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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vera, by Elisabeth von Arnim
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Vera
+
+Author: Elisabeth von Arnim
+
+Release Date: November 18, 2010 [EBook #34366]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VERA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Laura McDonald at http://www.girlebooks.com
+and Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org
+
+
+
+
+
+VERA
+
+
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF "ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN"
+
+
+
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+
+ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
+
+1921
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+When the doctor had gone, and the two women from the village he had been
+waiting for were upstairs shut in with her dead father, Lucy went out
+into the garden and stood leaning on the gate staring at the sea.
+
+Her father had died at nine o'clock that morning, and it was now twelve.
+The sun beat on her bare head; and the burnt-up grass along the top of
+the cliff, and the dusty road that passed the gate, and the glittering
+sea, and the few white clouds hanging in the sky, all blazed and glared
+in an extremity of silent, motionless heat and light.
+
+Into this emptiness Lucy stared, motionless herself, as if she had been
+carved in stone. There was not a sail on the sea, nor a line of distant
+smoke from any steamer, neither was there once the flash of a bird's
+wing brushing across the sky. Movement seemed smitten rigid. Sound
+seemed to have gone to sleep.
+
+Lucy stood staring at the sea, her face as empty of expression as the
+bright blank world before her. Her father had been dead three hours, and
+she felt nothing.
+
+It was just a week since they had arrived in Cornwall, she and he, full
+of hope, full of pleasure in the pretty little furnished house they had
+taken for August and September, full of confidence in the good the pure
+air was going to do him. But there had always been confidence; there
+had never been a moment during the long years of his fragility when
+confidence had even been questioned. He was delicate, and she had taken
+care of him. She had taken care of him and he had been delicate ever
+since she could remember. And ever since she could remember he had been
+everything in life to her. She had had no thought since she grew up for
+anybody but her father. There was no room for any other thought, so
+completely did he fill her heart. They had done everything together,
+shared everything together, dodged the winters together, settled in
+charming places, seen the same beautiful things, read the same books,
+talked, laughed, had friends,--heaps of friends; wherever they were her
+father seemed at once to have friends, adding them to the mass he had
+already. She had not been away from him a day for years; she had had no
+wish to go away. Where and with whom could she be so happy as with him?
+All the years were years of sunshine. There had been no winters; nothing
+but summer, summer, and sweet scents and soft skies, and patient
+understanding with her slowness--for he had the nimblest mind--and love.
+He was the most amusing companion to her, the most generous friend, the
+most illuminating guide, the most adoring father; and now he was dead,
+and she felt nothing.
+
+Her father. Dead. For ever.
+
+She said the words over to herself. They meant nothing.
+
+She was going to be alone. Without him. Always.
+
+She said the words over to herself. They meant nothing.
+
+Up in that room with its windows wide open, shut away from her with the
+two village women, he was lying dead. He had smiled at her for the last
+time, said all he was ever going to say to her, called her the last of
+the sweet, half-teasing names he loved to invent for her. Why, only a
+few hours ago they were having breakfast together and planning what they
+would do that day. Why, only yesterday they drove together after tea
+towards the sunset, and he had seen, with his quick eyes that saw
+everything, some unusual grasses by the road-side, and had stopped and
+gathered them, excited to find such rare ones, and had taken them back
+with him to study, and had explained them to her and made her see
+profoundly interesting, important things in them, in these grasses
+which, till he touched them, had seemed just grasses. That is what he
+did with everything,--touched it into life and delight. The grasses lay
+in the dining-room now, waiting for him to work on them, spread out
+where he had put them on some blotting-paper in the window. She had seen
+them as she came through on her way to the garden; and she had seen,
+too, that the breakfast was still there, the breakfast they had had
+together, still as they had left it, forgotten by the servants in the
+surprise of death. He had fallen down as he got up from it. Dead. In an
+instant. No time for anything, for a cry, for a look. Gone. Finished.
+Wiped out.
+
+What a beautiful day it was; and so hot. He loved heat. They were lucky
+in the weather....
+
+Yes, there were sounds after all,--she suddenly noticed them; sounds
+from the room upstairs, a busy moving about of discreet footsteps, the
+splash of water, crockery being carefully set down. Presently the women
+would come and tell her everything was ready, and she could go back to
+him again. The women had tried to comfort her when they arrived; and so
+had the servants, and so had the doctor. Comfort her! And she felt
+nothing.
+
+Lucy stared at the sea, thinking these things, examining the situation
+as a curious one but unconnected with herself, looking at it with a kind
+of cold comprehension. Her mind was quite clear. Every detail of what
+had happened was sharply before her. She knew everything, and she felt
+nothing,--like God, she said to herself; yes, exactly like God.
+
+Footsteps came along the road, which was hidden by the garden's fringe
+of trees and bushes for fifty yards on either side of the gate, and
+presently a man passed between her eyes and the sea. She did not notice
+him, for she was noticing nothing but her thoughts, and he passed in
+front of her quite close, and was gone.
+
+But he had seen her, and had stared hard at her for the brief instant it
+took to pass the gate. Her face and its expression had surprised him.
+He was not a very observant man, and at that moment was even less so
+than usual, for he was particularly and deeply absorbed in his own
+affairs; yet when he came suddenly on the motionless figure at the gate,
+with its wide-open eyes that simply looked through him as he went by,
+unconscious, obviously, that any one was going by, his attention was
+surprised away from himself and almost he had stopped to examine the
+strange creature more closely. His code, however, prevented that, and he
+continued along the further fifty yards of bushes and trees that hid the
+other half of the garden from the road, but more slowly, slower and
+slower, till at the end of the garden where the road left it behind and
+went on very solitarily over the bare grass on the top of the cliffs,
+winding in and out with the ins and outs of the coast for as far as one
+could see, he hesitated, looked back, went on a yard or two, hesitated
+again, stopped and took off his hot hat and wiped his forehead, looked
+at the bare country and the long twisting glare of the road ahead, and
+then very slowly turned and went past the belt of bushes towards the
+gate again.
+
+He said to himself as he went: 'My God, I'm so lonely. I can't stand it.
+I must speak to some one. I shall go off my head----'
+
+For what had happened to this man--his name was Wemyss--was that public
+opinion was forcing him into retirement and inactivity at the very time
+when he most needed company and distraction. He had to go away by
+himself, he had to withdraw for at the very least a week from his
+ordinary life, from his house on the river where he had just begun his
+summer holiday, from his house in London where at least there were his
+clubs, because of this determination on the part of public opinion that
+he should for a space be alone with his sorrow. Alone with sorrow,--of
+all ghastly things for a man to be alone with! It was an outrage, he
+felt, to condemn a man to that; it was the cruellest form of solitary
+confinement. He had come to Cornwall because it took a long time to get
+to, a whole day in the train there and a whole day in the train back,
+clipping the week, the minimum of time public opinion insisted on for
+respecting his bereavement, at both ends; but still that left five days
+of awful loneliness, of wandering about the cliffs by himself trying not
+to think, without a soul to speak to, without a thing to do. He couldn't
+play bridge because of public opinion. Everybody knew what had happened
+to him. It had been in all the papers. The moment he said his name they
+would know. It was so recent. Only last week....
+
+No, he couldn't bear this, he must speak to some one. That girl,--with
+those strange eyes she wasn't just ordinary. She wouldn't mind letting
+him talk to her for a little, perhaps sit in the garden with her a
+little. She would understand.
+
+Wemyss was like a child in his misery. He very nearly cried outright
+when he got to the gate and took off his hat, and the girl looked at him
+blankly just as if she still didn't see him and hadn't heard him when he
+said, 'Could you let me have a glass of water? I--it's so hot----'
+
+He began to stammer because of her eyes. 'I--I'm horribly thirsty--the
+heat----'
+
+He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. He certainly
+looked very hot. His face was red and distressed, and his forehead
+dripped. He was all puckered, like an unhappy baby. And the girl looked
+so cool, so bloodlessly cool. Her hands, folded on the top bar of the
+gate, looked more than cool, they looked cold; like hands in winter,
+shrunk and small with cold. She had bobbed hair, he noticed, so that it
+was impossible to tell how old she was, brown hair from which the sun
+was beating out bright lights; and her small face had no colour except
+those wide eyes fixed on his and the colour of her rather big mouth; but
+even her mouth seemed frozen.
+
+'Would it be much bother----' began Wemyss again; and then his situation
+overwhelmed him.
+
+'You would be doing a greater kindness than you know,' he said, his
+voice trembling with unhappiness, 'if you would let me come into the
+garden a minute and rest.'
+
+At the sound of the genuine wretchedness in his voice Lucy's blank eyes
+became a little human. It got through to her consciousness that this
+distressed warm stranger was appealing to her for something.
+
+'Are you so hot?' she asked, really seeing him for the first time.
+
+'Yes, I'm hot,' said Wemyss. 'But it isn't that. I've had a
+misfortune--a terrible misfortune----'
+
+He paused, overcome by the remembrance of it, by the unfairness of so
+much horror having overtaken him.
+
+'Oh, I'm sorry,' said Lucy vaguely, still miles away from him, deep in
+indifference. 'Have you lost anything?'
+
+'Good God, not that sort of misfortune!' cried Wemyss. 'Let me come in a
+minute--into the garden a minute--just to sit a minute with a human
+being. You would be doing a great kindness. Because you're a stranger I
+can talk to you about it if you'll let me. Just because we're strangers
+I could talk. I haven't spoken to a soul but servants and official
+people since--since it happened. For two days I haven't spoken at all to
+a living soul--I shall go mad----'
+
+His voice shook again with his unhappiness, with his astonishment at his
+unhappiness.
+
+Lucy didn't think two days very long not to speak to anybody in, but
+there was something overwhelming about the strange man's evident
+affliction that roused her out of her apathy; not much,--she was still
+profoundly detached, observing from another world, as it were, this
+extreme heat and agitation, but at least she saw him now, she did with a
+faint curiosity consider him. He was like some elemental force in his
+directness. He had the quality of an irresistible natural phenomenon.
+But she did not move from her position at the gate, and her eyes
+continued, with the unwaveringness he thought so odd, to stare into his.
+
+'I would gladly have let you come in,' she said, 'if you had come
+yesterday, but to-day my father died.'
+
+Wemyss looked at her in astonishment. She had said it in as level and
+ordinary a voice as if she had been remarking, rather indifferently, on
+the weather.
+
+Then he had a moment of insight. His own calamity had illuminated him.
+He who had never known pain, who had never let himself be worried, who
+had never let himself be approached in his life by a doubt, had for the
+last week lived in an atmosphere of worry and pain, and of what, if he
+allowed himself to think, to become morbid, might well grow into a most
+unfair, tormenting doubt. He understood, as he would not have understood
+a week ago, what her whole attitude, her rigidity meant. He stared at
+her a moment while she stared straight back at him, and then his big
+warm hands dropped on to the cold ones folded on the top bar of the
+gate, and he said, holding them firmly though they made no attempt to
+move, 'So that's it. So that's why. Now I know.'
+
+And then he added, with the simplicity his own situation was putting
+into everything he did, 'That settles it. We two stricken ones must talk
+together.'
+
+And still covering her hands with one of his, with the other he
+unlatched the gate and walked in.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+There was a seat under a mulberry tree on the little lawn, with its back
+to the house and the gaping windows, and Wemyss, spying it out, led Lucy
+to it as if she were a child, holding her by the hand.
+
+She went with him indifferently. What did it matter whether she sat
+under the mulberry tree or stood at the gate? This convulsed
+stranger--was he real? Was anything real? Let him tell her whatever it
+was he wanted to tell her, and she would listen, and get him his glass
+of water, and then he would go his way and by that time the women would
+have finished upstairs and she could be with her father again.
+
+'I'll fetch the water,' she said when they got to the seat.
+
+'No. Sit down,' said Wemyss.
+
+She sat down. So did he, letting her hand go. It dropped on the seat,
+palm upwards, between them.
+
+'It's strange our coming across each other like this,' he said, looking
+at her while she looked indifferently straight in front of her at the
+sun on the grass beyond the shade of the mulberry tree, at a mass of
+huge fuchsia bushes a little way off. 'I've been going through hell--and
+so must you have been. Good God, what hell! Do you mind if I tell you?
+You'll understand because of your own----'
+
+Lucy didn't mind. She didn't mind anything. She merely vaguely wondered
+that he should think she had been going through hell. Hell and her
+darling father; how quaint it sounded. She began to suspect that she was
+asleep. All this wasn't really happening. Her father wasn't dead.
+Presently the housemaid would come in with the hot water and wake her to
+the usual cheerful day. The man sitting beside her,--he seemed rather
+vivid for a dream, it was true; so detailed, with his flushed face and
+the perspiration on his forehead, besides the feel of his big warm hand
+a moment ago and the small puffs of heat that came from his clothes when
+he moved. But it was so unlikely ... everything that had happened since
+breakfast was so _unlikely_. This man, too, would resolve himself soon
+into just something she had had for dinner last night, and she would
+tell her father about her dream at breakfast, and they would laugh.
+
+She stirred uneasily. It wasn't a dream. It was real.
+
+'The story is unbelievably horrible,' Wemyss was saying in a high
+aggrievement, looking at her little head with the straight cut hair, and
+her grave profile. How old was she? Eighteen? Twenty-eight? Impossible
+to tell exactly with hair cut like that, but young anyhow compared to
+him; very young perhaps compared to him who was well over forty, and so
+much scarred, so deeply scarred, by this terrible thing that had
+happened to him.
+
+'It's so horrible that I wouldn't talk about it if you were going to
+mind,' he went on, 'but you can't mind because you're a stranger, and it
+may help you with your own trouble, because whatever you may suffer I'm
+suffering much worse, so then you'll see yours isn't so bad. And besides
+I must talk to some one I should go mad----'
+
+This was certainly a dream, thought Lucy. Things didn't happen like this
+when one was awake,--grotesque things.
+
+She turned her head and looked at him. No, it wasn't a dream. No dream
+could be so solid as the man beside her. What was he saying?
+
+He was saying in a tormented voice that he was Wemyss.
+
+'You are Wemyss,' she repeated gravely.
+
+It made no impression on her. She didn't mind his being Wemyss.
+
+'I'm the Wemyss the newspapers were full of last week,' he said, seeing
+that the name left her unmoved. 'My God,' he went on, again wiping his
+forehead, but as fast as he wiped it more beads burst out, 'those
+posters to see one's own name staring at one everywhere on posters!'
+
+'Why was your name on posters?' said Lucy.
+
+She didn't want to know; she asked mechanically, her ear attentive only
+to the sounds from the open windows of the room upstairs.
+
+'Don't you read newspapers here?' was his answer.
+
+'I don't think we do,' she said, listening. 'We've been settling in. I
+don't think we've remembered to order any newspapers yet.'
+
+A look of some, at any rate, relief from the pressure he was evidently
+struggling under came into Wemyss's face. 'Then I can tell you the real
+version,' he said, 'without you're being already filled up with the
+monstrous suggestions that were made at the inquest. As though I hadn't
+suffered enough as it was! As though it hadn't been terrible enough
+already----'
+
+'The inquest?' repeated Lucy.
+
+Again she turned her head and looked at him. 'Has your trouble anything
+to do with death?'
+
+'Why, you don't suppose anything else would reduce me to the state I'm
+in?'
+
+'Oh, I'm sorry,' she said; and into her eyes and into her voice came a
+different expression, something living, something gentle. 'I hope it
+wasn't anybody you--loved?'
+
+'It was my wife,' said Wemyss.
+
+He got up quickly, so near was he to crying at the thought of it, at the
+thought of all he had endured, and turned his back on her and began
+stripping the leaves off the branches above his head.
+
+Lucy watched him, leaning forward a little on both hands. 'Tell me about
+it,' she said presently, very gently.
+
+He came back and dropped down heavily beside her again, and with many
+interjections of astonishment that such a ghastly calamity could have
+happened to him, to him who till now had never----
+
+'Yes,' said Lucy, comprehendingly and gravely, 'yes--I know----'
+
+--had never had anything to do with--well, with calamities, he told her
+the story.
+
+They had gone down, he and his wife, as they did every 25th of July, for
+the summer to their house on the river, and he had been looking forward
+to a glorious time of peaceful doing nothing after months of London,
+just lying about in a punt and reading and smoking and resting--London
+was an awful place for tiring one out--and they hadn't been there
+twenty-four hours before his wife--before his wife----
+
+The remembrance of it was too grievous to him. He couldn't go on.
+
+'Was she--very ill?' asked Lucy gently, to give him time to recover. 'I
+think that would almost be better. One would be a little at least one
+would be a little prepared----'
+
+'She wasn't ill at all,' cried Wemyss. 'She just--died.'
+
+'Oh like father!' exclaimed Lucy, roused now altogether. It was she now
+who laid her hand on his.
+
+Wemyss seized it between both his, and went on quickly.
+
+He was writing letters, he said, in the library at his table in the
+window where he could see the terrace and the garden and the river; they
+had had tea together only an hour before; there was a flagged terrace
+along that side of the house, the side the library was on and all the
+principal rooms; and all of a sudden there was a great flash of shadow
+between him and the light; come and gone instantaneously; and
+instantaneously then there was a thud; he would never forget it, that
+thud; and there outside his window on the flags----
+
+'Oh don't--oh don't----' gasped Lucy.
+
+'It was my wife,' Wemyss hurried on, not able now to stop, looking at
+Lucy while he talked with eyes of amazed horror. 'Fallen out of the top
+room of the house her sitting-room because of the view--it was in a
+straight line with the library window--she dropped past my window like a
+stone--she was smashed--smashed----'
+
+'Oh, don't--oh----'
+
+'Now can you wonder at the state I'm in?' he cried. 'Can you wonder if
+I'm nearly off my head? And forced to be by myself--forced into
+retirement for what the world considers a proper period of mourning,
+with nothing to think of but that ghastly inquest.'
+
+He hurt her hand, he gripped it so hard.
+
+'If you hadn't let me come and talk to you,' he said, 'I believe I'd
+have pitched myself over the cliff there this afternoon and made an end
+of it.'
+
+'But how--but why--how could she fall?' whispered Lucy, to whom poor
+Wemyss's misfortune seemed more frightful than anything she had ever
+heard of.
+
+She hung on his words, her eyes on his face, her lips parted, her whole
+body an agony of sympathy. Life--how terrible it was, and how
+unsuspected. One went on and on, never dreaming of the sudden dreadful
+day when the coverings were going to be dropped and one would see it was
+death after all, that it had been death all the time, death pretending,
+death waiting. Her father, so full of love and interests and
+plans,--gone, finished, brushed away as if he no more mattered than some
+insect one unseeingly treads on as one walks; and this man's wife, dead
+in an instant, dead so far more cruelly, so horribly....
+
+'I had often told her to be careful of that window,' Wemyss answered in
+a voice that almost sounded like anger; but all the time his tone had
+been one of high anger at the wanton, outrageous cruelty of fate. 'It
+was a very low one, and the floor was slippery. Oak. Every floor in my
+house is polished oak. I had them put in myself. She must have been
+leaning out and her feet slipped away behind her. That would make her
+fall head foremost----'
+
+'Oh--oh----' said Lucy, shrinking. What could she do, what could she say
+to help him, to soften at least these dreadful memories?
+
+'And then,' Wemyss went on after a moment, as unaware as Lucy was that
+she was tremblingly stroking his hand, 'at the inquest, as though it
+hadn't all been awful enough for me already, the jury must actually get
+wrangling about the cause of death.'
+
+'The cause of death?' echoed Lucy. 'But--she fell.'
+
+'Whether it were an accident or done on purpose.'
+
+'Done on----?'
+
+'Suicide.'
+
+'Oh----'
+
+She drew in her breath quickly.
+
+'But--it wasn't?'
+
+'How could it be? She was my wife, without a care in the world,
+everything done for her, no troubles, nothing on her mind, nothing wrong
+with her health. We had been married fifteen years, and I was devoted to
+her--devoted to her.'
+
+He banged his knee with his free hand. His voice was full of indignant
+tears.
+
+'Then why did the jury----'
+
+'My wife had a fool of a maid--I never could stand that woman--and it
+was something she said at the inquest, some invention or other about
+what my wife had said to her. You know what servants are. It upset
+some of the jury. You know juries are made up of anybody and
+everybody--butcher, baker, and candle-stick-maker--quite uneducated most
+of them, quite at the mercy of any suggestion. And so instead of a
+verdict of death by misadventure, which would have been the right one,
+it was an open verdict.'
+
+'Oh, how terrible--how terrible for you,' breathed Lucy, her eyes on
+his, her mouth twitching with sympathy.
+
+'You'd have seen all about it if you had read the papers last week,'
+said Wemyss, more quietly. It had done him good to get it out and talked
+over.
+
+He looked down at her upturned face with its horror-stricken eyes and
+twitching mouth. 'Now tell me about yourself,' he said, touched with
+compunction; nothing that had happened to her could be so horrible as
+what had happened to him, still she too was newly smitten, they had met
+on a common ground of disaster, Death himself had been their introducer.
+
+'Is life all--only death?' she breathed, her horror-stricken eyes on
+his.
+
+Before he could answer--and what was there to answer to such a question
+except that of course it wasn't, and he and she were just victims of a
+monstrous special unfairness,--he certainly was; her father had probably
+died as fathers did, in the usual way in his bed--before he could
+answer, the two women came out of the house, and with small discreet
+steps proceeded down the path to the gate. The sun flooded their spare
+figures and their decent black clothes, clothes kept for these occasions
+as a mark of respectful sympathy.
+
+One of them saw Lucy under the mulberry tree and hesitated, and then
+came across the grass to her with the mincing steps of tact.
+
+'Here's somebody coming to speak to you,' said Wemyss, for Lucy was
+sitting with her back to the path.
+
+She started and looked round.
+
+The woman approached hesitatingly, her head on one side, her hands
+folded, her face pulled into a little smile intended to convey
+encouragement and pity.
+
+'The gentleman's quite ready, miss,' she said softly.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+All that day and all the next day Wemyss was Lucy's tower of strength
+and rock of refuge. He did everything that had to be done of the
+business part of death--that extra wantonness of misery thrown in so
+grimly to finish off the crushing of a mourner who is alone. It is true
+the doctor was kind and ready to help, but he was a complete stranger;
+she had never seen him till he was fetched that dreadful morning; and he
+had other things to see to besides her affairs,--his own patients,
+scattered widely over a lonely countryside. Wemyss had nothing to see
+to. He could concentrate entirely on Lucy. And he was her friend, linked
+to her so strangely and so strongly by death. She felt she had known him
+for ever. She felt that since the beginning of time she and he had been
+advancing hand in hand towards just this place, towards just this house
+and garden, towards just this year, this August, this moment of
+existence.
+
+Wemyss dropped quite naturally into the place a near male relative would
+have been in if there had been a near male relative within reach; and
+his relief at having something to do, something practical and immediate,
+was so immense that never were funeral arrangements made with greater
+zeal and energy,--really one might almost say with greater gusto. Fresh
+from the horrors of those other funeral arrangements, clouded as
+they had been by the silences of friends and the averted looks of
+neighbours--all owing to the idiotic jurors and their hesitations, and
+the vindictiveness of that woman because, he concluded, he had refused
+to raise her wages the previous month--what he was arranging now was so
+simple and straightforward that it positively was a pleasure. There were
+no anxieties, there were no worries, and there was a grateful little
+girl. After each fruitful visit to the undertaker, and he paid several
+in his zeal, he came back to Lucy and she was grateful; and she was not
+only grateful, but very obviously glad to get him back.
+
+He saw she didn't like it when he went away, off along the top of the
+cliff on his various business visits, purpose in each step, a different
+being from the indignantly miserable person who had dragged about that
+very cliff killing time such a little while before; he could see she
+didn't like it. She knew he had to go, she was grateful and immensely
+expressive of her gratitude--Wemyss thought he had never met any one so
+expressively grateful--that he should so diligently go, but she didn't
+like it. He saw she didn't like it; he saw that she clung to him; and it
+pleased him.
+
+'Don't be long,' she murmured each time, looking at him with eyes of
+entreaty; and when he got back, and stood before her again mopping his
+forehead, having triumphantly advanced the funeral arrangements another
+stage, a faint colour came into her face and she had the relieved eyes
+of a child who has been left alone in the dark and sees its mother
+coming in with a candle. Vera usedn't to look like that. Vera had
+accepted everything he did for her as a matter of course.
