“We must make some decision, dearie, about what we are going to do.”

“I suppose all those women talked about it all afternoon.”

“It is no good being resentful and childish. This is a serious matter, and we cannot dilly-dally any longer.”

“I think the best thing is to ignore it.”

“Your father certainly would not have thought so.”

“How can we tell what Father would have thought?”

“The enmity between us and Professor Vambrace was not of your father’s choosing, but he never permitted Vambrace to get the better of him. We owe something to your father’s memory.”

“Oh, Mother, let’s talk sense. About three years ago I took Pearl Vambrace to the Military Ball. You had her here to dinner beforehand. You were very decent to her.”

“There was a very good reason why you took her. I don’t entirely recall what it was, but there was something to do with that play—that one in which the Webster girl showed so much of her legs. I have no quarrel with Pearl Vambrace, poor creature. But her father is a very different matter. I will not have people thinking that we have knuckled under in that affair.”

“Oh, Mother, we can’t go on fighting forever.”

“Who said anything about fighting? It has been publicly announced that you are engaged to Pearl Vambrace. You are nothing of the kind. Someone has done this for spite. And I think I know who it was.”

“Who?”

“Professor Vambrace himself. It’s just the kind of crazy thing he would do. To make us look ridiculous.”

“You can’t be serious. He couldn’t do that to his own daughter.”

“Pooh, he could. She’s completely under his thumb. And that poor Elizabeth Fitzalan that married him—utterly crushed. The man’s insane. He did it. Within six months they’ll have to put him away, you mark my words.”

“Mother, do you realize that Vambrace is threatening to sue The Bellman? He’s telling it all over the campus, as a great secret. Everybody’s talking about it. He says it’s a plot to bring him into disrepute by associating his name with ours.”

“More madness! A great many people are very peculiar. Puss Pottinger is absolutely insane about that organist at the Cathedral—what’s-his-name. She won’t rest until she has taken his position from him. She thinks he put that piece in the paper.”

“Good God! Cobbler! What makes her think that?”

“Because there was some skylarking in the Cathedral on Hallowe’en and she is sure Cobbler was at the bottom of it. And if he was at the bottom of that, why shouldn’t he have made other mischief the same day?”

“And does she call that logic?”

“Puss Pottinger doesn’t know what logic is. But that’s the kind of thinking that gets big rewards for detectives, whatever the mystery-writers may say about clues and deduction and all that rubbish. But I think she’s wrong. Vambrace did it. I have more insight in my little finger than Puss Pottinger has in her whole body.”

Solly chewed wretchedly on a dry sandwich. He was thinking, as he had been thinking all day, of Pearl Vambrace running into her house, pursued by her father.

“Well, what do you think we ought to do?” he said at last.

The dignified and sensible thing is for you to go to The Bellman and see this man Ridley. You must give him an announcement which he will insert, denying the report of the engagement and apologizing for having printed it. You must speak to him very firmly.”

“No good. Vambrace did that on Tuesday and Ridley flatly refused. So there’s going to be a court action. That’s the talk on the campus.”

“And what are the grounds of this court action to be?”

“Libel.”

“Libel? And where does the libel lie?”

“In suggesting that I am going to marry his daughter. Now, Mother, there’s no use looking like that. That’s what he says.”

“Libel! Libellous to suggest that you—”

Solly was very much alarmed, for it seemed that his mother might have a seizure. But anger is a powerful stimulant, and Mrs Bridgetower’s wrath did her good. She seemed to drop twenty years before his eyes, and for ten minutes she called up the past iniquities of Professor Vambrace and uttered violent judgements on his present conduct. Her peroration was delivered in trumpet tones.

“Let him bring such a suit if he dare! We’ll bring a counter-action! Libellous to suggest that you should marry his daughter! Calculated to bring him into shame and disrepute? We’ll fight! We’ll spend money like water! We’ll break him, the old hound! Libellous to suggest that a Bridgetower would so lower himself! If there is any libel it is against us! But we’ll fight, my boy, we’ll fight!”

“Mother, please be calm. What’s the good of saying we’ll fight? We’ll all look like fools, that’s what we’ll do.”

“How can you talk so? Puss Pottinger was right. You haven’t any gimp!”

“All right, then, I haven’t any gimp. But it seems to me that you and Vambrace have no thought for Pearl or me; you’d make us look like a couple of children in leading-strings.”

“You have a lot of consideration for Pearl Vambrace, I must say. More than you have for me, it seems. Nasty, scheming little thing!”

“Very well, then, leave Pearl out of it. What will I look like if you go to court to fight a counter-action against Vambrace’s libel suit?”

“No, we will not leave Pearl out of it. It seems to me that you are very ready to fly to Pearl’s rescue. Solly, tell me honestly, is there any crumb of truth in this report about you and Pearl?”

“If you aren’t going to listen to my advice I don’t think you can expect me to answer that question,” said Solly, and was quite as surprised as his mother to hear himself say so.

The dispute went on, without anything new being added to it, for another half-hour. It ended with Solly fetching five volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica to his mother’s bedroom, so that she might read all that pertained to the law of libel. He also gave her her pink medicine, and arranged her reading light. Later details of washing and removing her teeth would be attended to by the elderly maid. In spite of these filial acts there was a barrier between them, for Solly had created an uncertainty, and an uncertainty about Solly was something which his mother found frightening and intolerable. But she was so stimulated by hatred and the love of combat that she was able to retain some composure, and contented herself by saying that she hoped that in the morning he would be in a more reasonable frame of mind, and see things as she saw them. Thus he left her, and went upstairs to his attic study.

Solly’s first act when he was in his own room was to take down Bacon’s Works in order that he might refresh himself with a look at his photograph of Griselda Webster. It was not a particularly good photograph, but the eye of adoration could see much in it, and it had been his solace in every dark hour since Griselda herself, several months before, had gone to Europe to travel for an indefinite period. In the picture she appeared as Ariel, in The Tempest, an unquestionably beautiful girl, even in the tabby-cat greys of a poor photograph. He had other photographs of the Salterton Little Theatre’s grand assault upon Shakespeare, hidden in other chapters of Bacon, but he did not look at them often, for his interest was in Griselda alone. But tonight he hunted them down in the large folio, supposing that in this way he was putting off the moment when he must settle down to his work. They looked like the photographs of almost any Little Theatre production; the cast had been taken in groups, some of the players self-conscious in costume and grinning at the camera, others keeping “in character” with great ferocity, and acting very hard, though without movement. Griselda was in two or three of these, and the one for which he was looking showed her standing on a grassy mound, obedient to the command of Prospero, who was Professor Vambrace.