to her. She seemed devoted to the child and I liked her. She was a rosy cheeked homely woman with an air of honesty, quite a contrast to the flamboyant actress and her truculent cockney dresser.
I talked to her and I confess to a curiosity to know how she fitted into such a household. She was not the sort of woman to talk much of her employers but one or two revealing observations slipped out.
"Mrs. Martindale be an actress twenty-four hours of the day. So you can never be sure whether 'tis what she means or whether she be playing a part, if you get my meaning. She'm fond of the child but forgets her sometimes ... and that's not the way for children." And of Maisie. "She be such another. Got her two feet on the ground though, that one. I don't know. It be like working in some sort of theatre ... not, mind you, Miss Grant, as I've ever worked in one. But I say to myself, Jane Gittings, this b'aint no theatre. This be a real live home and this be a real live child. And if they forget it, see you don't."
On the other occasions when I saw her-that was nearer the break-up for the Christmas holiday, she told me she was going to stay with her sister on the Moor just over the holiday. "Mistress, her be going to London and her'll take Maisie with her. That gives me a chance to take the little 'un with me. My sister's a one for babies. I reckon it was a real pity she never had one of her own."