+
+Naturally he wasn't going to let the poor little girl sleep alone in
+that house with a dead body, and the strange servants who had been hired
+together with the house and knew nothing either about her or her father
+probably getting restive as night drew on, and as likely as not bolting
+to the village; so he fetched his things from the primitive hotel down
+in the cove about seven o'clock and announced his intention of sleeping
+on the drawing-room sofa. He had lunched with her, and had had tea with
+her, and now was going to dine with her. What she would have done
+without him Wemyss couldn't think.
+
+He felt he was being delicate and tactful in this about the drawing-room
+sofa. He might fairly have claimed the spare-room bed; but he wasn't
+going to take any advantage, not the smallest, of the poor little girl's
+situation. The servants, who supposed him to be a relation and had
+supposed him to be that from the first moment they saw him, big and
+middle-aged, holding the young lady's hand under the mulberry tree,
+were surprised at having to make up a bed in the drawing-room when there
+were two spare-rooms with beds already in them upstairs, but did so
+obediently, vaguely imagining it had something to do with watchfulness
+and French windows; and Lucy, when he told her he was going to stay
+the night, was so grateful, so really thankful, that her eyes, red
+from the waves of grief that had engulfed her at intervals during the
+afternoon--ever since, that is, the sight of her dead father lying
+so remote from her, so wrapped, it seemed, in a deep, absorbed
+attentiveness, had unfrozen her and swept her away into a sea of
+passionate weeping--filled again with tears.
+
+'Oh,' she murmured, 'how _good_ you are----'
+
+It was Wemyss who had done all the thinking for her, and in the spare
+moments between his visits to the undertaker about the arrangements, and
+to the doctor about the certificate, and to the vicar about the burial,
+had telegraphed to her only existing relative, an aunt, had sent the
+obituary notice to _The Times_, and had even reminded her that she had
+on a blue frock and asked if she hadn't better put on a black one; and
+now this last instance of his thoughtfulness overwhelmed her.
+
+She had been dreading the night, hardly daring to think of it so much
+did she dread it; and each time he had gone away on his errands, through
+her heart crept the thought of what it would be like when dusk came and
+he went away for the last time and she would be alone, all alone in the
+silent house, and upstairs that strange, wonderful, absorbed thing that
+used to be her father, and whatever happened to her, whatever awful
+horror overcame her in the night, whatever danger, he wouldn't hear, he
+wouldn't know, he would still lie there content, content....
+
+'How _good_ you are!' she said to Wemyss, her red eyes filling. 'What
+would I have done without you?'
+
+'But what would I have done without _you_?' he answered; and they stared
+at each other, astonished at the nature of the bond between them, at its
+closeness, at the way it seemed almost miraculously to have been
+arranged that they should meet on the crest of despair and save each
+other.
+
+Till long after the stars were out they sat together on the edge of the
+cliff, Wemyss smoking while he talked, in a voice subdued by the night
+and the silence and the occasion, of his life and of the regular healthy
+calm with which it had proceeded till a week ago. Why this calm should
+have been interrupted, and so cruelly, he couldn't imagine. It wasn't as
+if he had deserved it. He didn't know that a man could ever be justified
+in saying he had done good, but he, Wemyss, could at least fairly say
+that he hadn't done any one any harm.
+
+'Oh, but you have done good,' said Lucy, her voice, too, dropped into
+more than ordinary gentleness by the night, the silence, and the
+occasion; besides which it vibrated with feeling, it was lovely with
+seriousness, with simple conviction. 'Always, always I know that you've
+been doing good,' she said, 'being kind. I can't imagine you anything
+else but a help to people and a comfort.'
+
+And Wemyss said, Well, he had done his best and tried, and no man could
+say more, but judging from what--well, what people had said to him, it
+hadn't been much of a success sometimes, and often and often he had been
+hurt, deeply hurt, by being misunderstood.
+
+And Lucy said, How was it possible to misunderstand him, to
+misunderstand any one so transparently good, so evidently kind?
+
+And Wemyss said, Yes, one would think he was easy enough to understand;
+he was a very natural, simple sort of person, who had only all his life
+asked for peace and quiet. It wasn't much to ask. Vera----
+
+'Who is Vera?' asked Lucy.
+
+'My wife.'
+
+'Ah, don't,' said Lucy earnestly, taking his hand very gently in hers.
+'Don't talk of that to-night please don't let yourself think of it. If I
+could only, only find the words that would comfort you----'
+
+And Wemyss said that she didn't need words, that just her being there,
+being with him, letting him help her, and her not having been mixed up
+with anything before in his life, was enough.
+
+'Aren't we like two children,' he said, his voice, like hers, deepened
+by feeling, 'two scared, unhappy children, clinging to each other alone
+in the dark.'
+
+So they talked on in subdued voices as people do who are in some holy
+place, sitting close together, looking out at the starlit sea, darkness
+and coolness gathering round them, and the grass smelling sweetly after
+the hot day, and the little waves, such a long way down, lapping lazily
+along the shingle, till Wemyss said it must be long past bedtime, and
+she, poor girl, must badly need rest.
+
+'How old are you?' he asked suddenly, turning to her and scrutinising
+the delicate faint outline of her face against the night.
+
+'Twenty-two,' said Lucy.
+
+'You might just as easily be twelve,' he said, 'except for the sorts of
+things you say.'
+
+'It's my hair,' said Lucy. 'My father liked--he liked----'
+
+'Don't,' said Wemyss, in his turn taking her hand. 'Don't cry again.
+Don't cry any more to-night. Come--we'll go in. It's time you were in
+bed.'
+
+And he helped her up, and when they got into the light of the hall he
+saw that she had, this time, successfully strangled her tears.
+
+'Good-night,' she said, when he had lit her candle for her, 'good-night,
+and--God bless you.'
+
+'God bless _you_' said Wemyss solemnly, holding her hand in his great
+warm grip.
+
+'He has,' said Lucy. 'Indeed He has already, in sending me you.' And she
+smiled up at him.
+
+For the first time since he had known her--and he too had the feeling
+that he had known her ever since he could remember--he saw her smile,
+and the difference it made to her marred, stained face surprised him.
+
+'Do that again,' he said, staring at her, still holding her hand.
+
+'Do what?' asked Lucy.
+
+'Smile,' said Wemyss.
+
+Then she laughed; but the sound of it in the silent, brooding house was
+shocking.
+
+'_Oh_,' she gasped, stopping short, hanging her head appalled by what it
+had sounded like.
+
+'Remember you're to go to sleep and not think of anything,' Wemyss
+ordered as she went slowly upstairs.
+
+And she did fall asleep at once, exhausted but protected, like some
+desolate baby that had cried itself sick and now had found its mother.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+All this, however, came to an end next day when towards evening Miss
+Entwhistle, Lucy's aunt, arrived.
+
+Wemyss retired to his hotel again and did not reappear till next
+morning, giving Lucy time to explain him; but either the aunt was
+inattentive, as she well might be under the circumstances in which she
+found herself so suddenly, so lamentably placed, or Lucy's explanations
+were vague, for Miss Entwhistle took Wemyss for a friend of her dear
+Jim's, one of her dear, dear brother's many friends, and accepted his
+services as natural and himself with emotion, warmth, and reminiscences.
+
+Wemyss immediately became her rock as well as Lucy's, and she in her
+turn clung to him. Where he had been clung to by one he was now clung to
+by two, which put an end to talk alone with Lucy. He did not see Lucy
+alone again once before the funeral, but at least, owing to Miss
+Entwhistle's inability to do without him, he didn't have to spend any
+more solitary hours. Except breakfast, he had all his meals up in the
+little house on the cliff, and in the evenings smoked his pipe under the
+mulberry tree till bedtime sent him away, while Miss Entwhistle in the
+darkness gently and solemnly reminisced, and Lucy sat silent, as close
+to him as she could get.
+
+The funeral was hurried on by the doctor's advice, but even so the short
+notice and the long distance did not prevent James Entwhistle's friends
+from coming to it. The small church down in the cove was packed; the
+small hotel bulged with concerned, grave-faced people. Wemyss, who had
+done everything and been everything, disappeared in this crowd. Nobody
+noticed him. None of James Entwhistle's friends happened--luckily, he
+felt, with last week's newspapers still fresh in the public mind--to be
+his. For twenty-four hours he was swept entirely away from Lucy by this
+surge of mourners, and at the service in the church could only catch a
+distant glimpse, from his seat by the door, of her bowed head in the
+front pew.
+
+He felt very lonely again. He wouldn't have stayed in the church a
+minute, for he objected with a healthy impatience to the ceremonies of
+death, if it hadn't been that he regarded himself as the stage-manager,
+so to speak, of these particular ceremonies, and that it was in a
+peculiarly intimate sense his funeral. He took a pride in it.
+Considering the shortness of the time it really was a remarkable
+achievement, the way he had done it, the smooth way the whole thing was
+going. But to-morrow,--what would happen to-morrow, when all these
+people had gone away again? Would they take Lucy and the aunt with them?
+Would the house up there be shut, and he, Wemyss, left alone again with
+his bitter, miserable recollections? He wouldn't, of course, stay on in
+that place if Lucy were to go, but wherever he went there would be
+emptiness without her, without her gratefulness, and gentleness, and
+clinging. Comforting and being comforted,--that is what he and she had
+been doing to each other for four days, and he couldn't but believe she
+would feel the same emptiness without him that he knew he was going to
+feel without her.
+
+In the dark under the mulberry tree, while her aunt talked softly and
+sadly of the past, Wemyss had sometimes laid his hand on Lucy's, and she
+had never taken hers away. They had sat there, content and comforted to
+be hand in hand. She had the trust in him, he felt, of a child; the
+confidence, and the knowledge that she was safe. He was proud and
+touched to know it, and it warmed him through and through to see how her
+face lit up whenever he appeared. Vera's face hadn't done that. Vera had
+never understood him, not with fifteen years to do it in, as this girl
+had in half a day. And the way Vera had died,--it was no use mincing
+matters when it came to one's own thoughts, and it had been all of a
+piece with her life: the disregard for others and of anything said to
+her for her own good, the determination to do what suited her, to lean
+out of dangerous windows if she wished to, for instance, not to take the
+least trouble, the least thought.... Imagine bringing such horror on
+him, such unforgettable horror, besides worries and unhappiness without
+end, by deliberately disregarding his warnings, his orders indeed,
+about that window. Wemyss did feel that if one looked at the thing
+dispassionately it would be difficult to find indifference to the wishes
+and feelings of others going further.
+
+Sitting in the church during the funeral service, his arms folded on his
+chest and his mouth grim with these thoughts, he suddenly caught sight
+of Lucy's face. The priest was coming down the aisle in front of the
+coffin on the way out to the grave, and Lucy and her aunt were following
+first behind it.
+
+_Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full
+of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it
+were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay...._
+
+The priest's sad, disillusioned voice recited the beautiful words as he
+walked, the afternoon sun from the west window and the open west door
+pouring on his face and on the faces of the procession that seemed all
+black and white,--black clothes, white faces.
+
+The whitest face was Lucy's, and when Wemyss saw the look on it his
+mouth relaxed and his heart went soft within him, and he came
+impulsively out of the shadow and joined her, boldly walking on her
+other side at the head of the procession, and standing beside her at the
+grave; and at the awful moment when the first earth was dropped on to
+the coffin he drew her hand, before everybody, through his arm and held
+it there tight.
+
+Nobody was surprised at his standing there with her like that. It was
+taken quite for granted. He was evidently a relation of poor Jim's. Nor
+was anybody surprised when Wemyss, not letting her go again, took her
+home up the cliff, her arm in his just as though he were the chief
+mourner, the aunt following with some one else.
+
+He didn't speak to her or disturb her with any claims on her attention,
+partly because the path was very steep and he wasn't used to cliffs, but
+also because of his feeling that he and she, isolated together by their
+sorrows, understood without any words. And when they reached the house,
+the first to reach it from the church just as if, he couldn't help
+thinking, they were coming back from their wedding, he told her in his
+firmest voice to go straight up to her room and lie down, and she obeyed
+with the sweet obedience of perfect trust.
+
+'Who is that?' asked the man who was helping Miss Entwhistle up the
+cliff.
+
+'Oh, a _very_ old friend of darling Jim's,' she sobbed,--she had been
+sobbing without stopping from the first words of the burial service, and
+was quite unable to leave off. 'Mr.--Mr.--We--We--Wemyss----'
+
+'Wemyss? I don't remember coming across him with Jim.'
+
+'Oh, one of his--his _oldest_--f--fr--friends,' sobbed poor Miss
+Entwhistle, got completely out of control.
+
+Wemyss, continuing in his role of chief mourner, was the only person who
+was asked to spend the evening up at the bereaved house.
+
+'I don't wonder,' said Miss Entwhistle to him at dinner, still with
+tears in her voice, 'at my dear brother's devotion to you. You have been
+the greatest help, the greatest comfort----'
+
+And neither Wemyss nor Lucy felt equal to explanation.
+
+What did it matter? Lucy, fatigued by emotions, her mind bruised by the
+violent demands that had been made on it the last four days, sat
+drooping at the table, and merely thought that if her father had known
+Wemyss it would certainly have been true that he was devoted to him. He
+hadn't known him; he had missed him by--yes, by just three hours; and
+this wonderful friend of hers was the very first good thing that she and
+her father hadn't shared. And Wemyss's attitude was simply that if
+people insist on jumping at conclusions, why, let them. He couldn't
+anyhow begin to expound himself in the middle of a meal, with a
+parlourmaid handing dishes round and listening.
+
+But there was an awkward little moment when Miss Entwhistle tearfully
+wondered--she was eating blanc-mange, the last of a series of cold and
+pallid dishes with which the imaginative cook, a woman of Celtic origin,
+had expressed her respectful appreciation of the occasion--whether when
+the will was read it wouldn't be found that Jim had appointed Mr. Wemyss
+poor Lucy's guardian.
+
+'I am--dear me, how very hard it is to remember to say I was--my dear
+brother's only relative. We belong--belonged--to an exiguous family, and
+naturally I'm no longer as young as I was. There is only--was only--a
+year between Jim and me, and at any moment I may be----'
+
+Here Miss Entwhistle was interrupted by a sob, and had to put down her
+spoon.
+
+'--taken,' she finished after a moment, during which the other two sat
+silent.
+
+'When this happens,' she went on presently, a little recovered, 'poor
+Lucy will be without any one, unless Jim thought of this and has
+appointed a guardian. You, Mr. Wemyss, I hope and expect.'
+
+Neither Lucy nor Wemyss spoke. There was the parlourmaid hovering, and
+one couldn't anyhow go into explanations now which ought to have been
+made four days ago.
+
+A dead-white cheese was handed round,--something local probably, for it
+wasn't any form of cheese with which Wemyss was acquainted, and the meal
+ended with cups of intensely black cold coffee. And all these carefully
+thought-out expressions of the cook's sympathy were lost on the three,
+who noticed nothing; certainly they noticed nothing in the way the cook
+had intended. Wemyss was privately a little put out by the coffee being
+cold. He had eaten all the other clammy things patiently, but a man
+likes his after-dinner coffee hot, and it was new in his experience to
+have it served cold. He did notice this, and was surprised that neither
+of his companions appeared to. But there,--women were notoriously
+insensitive to food; on this point the best of them were unintelligent,
+and the worst of them were impossible. Vera had been awful about it; he
+had had to do all the ordering of the meals himself at last, and also
+the engaging of the cooks.
+
+He got up from the table to open the door for the ladies feeling
+inwardly chilled, feeling, as he put it to himself, slabby inside; and,
+left alone with a dish of black plums and some sinister-looking wine in
+a decanter, which he avoided because when he took hold of it ice
+clinked, he rang the bell as unobtrusively as he could and asked the
+parlourmaid in a subdued voice, the French window to the garden being
+open and in the garden being Lucy and her aunt, whether there were such
+a thing in the house as a whisky and soda.
+
+The parlourmaid, who was a nice-looking girl and much more at home, as
+she herself was the first to admit, with gentlemen than with ladies,
+brought it him, and inquired how he had liked the dinner.
+
+'Not at all,' said Wemyss, whose mind on that point was clear.
+
+'No sir,' said the parlourmaid, nodding sympathetically. 'No sir.'
+
+She then explained in a discreet whisper, also with one eye on the open
+window, how the dinner hadn't been an ordinary dinner and it wasn't
+expected that it should be enjoyed, but it was the cook's tribute to her
+late master's burial day,--a master they had only known a week, sad to
+say, but to whom they had both taken a great fancy, he being so
+pleasant-spoken and all for giving no trouble.
+
+Wemyss listened, sipping the comforting drink and smoking a cigar.
+
+Very different, said the parlourmaid, who seemed glad to talk, would the
+dinner have been if the cook hadn't liked the poor gentleman. Why, in
+one place where she and the cook were together, and the lady was taken
+just as the cook would have given notice if she hadn't been because she
+was such a very dishonest and unpunctual lady, besides not knowing her
+place--no lady, of course, and never was--when she was taken, not sudden
+like this poor gentleman but bit by bit, on the day of her funeral the
+cook sent up a dinner you'd never think of,--she was like that, all
+fancy. Lucky it was that the family didn't read between the lines, for
+it began with fried soles----
+
+The parlourmaid paused, her eye anxiously on the window. Wemyss sat
+staring at her.
+
+'Did you say fried soles?' he asked, staring at her.
+
+'Yes sir. Fried soles. I didn't see anything in that either at first.
+It's how you spell it makes the difference, Cook said. And the next
+course was'--her voice dropped almost to inaudibleness--'devilled
+bones.'
+
+Wemyss hadn't so much as smiled for nearly a fortnight, and now to his
+horror, for what could it possibly sound like to the two mourners on the
+lawn, he gave a sudden dreadful roar of laughter. He could hear it
+sounding hideous himself.
+
+The noise he made horrified the parlourmaid as much as it did him. She
+flew to the window and shut it. Wemyss, in his effort to strangle the
+horrid thing, choked and coughed, his table-napkin up to his face, his
+body contorted. He was very red, and the parlourmaid watched him in
+terror. He had seemed at first to be laughing, though what Uncle Wemyss
+(thus did he figure in the conversations of the kitchen) could see to
+laugh at in the cook's way of getting her own back, the parlourmaid,
+whose flesh had crept when she first heard the story, couldn't
+understand; but presently she feared he wasn't laughing at all but was
+being, in some very robust way, ill. Dread seized her, deaths being on
+her mind, lest perhaps here in the chair, so convulsively struggling
+behind a table-napkin, were the beginnings of yet another corpse. Having
+flown to shut the window she now flew to open it, and ran out
+panic-stricken into the garden to fetch the ladies.
+
+This cured Wemyss. He got up quickly, leaving his half-smoked cigar and
+his half-drunk whisky, and followed her out just in time to meet Lucy
+and her aunt hurrying across the lawn towards the dining-room window.
+
+'I choked,' he said, wiping his eyes, which indeed were very wet.
+
+'Choked?' repeated Miss Entwhistle anxiously. 'We heard a most strange
+noise----'
+
+'That was me choking,' said Wemyss. 'It's all right--it's nothing at
+all,' he added to Lucy, who was looking at him with a face of extreme
+concern.
+
+But he felt now that he had had about as much of the death and funeral
+atmosphere as he could stand. Reaction had set in, and his reactions
+were strong. He wanted to get away from woe, to be with normal, cheerful
+people again, to have done with conditions in which a laugh was the most
+improper of sounds. Here he was, being held down by the head, he felt,
+in a black swamp,--first that ghastly business of Vera's, and now this
+woebegone family.
+
+Sudden and violent was Wemyss's reaction, let loose by the parlourmaid's
+story. Miss Entwhistle's swollen eyes annoyed him. Even Lucy's pathetic
+face made him impatient. It was against nature, all this. It shouldn't
+be allowed to go on, it oughtn't to be encouraged. Heaven alone knew how
+much he had suffered, how much more he had suffered than the Entwhistles
+with their perfectly normal sorrow, and if he could feel it was high
+time now to think of other things surely the Entwhistles could. He was
+tired of funerals. He had carried this one through really brilliantly
+from start to finish, but now it was over and done with, and he wished
+to get back to naturalness. Death seemed to him highly unnatural. The
+mere fact that it only happened once to everybody showed how exceptional
+it was, thought Wemyss, thoroughly disgusted with it. Why couldn't he
+and the Entwhistles go off somewhere to-morrow, away from this place
+altogether, go abroad for a bit, to somewhere cheerful, where nobody
+knew them and nobody would expect them to go about with long faces all
+day? Ostend, for instance? His mood of sympathy and gentleness had
+for the moment quite gone. He was indignant that there should be
+circumstances under which a man felt as guilty over a laugh as over a
+crime. A natural person like himself looked at things wholesomely. It
+was healthy and proper to forget horrors, to dismiss them from one's
+mind. If convention, that offspring of cruelty and hypocrisy, insisted
+that one's misfortunes should be well rubbed in, that one should be
+forced to smart under them, and that the more one was seen to wince the
+more one was regarded as behaving creditably,--if convention insisted
+on this, and it did insist, as Wemyss had been experiencing himself
+since Vera's accident, why then it ought to be defied. He had found he
+couldn't defy it by himself, and came away solitary and wretched in
+accordance with what it expected, but he felt quite different now that
+he had Lucy and her aunt as trusting friends who looked up to him, who
+had no doubts of him and no criticisms. Health of mind had come back to
+him,--his own natural wholesomeness, which had never deserted him in his
+life till this shocking business of Vera's.
+
+'I'd like to have some sensible talk with you,' he said, looking down at
+the two small black figures and solemn tired faces that were growing dim
+and wraith-like in the failing light of the garden.
+
+'With me or with Lucy?' asked Miss Entwhistle.
+
+By this time they both hung on his possible wishes, and watched him with
+the devout attentiveness of a pair of dogs.
+
+'With you and with Lucy,' said Wemyss, smiling at the upturned faces. He
+felt very conscious of being the male, of being in command.
+
+It was the first time he had called her Lucy. To Miss Entwhistle it
+seemed a matter of course, but Lucy herself flushed with pleasure, and
+again had the feeling of being taken care of and safe. Sad as she was at
+the end of that sad day, she still was able to notice how nice her very
+ordinary name sounded in this kind man's voice. She wondered what his
+own name was, and hoped it was something worthy of him,--not Albert, for
+instance.
+
+'Shall we go into the drawing-room?' asked Miss Entwhistle.
+
+'Why not to the mulberry tree?' said Wemyss, who naturally wished to
+hold Lucy's little hand if possible, and could only do that in the dark.
+
+So they sat there as they had sat other nights, Wemyss in the middle,
+and Lucy's hand, when it got dark enough, held close and comfortingly in
+his.
+
+'This little girl,' he began, 'must get the roses back into her cheeks.'
+
+'Indeed, indeed she must,' agreed Miss Entwhistle, a catch in her voice
+at the mere reminder of the absence of Lucy's roses, and consequently of
+what had driven them away.
+
+'How do you propose to set about it?' asked Wemyss.
+
+'Time,' gulped Miss Entwhistle.
+
+'Time?'
+
+'And patience. We must wait we must both wait p-patiently till time has
+s-softened----'
+
+She hastily pulled out her handkerchief.
+
+'No, no,' said Wemyss, 'I don't at all agree. It isn't natural, it isn't
+reasonable to prolong sorrow. You'll forgive plain words, Miss
+Entwhistle, but I don't know any others, and I say it isn't right to
+wallow--yes, wallow--in sorrow. Far from being patient one should be
+impatient. One shouldn't wait resignedly for time to help one, one
+should up and take time by the forelock. In cases of this kind, and
+believe me I know what I'm talking about'--it was here that his hand,
+the one on the further side from Miss Entwhistle, descended gently on
+Lucy's, and she made a little movement closer up to him--'it is due to
+oneself to refuse to be knocked out. Courage, spirit, is what one must
+aim at,--setting an example.'
+
+Ah, how wonderful he was, thought Lucy; so big, so brave, so simple, and
+so tragically recently himself the victim of the most awful of
+catastrophes. There was something burly about his very talk. Her darling
+father and his friends had talked quite differently. Their talk used to
+seem as if it ran about the room like liquid fire, it was so quick and
+shining; often it was quite beyond her till her father afterwards, when
+she asked him, explained it, put it more simply for her, eager as he
+always was that she should share and understand. She could understand
+every word of Wemyss's. When he spoke she hadn't to strain, to listen
+with all her might; she hardly had to think at all. She found this
+immensely reposeful in her present state.
+
+'Yes,' murmured Miss Entwhistle into her handkerchief, 'yes--you're
+quite right, Mr. Wemyss--one ought--it would be more--more heroic. But
+then if one--if one has loved some one very tenderly--as I did my dear
+brother--and Lucy her most precious father----'
+
+She broke off and wiped her eyes.
+
+'Perhaps,' she finished, 'you haven't ever loved anybody very--very
+particularly and lost them.'
+
+'Oh,' breathed Lucy at that, and moved still closer to him.
+
+Wemyss was deeply injured. Why should Miss Entwhistle suppose he had
+never particularly loved anybody? He seemed, on looking back, to have
+loved a great deal. Certainly he had loved Vera with the utmost devotion
+till she herself wore it down. He indignantly asked himself what this
+maiden lady could know of love.
+
+But there was Lucy's little hand, so clinging, so understanding,
+nestling in his. It soothed him.
+
+There was a pause. Then he said, very gravely, 'My wife died only a
+fortnight ago.'
+
+Miss Entwhistle was crushed. 'Ah,' she cried, 'but you must forgive
+me----'
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Nevertheless he was not able to persuade her to join him, with Lucy, in
+a trip abroad. She was tirelessly concerned to do and say everything she
+could that showed her deep sympathy with him in his loss--he had told
+her nothing beyond the bare fact, and she was not one to read about
+inquests--and her deep sense of obligation to him that he, labouring
+under so great a burden of sorrow of his own, should have helped them
+with such devotion and unselfishness in theirs; but she wouldn't go
+abroad. She was going, she said, to her little house in London with
+Lucy.
+
+'What, in August?' exclaimed Wemyss.
+
+Yes, they would be quiet there, and indeed they were both worn out and
+only wished for solitude.
+
+'Then why not stay here?' asked Wemyss, who now considered Lucy's aunt
+selfish. 'This is solitary enough, in all conscience.'
+
+No, they neither of them felt they could bear to stay in that house.
+Lucy must go to the place least connected in her mind with her father.
+Indeed, indeed it was best. She did so understand and appreciate Mr.
+Wemyss's wonderful and unselfish motives in suggesting the continent,
+but she and Lucy were in that state when the idea of an hotel and
+waiters and a band was simply impossible to them, and all they wished
+was to creep into the quiet and privacy of their own nest,--'Like
+wounded birds,' said poor Miss Entwhistle, looking up at him with much
+the piteous expression of a dog lifting an injured paw.
+
+'It's very bad for Lucy to be encouraged to think she's a wounded bird,'
+said Wemyss, controlling his disappointment as best he could.
+
+'You must come and see us in London and help us to feel heroic,' said
+Miss Entwhistle, with a watery smile.
+
+'But I can come and see you much better and easier if you're here,'
+persisted Wemyss.
+
+Miss Entwhistle, however, though watery, was determined. She refused to
+stay where she so conveniently was, and Wemyss now considered Lucy's
+aunt obstinate as well as selfish. Also he thought her very ungrateful.
+She had made use of him, and now was going to leave him, without
+apparently giving him a thought, in the lurch.
+
+He was having a good deal of Miss Entwhistle, because during the two
+days that came after the funeral Lucy was practically invisible, engaged
+in collecting and packing her father's belongings. Wemyss hung about the
+garden, not knowing when these activities mightn't suddenly cease and
+not wishing to miss her if she did come out, and Miss Entwhistle, who
+couldn't help Lucy in this--no one could help her in the heart-breaking
+work--naturally joined him.
+
+He found these two days long. Miss Entwhistle felt there was a great
+bond between herself and him, and Wemyss felt there wasn't. When she
+said there was he had difficulty in not contradicting her. Not only,
+Miss Entwhistle felt, and also explained, was there the bond of their
+dear Jim, whom both she and Mr. Wemyss had so much loved, but there was
+this communion of sorrow,--the loss of his wife, the loss of her
+brother, within the same fortnight.
+
+Wemyss shut his mouth tight at this and said nothing.
+
+How natural for her, feeling so sorry for him, feeling so grateful to
+him, when from a window during those two days she beheld him sitting
+solitary beneath the mulberry tree, to go down and sit there with him;
+how natural that, when he got up, made restless, she supposed, by
+his memories, and began to pace the lawn, she should get up and
+sympathetically pace it too. She could not let this kind, tender-hearted
+man--he must be that, or Jim wouldn't have been fond of him, besides she
+had seen it for herself in the way he had helped her and Lucy--she could
+not let him be alone with his sad thoughts. And he had a double burden
+of sad thoughts, a double loss to bear, for he had lost her dear brother
+as well as his poor wife.
+
+All Entwhistles were compassionate, and as she and Wemyss sat together
+or together paced, she kept up a flow of gentle loving-kindness.
+Wemyss smoked his pipe in practically unbroken silence. This was his way
+when he was holding on to himself. Miss Entwhistle of course didn't
+know he was holding on to himself, and taking his silence for the
+inarticulateness of deep unhappiness was so much touched that she would
+have done anything for him, anything that might bring this poor, kind,
+suffering fellow-creature comfort--except go to Ostend. From that
+dreadful suggestion she continued to shudder away; nor, though he tried
+again, even after all arrangements for leaving Cornwall had been made,
+would she be persuaded to stay where she was.
+
+Therefore Wemyss was forced to conclude that she was obstinate as well
+as selfish; and if it hadn't been for the brief moments at meals when
+Lucy appeared, and through her unhappiness--what she was doing was
+obviously depressing her very much--smiled faintly at him and always
+went and sat as near him as she could, he would have found these two
+days intolerable.
+
+How atrocious, he thought, while he smoked in silence and held on to
+himself, that Lucy should be taken away from him by a mere maiden lady,
+an aunt, an unmarried aunt,--weakest and most negligible, surely, of all
+relatives. How atrocious that such a person should have any right to
+come between him and Lucy, to say she wouldn't do this, that, or the
+other that Wemyss proposed, and thus possess the power to make him
+unhappy. Miss Entwhistle was so little that he could have brushed her
+aside with the back of one hand; yet here again the strong monster
+public opinion stepped in and forced him to acquiesce in any plan she
+chose to make for Lucy, however desolate it left him, merely because she
+stood to her in the anaemic relationship of aunt.
+
+During two mortal days, as he waited about in that garden so grievously
+infested by Miss Entwhistle, sounds of boxes being moved and drawers
+being opened and shut came through the windows, but except at meals
+there was no Lucy. He could have borne it if he hadn't known they were
+the very last days he would be with her, but as things were it seemed
+cruel that he should be left like that to be miserable. Why should he be
+left like that to be miserable, just because of a lot of clothes and
+papers? he asked himself; and he felt he was getting thoroughly tired of
+Jim.
+
+'Haven't you done yet?' he said at tea on the second afternoon of this
+sorting out and packing, when Lucy got up to go indoors again, leaving
+him with Miss Entwhistle, even before he had finished his second cup of
+tea.
+
+'You've no idea what a lot there is,' she said, her voice sounding worn
+out; and she lingered a moment, her hand on the back of her aunt's
+chair. 'Father brought all his notes with him, and heaps and heaps of
+letters from people he was consulting, and I'm trying to get them
+straight--get them as he would have wished----'
+
+Miss Entwhistle put up her hand and stroked Lucy's arm.
+
+'If you weren't in this hurry to go away you'd have had more time and
+done it comfortably,' said Wemyss.
+
+'Oh, but I don't want more time,' said Lucy quickly.
+
+'Lucy means she couldn't bear it drawn out,' said Miss Entwhistle,
+leaning her thin cheek against Lucy's sleeve. 'These things--they tear
+one's heart. And nobody can help her. She has to go through with it
+alone.' And she drew Lucy's face down to hers and held it there a
+moment, gently stroking it, the tears brimming up again in the eyes of
+both.
+
+Always tears, thought Wemyss. Yes, and there always would be tears as
+long as that aunt had hold of Lucy. She was the arch-wallower, he told
+himself, filling his pipe in silence after Lucy had gone in.
+
+He got up and went out at the gate and crossed the road and stood
+staring at the evening sea. Should he hear steps coming after him and
+Miss Entwhistle were to follow him even beyond the garden, he would
+proceed without looking round down to the cove and to the inn, where she
+must needs leave him alone. He had had enough. That Miss Entwhistle
+should explain to him what Lucy meant, he considered to be the last
+straw of her behaviour. Barging in, he said indignantly to himself;
+barging in when nobody had asked her opinion or explanation of anything.
+And she had stroked Lucy's face as though Lucy and her face and
+everything about her belonged to her, merely because she happened to be
+her aunt. Fancy explaining to him what Lucy really meant, taking upon
+herself the functions of interpreter, of go-between, when for a whole
+day and a half before she appeared on the scene--and she had only
+appeared on it at all thanks to his telegram--Lucy and he had been in
+the closest fellowship, the closest communion....
+
+Well, things couldn't go on like this. He was not the man to be
+dominated by a relative. If he had lived in those sensible ancient days
+when people behaved wholesomely, he would have flung Lucy over his
+shoulder and walked off with her to Ostend or Paris and laughed at such
+insects as aunts. He couldn't do that unfortunately, though where the
+harm would be in two mourners like himself and Lucy going together in
+search of relief he must say he was unable to see. Why should they be
+condemned to search for relief separately? Their sorrows, surely, would
+be their chaperone, especially his sorrow. Nobody would object to Lucy's
+nursing him, supposing he were dangerously ill; why should she not be
+equally beyond the reach of tongues if she nursed the bitter wounds of
+his spirit?
+
+He heard steps coming down the garden path to the gate. There, he
+thought, was the aunt again, searching for him, and he stood squarely
+and firmly with his back to the road, smoking his pipe and staring at
+the sea. If he heard the gate open and she dared to come through it he
+would instantly walk away. In the garden he had to endure being joined
+by her, because there he was in the position of guest; but let her try
+to join him on the King's highway!
+
+Nobody opened the gate, however, and, as he heard no retreating
+footsteps either, after a minute he began to want to look round. He
+struggled against this wish, because the moment Miss Entwhistle caught
+his eye she would come out to him, he felt sure. But Wemyss was not much
+good at struggling against his wishes,--he usually met with defeat; and
+after briefly doing so on this occasion he did look round. And what a
+good thing he did, for it was Lucy.
+
+There she was, leaning on the gate just as she had been that first
+morning, but this time her eyes instead of being wide and blank were
+watching him with a deep and touching interest.
+
+He got across the road in one stride. 'Lucy!' he exclaimed. 'You? Why
+didn't you call me? We've wasted half an hour----'
+
+'About two minutes,' she said, smiling up at him as he, on the other
+side of the gate, folded both her hands in his just as he had done that
+first morning; and the relief it was to Wemyss to see her again alone,
+to see that smile of trust and--surely--content in getting back to him!
+
+Then her face went grave again. 'I've finished father's things now,' she
+said, 'and so I came to look for you.'
+
+'Lucy, how can you leave me,' was Wemyss's answer to that, his voice
+vibrating, 'how can you go away from me to-morrow and hand me over again
+to the torments--yes, torments, I was in before?'
+
+'But I have to go,' she said, distressed. 'And you mustn't say that. You
+mustn't let yourself be like that again. You won't be, I know--you're so
+brave and strong.'
+
+'Not without you. I'm nothing without you,' said Wemyss; and his eyes,
+as he searched hers, were full of tears.
+
+At this Lucy flushed, and then, staring at him, her face went slowly
+white. These words of his, the way he said them, reminded her--oh no, it
+wasn't possible; he and she stood in a relationship to each other like
+none, she was sure, that had ever yet been. It was an intimacy arrived
+at at a bound, with no preliminary steps. It was a holy thing, based on
+mutual grief, protected from everything ordinary by the great wings of
+Death. He was her wonderful friend, big in his simplicity, all care for
+her and goodness, a very rock of refuge and shelter in the wilderness
+she had been flung into when he found her. And that he, bleeding as he
+was himself from the lacerations of the violent rending asunder from
+his wife to whom he had been, as he had told her, devoted, that he
+should--oh no, it wasn't possible; and she hung her head, shocked at her
+thoughts. For the way he had said those words, and the words themselves
+had reminded her--no, she could hardly bear to think it, but they _had_
+reminded her of the last time she had been proposed to. The man--he
+was a young man; she had never been proposed to by any one even
+approximately Wemyss's age--had said almost exactly that: Without you I
+am nothing. And just in that same deep, vibrating voice.
+
+How dreadful thoughts could be, Lucy said to herself, overcome that such
+a one at such a moment should thrust itself into her mind. Hateful of
+her, hateful....
+
+She hung her head in shame; and Wemyss, looking down at the little
+bobbed head with its bright, thick young hair bent over their folded
+hands as though it were saying its prayers,--Wemyss, not having his pipe
+in his mouth to protect him and help him to hold on to himself, for he
+had hastily stuffed it in his pocket, all alight as it was, when he saw
+her at the gate, and there at that moment it was burning holes,--Wemyss,
+after a brief struggle with his wishes, in which as usual he was
+defeated, stooped and began to kiss Lucy's hair. And having begun, he
+continued.
+
+She was horrified. At the first kiss she started as if she had been hit,
+and then, clinging to the gate, she stood without moving, without being
+able to think or lift her head, in the same attitude bowed over his and
+her own hands, while this astonishing thing was being done to her hair.
+Death all round them, death pervading every corner of their lives, death
+in its blackest shape brooding over him, and--kisses. Her mind, if
+anything so gentle could be said to be in anything that sounds so loud,
+was in an uproar. She had had the complete, guileless trust in him of a
+child for a tender and sympathetic friend,--a friend, not a father,
+though he was old enough to be her father, because in a father, however
+much hidden by sweet comradeship as it had been in hers, there always at
+the back of everything was, after all, authority. And it had been even
+more than the trust of a child in its friend: it had been the trust of a
+child in a fellow-child hit by the same punishment,--a simple
+fellowship, a wordless understanding.
+
+She hung on to the gate while her thoughts flew about in confusion
+within her. These kisses--and his wife just dead--and dead so
+terribly--how long would she have to stand there with this going on--she
+couldn't lift up her head, for then she felt it would only get
+worse--she couldn't turn and run into the house, because he was holding
+her hands. He oughtn't to have--oh, he oughtn't to have--it wasn't
+fair....
+
+Then--what was he saying? She heard him say, in an absolutely broken
+voice, laying his head on hers, 'We two poor things--we two poor
+things'--and then he said and did nothing more, but kept his head like
+that, and presently, thick though her hair was, through it came wetness.
+
+At that Lucy's thoughts suddenly stopped flying about and were quite
+still. Her heart went to wax within her, melted again into pity, into a
+great flood of pitiful understanding. The dreadfulness of lonely
+grief.... Was there anything in the world so blackly desolate as to be
+left alone in grief? This poor broken fellow-creature--and she herself,
+so lost, so lost in loneliness--they were two half-drowned things,
+clinging together in a shipwreck--how could she let him go, leave him to
+himself--how could she be let go, left to herself....
+
+'Lucy,' he said, 'look at me----'
+
+She lifted her head. He loosed her hands, and put his arms round her
+shoulders.
+
+'Look at me,' he said; for though she had lifted her head she hadn't
+lifted her eyes.
+
+She looked at him. Tears were on his face. When she saw them her mouth
+began to quiver and twitch. She couldn't bear that.
+
+'Lucy----' he said again.
+
+She shut her eyes. 'Yes'--she breathed, 'yes.' And with one hand she
+felt along up his coat till she reached his face, and shakingly tried to
+brush away its tears.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+After that, for the moment anyhow, it was all over with Lucy. She was
+engulfed. Wemyss kissed her shut eyes, he kissed her parted lips, he
+kissed her dear, delightful bobbed hair. His tears dried up; or rather,
+wiped away by her little blind, shaking hand, there were no more of
+them. Death for Wemyss was indeed at that moment swallowed up in
+victory. Instantly he passed from one mood to the other, and when she
+finally did open her eyes at his orders and look at him, she saw bending
+over her a face she hardly recognised, for she had not yet seen him
+happy. Happy! How could he be happy, as happy as that all in a moment?
+She stared at him, and even through her confusion, her bewilderment, was
+frankly amazed.
+
+Then the thought crept into her mind that it was she who had done this,
+it was she who had transformed him, and her stare softened into a gaze
+almost of awe, with something of the look in it of a young mother when
+she first sees her new-born baby. 'So that is what it is like,' the
+young mother whispers to herself in a sort of holy surprise, 'and I have
+made it, and it is mine'; and so, gazing at this new, effulgent Wemyss,
+did Lucy say to herself with the same feeling of wonder, of awe at her
+own handiwork, 'So that is what he is like.'
+
+Wemyss's face was indeed one great beam. He simply at that moment
+couldn't remember that he had ever been miserable. He seemed to have his
+arms round Love itself; for never did any one look more like the very
+embodiment of his idea of love than Lucy then as she gazed up at him, so
+tender, so resistless. But there were even more wonderful moments after
+dinner in the darkening garden, while Miss Entwhistle was upstairs
+packing ready to start by the early train next morning, and they hadn't
+got the gate between them, and Lucy of her own accord laid her cheek
+against his coat, nestling her head into it as though there indeed she
+knew that she was safe.
+
+'My baby--my baby,' Wemyss murmured, in an ecstasy of passionate
+protectiveness, in his turn flooded by maternal feeling. 'You shall
+never cry again never, never.'
+
+It irked him that their engagement--Lucy demurred at first to the word
+engagement, but Wemyss, holding her tight in his arms, said he would
+very much like to know, then, by what word she would describe her
+position at that moment--it irked him that it had to be a secret. He
+wanted instantly to shout out to the whole world his glory and his
+pride. But this under the tragic circumstances of their mourning was
+even to Wemyss clearly impossible. Generally he brushed aside the word
+impossible if it tried to come between him and the smallest of his
+wishes, but that inquest was still too vividly in his mind, and the
+faces of his so-called friends. What the faces of his so-called friends
+would look like if he, before Vera had been dead a fortnight, should
+approach them with the news of his engagement even Wemyss, a person not
+greatly imaginative, could picture. And Lucy, quite overwhelmed, first
+by his tears and then by his joy, no longer could judge anything. She no
+longer knew whether it were very awful to be love-making in the middle
+of death, or whether it were, as Wemyss said, the natural glorious
+self-assertiveness of life. She knew nothing any more except that he and
+she, shipwrecked, had saved each other, and that for the moment nothing
+was required of her, no exertion, nothing at all, except to sit passive
+with her head on his breast, while he called her his baby and softly,
+wonderfully, kissed her closed eyes. She couldn't think; she needn't
+think; oh, she was tired--and this was rest.
+
+But after he had gone that night, and all the next day in the train
+without him, and for the first few days in London, misgivings laid hold
+of her.
+
+That she should be being made love to, be engaged, as Wemyss insisted,
+within a week of her father's death, could not, she thought, be called
+anything worse than possibly and at the outside an irrelevance. It did
+no harm to her father's dear memory; it in no way encroached on her
+adoration of him. He would have been the first to be pleased that
+she should have found comfort. But what worried her was that
+Everard--Wemyss's Christian name was Everard--should be able to think of
+such things as love and more marriage when his wife had just died so
+awfully, and he on the very spot, and he the first to rush out and
+see....
+
+She found that the moment she was away from him she couldn't get over
+this. It went round and round in her head as a thing she was unable, by
+herself, to understand. While she was with him he overpowered her into a
+torpor, into a shutting of her eyes and her thoughts, into just giving
+herself up, after the shocks and agonies of the week, to the blessedness
+of a soothed and caressed semi-consciousness; and it was only when his
+first letters began to come, such simple, adoring letters, taking the
+situation just as it was, just as life and death between them had
+offered it, untroubled by questioning, undimmed by doubt, with no
+looking backward but with a touching, thankful acceptance of the
+present, that she gradually settled down into that placidity which was
+at once the relief and the astonishment of her aunt. And his letters
+were so easy to understand. They were so restfully empty of the
+difficult thoughts and subtle, half-said things her father used to write
+and all his friends. His very handwriting was the round, slow
+handwriting of a boy. Lucy had loved him before; but now she fell in
+love with him, and it was because of his letters.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Miss Entwhistle lived in a slim little house in Eaton Terrace. It was
+one of those little London houses where you go in and there's a
+dining-room, and you go up and there's a drawing-room, and you go up
+again and there's a bedroom and a dressing-room, and you go up yet more
+and there's a maid's room and a bathroom, and then that's all. For one
+person it was just enough; for two it was difficult. It was so difficult
+that Miss Entwhistle had never had any one stay with her before, and the
+dressing-room had to be cleared out of all her clothes and toques, which
+then had nowhere to go to and became objects that you met at night
+hanging over banisters or perched with an odd air of dashingness on the
+ends of the bath, before Lucy could go in.
+
+But no Entwhistle ever minded things like that. No trouble seemed to any
+of them too great to take for a friend; while as for one's own dear
+niece, if only she could have been induced to take the real bedroom and
+let her aunt, who knew the dressing-room's ways, sleep there instead,
+that aunt--on such liberal principles was this family constructed--would
+have been perfectly happy.
+
+Lucy, of course, only smiled at that suggestion, and inserted herself
+neatly into the dressing-room, and the first weeks of their mourning,
+which Miss Entwhistle had dreaded for them both, proceeded to flow by
+with a calm, an unruffledness, that could best be described by the word
+placid.
+
+In that small house, unless the inhabitants were accommodating and
+adaptable, daily life would be a trial. Miss Entwhistle well knew Lucy
+would give no trouble that she could help, but their both being in such
+trouble themselves would, at such close quarters, she had been afraid,
+inevitably keep their sorrow raw by sheer rubbing against each other.
+
+To her surprise and great relief nothing of the sort happened. There
+seemed to be no rawness to rub. Not only Lucy didn't fret--her white
+face and heavy eyes of the days in Cornwall had gone--but she was almost
+from the first placid. Just on leaving Cornwall, and for a day or two
+after, she was a little _bouleversee_, and had a curious kind of
+timidity in her manner to her aunt, and crept rather than walked about
+the house, but this gradually disappeared; and if Miss Entwhistle hadn't
+known her, hadn't known of her terrible loss, she would have said that
+here was some one who was quietly happy. It was subdued, but there it
+was, as if she had some private source of confidence and warmth. Had she
+by any chance got religion? wondered her aunt, who herself had never had
+it, and neither had Jim, and neither had any Entwhistles she had ever
+heard of. She dismissed that. It was too unlikely for one of their
+breed. But even the frequent necessary visits to the house in Bloomsbury
+she and her father had lived in so long didn't quite blot out the odd
+effect Lucy produced of being somehow inwardly secure. Presently, when
+these sad settlings up were done with, and the books and furniture
+stored, and the house handed over to the landlord, and she no longer had
+to go to it and be among its memories, her face became what it used to
+be,--delicately coloured, softly rounded, ready to light up at a word,
+at a look.
+
+Miss Entwhistle was puzzled. This serenity of the one who was, after
+all, chief mourner, made her feel it would be ridiculous if she outdid
+Lucy in grief. If Lucy could pull herself together so marvellously--and
+she supposed it must be that, it must be that she was heroically pulling
+herself together--she for her part wouldn't be behindhand. Her darling
+Jim's memory should be honoured, then, like this: she would bless God
+for him, bless God that she had had him, and in a high thankfulness
+continue cheerfully on her way.
+
+Such were some of Miss Entwhistle's reflections and conclusions as she
+considered Lucy. She seemed to have no thought of the future,--again to
+her aunt's surprise and relief, who had been afraid she would very soon
+begin to worry about what she was to do next. She never talked of it;
+she never apparently thought of it. She seemed to be--yes, that was the
+word, decided Miss Entwhistle observing her--resting. But resting on
+what? A second time Miss Entwhistle dismissed the idea of religion.
+Impossible, she thought, that Jim's girl,--yet it did look very like
+religion.
+
+There was, it appeared, enough money left scraped together by Jim for
+Lucy in case of his death to produce about two hundred pounds a year.
+This wasn't much; but Lucy apparently didn't give it a thought. Probably
+she didn't realise what it meant, thought her aunt, because of her life
+with her father having been so easy, surrounded by all those necessities
+for an invalid which were, in fact, to ordinary people luxuries. No one
+had been appointed her guardian. There was no mention of Mr. Wemyss in
+the will. It was a very short will, leaving everything to Lucy. This,
+as far as it went, was admirable, thought Miss Entwhistle, but
+unfortunately there was hardly anything to leave. Except books;
+thousands of books, and the old charming furniture of the Bloomsbury
+house. Well, Lucy should live with her for as long as she could endure
+the dressing-room, and perhaps they might take a house together a little
+less tiny, though Miss Entwhistle had lived in the one she was in for so
+long that it wouldn't be very easy for her to leave it.
+
+Meanwhile the first weeks of mourning slid by in an increasing serenity,
+with London empty and no one to intrude on what became presently
+distinctly recognisable as happiness. She and Lucy agreed so perfectly.
+And they weren't altogether alone either, for Mr. Wemyss came regularly
+twice a week, coming on the same days, and appearing so punctually on
+the stroke of five that at last she began to set her clocks by him.
+
+He, too, poor man, seemed to be pulling himself together. He had none of
+the air of the recently bereaved, either in his features or his clothes.
+Not that he wore coloured ties or anything like that, but he certainly
+didn't produce an effect of blackness. His trousers, she observed, were
+grey; and not a particularly dark grey either. Well, perhaps it was no
+longer the fashion, thought Miss Entwhistle, eyeing these trousers with
+some doubt, to be very unhappy. But she couldn't help thinking there
+ought to be a band on his left arm to counteract the impression of
+light-heartedness in his legs; a crape band, no matter how narrow, or a
+band of black anything, not necessarily crape, such as she was sure it
+was usual in these circumstances to wear.
+
+However, whatever she felt about his legs she welcomed him with the
+utmost cordiality, mindful of his kindness to them down in Cornwall and
+of how she had clung to him there as her rock; and she soon got to
+remember the way he liked his tea, and had the biggest chair placed
+comfortably ready for him--the chairs were neither very big nor numerous
+in her spare little drawing-room--and did all she could in the way of
+hospitality and pleasant conversation. But the more she saw of him, and
+the more she heard of his talk, the more she wondered at Jim.
+
+Mr. Wemyss was most good-natured, and she was sure, and as she knew from
+experience, was most kind and thoughtful; but the things he said were so
+very unlike the things Jim said, and his way of looking at things was so
+very unlike Jim's way. Not that there wasn't room in the world for
+everybody, Miss Entwhistle reminded herself, sitting at her tea-table
+observing Wemyss, who looked particularly big and prosperous in her
+small frugal room, and no doubt one star differed from another in glory;
+still, she did wonder at Jim. And if Mr. Wemyss could bear the loss of
+his wife to the extent of grey trousers, how was it he couldn't bear
+Jim's name so much as mentioned? Whenever the talk got on to Jim--it
+couldn't be kept off him in a circle composed of his daughter and his
+sister and his friend--she noticed that Mr. Wemyss went silent. She
+would have taken this for excess of sensibility and the sign of a deep
+capacity for faithful devotion if it hadn't been for those trousers.
+Faced by them, it perplexed her.
+
+While Miss Entwhistle was thinking like this and observing Wemyss, who
+never observed her at all after a first moment of surprise that she
+should look and behave so differently from the liquid lady of the
+cottage in Cornwall, that she should sit so straight and move so
+briskly, he and Lucy were, though present in the body, absent in love.
+Round them was drawn that magic circle through which nobody and nothing
+can penetrate, and within it they sat hand in hand and safe. Lucy's
+whole heart was his. He only had to come into the room for her to feel
+content. There was a naturalness, a bigness about his way of looking at
+things that made intricate, tormenting feelings shrink away in his
+presence ashamed. Quite apart from her love for him, her gratitude, her
+longing that he should go on now being happy and forget his awful
+tragedy, he was so very comfortable. She had never met any one so
+comfortable to lean on mentally. Bodily, on the few occasions on which
+her aunt was out of the room, he was comfortable too; he reminded her of
+the very nicest of sofas,--expensive ones, all cushions. But mentally he
+was more than comfortable, he was positively luxurious. Such perfect
+rest, listening to his talk. No thinking needed. Things according to him
+were either so, or so. With her father things had never been either so,
+or so; and one had had to frown, and concentrate, and make efforts to
+follow and understand his distinctions, his infinitely numerous,
+delicate, difficult distinctions. Everard's plain division of everything
+into two categories only, snow-white and jet-black, was as reposeful as
+the Roman church. She hadn't got to strain or worry, she had only to
+surrender. And to what love, to what safety! At night she couldn't go to
+bed for thinking of how happy she was. She would sit quite still in the
+little dressing-room, her hands in her lap, and a proverb she had read
+somewhere running in her head:
+
+     When God shuts the door He opens the window.
+
+Not for a moment, hardly, had she been left alone to suffer. Instantly,
+almost, Everard had come into her life and saved her. Lucy had indeed,
+as her aunt had twice suspected, got religion, but her religion was
+Wemyss. Ah, how she loved him! And every night she slept with his last
+letter under her pillow on the side of her heart.
+
+As for Wemyss, if Lucy couldn't get over having got him he couldn't get
+over having got Lucy. He hadn't had such happiness as this, of this
+quality of tenderness, of goodness, in his life before. What he had felt
+for Vera had not at any time, he was sure, even at the beginning, been
+like this. While for the last few years--oh, well. Wemyss, when he found
+himself thinking of Vera, pulled up short. He declined to think of her
+now. She had filled his thoughts enough lately, and how terribly. His
+little angel Lucy had healed that wound, and there was no use in
+thinking of an old wound; nobody healthy ever did that. He had explained
+to Lucy, who at first had been a little morbid, how wrong it is, how
+really wicked, besides being intensely stupid, not to get over things.
+Life, he had said, is for the living; let the dead have death. The
+present is the only real possession a man has, whatever clever people
+may say; and the wise man, who is also the natural man of simple healthy
+instincts and a proper natural shrinking from death and disease, does
+not allow the past, which after all anyhow is done for, to intrude upon,
+much less spoil, the present. That is what, he explained, the past will
+always do if it can. The only safe way to deal with it is to forget it.
+
+'But I don't want to forget mine,' Lucy had said at that, opening her
+eyes, which as usual had been shut, because the commas of Wemyss's talk
+with her when they chanced to be alone were his soothing, soporific
+kisses dropped gently on her closed eyelids. 'Father----'
+
+'Oh, you may remember yours,' he had answered, smiling tenderly down at
+the head lying on his breast. 'It's such a little one. But you'll see
+when you're older if your Everard wasn't right.'
+
+To Wemyss in his new happiness it seemed that Vera had belonged to
+another life altogether, an elderly, stale life from which, being
+healthy-minded, he had managed to unstick himself and to emerge born
+again all new and fresh and fitted for the present. She was forty when
+she died. She had started life five years younger than he was, but had
+quickly caught him up and passed him, and had ended, he felt, by being
+considerably his senior. And here was Lucy, only twenty-two anyhow, and
+looking like twelve. The contrast never ceased to delight him, to fill
+him with pride. And how pretty she was, now that she had left off
+crying. He adored her bobbed hair that gave her the appearance of a
+child or a very young boy, and he adored the little delicate lines of
+her nose and nostrils, and her rather big, kind mouth that so easily
+smiled, and her sweet eyes, the colour of Love-in-a-Mist. Not that he
+set any store by prettiness, he told himself; all he asked in a woman
+was devotion. But her being pretty would make it only the more exciting
+when the moment came to show her to his friends, to show his little girl
+to those friends who had dared slink away from him after Vera's death,
+and say, 'Look here--look at this perfect little thing--_she_ believes
+in me all right!'
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+London being empty, Wemyss had it all his own way. No one else was there
+to cut him out, as his expression was. Lucy had many letters with offers
+of every kind of help from her father's friends, but naturally she
+needed no help and had no wish to see anybody in her present condition
+of secret contentment, and she replied to them with thanks and vague
+expressions of hope that later on they might all meet. One young man--he
+was the one who often proposed to her--wasn't to be put off like that,
+and journeyed all the way from Scotland, so great was his devotion, and
+found out from the caretaker of the Bloomsbury house that she was living
+with her aunt, and called at Eaton Terrace. But that afternoon Lucy and
+Miss Entwhistle were taking the air in a car Wemyss had hired, and at
+the very moment the young man was being turned away from the Eaton
+Terrace door Lucy was being rowed about the river at Hampton Court--very
+slowly, because of how soon Wemyss got hot--and her aunt, leaning on the
+stone parapet at the end of the Palace gardens, was observing her. It
+was a good thing the young man wasn't observing her too, for it wouldn't
+have made him happy.
+
+'What is Mr. Wemyss?' asked Miss Entwhistle unexpectedly that evening,
+just as they were going to bed.
+
+Lucy was taken aback. Her aunt hadn't asked a question or said a thing
+about him up to then, except general comments on his kindness and
+good-nature.
+
+'What is Mr. Wemyss?' she repeated stupidly; for she was not only taken
+aback, but also, she discovered, she had no idea. It had never occurred
+to her even to wonder what he was, much less to ask. She had been, as it
+were, asleep the whole time in a perfect contentment on his breast.
+
+'Yes. What is he besides being a widower?' said Miss Entwhistle. 'We
+know he's that, but it is hardly a profession.'
+
+'I--don't think I know,' said Lucy, looking and feeling very stupid.
+
+'Oh well, perhaps he isn't anything,' said her aunt kissing her
+good-night. 'Except punctual,' she added, smiling, pausing a moment at
+her bedroom door.
+
+And two or three days later, when Wemyss had again hired a car to take
+them for an outing to Windsor, while she and Lucy were tidying
+themselves for tea in the ladies' room of the hotel she turned from the
+looking-glass in the act of pinning back some hair loosened by motoring,
+and in spite of having a hairpin in her mouth said, again suddenly,
+'What did Mrs. Wemyss die of?'
+
+This unnerved Lucy. If she had stared stupidly at her aunt at the other
+question she stared aghast at her at this one.
+
+'What did she die of?' she repeated, flushing.
+
+'Yes. What illness was it?' asked her aunt, continuing to pin.
+
+'It--wasn't an illness,' said Lucy helplessly.
+
+'Not an illness?'
+
+'I--believe it was an accident.'
+
+'An accident?' said Miss Entwhistle, taking the hairpin out of her mouth
+and in her turn staring. 'What sort of an accident?'
+
+'I think a rather serious one,' said Lucy, completely unnerved.
+
+How could she bear to tell that dreadful story, the knowledge of which
+seemed somehow so intimately to bind her and Everard together with a
+sacred, terrible tie?
+
+At that her aunt remarked that an accident resulting in death would
+usually be described as serious, and asked what its nature, apart from
+its seriousness, had been; and Lucy, driven into a corner, feeling
+instinctively that her aunt, who had already once or twice expressed
+what she said was her surprised admiration for Mr. Wemyss's heroic way
+of bearing his bereavement, might be too admiringly surprised altogether
+if she knew how tragically much he really had to bear, and might begin
+to inquire into the reasons of this heroism, took refuge in saying what
+she now saw she ought to have begun by saying, even though it wasn't
+true, that she didn't know.
+
+'Ah,' said her aunt. 'Well--poor man. It's wonderful how he bears
+things.' And again in her mind's eye, and with an increased doubt, she
+saw the grey trousers.
+
+That day at tea Wemyss, with the simple naturalness Lucy found so
+restful, the almost bald way he had of talking frankly about things more
+sophisticated people wouldn't have mentioned, began telling them of the
+last time he had been at Windsor.
+
+It was the summer before, he said, and he and his wife--at this Miss
+Entwhistle became attentive--had motored down one Sunday to lunch in
+that very room, and it had been so much crowded, and the crowding had
+been so monstrously mismanaged, that positively they had had to go away
+without having had lunch at all.
+
+'Positively without having had any lunch at all,' repeated Wemyss,
+looking at them with a face full of astonished aggrievement at the mere
+recollection.
+
+'Ah,' said Miss Entwhistle, leaning across to him, 'don't let us revive
+sad memories.'
+
+Wemyss stared at her. Good heavens, he thought, did she think he was
+talking about Vera? Any one with a grain of sense would know he was only
+talking about the lunch he hadn't had.
+
+He turned impatiently to Lucy, and addressed his next remark to her. But
+in another moment there was her aunt again.
+
+'Mr. Wemyss,' she said, 'I've been dying to ask you----'
+
+Again he was forced to attend. The pure air and rapid motion of the
+motoring intended to revive and brace his little love were apparently
+reviving and bracing his little love's aunt as well, for lately he had
+been unable to avoid noticing a tendency on her part to assert herself.
+During his first eight visits to Eaton Terrace--that made four weeks
+since his coming back to London and six since the funeral in
+Cornwall--he had hardly known she was in the room; except, of course,
+that she _was_ in the room, completely hindering his courting. During
+those eight visits his first impression of her remained undisturbed in
+his mind: she was a wailing creature who had hung round him in Cornwall
+in a constant state of tears. Down there she had behaved exactly like
+the traditional foolish woman when there is a death about,--no common
+sense, no grit, crying if you looked at her, and keeping up a continual
+dismal recital of the virtues of the departed. Also she had been
+obstinate; and she had, besides, shown unmistakable signs of
+selfishness. When he paid his first call in Eaton Terrace he did notice
+that she had considerably, indeed completely, dried up, and was
+therefore to that extent improved, but she still remained for him just
+Lucy's aunt,--somebody who poured out the tea, and who unfortunately
+hardly ever went out of the room; a necessary, though luckily a
+transitory, evil. But now it was gradually being borne in on him that
+she really existed, on her own account, independently. She asserted
+herself. Even when she wasn't saying anything--and often she said hardly
+a word during an entire outing--she still somehow asserted herself.
+
+And here she was asserting herself very much indeed, and positively
+asking him across a tea-table which was undoubtedly for the moment his,
+asking him straight out what, if anything, he did in the way of a trade,
+profession or occupation.
+
+She was his guest, and he regarded it as less than seemly for a guest to
+ask a host what he did. Not that he wouldn't gladly have told her if it
+had come from him of his own accord. Surely a man has a right, he
+thought, to his own accord. At all times Wemyss disliked being asked
+questions. Even the most innocent, ordinary question appeared to him to
+be an encroachment on the right he surely had to be let alone.
+
+Lucy's aunt between sips of tea--his tea--pretended, pleasantly it is
+true, and clothing what could be nothing but idle curiosity in words
+that were not disagreeable, that she was dying to know what he was. She
+could see for herself, she said, smiling down at the leg nearest her,
+that he wasn't a bishop, she was sure he wasn't either a painter,
+musician or writer, but she wouldn't be in the least surprised if he
+were to tell her he was an admiral.
+
+Wemyss thought this intelligent of the aunt. He had no objection to
+being taken for an admiral; they were an honest, breezy lot.
+
+Placated, he informed her that he was on the Stock Exchange.
+
+'Ah,' nodded Miss Entwhistle, looking wise because on this subject she
+so completely wasn't, the Stock Exchange being an institution whose
+nature and operations were alien to anything the Entwhistles were
+familiar with; 'ah yes. Quite. Bulls and bears. Now I come to look at
+it, you have the Stock Exchange eye.'
+
+'Foolish woman,' thought Wemyss, who for some reason didn't like being
+told before Lucy that he had the Stock Exchange eye; and he dismissed
+her impatiently from his mind and concentrated on his little love,
+asking himself while he did so how short he could, with any sort of
+propriety, cut this unpleasant time of restricted courting, of never
+being able to go anywhere with her unless her tiresome aunt came too.
+
+Nearly two months now since both those deaths; surely Lucy's aunt might
+soon be told now of the engagement. It was after this outing that he
+began in his letters, and in the few moments he and she were alone, to
+urge Lucy to tell her aunt. Nobody else need know, he wrote; it could go
+on being kept secret from the world; but the convenience of her aunt's
+knowing was so obvious,--think of how she would then keep out of the
+way, think of how she would leave them to themselves, anyhow indoors,
+anyhow in the house in Eaton Terrace.
+
+Lucy, however, was reluctant. She demurred. She wrote begging him to be
+patient. She said that every week that passed would make their
+engagement less a thing that need surprise. She said that at present it
+would take too much explaining, and she wasn't sure that even at the end
+of the explanation her aunt would understand.
+
+Wemyss wrote back brushing this aside. He said her aunt would have to
+understand, and if she didn't what did it matter so long as she knew?
+The great thing was that she should know. Then, he said, she would
+leave them alone together, instead of for ever sticking; and his little
+love must see how splendid it would be for him to come and spend happy
+hours with her quite alone. What was an aunt after all? he asked. What
+could she possibly be, compared to Lucy's own Everard? Besides, he
+disliked secrecy, he said. No honest man could stand an atmosphere of
+concealment. His little girl must make up her mind to tell her aunt, and
+believe that her Everard knew best; or, if she preferred it, he would
+tell her himself.
+
+Lucy didn't prefer it, and was beginning to feel worried, because as the
+days went on Wemyss grew more and more persistent the more he became
+bored by Miss Entwhistle's development of an independent and inquiring
+mind, and she hated having to refuse or even to defer doing anything he
+asked, when her aunt one morning at breakfast, in the very middle of
+apparent complete serene absorption in her bacon, looked up suddenly
+over the coffee-pot and said, 'How long had your father known Mr.
+Wemyss?'
+
+This settled things. Lucy felt she could bear no more of these shocks. A
+clean breast was the only thing left for her.
+
+'Aunt Dot,' she stammered--Miss Entwhistle's Christian name was
+Dorothy,--'I'd like--I've got--I want to tell you----'
+
+'After breakfast,' said Miss Entwhistle briskly. 'We shall need lots of
+time, and to be undisturbed. We'll go up into the drawing-room.'
+
+And immediately she began talking about other things.
+
+Was it possible, thought Lucy, her eyes carefully on her toast and
+butter, that Aunt Dot suspected?
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+It was not only possible, but the fact. Aunt Dot had suspected, only she
+hadn't suspected anything like all that was presently imparted to her,
+and she found great difficulty in assimilating it. And two hours later
+Lucy, standing in the middle of the drawing-room, was still passionately
+saying to her, and saying it for perhaps the tenth time, 'But don't you
+_see_? It's just _because_ what happened to him was so awful. It's
+nature asserting itself. If he couldn't be engaged now, if he couldn't
+reach up out of such a pit of blackness and get into touch with living
+things again and somebody who sympathises and--is fond of him, he would
+die, die or go mad; and oh, what's the _use_ to the world of somebody
+good and fine being left to die or go mad? Aunt Dot, what's the _use_?'
+
+And her aunt, sitting in her customary chair by the fireplace, continued
+to assimilate with difficulty. Also her face was puckered into folds of
+distress. She was seriously upset.
+
+Lucy, looking at her, felt a kind of despair that she wasn't being able
+to make her aunt, whom she loved, see what she saw, understand what she
+understood, and so be, as she was, filled with confidence and happiness.
+Not that she was happy at that moment; she, too, was seriously upset,
+her face flushed, her eyes bright with effort to get Wemyss as she knew
+him, as he so simply was, through into her aunt's consciousness.
+
+She had made her clean breast with a completeness that had included the
+confession that she did know what Mrs. Wemyss's accident had been, and
+she had described it. Her aunt was painfully shocked. Anything so
+horrible as that hadn't entered her mind. To fall past the very window
+her husband was sitting at ... it seemed to her dreadful that Lucy
+should be mixed up in it, and mixed up so instantly on the death of her
+natural protector,--of her two natural protectors, for hadn't Mrs.
+Wemyss as long as she existed also been one? She was bewildered, and
+couldn't understand the violent reactions that Lucy appeared to look
+upon as so natural in Wemyss. She would have concluded that she didn't
+understand because she was too old, because she was out of touch with
+the elasticities of the younger generation, but Wemyss must be very
+nearly as old as herself. Certainly he was of the same generation; and
+yet behold him, within a fortnight of his wife's most shocking death,
+able to forget her, able to fall in love----
+
+'But that's _why_--that's _why_,' Lucy cried when Miss Entwhistle said
+this. 'He _had_ to forget, or die himself. It was beyond what anybody
+could bear and stay sane----'
+
+'I'm sure I'm very glad he should stay sane,' said Miss Entwhistle, more
+and more puckered, 'but I can't help wishing it hadn't been you, Lucy,
+who are assisting him to stay it.'
+
+And then she repeated what at intervals she had kept on repeating with a
+kind of stubborn helplessness, that her quarrel with Mr. Wemyss was that
+he had got happy so very quickly.
+
+'Those grey trousers,' she murmured.
+
+No; Miss Entwhistle couldn't get over it. She couldn't understand it.
+And Lucy, expounding and defending Wemyss in the middle of the room with
+all the blaze and emotion of what was only too evidently genuine love,
+was to her aunt an astonishing sight. That little thing, defending that
+enormous man. Jim's daughter; Jim's cherished little daughter....
+
+Miss Entwhistle, sitting in her chair, struggled among other struggles
+to be fair, and reminded herself that Mr. Wemyss had proved himself to
+be most kind and eager to help down in Cornwall,--though even on this
+there was shed a new and disturbing light, and that now that she knew
+everything, and the doubts that had made her perhaps be a little unjust
+were out of the way and she could begin to consider him impartially, she
+would probably very soon become sincerely attached to him. She hoped so
+with all her heart. She was used to being attached to people. It was
+normal to her to like and be liked. And there must be something more in
+him than his fine appearance for Lucy to be so very fond of him.
+
+She gave herself a shake. She told herself she was taking this thing
+badly; that she ought not, just because it was an unusual situation, be
+so ready to condemn it. Was she really only a conventional spinster,
+shrinking back shocked at a touch of naked naturalness? Wasn't there
+much in what that short-haired child was so passionately saying about
+the rightness, the saneness, of reaction from horror? Wasn't it nature's
+own protection against too much death? After all, what was the good of
+doubling horror, of being so much horrified at the horrible that you
+stayed rooted there and couldn't move, and became, with your starting
+eyes and bristling hair, a horror yourself?
+
+Better, of course, to pass on, as Lucy was explaining, to get on with
+one's business, which wasn't death but life. Still--there were the
+decencies. However desolate one would be in retirement, however much one
+would suffer, there was a period, Miss Entwhistle felt, during which the
+bereaved withdrew. Instinctively. The really bereaved _would_ want to
+withdraw----
+
+'Ah, but don't you _see_,' Lucy once more tried despairingly to explain,
+'this wasn't just being bereaved--this was something simply too awful.
+Of course Everard would have behaved in the ordinary way if it had been
+an ordinary death.'
+
+'So that the more terrible one's sorrow the more cheerfully one goes out
+to tea,' said Miss Entwhistle, the remembrance of the light trousers at
+one end of Wemyss and the unmistakably satisfied face at the other being
+for a moment too much for her.
+
+'Oh,' almost moaned Lucy at that, and her head drooped in a sudden
+fatigue.
+
+Miss Entwhistle got up quickly and put her arms round her. 'Forgive me,'
+she said. 'That was just stupid and cruel. I think I'm hide-bound. I
+think I've probably got into a rut. Help me out of it, Lucy. You shall
+teach me to take heroic views----'
+
+And she kissed her hot face tenderly, holding it close to her own.
+
+'But if I could only make you _see_,' said Lucy, clinging to her, tears
+in her voice.
+
+'But I do see that you love him very much,' said Miss Entwhistle gently,
+again very tenderly kissing her.
+
+That afternoon when Wemyss appeared at five o'clock, it being his
+bi-weekly day for calling, he found Lucy alone.
+
+'Why, where----? How-----?' he asked, peeping round the drawing-room as
+though Miss Entwhistle must be lurking behind a chair.
+
+'I've told,' said Lucy, who looked tired.
+
+Then he clasped her with a great hug to his heart. 'Everard's own little
+love,' he said, kissing and kissing her. 'Everard's own good little
+love.'
+
+'Yes, but----' began Lucy faintly. She was, however, so much muffled and
+engulfed that her voice didn't get through.
+
+'Now wasn't I right?' he said triumphantly, holding her tight. 'Isn't
+this as it should be? Just you and me, and nobody to watch or
+interfere?'
+
+'Yes, but----' began Lucy again.
+
+'What do you say? "Yes, but?"' laughed Wemyss, bending his ear. 'Yes
+without any but, you precious little thing. Buts don't exist for
+us--only yeses.'
+
+And on these lines the interview continued for quite a long time before
+Lucy succeeded in telling him that her aunt had been much upset.
+
+Wemyss minded that so little that he didn't even ask why. He was
+completely incurious about anything her aunt might think. 'Who cares?'
+he said, drawing her to his heart again. 'Who cares? We've got each
+other. What does anything else matter? If you had fifty aunts, all being
+upset, what would it matter? What can it matter to us?'
+
+And Lucy, who was exhausted by her morning, felt too as she nestled
+close to him that nothing did matter so long as he was there. But the
+difficulty was that he wasn't there most of the time, and her aunt was,
+and she loved her aunt and did very much hate that she should be upset.
+
+She tried to convey this to Wemyss, but he didn't understand. When it
+came to Miss Entwhistle he was as unable to understand Lucy as Miss
+Entwhistle was unable to understand her when it came to Wemyss. Only
+Wemyss didn't in the least mind not understanding. Aunts. What were
+they? Insects. He laughed, and said his little love couldn't have it
+both ways; she couldn't eat her cake, which was her Everard, and have it
+too, which was her aunt; and he kissed her hair and asked who was a
+complicated little baby, and rocked her gently to and fro in his arms,
+and Lucy was amused at that and laughed too, and forgot her aunt, and
+forgot everything except how much she loved him.
+
+Meanwhile Miss Entwhistle was spending a diligent afternoon in the
+newspaper room of the British Museum. She was reading _The Times_ report
+of the Wemyss accident and inquest; and if she had been upset by what
+Lucy told her in the morning she was even more upset by what she read in
+the afternoon. Lucy hadn't mentioned that suggestion of suicide. Perhaps
+he hadn't told her. Suicide. Well, there had been no evidence. There was
+an open verdict. It had been a suggestion made by a servant, perhaps a
+servant with a grudge. And even if it had been true, probably the poor
+creature had discovered she had some incurable disease, or she may have
+had some loss that broke her down temporarily, and--oh, there were many
+explanations; respectable, ordinary explanations.
+
+Miss Entwhistle walked home slowly, loitering at shop windows, staring
+at hats and blouses that she never saw, spinning out her walk to its
+utmost, trying to think. Suicide. How desolate it sounded on that
+beautiful afternoon. Such a giving up. Such a defeat. Why should she
+have given up? Why should she have been defeated? But it wasn't true.
+The coroner had said there was no evidence to show how she came by her
+death.
+
+Miss Entwhistle walked slower and slower. The nearer she got to Eaton
+Terrace the more unwillingly did she advance. When she reached Belgrave
+Square she went right round it twice, lingering at the garden railings
+studying the habits of birds. She had been out all the afternoon, and,
+as those who have walked it know, it is a long way from the British
+Museum to Eaton Terrace. Also it was a hot day and her feet ached, and
+she very much would have liked to be in her own chair in her cool
+drawing-room having her tea. But there in that drawing-room would
+probably still be Mr. Wemyss, no longer now to be Mr. Wemyss for
+her--would she really have to call him Everard?--or she might meet him
+on the stairs--narrow stairs; or in the hall--also narrow, which he
+would fill up; or on her doorstep she might meet him, filling up her
+doorstep; or, when she turned the corner into her street, there, coming
+towards her, might be the triumphant trousers.
+
+No, she felt she couldn't stand seeing him that day. So she lingered
+forlornly watching the sparrows inside the garden railings of Belgrave
+Square, balancing first on one and then on the other of those feet that
+ached.
+
+This was only the beginning, she thought; this was only the first of
+many days for her of wandering homelessly round. Her house was too small
+to hold both herself and love-making. If it had been the slender
+love-making of the young man who was so doggedly devoted to Lucy, she
+felt it wouldn't have been too small. He would have made love
+youthfully, shyly. She could have sat quite happily in the dining-room
+while the suitably paired young people dallied delicately together
+overhead. But she couldn't bear the thought of being cramped up so near
+Mr. Wemyss's--no, Everard's; she had better get used to that at
+once--love-making. His way of courting wouldn't be,--she searched about
+in her uneasy mind for a word, and found vegetarian. Yes; that word
+sufficiently indicated what she meant: it wouldn't be vegetarian.
+
+Miss Entwhistle drifted away from the railings, and turning her back on
+her own direction wandered towards Sloane Street. There she saw an
+omnibus stopping to let some one out. Wanting very much to sit down she
+made an effort and caught it, and squeezing herself into its vacant seat
+gave herself up to wherever it should take her.
+
+It took her to the City; first to the City, and then to strange places
+beyond. She let it take her. Her clothes became steadily more
+fashionable the farther the omnibus went. She ended by being conspicuous
+and stared at. But she was determined to give the widest margin to the
+love-making and go the whole way, and she did.
+
+For an hour and a half the omnibus went on and on. She had no idea
+omnibuses did such things. When it finally stopped she sat still; and
+the conductor, who had gradually come to share the growing surprise of
+the relays of increasingly poor passengers, asked her what address she
+wanted.
+
+She said she wanted Sloane Street.
+
+He was unable to believe it, and tried to reason with her, but she sat
+firm in her place and persisted.
+
+At nine o'clock he put her down where he had taken her up. She
+disappeared into the darkness with the movements of one who is stiff,
+and he winked at the passenger nearest the door and touched his
+forehead.
+
+But as she climbed wearily and hungrily up her steps and let herself in
+with her latchkey, she felt it had been well worth it; for that one day
+at least she had escaped Mr. We---- no, Everard.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Miss Entwhistle, however, made up her mind very firmly that after this
+one afternoon of giving herself up to her feelings she was going to
+behave in the only way that is wise when faced by an inevitable
+marriage, the way of sympathy and friendliness.
+
+Too often had she seen the first indignation of disappointed parents at
+the marriages of their children harden into a matter of pride, a matter
+of doggedness and principle, and finally become an attitude unable to be
+altered, long after years had made it ridiculous. If the marriages
+turned out happy, how absurd to persist in an antiquated disapproval; if
+they turned out wretched, then how urgent the special need for love.
+
+Thus Miss Entwhistle reasoned that first sleepless night in bed, and
+on these lines she proceeded during the next few months. They were
+trying months. She used up all she had of gallantry in sticking to
+her determination. Lucy's instinct had been sound, that wish to keep
+her engagement secret from her aunt for as long as possible. Miss
+Entwhistle, always thin, grew still more thin in her constant daily and
+hourly struggle to be pleased, to enter into Lucy's happiness, to make
+things easy for her, to protect her from the notice and inquiry of their
+friends, to look hopefully and with as much of Lucy's eyes as she could
+at Everard and at the future.
+
+'She isn't simple enough,' Wemyss would say to Lucy if ever she said
+anything about her aunt's increasing appearance of strain and overwork.
+'She should take things more naturally. Look at us.' For it was the
+one fly in Lucy's otherwise perfect ointment, this intermittent
+consciousness that her aunt wasn't altogether happy.
+
+And then he would ask her, laying his head on hers as he stood with his
+arms about her, who had taught his little girl to be simple; and they
+would laugh, and kiss, and talk of other things.
+
+Miss Entwhistle was unable to be simple in Wemyss's sense. She tried
+to; for when she saw his fresh, unlined face, his forehead without a
+wrinkle on it, and compared it in the glass with her own which was
+only three years older, she thought there must be a good deal to be
+said for single-mindedness. It was Lucy who told her Everard was so
+single-minded. He took one thing at a time, she said, concentrating
+quietly. When he had completely finished it off then, and not till then,
+he went on to the next. He knew his own mind. Didn't Aunt Dot think it
+was a great thing to know one's own mind? Instead of wobbling about,
+wasting one's thoughts and energies on side-shows?
+
+This was the very language of Wemyss; and Miss Entwhistle, after having
+been listening to him in the afternoon--for every time he came she put
+in a brief appearance just for the look of the thing, and on the
+Saturday and Sunday outings she was invariably present the whole
+time--felt it a little hard that when at last she had reached the end of
+the day and the harbour of her empty drawing-room she should, through
+the mouth of Lucy, have to listen to him all the evening as well.
+
+But she always agreed, and said Yes, he was a great dear; for when an
+only and much-loved niece is certainly going to marry, the least a wise
+aunt can call her future nephew is a great dear. She will make this
+warmer and more varied if she can, but at least she will say that much.
+Miss Entwhistle tried to think of variations, afraid Lucy might notice a
+certain sameness, and once with an effort she faltered out that he
+seemed to be a--a real darling; but it had a hollow sound, and she
+didn't repeat it. Besides, Lucy was quite satisfied with the other.
+
+She used, sitting at her aunt's feet in the evenings--Wemyss never came
+in the evenings because he distrusted the probable dinner--sometimes to
+make her aunt say it again, by asking a little anxiously, 'But you _do_
+think him a great dear, don't you, Aunt Dot?' Whereupon Miss Entwhistle,
+afraid her last expression of that opinion may have been absent-minded,
+would hastily exclaim with almost excess of emphasis, 'Oh, a _great_
+dear.'
+
+Perhaps he was a dear. She didn't know. What had she against him? She
+didn't know. He was too old, that was one thing; but the next minute,
+after hearing something he had said or laughed at, she thought he wasn't
+old enough. Of course what she really had against him was that he had
+got over his wife's shocking death so quickly. Yet she admitted there
+was much in Lucy's explanation of this as a sheer instinctive gesture of
+self-defence. Besides, she couldn't keep it up as a grudge against him
+for ever; with every day it mattered less. And sometimes Miss Entwhistle
+even doubted whether it was this that mattered to her at all,--whether
+it was not rather some quite small things that she really objected to: a
+want of fastidiousness, for instance, a forgetfulness of the minor
+courtesies,--the objections, in a word, she told herself smiling, of an
+old maid. Lucy seemed not to mind his blunders in these directions in
+the least. She seemed positively, thought her aunt, to take a kind of
+pride in them, delighting in everything he said or did with the adoring
+tenderness of a young mother watching the pranks of her first-born. She
+laughed gaily; she let him caress her openly. She too, thought Miss
+Entwhistle, had become what she no doubt would say was single-minded.
+Well, perhaps all this was a spinster's way of feeling about a type not
+previously met with, and she had got--again she reproached herself--into
+an elderly groove. Jim's friends,--well, they had been different, but
+not necessarily better. Mr. Wemyss would call them, she was sure, a
+finicking lot.
+
+When in October London began to fill again, and Jim's friends came to
+look her and Lucy up and showed a tendency, many of them, to keep on
+doing it, a new struggle was added to her others, the struggle to
+prevent their meeting Wemyss. He wouldn't, she was convinced, be able to
+hide his proprietorship in Lucy, and Lucy wouldn't ever get that look of
+tenderness out of her eyes when they rested on him. Questions as to who
+he was would naturally be asked, and one or other of Jim's friends would
+be sure to remember the affair of Mrs. Wemyss's death; indeed, that day
+she went to the British Museum and read the report of it she had been
+amazed that she hadn't seen it at the time. It took up so much of the
+paper that she was bound to have seen it if she had seen a paper at all.
+She could only suppose that as she was visiting friends just then, she
+chanced that day to have been in the act of leaving or arriving, and
+that if she bought a paper on the journey she had looked, as was
+sometimes her way in trains, not at it but out of the window.
+
+She felt she hadn't the strength to support being questioned, and in her
+turn have to embark on the explanation and defence of Wemyss. There was
+too much of him, she felt, to be explained. He ought to be separated
+into sections, and taken gradually and bit by bit,--but far best not to
+produce him, to keep him from meeting her friends. She therefore
+arranged a day in the week when she would be at home, and discouraged
+every one from the waste of time of trying to call on her on other days.
+Then presently the afternoon became an evening once a week, when whoever
+liked could come in after dinner and talk and drink coffee, because the
+evening was safer; made safe by Wemyss's conviction--he hadn't concealed
+it--that the dinners of maiden ladies were notoriously both scanty and
+bad.
+
+Lucy would have preferred never to see a soul except Wemyss, who was all
+she wanted, all she asked for in life; but she did see her aunt's point,
+that only by pinning their friends to a day and an hour could the risk
+of their overflowing into precious moments be avoided. This is how Miss
+Entwhistle put it to her, wondering as she said it at her own growing
+ability in artfulness.
+
+She had an old friend living in Chesham Street, a widow full of that
+ripe wisdom that sometimes comes at the end to those who have survived
+marriage; and to her, when the autumn brought her back to London, Miss
+Entwhistle went occasionally in search of comfort.
+
+'What in the whole world puts such a gulf between two affections and
+comprehensions as a new love?' she asked one day, freshly struck,
+because of something Lucy had said, by the distance she had travelled.
+Lucy was quite a tiny figure now, so far away from her had she moved;
+she couldn't even get her voice to carry to her, much less still hold on
+to her with her hands.
+
+And the friend, made brief of speech by wisdom, said: 'Nothing.'
+
+About Wemyss's financial position Miss Entwhistle could only judge from
+appearances, for it wouldn't have occurred to him that it might perhaps
+be her concern to know, and she preferred to wait till later, when the
+engagement could be talked about, to ask some old friend of Jim's to
+make the proper inquiries; but from the way he lived it seemed to be an
+easy one. He went freely in taxis, he hired cars with a reasonable
+frequency, he inhabited one of the substantial houses of Lancaster Gate,
+and also, of course, he had The Willows, the house on the river near
+Strorley where his wife had died. After all, what could be better than
+two houses, Miss Entwhistle thought, congratulating herself, as it were,
+on Lucy's behalf that this side of Wemyss was so satisfactory. Two
+houses, and no children; how much better than the other way about. And
+one day, feeling almost hopeful about Lucy's prospects, on the
+advantages of which she had insisted that her mind should dwell, she
+went round again to the widow in Chesham Street and said suddenly to
+her, who was accustomed to these completely irrelevant exclamatory
+inquiries from her friend, and who being wise was also incurious, 'What
+can be better than two houses?'
+
+To which the widow, whose wisdom was more ripe than comforting, replied
+disappointingly: 'One.'
+
+Later, when the marriage loomed very near, Miss Entwhistle, who found
+that she was more than ever in need of reassurance instead of being, as
+she had hoped to become, more reconciled, went again, in a kind of
+desperation this time, to the widow, seeking some word from her who was
+so wise that would restore her to tranquillity, that would dispel her
+absurd persistent doubts. 'After all,' she said almost entreatingly,
+'what can be better than a devoted husband?'
+
+And the widow, who had had three and knew what she was talking about,
+replied with the large calm of those who have finished and can in
+leisure weigh and reckon up: 'None.'
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+The Wemyss-Entwhistle engagement proceeded on its way of development
+through the ordinary stages of all engagements: secrecy complete,
+secrecy partial, semi-publicity, and immediately after that entire
+publicity, with its inevitable accompanying uproar. The uproar, always
+more or less audible to the protagonists, of either approval or
+disapproval, was in this case one of unanimous disapproval. Lucy's
+father's friends protested to a man. The atmosphere at Eaton Terrace was
+convulsed; and Lucy, running as she always did to hide from everything
+upsetting into Wemyss's arms, was only made more certain than ever that
+there alone was peace.
+
+This left Miss Entwhistle to face the protests by herself. There was
+nothing for it but to face them. Jim had had so many intimate, devoted
+friends, and each of them apparently regarded his daughter as his
+special care and concern. One or two of the younger ones, who had been
+disciples rather than friends, were in love with her themselves, and
+these were specially indignant and vocal in their indignation. Miss
+Entwhistle found herself in the position she had tried so hard to
+avoid, that of defending and explaining Wemyss to a highly sceptical,
+antagonistic audience. It was as if, forced to fight for him, she was
+doing so with her back to her drawing-room wall.
+
+Lucy couldn't help her, because though she was distressed that her aunt
+should be being worried because of her affairs, yet she did feel that
+Everard was right when he said that her affairs concerned nobody in the
+world but herself and him. She, too, was indignant, but her indignation
+was because her father's friends, who had been ever since she could
+remember always good and kind, besides perfectly intelligent and
+reasonable, should with one accord, and without knowing anything about
+Everard except that story of the accident, be hostile to her marrying
+him. The ready unfairness, the willingness immediately to believe the
+worst instead of the best, astonished and shocked her. And then the way
+they all talked! Everlasting arguments and reasoning and hair-splitting;
+so clever, so impossible to stand up against, and yet so surely, she was
+certain, if only she had been clever too and able to prove things,
+wrong. All their multitudinous points of view,--why, there was only one
+point of view about a thing, Everard said, and that was the right one.
+Ah, but what a woman wanted wasn't this; she didn't want this endless
+thinking and examining and dissecting and considering. A woman--her very
+thoughts were now dressed in Wemyss's words--only wanted her man. '"Hers
+not to reason why,"' Wemyss had quoted one day, and both of them had
+laughed at his parody, '"hers but to love and--not die, but live."'
+
+The most that could be said for her father's friends was that they
+meant well; but oh, what trouble the well-meaning could bring into an
+otherwise simple situation! From them she hid--it was inevitable--in
+Wemyss's arms. Here were no arguments; here were no misgivings
+and paralysing hesitations. Here was just simple love, and the
+feeling--delicious to her whose mother had died in the very middle of
+all the sweet early petting, and whose whole life since had been spent
+entirely in the dry and bracing company of unusually inquisitive-minded,
+clever men--of being a baby again in somebody's big, comfortable,
+uncritical lap.
+
+The engagement hadn't leaked out so much as flooded out. It would have
+continued secret for quite a long time, known only to the three and to
+the maids--who being young women themselves, and well acquainted with
+the symptoms of the condition, were sure of it before Miss Entwhistle
+had even begun to suspect,--if Wemyss hadn't taken to dropping in,
+contrary to expectations, on the Thursday evenings. Lucy's descriptions
+of these evenings and of the people who came, and of how very kind they
+were to her aunt and herself, and how anxious they were to help her,
+they of course supposing that she was, actually, the lonely thing she
+would have been if she hadn't had Everard as the dear hidden background
+to her life--at this point they embraced,--at first amused him, then
+made him curious, and finally caused him to come and see for himself.
+
+He didn't tell Lucy he was coming, he just came. It had taken him five
+Thursday evenings of playing bridge as usual at his club, playing it
+with one hand, as he said to her afterwards, and thinking of her with
+the other--'You know what I mean,' he said, and they laughed and
+embraced--before it slowly oozed into and pervaded his mind that there
+was his little girl, rounded by people fussing over her and making love
+to her (because, said Wemyss, everybody would naturally want to make
+love to her), and there was he, the only person who had a right to do
+this, somewhere else.
+
+So he walked in; and when he walked in, the group standing round Lucy
+with their backs to the door saw her face, which had been gently
+attentive, suddenly flash into colour and light; and turning with one
+accord to see what it was she was looking at behind them with parted
+lips and eyes of startled joy, beheld once more the unknown chief
+mourner of the funeral in Cornwall.
+
+Down there they had taken for granted that he was a relation of Jim's,
+the kind of relative who in a man's life appears only three times, the
+last of which is his funeral; here in Eaton Terrace they were
+immediately sure he was not, anyhow, that, because for relatives who
+only appear those three times a girl's face doesn't change in a flash
+from gentle politeness to tremulous, shining life. They all stared at
+him astonished. He was so different from the sorts of people they had
+met at Jim's. For one thing he was so well dressed,--in the mating
+season, thought Miss Entwhistle, even birds dress well,--and in his
+impressive evening clothes, with what seemed a bigger and more spotless
+shirt-front than any shirt-front they could have imagined, he made them
+look and feel what they actually were, a dingy, shabby lot.
+
+Wemyss was good-looking. He might be middle-aged, but he was
+good-looking enough frequently to eclipse the young. He might have a
+little too much of what tailors call a fine presence, but his height
+carried this off. His features were regular, his face care-free and
+healthy, his brown hair sleek with no grey in it, he was clean-shaven,
+and his mouth was the kind of mouth sometimes described by journalists
+as mobile, sometimes as determined, but always as well cut. One could
+visualise him in a fur-lined coat, thought a young man near Lucy,
+considering him; and one couldn't visualise a single one of the others,
+including himself, in the room that evening in a fur-lined coat. Also,
+thought this same young man, one could see railway porters and
+taxi-drivers and waiters hurrying to be of service to him; and one not
+only couldn't imagine them taking any notice that wasn't languid and
+reluctant of the others, including himself, but one knew from personal
+distressing experience that they didn't.
+
+'My splendid lover!' Lucy's heart cried out within her when the door
+opened and there he stood. She had not seen him before in the evening,
+and the contrast between him and the rest of the people there was really
+striking.
+
+Miss Entwhistle had been right: there was no hiding the look in Lucy's
+eyes or Wemyss's proprietary manner. He hadn't meant to take any but the
+barest notice of his little girl, he had meant to be quite an ordinary
+guest--just shake hands and say 'Hasn't it been wet to-day'--that sort
+of thing; but his pride and love were too much for him, he couldn't hide
+them. He thought he did, and was sure he was behaving beautifully and
+with the easiest unconcern, but the mere way he looked at her and stood
+over her was enough. Also there was the way she looked at him. The
+intelligences in that room were used to drawing more complicated
+inferences than this. They were outraged by its obviousness. Who was
+this middle-aged, prosperous outsider who had got hold of Jim's
+daughter? What had her aunt been about? Where had he dropped from? Had
+Jim known?
+
+Miss Entwhistle introduced him. 'Mr. Wemyss,' she said to them
+generally, with a vague wave of her hand; and a red spot appeared and
+stayed on each of her cheekbones.
+
+Wemyss held forth. He stood on the hearthrug filling his pipe--he was
+used to smoking in that room when he came to tea with Lucy, and forgot
+to ask Miss Entwhistle if it mattered--and told everybody what he
+thought. They were talking about Ireland when he came in, and after the
+disturbance of his arrival had subsided he asked them not to mind him
+but to go on. He then proceeded to go on himself, telling them what he
+thought; and what he thought was what _The Times_ had thought that
+morning. Wemyss spoke with the practised fluency of a leading article.
+He liked politics and constantly talked them at his club, and it created
+vacancies in the chairs near him. But Lucy, who hadn't heard him on
+politics before and found that she could understand every word, listened
+to him with parted lips. Before he came in they had been saying things
+beyond her quickness in following, eagerly discussing Sinn Fein,
+Lloyd George, the outrageous cost of living--it was the autumn of
+1920--turning everything inside out, upside down, being witty, being
+surprising, being tremendously eager and earnest. It had been a kind of
+restless flashing round and catching fire from each other,--a kind of
+kick, and flick, and sparks, and a burst of laughter, and then on to
+something else just as she was laboriously getting under weigh to follow
+the last sentence but six. She had been missing her father, who took her
+by the hand on these occasions when he saw her lagging behind, and
+stopped a moment to explain to her, and held up the others while she got
+her breath.
+
+But now came Everard, and in a minute everything was plain. He had the
+effect on her of a window being thrown open and fresh air and sunlight
+being let in. He was so sensible, she felt, compared to these others; so
+healthy and natural. The Government, he said, only had to do this and
+that, and Ireland and the cost of living would immediately, regarded as
+problems, be solved. He explained the line to be taken. It was a very
+simple line. One only needed goodwill and a little common sense. Why,
+thought Lucy, unconsciously nodding proud agreement, didn't people have
+goodwill and a little common sense?
+
+At first there was a disposition to interrupt, to heckle, but it grew
+fainter and soon gave way to complete silence. The other guests might
+have been stunned, Miss Entwhistle thought, so motionless did they
+presently sit. And when they went away, which they seemed to do earlier
+than usual and in a body, Wemyss was still standing on the hearthrug
+explaining the points of view of the ordinary, sensible business man.
+
+'Mind you,' he said, pointing at them with his pipe, 'I don't pretend to
+be a great thinker. I'm just a plain business man, and as a plain
+business man I know there's only one way of doing a thing, and that's
+the right way. Find out what that way is, and go and do it. There's too
+much arguing altogether and asking other people what they think. We
+don't want talk, we want action. I agree with Napoleon, who said
+concerning the French Revolution, _"Il aurait fallu mitrailler cette
+canaille."_ We're not simple enough.'
+
+This was the last the others heard as they trooped in silence down the
+stairs. Outside they lingered for a while in little knots on the
+pavement talking, and then they drifted away to their various homes,
+where most of them spent the rest of the evening writing to Miss
+Entwhistle.
+
+The following Thursday evening, her letters in reply having been vague
+and evasive, they came again, each hoping to get Lucy's aunt to himself,
+and on the ground of being Jim's most devoted friend ask her straight
+questions such as who and what was Wemyss. Also, more particularly, why.
+Who and what he was was of no sort of consequence if he would only be
+and do it somewhere else; but they arrived determined to get an answer
+to the third question: Why Wemyss? And when they got there, there he was
+again; there before them this time, standing on the hearthrug as if he
+had never moved off it since the week before and had gone on talking
+ever since.
+
+This was the end of the Thursday evenings. The next one was unattended,
+except by Wemyss; but Miss Entwhistle had been forced to admit the
+engagement, and from then on right up to the marriage her life was a
+curse to her and a confusion. Just because Jim had appointed no guardian
+in his will for Lucy, every single one of his friends felt bound to fill
+the vacancy. They were indignant when they discovered that almost before
+they had begun Lucy was being carried off, but they were horrified when
+they discovered what Wemyss it was who was carrying her off. Most of
+them quite well remembered the affair of Mrs. Wemyss's death a few weeks
+before, and those who did not went, as Miss Entwhistle had gone, to the
+British Museum and read it up. They also, though they themselves were
+chiefly unworldly persons who lost money rather than made it, instituted
+the most searching private inquiries into Wemyss's business affairs,
+hoping that he might be caught out as such a rascal or so penniless, or,
+preferably, both, that no woman could possibly have anything to do with
+him. But Wemyss's business record, the solicitor they employed informed
+them, was quite creditable. Everything about it was neat and in order.
+He was not what the City would call a wealthy man, but if you went out
+say to Ealing, said the solicitor, he would be called wealthy. He was
+solid, and he was certainly more than able to support a wife and family.
+He could have been quite wealthy if he had not adopted a principle to
+which he had adhered for years of knocking off work early and leaving
+his office at an hour when other men did not,--the friends were obliged
+to admit that this, at least, seemed sensible. There had been, though, a
+very sad occurrence recently in his private life,--'Oh, thank you,'
+interrupted the friends, 'we have heard about that.'
+
+But however good Wemyss's business record might be, it couldn't alter
+their violent objection to Jim's daughter marrying him. Apart from the
+stuff he talked, there was the inquest. They were aware that in this
+they were unreasonable, but they were all too much attached to Jim's
+memory to be able to be reasonable about a man they felt so certain he
+wouldn't have liked. Singly and in groups they came at safe times, such
+as after breakfast, to Eaton Terrace to reason with Lucy, too much
+worried to remember that you cannot reason with a person in love. Less
+wise than Miss Entwhistle, they tried to dissuade her from marrying this
+man, and the more they tried the tighter she clung to him. To the
+passion of love was added, by their attitudes, the passion of
+protectiveness, of flinging her body between him and them. And all the
+while, right inside her innermost soul, in spite of her amazement at
+them and her indignation, she was smiling to herself; for it was really
+very funny, the superficial judgments of these clever people when set
+side by side with what she alone knew,--the tenderness, the simple
+goodness of her heart's beloved.
+
+Lucy laughed to herself in her happy sureness. She had miraculously
+found not only a lover she could adore and a guide she could follow and
+a teacher she could look up to and a sufferer who without her wouldn't
+have been healed, but a mother, a nurse, and a playmate. In spite of his
+being so much older and so extraordinarily wise, he was yet her
+contemporary,--sometimes hardly even that, so boyish was he in his talk
+and jokes. Lucy had never had a playmate. She had spent her life
+sitting, as it were, bolt upright mentally behaving, and she hadn't
+known till Wemyss came on the scene how delicious it was to relax.
+Nonsense had delighted her father, it is true, but it had to be of a
+certain kind; never the kind to which the adjective 'sheer' would apply.
+With Wemyss she could say whatever nonsense came into her head, sheer or
+otherwise. He laughed consumedly at her when she talked it. She loved to
+make him laugh. They laughed together. He understood her language. He
+was her playmate. Those people outside, old and young, who didn't know
+what playing was and were trying to get her away from him, might beat at
+the door behind which he and she sat listening, amused, as long as they
+liked.
+
+'How they all try to separate us,' she said to him one day, sitting as
+usual safe in the circle of his arm, her head on his breast.
+
+'You can't separate unity,' remarked Wemyss comfortably.
+
+She wanted to tell them that answer, confront them with it next time
+they came after breakfast, as a discouragement to useless further
+effort, but she had learned that they somehow always knew when what she
+said was Everard's and not hers, and then, of course, prejudiced as they
+were, they wouldn't listen.
+
+'Now, Lucy, that's pure Wemyss,' they would say. 'For heaven's sake say
+something of your own.'
+
+At Christmas Wemyss had an encounter with Miss Entwhistle, who ever
+since she had been told of the engagement had been so quiet and
+inoffensive that he quite liked her. She had seemed to recognise her
+position as a side-show, and had accepted it without a word. She no
+longer asked him questions, and she made no difficulties. She left him
+alone with Lucy in Eaton Terrace, and though she had to go with them on
+the outings she asserted herself so little that he forgot she was there.
+But when towards the middle of December he remarked one afternoon that
+he always spent Christmas at The Willows, and what day would she and
+Lucy come down, Christmas Eve or the day before, to his astonishment she
+looked astonished, and after a silence said it was most kind of him, but
+they were going to spend Christmas where they were.
+
+'I had hoped you would join us,' she said. 'Must you really go away?'
+
+'But----' began Wemyss, incredulous, doubting his ears.
+
+It was, however, the fact that Miss Entwhistle wouldn't go to The
+Willows; and of course if she wouldn't Lucy couldn't either. Nothing
+that he said could shake her determination. Here was a repetition, only
+how much worse--fancy spoiling his Christmas--of her conduct in Cornwall
+when she insisted on going away from that nice little house where they
+were all so comfortably established, and taking Lucy up to London. He
+had forgotten, so acquiescent had she been for weeks, that down there he
+had discovered she was obstinate. It was a shock to him to realise that
+her obstinacy, the most obstinate obstinacy he had ever met, might be
+going to upset his plans. He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe he
+wasn't going to be able to have what he wished, and only because an old
+maid said 'No.' Was the story of Balaam to be reversed, and the angel be
+held up by the donkey? He refused to believe such a thing possible.
+
+Wemyss, who made his plans first and talked about them afterwards,
+hadn't mentioned Christmas even to Lucy. It was his habit to settle what
+he wished to do, arrange all the details, and then, when everything was
+ready, inform those who were to take part. It hadn't occurred to him
+that over the Christmas question there would be trouble. He had
+naturally taken it for granted that he would spend Christmas with his
+little girl, and of course as he always spent it at The Willows she
+would spend it there too. All his arrangements were made, and the
+servants, who looked surprised, had been told to get the spare-rooms
+ready for two ladies. He had begun to feel seasonable as early as the
+first week in December, and had bespoken two big turkeys instead of one,
+because this was to be his first real Christmas at The Willows--Vera had
+been without the Christmas spirit--and he felt it couldn't be celebrated
+lavishly enough. Two where there had in previous years been one,--that
+was the turkeys; four where there had been two,---that was the plum
+puddings. He doubled everything. Doubling seemed the proper, even the
+symbolic expression of his feelings, for wasn't he soon going to be
+doubled himself? And how sweetly.
+
+Then suddenly, having finished his preparations and proceeding, the
+time being ripe, to the question of the day of arrival, he found
+himself up against opposition. Miss Entwhistle wouldn't go to The
+Willows--incredible, impossible, and insufferable,--while Lucy, instead
+of instantly insisting and joining with him in a compelling majority,
+sat as quiet as a mouse.
+
+'But Lucy----' Wemyss having stared speechless at her aunt, turned to
+her. 'But of course we must spend Christmas together.'
+
+'Oh yes,' said Lucy, leaning forward, 'of course----'
+
+'But of course you must come down. Why, any other arrangement is
+unthinkable. My house is in the country, which is the proper place for
+Christmas, and it's your Everard's house, and you haven't seen it
+yet--why, I would have taken you down long ago, but I've been saving up
+for this.'
+
+'We hoped,' said Miss Entwhistle, 'you would join us here.'
+
+'Here! But there isn't room to swing a turkey here. I've ordered two,
+and each of them is twice too big to get through your front door.'
+
+'Oh, Everard--have you actually ordered turkeys?' said Lucy.
+
+She wanted to laugh, but she also wanted to cry. His simplicity was too
+wonderful. In her eyes it set him apart from criticism and made him
+sacred, like the nimbus about the head of a saint.
+
+That he should have been secretly busy making preparations, buying
+turkeys, planning a surprise, when all this time she had been supposing
+that why he never mentioned The Willows was because he shrank both for
+himself and for her from the house of his tragedy! There had never been
+any talk of showing it to her, as there had about the house in Lancaster
+Gate, and she had imagined he would never go near it again and was
+probably quietly getting rid of it. He would want to get rid of it, of
+course,--that house of unbearable memories. To the other one, the house
+in Lancaster Gate, he had insisted on taking them to tea, and in spite
+of a great desire not to go, plainly visible on her aunt's face and felt
+too by herself, it had seemed after all a natural and more or less
+inevitable thing, and they had gone. At least that poor Vera had only
+lived there, and not died there. It was a gloomy house, and Lucy had
+wanted him to give it up and start life with her in a place without
+associations, but he had been so much astonished at the idea--'Why,' he
+had cried, 'it was my father's house and I was born in it!'--that she
+couldn't help laughing at his dismay, and was ashamed of herself for
+having thought of uprooting him. Besides, she hadn't known he had been
+born in it.
+
+The Willows, however, was different. Of that he never spoke, and Lucy
+had been sure of the pitiful, the delicate reason. Now it appeared that
+all this time he had just been saving it up as a Christmas treat.
+
+'Oh, Everard----!' she said, with a gasp. She hadn't reckoned with The
+Willows. That The Willows should still be in Everard's life, and
+actively so, not just lingering on while house agents were disposing of
+it, but visited and evidently prized, came upon her as an immense shock.
+
+'I think we can achieve a happy little Christmas for you here,' said her
+aunt, smiling the smile she smiled when she found difficulty in smiling.
+'Of course you and Lucy would want to be together. I ought to have told
+you earlier that we were counting on you, but somehow Christmas comes on
+one so unexpectedly.'
+
+'Perhaps you'll tell me why you won't come to The Willows,' said Wemyss,
+holding on to himself as she used to make him hold on to himself in
+Cornwall. 'You realise, of course, that if you persist you spoil both
+Lucy's and my Christmas.'
+
+'Ah, but you mustn't put it that way,' said Miss Entwhistle, gentle but
+determined. 'I promise you that you and Lucy shall be very happy here.'
+
+'You haven't answered my question,' said Wemyss, slowly filling his
+pipe.
+
+'I don't think I'm going to,' said Miss Entwhistle, suddenly flaring up.
+She hadn't flared up since she was ten, and was instantly ashamed of
+herself, but there was something about Mr. Wemyss----
+
+'I think,' she said, getting up and speaking very gently, 'you'll like
+to be alone together now.' And she crossed to the door.
+
+There she wavered, and turning round said more gently still, even
+penitentially, 'If Lucy wishes to go to The Willows I'll--I'll accept
+your kind invitation and take her. I leave it to her.'
+
+Then she went out.
+
+'That's all right then,' said Wemyss with a great sigh of relief,
+smiling broadly at Lucy. 'Come here, little love,--come to your Everard,
+and we'll fix it all up. Lord, what a kill-joy that woman is!'
+
+And he put out his arms and drew her to him.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+But Christmas was spent after all at Eaton Terrace, and they lived on
+Wemyss's turkeys and plum puddings for a fortnight.
+
+It was not a very successful Christmas, because Wemyss was so profoundly
+disappointed, and Miss Entwhistle had the apologeticness of those who
+try to make up for having got their own way, and Lucy, who had shrunk
+from The Willows far more than her aunt, wished many times before it was
+over that they had after all gone there. It would have been much simpler
+in the long run, and much less painful than having to look on at Everard
+being disappointed; but at the time, and taken by surprise, she had felt
+that she couldn't have borne festivities, and still less could she have
+borne seeing Everard bearing festivities in that house.
+
+'This is morbid,' he said, when in answer to his questioning she at last
+told him it was poor Vera's dreadful death there that made her feel she
+couldn't go; and he explained, holding her in his arms, how foolish it
+was to be morbid, and how his little girl, who was marrying a healthy,
+sensible man who, God knew, had had to fight hard enough to keep so--she
+pressed closer--and yet had succeeded, must be healthily sensible too.
+Otherwise, if she couldn't do this and couldn't do that because it
+reminded her of something sad, and couldn't go here and couldn't go
+there because of somebody's having died, he was afraid she would make
+both herself and him very unhappy.
+
+'Oh, Everard----' said Lucy at that, holding him tight, the thought of
+making him unhappy, him, her own beloved who had been through such
+terrible unhappiness already, giving her heart a stab.
+
+His little girl must know, he continued, speaking with the grave voice
+that was natural to him when he was serious, the voice not of the
+playmate but of the man she adored, the man she was in love with, in
+whose hands she could safely leave her earthly concerns,--his little
+girl must know that somebody had died everywhere. There wasn't a spot,
+there wasn't a house, except quite new ones----
+
+'Oh yes, I know--but----' Lucy tried to interrupt.
+
+And The Willows was his home, the home he had looked forward to and
+worked for and had at last been able to afford to rent on a long lease,
+a lease so long that it made it practically his very own, and he had
+spent the last ten years developing and improving it, and there wasn't a
+brick or a tree in it in which he didn't take an interest, really an
+almost personal interest, and his one thought all these months had been
+the day when he would show it to her, to its dear future mistress.
+
+'Oh, Everard--yes--you shall--I want to----' said Lucy incoherently, her
+cheek against his, 'only not yet--not festivities--please--I won't be so
+morbid--I promise not to be morbid--but--please----'
+
+And just when she was wavering, just when she was going to give in, not
+because of his reasoning, for her instincts were stronger than his
+reasoning, but because she couldn't bear his disappointment, Miss
+Entwhistle, sure now of Lucy's dread of Christmas at The Willows,
+suddenly turned firm again and announced that they would spend it in
+Eaton Terrace.
+
+So Wemyss was forced to submit. The sensation was so new to him that he
+couldn't get over it. Once it was certain that his Christmas was, as he
+insisted, spoilt, he left off talking about it and went to the other
+extreme and was very quiet. That his little love should be so much under
+the influence of her aunt saddened him, he told her. Lucy tried to bring
+gaiety into this attitude by pointing out the proof she was giving him
+of how very submissive she was to the person she happened to live
+with,--'And presently all my submissiveness will be concentrated on
+you,' she said gaily.
+
+But he wouldn't be gay. He shook his head in silence and filled his
+pipe. He was too deeply disappointed to be able to cheer up. And the
+expression 'happen to live with,' jarred a little. There was an airy
+carelessness about the phrase. One didn't happen to live with one's
+husband; yet that had been the implication.
+
+Every year in April Wemyss had a birthday; that is, unlike most people
+of his age, he regularly celebrated it. Christmas and his birthday were
+the festivals of the year for Him, and were always spent at The Willows.
+He regarded his birthday, which was on the 4th of April, as the first
+day of spring, defying the calendar, and was accustomed to find certain
+yellow flowers in blossom down by the river on that date supporting his
+contention. If these flowers came out before his birthday he took no
+notice of them, treating them as non-existent, nor did he ever notice
+them afterwards, for he did not easily notice flowers; but his gardener
+had standing orders to have a bunch of them on the table that one
+morning in the year to welcome him with their bright shiny faces when he
+came down to his birthday breakfast, and coming in and seeing them he
+said, 'My birthday and Spring's'; whereupon his wife--up to now it had
+been Vera, but from now it would be Lucy--kissed him and wished him many
+happy returns. This was the ritual; and when one year of abnormal cold
+the yellow flowers weren't there at breakfast, because neither by the
+river's edge nor in the most sheltered of the swamps had the
+increasingly frantic gardener been able to find them, the entire
+birthday was dislocated. He couldn't say on entering the room and
+beholding them, 'My birthday and Spring's,' because he didn't behold
+them; and his wife--that year Vera--couldn't kiss him and wish him many
+happy returns because she hadn't the cue. She was so much used to the
+cue that not having it made her forget her part,--forget, indeed, his
+birthday altogether; and consequently it was a day of the extremest
+spiritual chill and dinginess, matching the weather without. Wemyss had
+been terribly hurt. He hoped never to spend another birthday like it.
+Nor did he, for Vera remembered it after that.
+
+Birthdays being so important to him, he naturally reflected after Miss
+Entwhistle had spoilt his Christmas that she would spoil his birthday
+too if he let her. Well, he wasn't going to let her. Not twice would he
+be caught like that; not twice would he be caught in a position of
+helplessness on his side and power on hers. The way to avoid it was very
+simple: he would marry Lucy in time for his birthday. Why should they
+wait any longer? Why stick to that absurd convention of the widower's
+year? No sensible man minded what people thought. And who were the
+people? Surely one didn't mind the opinions of those shabby weeds he had
+met on the two Thursday evenings at Lucy's aunt's. The little they had
+said had been so thoroughly unsound and muddled and yet dangerous, that
+if they one and all emigrated to-morrow England would only be the
+better. After meeting them he had said to Lucy, who had listened in some
+wonder at this new light thrown on her father's friends, that they were
+the very stuff of which successful segregation was made. In an island by
+themselves, he told her, they would be quite happy undermining each
+other's backbones, and the backbone of England, which consisted of plain
+unspoilt patriots, would be let alone. They, certainly, didn't matter;
+while as for his own friends, those friends who had behaved badly to him
+on Vera's death, not only didn't he care twopence for their criticisms
+but he could hardly wait for the moment when he would confound them by
+producing for their inspection this sweetest of little girls, so young,
+so devoted to him, Lucy his wife.
+
+He accordingly proceeded to make all the necessary arrangements for
+being married in March, for going for a trip to Paris, and for returning
+to The Willows for the final few days of his honeymoon on the very day
+of his birthday. What a celebration that would be! Wemyss, thinking of
+it, shut his eyes so as to dwell upon it undisturbed. Never would he
+have had a birthday like this next one. He might really quite fairly
+call it his First, for he would be beginning life all over again, and
+entering on years that would indeed be truthfully described as tender.
+
+So much was it his habit to make plans privately and not mention them
+till they were complete, that he found it difficult to tell Lucy of this
+one in spite of the important part she was to play in it. But, after
+all, some preparing would, he admitted to himself, be necessary even for
+the secret marriage he had decided on at a registrar's office. She would
+have to pack a bag; she would have to leave her belongings in order.
+Also he might perhaps have to use persuasion. He knew his little girl
+well enough to be sure she would relinquish church and white satin
+without a murmur at his request, but she might want to tell her aunt of
+the marriage's imminence, and then the aunt would, to a dead certainty,
+obstruct, and either induce her to wait till the year was out, or, if
+Lucy refused to do this, make her miserable with doubts as to whether
+she had been right to follow her lover's wishes. Fancy making a girl
+miserable because she followed her lover's wishes! What a woman, thought
+Wemyss, filling his pipe. In his eyes Miss Entwhistle had swollen since
+her conduct at Christmas to the bulk of a monster.
+
+Having completed his preparations, and fixed his wedding day for the
+first Saturday in March, Wemyss thought it time he told Lucy; so he did,
+though not without a slight fear at the end that she might make
+difficulties.
+
+'My little love isn't going to do anything that spoils her Everard's
+plans after all the trouble he has taken?' he said, seeing that with her
+mouth slightly open she gazed at him in an obvious astonishment and
+didn't say a word.
+
+He then proceeded to shut the eyes that were gazing up into his, and the
+surprised parted lips, with kisses, for he had discovered that gentle,
+lingering kisses hushed Lucy quiet when she was inclined to say,
+'But----' and brought her back quicker than anything to the mood of
+tender, half-asleep acquiescence in which, as she lay in his arms, he
+most loved her; then indeed she was his baby, the object of the
+passionate protectiveness he felt he was naturally filled with, but for
+the exercise of which circumstances up to now had given him no scope.
+You couldn't passionately protect Vera. She was always in another room.
+
+Lucy, however, did say, 'But----' when she recovered from her first
+surprise, and did presently--directly, that is, he left off kissing her
+and she could speak--make difficulties. Her aunt; the secrecy; why
+secrecy; why not wait; it was so necessary under the circumstances to
+wait.
+
+And then he explained about his birthday.
+
+At that she gazed at him again with a look of wonder in her eyes, and
+after a moment began to laugh. She laughed a great deal, and with her
+arm tight round his neck, but her eyes were wet. 'Oh, Everard,' she
+said, her cheek against his, 'do you think we're really old enough to
+marry?'
+
+This time, however, he got his way. Lucy found she couldn't bring
+herself to spoil his plans a second time; the spectacle of his prolonged
+silent disappointment at Christmas was still too vividly before her. Nor
+did she feel she could tell her aunt. She hadn't the courage to face her
+aunt's expostulations and final distressed giving in. Her aunt, who
+loomed so enormous in Wemyss's eyes, seemed to Lucy to be only half the
+size she used to be. She seemed to have been worried small by her
+position, like a bone among contending dogs, in the middle of different
+indignations. What would be the effect on her of this final blow? The
+thought of it haunted Lucy and spoilt all the last days before her
+marriage, days which she otherwise would have loved, because she very
+quickly became infected by the boyish delight and excitement over their
+secret that made Wemyss hardly able to keep still in his chair. He
+didn't keep still in it. Once at least he got up and did some slow steps
+about the room, moving with an apparent solemnity because of not being
+used to such steps, which he informed her presently were a dance. Till
+he told her this she watched him too much surprised to say anything. So
+did penguins dance in pictures. She couldn't think what was the matter
+with him. When he had done, and told her, breathing a little hard, that
+it was a dance symbolic of married happiness, she laughed and laughed,
+and flew to hug him.
+
+'Baby, oh, baby!' she said, rubbing her cheek up and down his coat.
+
+'Who's another baby?' he asked, breathless but beaming.
+
+Such was their conversation.
+
+But poor Aunt Dot....
+
+Lucy couldn't bear to think of poor little kind Aunt Dot. She had been
+so wonderful, so patient, and she would be deeply horrified by a runaway
+marriage. Never, never would she understand the reason for it. She
+didn't a bit understand Everard, didn't begin to understand him, and
+that his birthday should be a reason for breaking what she would regard
+as the common decencies would of course only seem to her too childish to
+be even discussed. Lucy was afraid Aunt Dot was going to be very much
+upset, poor darling little Aunt Dot. Conscience-stricken, she couldn't
+do enough for Aunt Dot now that the secret date was fixed. She watched
+for every possible want during their times alone, flew to fetch things,
+darted at dropped handkerchiefs, kissed her not only at bedtime and in
+the morning but whenever there was the least excuse and with the utmost
+tenderness; and every kiss and every look seemed to say, 'Forgive me.'
+
+'Are they going to run away?' wondered Miss Entwhistle presently.
+
+Lucy would have been immensely taken aback, and perhaps, such is one's
+perversity, even hurt, if she could have seen the ray of hope which at
+this thought lit her Aunt Dot's exhausted mind; for Miss Entwhistle's
+life, which had been a particularly ordered and calm one up to the day
+when Wemyss first called at Eaton Terrace, had since then been nothing
+but just confused clamour. Everybody was displeased with her, and each
+for directly opposite reasons. She had fallen on evil days, and they had
+by February been going on so long that she felt worn out. Wemyss, she
+was quite aware, disliked her heartily; her Jim was dead; Lucy, her one
+living relation, so tenderly loved, was every day disappearing further
+before her very eyes into Wemyss's personality, into what she sometimes
+was betrayed by fatigue and impatience into calling to herself the
+Wemyss maw; and her little house, which had always been so placid, had
+become, she wearily felt, the cockpit of London. She used to crawl back
+to it with footsteps that lagged more and more the nearer she got, after
+her enforced prolonged daily outings--enforced and prolonged because the
+house couldn't possibly hold both herself and Wemyss except for the
+briefest moments,--and drearily wonder what letters she would find from
+Jim's friends scolding her, and what fresh arrangements in the way of
+tiring motor excursions, or invitations to tea at that dreadful house in
+Lancaster Gate, would be sprung upon her. Did all engagements pursue
+such a turbulent course? she asked herself,--she had given up asking the
+oracle of Chesham Street anything because of her disconcerting answers.
+How glad she was she had never been engaged; how glad she was she had
+refused the offers she had had when she was a girl. Quite recently she
+had met one of those would-be husbands in an omnibus, and how glad she
+was when she looked at him that she had refused him. People don't keep
+well, mused Miss Entwhistle. If Lucy would only refuse Wemyss now, how
+glad she would be that she had when she met him in ten years' time in an
+omnibus.
+
+But these, of course, were merely the reflections of a tired-out
+spinster, and she still had enough spirit to laugh at them to herself.
+After all, whatever she might feel about Wemyss Lucy adored him, and
+when anybody adores anybody as much as that, Miss Entwhistle thought,
+the only thing to do is to marry and have done with it. No; that was
+cynical. She meant, marry and not have done with it. Ah, if only the
+child were marrying that nice young Teddy Trevor, her own age and so
+devoted, and with every window-sill throughout his house in Chelsea the
+proper height....
+
+Miss Entwhistle was very unhappy all this time, besides having feet that
+continually ached. Though she dreaded the marriage, yet she couldn't
+help feeling that it would be delicious to be able once more to sit
+down. How enchanting to sit quietly in her own empty drawing-room, and
+not to have to walk about London any more. How enchanting not to make
+any further attempts to persuade herself that she enjoyed Battersea
+Park, and liked the Embankment, and was entertained by Westminster
+Abbey. What she wanted with an increasing longing that amounted at last
+to desperation as the winter dragged on, was her own chair by the fire
+and an occasional middle-aged crony to tea. She had reached the time of
+life when one likes sitting down. Also she had definitely got to the
+period of cronies. One's contemporaries--people who had worn the same
+kinds of clothes as oneself in girlhood, who remembered bishop's sleeves
+and could laugh with one about bustles--how very much one longed for
+one's contemporaries.
+
+When, then, Lucy's behaviour suddenly became so markedly attentive and
+so very tender, when she caught her looking at her with wistful
+affection and flushing on being caught, when her good-nights and
+good-mornings were many kisses instead of one, and she kept on jumping
+up and bringing her teaspoons she hadn't asked for and sugar she didn't
+want, Miss Entwhistle began to revive.
+
+'Is it possible they're going to run away?' she wondered; and so much
+reduced was she that she very nearly hoped so.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Lucy had meant to do exactly as Wemyss said and keep her marriage
+secret, creeping out of the house quietly, going off with him abroad
+after the registrar had bound them together, and telegraphing or writing
+to her aunt from some safe distant place _en route_ like Boulogne; but
+on saying good-night the evening before the wedding day, to her very
+great consternation her aunt, whom she was in the act of kissing,
+suddenly pushed her gently a little away, looked at her a moment, and
+then holding her by both arms said with conviction, 'It's to-morrow.'
+
+Lucy could only stare. She stared idiotically, open-mouthed, her face
+scarlet. She looked and felt both foolish and frightened. Aunt Dot was
+uncanny. If she had discovered, how had she discovered? And what was she
+going to do? But had she discovered, or was it just something she
+chanced to remember, some engagement Lucy had naturally forgotten, or
+perhaps only somebody coming to tea?
+
+She clutched at this straw. 'What is to-morrow?' she stammered, scarlet
+with fright and guilt.
+
+And her aunt made herself perfectly clear by replying, 'Your wedding.'
+
+Then Lucy fell on her neck and cried and told her everything, and her
+wonderful, unexpected, uncanny, adorable little aunt, instead of being
+upset and making her feel too wicked and ungrateful to live, was full of
+sympathy and understanding. They sobbed together, sitting on the sofa
+locked in each other's arms, but it was a sweet sobbing, for they both
+felt at this moment how much they loved each other. Miss Entwhistle
+wished she had never had a single critical impatient thought of the man
+this darling little child so deeply loved, and Lucy wished she had never
+had a single secret from this darling little aunt Everard so blindly
+didn't love. Dear, dear little Aunt Dot. Lucy's heart was big with
+gratitude and tenderness and pity,--pity because she herself was so
+gloriously happy and surrounded by love, and Aunt Dot's life seemed,
+compared to hers, so empty, so solitary, and going to be like that till
+the end of her days; and Miss Entwhistle's heart was big with yearning
+over this lamb of Jim's who was giving herself with such fearlessness,
+all lit up by radiant love, into the hands of a strange husband.
+Presently, of course, he wouldn't be a strange husband, he would be a
+familiar husband; but would he be any the better for that, she wondered?
+They sobbed, and kissed, and sobbed again, each keeping half her
+thoughts to herself.
+
+This is how it was that Miss Entwhistle walked into the registrar's
+office with Lucy next morning and was one of the witnesses of the
+marriage.
+
+Wemyss had a very bad moment when he saw her come in. His heart gave a
+great thump, such as it had never done in his life before, for he
+thought there was to be a hitch and that at the very last minute he was
+somehow not going to get his Lucy. Then he looked at Lucy and was
+reassured. Her face was like the morning of a perfect day in its
+cloudlessness, her Love-in-a-Mist eyes were dewy with tenderness as they
+rested on him, and her mouth was twisted up by happiness into the
+sweetest, funniest little crooked smile. If only she would take off her
+hat, thought Wemyss, bursting with pride, so that the registrar could
+see how young she looked with her short hair,--why, perhaps the old boy
+might think she was too young to be married and start asking searching
+questions! What fun that would be.
+
+He himself produced the effect on Miss Entwhistle, as he stood next to
+Lucy being married, of an enormous schoolboy who has just won some
+silver cup or other for his House after immense exertions. He had
+exactly that glowing face of suppressed triumph and pride; he was red
+with delighted achievement.
+
+'Put the ring on your wife's finger,' ordered the registrar when, having
+got through the first part of the ceremony, Wemyss, busy beaming down at
+Lucy, forgot there was anything more to do. And Lucy stuck up her hand
+with all the fingers spread out and stiff, and her face beamed too with
+happiness at the words, 'Your wife.'
+
+'"Nothing is here for tears,"' quoted Miss Entwhistle to herself,
+watching the blissful absorption with which they were both engaged in
+getting the ring successfully over the knuckle of the proper finger. 'He
+really _is_ a--a dear. Yes. Of course. But how queer life is. I wonder
+what he was doing this day last year, he and that poor other wife of
+his.'
+
+When it was over and they were outside on the steps, with the taxi
+Wemyss had come in waiting to take them to the station, Miss Entwhistle
+realised that here was the place and moment of good-bye, and that not
+only could she go no further with Lucy but that from now on she could do
+nothing more for her. Except love her. Except listen to her. Ah, she
+would always be there to love and listen to her; but happiest of all it
+would be for the little thing if she never, from her, were to need
+either of those services.
+
+At the last moment she put her hand impulsively on Wemyss's breast and
+looked up into his triumphant, flushed face and said, 'Be kind to her.'
+
+'Oh, Aunt Dot!' laughed Lucy, turning to hug her once more.
+
+'Oh, Aunt Dot!' laughed Wemyss, vigorously shaking her hand.
+
+They went down the steps, leaving her standing alone on the top, and she
+watched the departing taxi with the two heads bobbing up and down at the
+window and the four hands waving good-byes. That taxi window could never
+have framed in so much triumph, so much radiance before. Well, well,
+thought Aunt Dot, going down in her turn when the last glimpse of them
+had disappeared, and walking slowly homeward; and she added, after a
+space of further reflection, 'He really _is_ a--a dear.'
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Marriage, Lucy found, was different from what she had supposed; Everard
+was different; everything was different. For one thing she was always
+sleepy. For another she was never alone. She hadn't realised how
+completely she would never be alone, or, if alone, not sure for one
+minute to the other of going on being alone. Always in her life there
+had been intervals during which she recuperated in solitude from any
+strain; now there were none. Always there had been places she could go
+to and rest in quietly, safe from interruption; now there were none. The
+very sight of their room at the hotels they stayed at, with Wemyss's
+suitcases and clothes piled on the chairs, and the table covered with
+his brushes and shaving things, for he wouldn't have a dressing-room,
+being too natural and wholesome, he explained, to want anything separate
+from his own woman--the very sight of this room fatigued her. After a
+day of churches, pictures and restaurants--he was a most conscientious
+sightseer, besides being greatly interested in his meals--to come back
+to this room wasn't rest but further fatigue. Wemyss, who was never
+tired and slept wonderfully--it was the soundness of his sleep that kept
+her awake, because she wasn't used to hearing sound sleep so
+close--would fling himself into the one easy-chair and pull her on to
+his knee, and having kissed her a great many times he would ruffle her
+hair, and then when it was all on ends like a boy's coming out of a
+bath, look at her with the pride of possession and say, 'There's a wife
+for a respectable British business man to have! Mrs. Wemyss, aren't you
+ashamed of yourself?' And then there would be more kissing,--jovial,
+gluttonous kisses, that made her skin rough and chapped.
+
+'Baby,' she would say, feebly struggling, and smiling a little wearily.
+
+Yes, he was a baby, a dear, high-spirited baby, but a baby now at very
+close quarters and one that went on all the time. You couldn't put him
+in a cot and give him a bottle and say, 'There now,' and then sit down
+quietly to a little sewing; you didn't have Sundays out; you were never,
+day or night, an instant off duty. Lucy couldn't count the number of
+times a day she had to answer the question, 'Who's my own little wife?'
+At first she answered it with laughing ecstasy, running into his
+outstretched arms, but very soon that fatal sleepiness set in and
+remained with her for the whole of her honeymoon, and she really felt
+too tired sometimes to get the ecstasy she quickly got to know was
+expected of her into her voice. She loved him, she was indeed his own
+little wife, but constantly to answer this and questions like it
+satisfactorily was a great exertion. Yet if there was a shadow of
+hesitation before she answered, a hair's-breadth of delay owing to her
+thoughts having momentarily wandered, Wemyss was upset, and she had to
+spend quite a long time reassuring him with the fondest whispers and
+caresses. Her thoughts mustn't wander, she had discovered; her thoughts
+were to be his as well as all the rest of her. Was ever a girl so much
+loved? she asked herself, astonished and proud; but, on the other hand,
+she was dreadfully sleepy.
+
+Any thinking she did had to be done at night, when she lay awake because
+of the immense emphasis with which Wemyss slept, and she hadn't been
+married a week before she was reflecting what a bad arrangement it was,
+the way ecstasy seemed to have no staying power. Also it oughtn't to
+begin, she considered, at its topmost height and accordingly not be able
+to move except downwards. If one could only start modestly in marriage
+with very little of it and work steadily upwards, taking one's time,
+knowing there was more and more to come, it would be much better she
+thought. No doubt it would go on longer if one slept better and hadn't,
+consequently, got headaches. Everard's ecstasy went on. Perhaps by
+ecstasy she really meant high spirits, and Everard was beside himself
+with high spirits.
+
+Wemyss was indeed the typical bridegroom of the Psalms, issuing forth
+rejoicing from his chamber. Lucy wished she could issue forth from it
+rejoicing too. She was vexed with herself for being so stupidly sleepy,
+for not being able to get used to the noise beside her at night and go
+to sleep as naturally as she did in Eaton Terrace, in spite of the horns
+of taxis. It wasn't fair to Everard, she felt, not to find a wife in the
+morning matching him in spirits. Perhaps, however, this was a condition
+peculiar to honeymoons, and marriage, once the honeymoon was over, would
+be a more tranquil state. Things would settle down when they were back
+in England, to a different, more separated life in which there would be
+time to rest, time to think; time to remember, while he was away at his
+office, how deeply she loved him. And surely she would learn to sleep;
+and once she slept properly she would be able to answer his loving
+questions throughout the day with more real _elan_.
+
+But,--there in England waiting for her, inevitable, no longer to be put
+off or avoided, was The Willows. Whenever her thoughts reached that
+house they gave a little jump and tried to slink away. She was ashamed
+of herself, it was ridiculous, and Everard's attitude was plainly the
+sensible one, and if he could adopt it surely she, who hadn't gone
+through that terrible afternoon last July, could; yet she failed to see
+herself in The Willows, she failed altogether to imagine it. How, for
+instance, was she going to sit on that terrace,--'We always have tea in
+fine weather on the terrace,' Wemyss had casually remarked, apparently
+quite untouched by the least memory--how was she going to have tea on
+the very flags perhaps where.... Her thoughts slunk away; but not before
+one of them had sent a curdling whisper through her mind, '_The tea
+would taste of blood_.'
+
+Well, this was sleeplessness. She never in her life had had that sort of
+absurd thought. It was just that she didn't sleep, and so her brain was
+relaxed and let the reins of her thinking go slack. The day her father
+died, it's true, when it began to be evening and she was afraid of the
+night alone with him in his mysterious indifference, she had begun
+thinking absurdly, but Everard had come and saved her. He could save her
+from this too if she could tell him; only she couldn't tell him. How
+could she spoil his joy in his home? It was the thing he loved next best
+to her.
+
+As the honeymoon went on and Wemyss's ecstasies a little subsided, as he
+began to tire of so many trains--after Paris they did the chateaux
+country--and hotels and waiters and taxis and restaurants, and the
+cooking which he had at first enjoyed now only increased his longing at
+every meal for a plain English steak and boiled potatoes, he talked more
+and more of The Willows. With almost the same eagerness as that which
+had so much enchanted and moved her before their marriage when he talked
+of their wedding day, he now talked of The Willows and the day when he
+would show it to her. He counted the days now to that day. The 4th of
+April; his birthday; on that happy day he would lead his little wife
+into the home he loved. How could she, when he talked like that, do
+anything but pretend enthusiasm and looking forward? He had apparently
+entirely forgotten what she had told him about her reluctance to go
+there at Christmas. She was astonished that, when the first bliss of
+being married to her had worn off and his thoughts were free for this
+other thing he so much loved, his home, he didn't approach it with more
+care for what he must know was her feeling about it. She was still more
+astonished when she realised that he had entirely forgotten her feeling
+about it. It would be, she felt, impossible to shadow his happiness at
+the prospect of showing her his home by any reminder of her reluctance.
+Besides, she was certainly going to have to live at The Willows, so what
+was the use of talking?
+
+'I suppose,' she did say hesitatingly one day when he was describing it
+to her for the hundredth time, for it was his habit to describe the same
+thing often, 'you've changed your room----?'
+
+They were sitting at the moment, resting after the climb up, on one of
+the terraces of the Chateau of Amboise, with a view across the Loire of
+an immense horizon, and Wemyss had been comparing it, to its
+disadvantage, when he recovered his breath, with the view from his
+bedroom window at The Willows. It wasn't very nice weather, and they
+both were cold and tired, and it was still only eleven o'clock in the
+morning.
+
+'Change my room? What room?' he asked.
+
+'Your--the room you and--the room you slept in.'
+
+'My bedroom? I should think not. It's the best room in the house. Why do
+you think I've changed it?' And he looked at her with a surprised face.
+
+'Oh, I don't know,' said Lucy, taking refuge in stroking his hand. 'I
+only thought----'
+
+An inkling of what was in her mind penetrated into his, and his voice
+went grave.
+
+'You mustn't think,' he said. 'You mustn't be morbid. Now Lucy, I can't
+have that. It will spoil everything if you let yourself be morbid. And
+you promised me before our marriage you wouldn't be. Have you
+forgotten?'
+
+He turned to her and took her face in both his hands and searched her
+eyes with his own very solemn ones, while the woman who was conducting
+them over the castle went to the low parapet, and stood with her back to
+them studying the view and yawning.
+
+'Oh, Everard--of course I haven't forgotten. I've not forgotten anything
+I promised you, and never will. But--have I got to go into that bedroom
+too?'
+
+He was really astonished. 'Have you got to go into that bedroom too?' he
+repeated, staring at the face enclosed in his two big hands. It looked
+extraordinarily pretty like that, like a small flower in its delicate
+whiteness next to his discoloured, middle-aged hands, and her mouth
+since her marriage seemed to have become an even more vivid red than it
+used to be, and her eyes were young enough to be made more beautiful
+instead of less by the languor of want of sleep. 'Well, I should think
+so. Aren't you my wife?'
+
+'Yes,' said Lucy. 'But----'
+
+'Now, Lucy, I'll have no buts,' he said, with his most serious air,
+kissing her on the cheek, she had discovered that just that kind of kiss
+was a rebuke. 'Those buts of yours butt in----'
+
+He stopped, struck by what he had said.
+
+'I think that was rather amusing--don't you?' he asked, suddenly
+smiling.
+
+'Oh yes--very,' said Lucy eagerly, smiling too, delighted that he should
+switch off from solemnity.
+
+He kissed her again,--this time a real kiss, on her funny, charming
+mouth.
+
+'I suppose you'll admit,' he said, laughing and squeezing up her face
+into a quaint crumpled shape, 'that either you're my wife or not my
+wife, and that if you're my wife----'
+
+'Oh, I'm _that_ all right,' laughed Lucy.
+
+'Then you share my room. None of these damned new-fangled notions for
+me, young woman.'
+
+'Oh, but I didn't mean----'
+
+'What? Another but?' he exclaimed, pouncing down on to her mouth and
+stopping it with an enormous kiss.
+
+'_Monsieur et Madame se refroidiront_,' said the woman, turning round
+and drawing her shawl closer over her chest as a gust of chilly wind
+swept over the terrace.
+
+They were honeymooners, poor creatures, and therefore one had patience;
+but even honeymooners oughtn't to wish to embrace in a cold wind on an
+exposed terrace of a chateau round which they were being conducted by a
+woman who was in a hurry to return to the preparation of her Sunday
+dinner. For such purposes hotels were provided, and the shelter of a
+comfortable warm room. She had supposed them to be _pere et fille_ when
+first she admitted them, but was soon aware of their real relationship.
+'_Il doit etre bien riche_,' had been her conclusion.
+
+'Come along, come along,' said Wemyss, getting up quickly, for he too
+felt the gust of cold wind. 'Let's finish the chateau or we'll be late
+for lunch. I wish they hadn't preserved so many of these places--one
+would have been quite enough to show us the sort of thing.'
+
+'But we needn't go and look at them all,' said Lucy.
+
+'Oh yes we must. We've arranged to.'
+
+'But Everard----' began Lucy, following after him as he followed after
+the conductress, who had a way of darting out of sight round corners.
+
+'This woman's like a lizard,' panted Wemyss, arriving round a corner
+only to see her disappear through an arch. 'Won't we be happy when it's
+time to go back to England and not have to see any more sights.'
+
+'But why don't we go back now, if you feel like it?' asked Lucy,
+trotting after him as he on his big legs pursued the retreating
+conductress, and anxious to show him, by eagerness to go sooner to The
+Willows than was arranged, that she wasn't being morbid.
+
+'Why, you know we can't leave before the 3rd of April,' said Wemyss,
+over his shoulder. 'It's all settled.'
+
+'But can't it be unsettled?'
+
+'What, and upset all the plans, and arrive home before my birthday?' He
+stopped and turned round to stare at her. 'Really, my dear----' he said.
+
+She had discovered that my dear was a term of rebuke.
+
+'Oh yes--of course,' she said hastily, 'I forgot about your birthday.'
+
+At that Wemyss stared at her harder than ever; incredulously, in fact.
+Forgot about his birthday? _Lucy_ had forgotten? If it had been Vera,
+now--but Lucy? He was deeply hurt. He was so much hurt that he stood
+quite still, and the conductress was obliged, on discovering that she
+was no longer being followed, to wait once more for the honeymooners;
+which she did, clutching her shawl round her abundant French chest and
+shivering.
+
+What had she said, Lucy hurriedly asked herself, nipping over her last
+words in her mind, for she had learned by now what he looked like when
+he was hurt. Oh yes,--the birthday. How stupid of her. But it was
+because birthdays in her family were so unimportant, and nobody had
+minded whether they were remembered or not.
+
+'I didn't mean that,' she said earnestly, laying her hand on his breast.
+'Of course I hadn't forgotten anything so precious. It only had--well,
+you know what even the most wonderful things do sometimes--it--it had
+escaped my memory.'
+
+'Lucy! Escaped your memory? The day to which you owe your husband?'
+
+Wemyss said this with such an exaggerated solemnity, such an immense
+pomposity, that she thought he was in fun and hadn't really minded about
+the birthday at all; and, eager to meet every mood of his, she laughed.
+Relieved, she was so unfortunate as to laugh merrily.
+
+To her consternation, after a moment's further stare he turned his back
+on her without a word and walked on.
+
+Then she realised what she had done, that she had laughed--oh, how
+dreadful!--in the wrong place, and she ran after him and put her arm
+through his, and tried to lay her cheek against his sleeve, which was
+difficult because of the way their paces didn't match and also because
+he took no notice of her, and said, 'Baby--baby--were his dear feelings
+hurt, then?' and coaxed him.
+
+But he wouldn't be coaxed. She had wounded him too deeply,--laughing, he
+said to himself, at what was to him the most sacred thing in life, the
+fact that he was her husband, that she was his wife.
+
+'Oh, Everard,' she murmured at last, withdrawing her arm, giving up,
+'don't spoil our day.'
+
+Spoil their day? He? That finished it.
+
+He didn't speak to her again till night. Then, in bed, after she had
+cried bitterly for a long while, because she couldn't make out what
+really had happened, and she loved him so much, and wouldn't hurt him
+for the world, and was heart-broken because she had, and anyhow was
+tired out, he at last turned to her and took her to his arms again and
+forgave her.
+
+'I can't live,' sobbed Lucy, 'I can't live--if you don't go on loving
+me--if we don't understand----'
+
+'My little Love,' said Wemyss, melted by the way her small body was
+shaking in his arms, and rather frightened, too, at the excess of her
+woe. 'My little Love don't. You mustn't. Your Everard loves you, and you
+mustn't give way like this. You'll be ill. Think how miserable you'd
+make him then.'
+
+And in the dark he kissed away her tears, and held her close till her
+sobbing quieted down; and presently, held close like that, his kisses
+shutting her smarting eyes, she now the baby comforted and reassured,
+and he the soothing nurse, she fell asleep, and for the first time since
+her marriage slept all night.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Early in their engagement Wemyss had expounded his theory to Lucy that
+there should be the most perfect frankness between lovers, while as for
+husband and wife there oughtn't to be a corner anywhere about either of
+them, mind, body, or soul, which couldn't be revealed to the other one.
+
+'You can talk about everything to your Everard,' he assured her. 'Tell
+him your innermost thoughts, whatever they may be. You need no more be
+ashamed of telling him than of thinking them by yourself. He _is_ you.
+You and he are one in mind and soul now, and when he is your husband you
+and he will become perfect and complete by being one in body as well.
+Everard--Lucy. Lucy--Everard. We shan't know where one ends and the
+other begins. That, little Love, is real marriage. What do you think of
+it?'
+
+Lucy thought so highly of it that she had no words with which to express
+her admiration, and fell to kissing him instead. What ideal happiness,
+to be for ever removed from the fear of loneliness by the simple
+expedient of being doubled; and who so happy as herself to have found
+the exactly right person for this doubling, one she could so perfectly
+agree with and understand? She felt quite sorry she had nothing in her
+mind in the way of thoughts she was ashamed of to tell him then and
+there, but there wasn't a doubt, there wasn't a shred of anything a
+little wrong, not even an unworthy suspicion. Her mind was a chalice
+filled only with love, and so clear and bright was the love that even at
+the bottom, when she stirred it up to look, there wasn't a trace of
+sediment.
+
+But marriage--or was it sleeplessness?--completely changed this, and
+there were perfect crowds of thoughts in her mind that she was
+thoroughly ashamed of. Remembering his words, and whole-heartedly
+agreeing that to be able to tell each other everything, to have no
+concealments, was real marriage, the day after her wedding she first of
+all reminded him of what he had said, then plunged bravely into the
+announcement that she'd got a thought she was ashamed of.
+
+Wemyss pricked up his ears, thinking it was something interesting to do
+with sex, and waited with an amused, inquisitive smile. But Lucy in such
+matters was content to follow him, aware of her want of experience and
+of the abundance of his, and the thought that was worrying her only had
+to do with a waiter. A waiter, if you please.
+
+Wemyss's smile died away. He had had occasion to reprimand this waiter
+at lunch for gross negligence, and here was Lucy alleging he had done so
+without any reason that she could see, and anyhow roughly. Would he
+remove the feeling of discomfort she had at being forced to think her
+own heart's beloved, the kindest and gentlest of men, hadn't been kind
+and gentle but unjust, by explaining?
+
+Well, that was at the very beginning. She soon learned that a doubt in
+her mind was better kept there. If she brought it out to air it and
+dispel it by talking it over with him, all that happened was that he was
+hurt, and when he was hurt she instantly became perfectly miserable.
+Seeing, then, that this happened about small things, how impossible it
+was to talk with him of big things; of, especially, her immense doubt in
+regard to The Willows. For a long while she was sure he was bearing her
+feeling in mind, since it couldn't have changed since Christmas, and
+that when she arrived there she would find that he had had everything
+altered and all traces of Vera's life there removed. Then, when he began
+to talk about The Willows, she found that such an idea as alterations
+hadn't entered his head. She was to sleep in the very room that had been
+his and Vera's, in the very bed. And positively, so far was it from true
+that she could tell him every thought and talk everything over with him,
+when she discovered this she wasn't able to say more than that
+hesitating remark on the chateau terrace at Amboise about supposing he
+was going to change his bedroom.
+
+Yet The Willows haunted her, and what a comfort it would have been to
+tell him all she felt and let him help her to get rid of her growing
+obsession by laughing at her. What a comfort if, even if he had thought
+her too silly and morbid to be laughed at, he had indulged her and
+consented to alter those rooms. But one learns a lot on a honeymoon,
+Lucy reflected, and one of the things she had learned was that Wemyss's
+mind was always made up. There seemed to be no moment when it was in a
+condition of becoming, and she might have slipped in a suggestion or
+laid a wish before him; his plans were sprung upon her full fledged, and
+they were unalterable. Sometimes he said, 'Would you like----?' and if
+she didn't like, and answered truthfully, as she answered at first
+before she learned not to, there was trouble. Silent trouble. A retiring
+of Wemyss into a hurt aloofness, for his question was only decorative,
+and his little Love should instinctively, he considered, like what he
+liked; and there outside this aloofness, after efforts to get at him
+with fond and anxious questions, she sat like a beggar in patient
+distress, waiting for him to emerge and be kind to her.
+
+Of course as far as the minor wishes and preferences of every day went
+it was all quite easy, once she had grasped the right answer to the
+question, 'Would you like?' She instantly did like. 'Oh yes--_very_
+much!' she hastened to assure him; and then his face continued content
+and happy instead of clouding with aggrievement. But about the big
+things it wasn't easy, because of the difficulty of getting the right
+flavour of enthusiasm into her voice, and if she didn't get it in he
+would put his finger under her chin and turn her to the light and repeat
+the question in a solemn voice,--precursor, she had learned, of the
+beginning of the cloud on his face.
+
+How difficult it was sometimes. When he said to her, 'You'll like the
+view from your sitting-room at The Willows,' she naturally wanted to cry
+out that she wouldn't, and ask him how he could suppose she would like
+what was to her a view for ever associated with death? Why shouldn't she
+be able to cry out naturally if she wanted to, to talk to him frankly,
+to get his help to cure herself of what was so ridiculous by laughing at
+it with him? She couldn't laugh all alone, though she was always trying
+to; with him she could have, and so have become quite sensible. For he
+was so much bigger than she was, so wonderful in the way he had
+triumphed over diseased thinking, and his wholesomeness would spread
+over her too, a purging, disinfecting influence, if only he would let
+her talk, if only he would help her to laugh. Instead, she found herself
+hurriedly saying in a small, anxious voice, 'Oh yes--_very_ much!'
+
+'Is it possible,' she thought, 'that I am abject?'
+
+Yes, she was extremely abject, she reflected, lying awake at night
+considering her behaviour during the day. Love had made her so. Love did
+make one abject, for it was full of fear of hurting the beloved. The
+assertion of the Scriptures that perfect love casteth out fear only
+showed, seeing that her love for Everard was certainly perfect, how
+little the Scriptures really knew what they were talking about.
+
+Well, if she couldn't tell him the things she was feeling, why couldn't
+she get rid of the sorts of feelings she couldn't tell him, and just be
+wholesome? Why couldn't she be at least as wholesome about going to that
+house as Everard? If anybody was justified in shrinking from The Willows
+it was Everard, not herself. Sometimes Lucy would be sure that deep in
+his character there was a wonderful store of simple courage. He didn't
+speak of Vera's death, naturally he didn't wish to speak of that awful
+afternoon, but how often he must think of it, hiding his thoughts even
+from her, bearing them altogether alone. Sometimes she was sure of this,
+and sometimes she was equally sure of the very opposite. From the way he
+looked, the way he spoke, from those tiny indications that one somehow
+has noticed without knowing that one has noticed and that are so far
+more revealing and conclusive than any words, she sometimes was sure he
+really had forgotten. But this was too incredible. She couldn't believe
+it. What had perhaps happened, she thought, was that in self-defence,
+for the preservation of his peace, he had made up his mind never to
+think of Vera. Only by banishing her altogether from his mind would he
+be safe. Yet that couldn't be true either, for several times on the
+honeymoon he had begun talking of her, of things she had said, of things
+she had liked, and it was she, Lucy, who stopped him. She shrank from
+hearing anything about Vera. She especially shrank from hearing her
+mentioned casually. She was ready to brace herself to talk about her if
+it was to be a serious talk, because she wanted to help and comfort him
+whenever the remembrance of her death arose to torment him, but she
+couldn't bear to hear her mentioned casually. In a way she admired this
+casualness, because it was a proof of the supreme wholesomeness Everard
+had attained to by sheer courageous determination, but even so she
+couldn't help thinking that she would have preferred a little less of
+just this kind of wholesomeness in her beloved. She might be too morbid,
+but wasn't it possible to be too wholesome? Anyhow she shrank from the
+intrusion of Vera into her honeymoon. That, at least, ought to be kept
+free from her. Later on at The Willows....
+
+Lucy fought and fought against it, but always at the back of her mind
+was the thought, not looked at, slunk away from, but nevertheless fixed,
+that there at The Willows, waiting for her, was Vera.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Those who go to Strorley, and cross the bridge to the other side of the
+river, have only to follow the towpath for a little to come to The
+Willows. It can also be reached by road, through a white gate down a
+lane that grows more and more willowy as it gets nearer the river and
+the house, but is quite passable for carts and even for cars, except
+when there are floods. When there are floods this lane disappears, and
+when the floods have subsided it is black and oozing for a long time
+afterwards, with clouds of tiny flies dancing about in it if the weather
+is at all warm, and the shoes of those who walk stick in it and come
+off, and those who drive, especially if they drive a car, have trouble.
+But all is well once a second white gate is reached, on the other side
+of which is a gravel sweep, a variety of handsome shrubs, nicely kept
+lawns, and The Willows. There are no big trees in the garden of The
+Willows, because it was built in the middle of meadows where there
+weren't any, but all round the iron railings of the square garden--the
+house being the centre of the square--and concealing the wire netting
+which keeps the pasturing cows from thrusting their heads through and
+eating the shrubs, is a fringe of willows. Hence its name.
+
+'A house,' said Wemyss, explaining its name to Lucy on the morning of
+their arrival, 'should always be named after whatever most insistently
+catches the eye.'
+
+'Then oughtn't it to have been called The Cows?' asked Lucy; for the
+meadows round were strewn thickly as far as she could see with recumbent
+cows, and they caught her eye much more than the tossing bare willow
+branches.
+
+'No,' said Wemyss, annoyed. 'It ought not have been called The Cows.'
+
+'No--of course I didn't mean that,' she said hastily.
+
+Lucy was nervous, and said what first came into her head, and had been
+saying things of this nature the whole journey down. She didn't want to,
+she knew he didn't like it, but she couldn't stop.
+
+They had just arrived, and were standing on the front steps while the
+servants unloaded the fly that had brought them from the station, and
+Wemyss was pointing out what he wished her to look at and admire from
+that raised-up place before taking her indoors. Lucy was glad of any
+excuse that delayed going indoors, that kept her on the west side of the
+house, furthest away from the terrace and the library window. Indoors
+would be the rooms, the unaltered rooms, the library past whose
+window..., the sitting-room at the top of the house out of whose
+window..., the bedroom she was going to sleep in with the very bed....
+It was too miserably absurd, too unbalanced of her for anything but
+shame and self-contempt, how she couldn't get away from the feeling that
+indoors waiting for her would be Vera.
+
+It was a grey, windy morning, with low clouds scurrying across the
+meadows. The house was raised well above flood level, and standing on
+the top step she could see how far the meadows stretched beyond the
+swaying willow hedge. Grey sky, grey water, green fields,--it was all
+grey and green except the house, which was red brick with handsome stone
+facings, and made, in its exposed position unhidden by any trees, a
+great splotch of vivid red in the landscape.
+
+'Like blood,' said Lucy to herself; and was immediately ashamed.
+
+'Oh, how bracing!' she cried, spreading out her arms and letting the
+wind blow her serge wrap out behind her like a flag. It whipped her
+skirt round her body, showing its slender pretty lines, and the
+parlourmaid, going in and out with the luggage, looked curiously at this
+small juvenile new mistress. 'Oh, I love this wind--don't take me
+indoors yet----'
+
+Wemyss was pleased that she should like the wind, for was it not by the
+time it reached his house part, too, of his property? His face, which
+had clouded a little because of The Cows, cleared again.
+
+But she didn't really like the wind at all, she never had liked anything
+that blustered and was cold, and if she hadn't been nervous the last
+thing she would have done was to stand there letting it blow her to
+pieces.
+
+'And what a lot of laurels!' she exclaimed, holding on her hat with one
+hand and with the other pointing to a corner filled with these shrubs.
+
+'Yes. I'll take you round the garden after lunch,' said Wemyss. 'We'll
+go in now.'
+
+'And--and laurustinus. I love laurustinus----'
+
+'Yes. Vera planted that. It has done very well. Come in now----'
+
+'And--look, what are those bare things without any leaves yet?'
+
+'I'll show you everything after lunch, Lucy. Come in----' And he put his
+arm about her shoulders, and urged her through the door the maid was
+holding open with difficulty because of the wind.
+
+There she was, then, actually inside The Willows. The door was shut
+behind her. She looked about her shrinkingly.
+
+They were in a roomy place with a staircase in it.
+
+'The hall,' said Wemyss, standing still, his arm round her.
+
+'Yes,' said Lucy.
+
+'Oak,' said Wemyss.
+
+'Yes,' said Lucy.
+
+He gazed round him with a sigh of satisfaction at having got back to it.
+
+'All oak,' he said. 'You'll find nothing gimcrack about _my_ house,
+little Love. Where are those flowers?' he added, turning sharply to the
+parlourmaid. 'I don't see my yellow flowers.'
+
+'They're in the dining-room, sir,' said the parlourmaid.
+
+'Why aren't they where I could see them the first thing?'
+
+'I understood the orders were they were always to be on the
+breakfast-table, sir.'
+
+'Breakfast-table! When there isn't any breakfast?'
+
+'I understood----'
+
+'I'm not interested in what you understood.'
+
+Lucy here nervously interrupted, for Everard sounded suddenly very
+angry, by exclaiming, 'Antlers!' and waving her unpinned-down arm in the
+direction of the----
+
+'Yes,' said Wemyss, his attention called off the parlourmaid, gazing up
+at his walls with pride.
+
+'What a lot,' said Lucy.
+
+'Aren't there. I always said I'd have a hall with antlers in it, and
+I've got it.' He hugged her close to his side. 'And I've got you too,'
+he said. 'I always get what I'm determined to get.'
+
+'Did you shoot them all yourself?' asked Lucy, thinking the parlourmaid
+would take the opportunity to disappear, and a little surprised that she
+continued to stand there.
+
+'What? The beasts they belonged to? Not I. If you want antlers the
+simple way is to go and buy them. Then you get them all at once, and not
+gradually. The hall was ready for them all at once, not gradually. I got
+these at Whiteley's. Kiss me.'
+
+This sudden end to his remarks startled Lucy, and she repeated in her
+surprise--for there still stood the parlourmaid 'Kiss you?'
+
+'I haven't had my birthday kiss yet.'
+
+'Why, the very first thing when you woke up----'
+
+'Not my real birthday kiss in my own home.'
+
+She looked at the parlourmaid, who was quite frankly looking at her.
+Well, if the parlourmaid didn't mind, and Everard didn't mind, why
+should she mind?
+
+She lifted her face and kissed him; but she didn't like kissing him or
+being kissed in public. What was the point of it? Kissing Everard was a
+great delight to her. A mixture of all sorts of wonderful sensations,
+and she loved to do it in different ways, tenderly, passionately,
+lingeringly, dreamily, amusingly, solemnly; each kind in turn, or in
+varied combinations. But among her varied combinations there was nothing
+that included a parlourmaid. Consequently her kiss was of the sort that
+was to be expected, perfunctory and brief, whereupon Wemyss said,
+'Lucy----' in his hurt voice.
+
+She started.
+
+'Oh Everard--what is it?' she asked nervously.
+
+That particular one of his voices always by now made her start, for it
+always took her by surprise. Pick her way as carefully as she might
+among his feelings there were always some, apparently, that she hadn't
+dreamed were there and that she accordingly knocked against. How
+dreadful if she had hurt him the very first thing on getting into The
+Willows! And on his birthday too. From the moment he woke that morning,
+all the way down in the train, all the way in the fly from the station,
+she had been unremittingly engaged in avoiding hurting him; an activity
+made extra difficult by the unfortunate way her nervousness about the
+house at the journey's end impelled her to say the kinds of things she
+least wanted to. Irreverent things; such as the silly remark on his
+house's name. She had got on much better the evening before at the house
+in Lancaster Gate where they had slept, because gloomy as it was it
+anyhow wasn't The Willows. Also there was no trace in it that she could
+see of such a thing as a woman ever having lived in it. It was a man's
+house; the house of a man who has no time for pictures, or interesting
+books and furniture. It was like a club and an office mixed up together,
+with capacious leather chairs and solid tables and Turkey carpets and
+reference books. She found it quite impossible to imagine Vera, or any
+other woman, in that house. Either Vera had spent most of her time at
+The Willows, or every trace of her had been very carefully removed.
+Therefore Lucy, helped besides by extreme fatigue, for she had been
+sea-sick all the way from Dieppe to Newhaven, Wemyss having crossed that
+way because he was fond of the sea, had positively been unable to think
+of Vera in those surroundings and had dropped off to sleep directly she
+got there and had slept all night; and of course being asleep she
+naturally hadn't said anything she oughtn't to have said, so that her
+first appearance in Lancaster Gate was a success; and when she woke next
+morning, and saw Wemyss's face in such unclouded tranquillity next to
+hers as he still slept, she lay gazing at it with her heart brimming
+with tender love and vowed that his birthday should be as unclouded
+throughout as his dear face was at that moment. She adored him. He was
+her very life. She wanted nothing in the world except for him to be
+happy. She would watch every word. She really must see to it that on
+this day of all days no word should escape her before it had been turned
+round in her head at least three times, and considered with the utmost
+care. Such were her resolutions in the morning; and here she was not
+only saying the wrong things but doing them. It was because she hadn't
+expected to be told to kiss him in the presence of a parlourmaid. She
+was always being tripped up by the unexpected. She ought by now to have
+learned better. How unfortunate.
+
+'Oh Everard--what is it?' she asked nervously; but she knew before he
+could answer, and throwing her objections to public caresses to the
+winds, for anything was better than that he should be hurt at just that
+moment, she put up her free arm and drew his head down and kissed him
+again,--lingeringly this time, a kiss of tender, appealing love. What
+must it be like, she thought while she kissed him and her heart yearned
+over him, to be so fearfully sensitive. It made things difficult for
+her, but how much, much more difficult for him. And how wonderful the
+way his sensitiveness had developed since marriage. There had been no
+sign of it before.
+
+Implicit in her kiss was an appeal not to let anything she said or did
+spoil his birthday, to forgive her, to understand. And at the back of
+her mind, quite uncontrollable, quite unauthorised, ran beneath these
+other thoughts this thought: 'I am certainly abject.'
+
+This time he was quickly placated because of his excitement at getting
+home. 'Nobody can hurt me as you can,' was all he said.
+
+'Oh but as though I ever, ever mean to,' she breathed, her arm round his
+neck.
+
+Meanwhile the parlourmaid looked on.
+
+'Why doesn't she go?' whispered Lucy, making the most of having got his
+ear.
+
+'Certainly not,' said Wemyss out loud, raising his head. 'I might want
+her. Do you like the hall, little Love?'
+
+'_Very_ much,' she said, loosing him.
+
+'Don't you think it's a very fine staircase?'
+
+'_Very_ fine,' she said.
+
+He gazed about him with pride, standing in the middle of the Turkey
+carpet holding her close to his side.
+
+'Now look at the window,' he said, turning her round when she had had
+time to absorb the staircase. 'Look--isn't it a jolly window? No
+nonsense about that window. You can really see out of it, and it really
+lets in light. Vera'--she winced--'tried to stuff it all up with
+curtains. She said she wanted colour, or something. Having got a
+beautiful garden to look out at, what does she try to do but shut most
+of it out again by putting up curtains.'
+
+The attempt had evidently not succeeded, for the window, which was as
+big as a window in the waiting-room of a London terminus, had nothing to
+interfere with it but the hanging cord of a drawn-up brown holland
+blind. Through it Lucy could see the whole half of the garden on the
+right side of the front door with the tossing willow hedge, the meadows,
+and the cows. The leafless branches of some creeper beat against it and
+made a loud irregular tapping in the pauses of Wemyss's observations.
+
+'Plate glass,' he said.
+
+'Yes,' said Lucy; and something in his voice made her add in a tone of
+admiration, 'Fancy.'
+
+Looking at the window they had their backs to the stairs. Suddenly she
+heard footsteps coming down them from the landing above.
+
+'Who's that?' she said quickly, with a little gasp, before she could
+think, before she could stop, not turning her head, her eyes staring at
+the window.
+
+'Who's what?' asked Wemyss. 'You do think it's a jolly window, don't
+you, little Love?'
+
+The footsteps on the stairs stopped, and a gong she had noticed at the
+angle of the turn was sounded. Her body, which had shrunk together,
+relaxed. What a fool she was.
+
+'Lunch,' said Wemyss. 'Come along--but isn't it a jolly window, little
+Love?'
+
+'_Very_ jolly.'
+
+He turned her round to march her off to the dining-room, while the
+housemaid, who had come down from the landing, continued to beat the
+gong, though there they were obeying it under her very nose.
+
+'Don't you think that's a good place to have a gong?' he asked, raising
+his voice because the gong, which had begun quietly, was getting rapidly
+louder. 'Then when you're upstairs in your sitting-room you'll hear it
+just as distinctly as if you were downstairs. Vera----'
+
+But what he was going to say about Vera was drowned this time in the
+increasing fury of the gong.
+
+'Why doesn't she leave off?' Lucy tried to call out to him, straining
+her voice to its utmost, for the maid was very good at the gong and was
+now extracting the dreadfullest din out of it.
+
+'Eh?' shouted Wemyss.
+
+In the dining-room, whither they were preceded by the parlourmaid, who
+at last had left off standing still and had opened the door for them, as
+Lucy could hear the gong continuing to be beaten though muffled now by
+doors and distance, she again said, 'Why doesn't she leave off?'
+
+Wemyss took out his watch.
+
+'She will in another fifty seconds,' he said.
+
+Lucy's mouth and eyebrows became all inquiry.
+
+'It is beaten for exactly two and a half minutes before every meal,' he
+explained.
+
+'Oh?' said Lucy. 'Even when we're visibly collected?'
+
+'She doesn't know that.'
+
+'But she saw us.'
+
+'But she doesn't know it officially.'
+
+'Oh,' said Lucy.
+
+'I had to make that rule,' said Wemyss, arranging his knives and forks
+more accurately beside his plate, 'because they would leave off beating
+it almost as soon as they'd begun, and then Vera was late and her excuse
+was that she hadn't heard. For a time after that I used to have it
+beaten all up the stairs right to the door of her sitting-room. Isn't it
+a fine gong? Listen----' And he raised his hand.
+
+'_Very_ fine,' said Lucy, who was thoroughly convinced there wasn't a
+finer, more robust gong in existence.
+
+'There. Time's up,' he said, as three great strokes were followed by a
+blessed silence.
+
+He pulled out his watch again. 'Let's see. Yes--to the tick. You
+wouldn't believe the trouble I had to get them to keep time.'
+
+'It's wonderful,' said Lucy.
+
+The dining-room was a narrow room full of a table. It had a window
+facing west and a window facing north, and in spite of the uninterrupted
+expanses of plate glass was a bleak, dark room. But then the weather was
+bleak and dark, and one saw such a lot of it out of the two big windows
+as one sat at the long table and watched the rolling clouds blowing
+straight towards one from the north-west; for Lucy's place was facing
+the north window, on Wemyss's left hand. Wemyss sat at the end of the
+table facing the west window. The table was so long that if Lucy had
+sat in the usual seat of wives, opposite her husband, communication
+would have been difficult,--indeed, as she remarked, she would have
+disappeared below the dip of the horizon.
+
+'I like a long table,' said Wemyss to this. 'It looks so hospitable.'
+
+'Yes,' said Lucy a little doubtfully, but willing to admit that its
+length at least showed a readiness for hospitality. 'I suppose it does.
+Or it would if there were people all round it.'
+
+'People? You don't mean to say you want people already?'
+
+'Good heavens no,' said Lucy hastily.' Of course I don't. Why, of
+course, Everard, I didn't mean that,' she added, laying her hand on his
+and smiling at him so as to dispel the gathering cloud on his face; and
+once more she flung all thoughts of the parlourmaid to the winds. 'You
+know I don't want a soul in the world but you.'
+
+'Well, that's what I thought,' said Wemyss, mollified. 'I know all I
+want is you.'
+
+(Was this same parlourmaid here in Vera's time? Lucy asked herself very
+privately and unconsciously and beneath the concerned attentiveness she
+was concentrating on Wemyss.)
+
+'What lovely kingcups!' she said aloud.
+
+'Oh yes, there they are--I hadn't noticed them. Yes, aren't they?
+They're my birthday flowers.' And he repeated his formula: 'It's my
+birthday and Spring's.'
+
+But Lucy, of course, didn't know the proper ritual, it being her first
+experience of one of Wemyss's birthdays, besides having wished him his
+many happy returns hours ago when he first opened his eyes and found
+hers gazing at him with love; so all she did was to make the natural but
+unfortunate remark that surely Spring began on the 21st of March,--or
+was it the 25th? No, that was Christmas Day--no, she didn't mean
+that----
+
+'You're always saying things and then saying you didn't mean them,'
+interrupted Wemyss, vexed, for he thought that Lucy of all people should
+have recognised the allegorical nature of his formula. If it had been
+Vera, now,--but even Vera had managed to understand that much. 'I wish
+you would begin with what you do mean, it would be so much simpler.
+What, pray, _do_ you mean now?'
+
+'I can't think,' said Lucy timidly, for she had offended him again, and
+this time she couldn't even remotely imagine how.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+He got over it, however. There was a particularly well-made souffle, and
+this helped. Also Lucy kept on looking at him very tenderly, and it was
+the first time she had sat at his table in his beloved home, realising
+the dreams of months that she should sit just there with him, his little
+bobbed-haired Love, and gradually therefore he recovered and smiled at
+her again.
+
+But what power she had to hurt him, thought Wemyss; it was so great
+because his love for her was so great. She should be very careful how
+she wielded it. Her Everard was made very sensitive by his love.
+
+He gazed at her solemnly, thinking this, while the plates were being
+changed.
+
+'What is it, Everard?' Lucy asked anxiously.
+
+'I'm only thinking that I love you,' he said, laying his hand on hers.
+
+She flushed with pleasure, and her face grew instantly happy. 'My
+Everard,' she murmured, gazing back at him, forgetful in her pleasure of
+the parlourmaid. How dear he was. How silly she was to be so much
+distressed when he was offended. At the core he was so sound and simple.
+At the core he was utterly her own dear lover. The rest was mere
+incident, merest indifferent detail.
+
+'We'll have coffee in the library,' he said to the parlourmaid, getting
+up when he had finished his lunch and walking to the door. 'Come along,
+little Love,' he called over his shoulder.
+
+The library....
+
+'Can't we--don't we--have coffee in the hall?' asked Lucy, getting up
+slowly.
+
+'No,' said Wemyss, who had paused before an enlarged photograph that
+hung on the wall between the two windows, enlarged to life size.
+
+He examined it a moment, and then drew his finger obliquely across the
+glass from top to bottom. It then became evident that the picture needed
+dusting.
+
+'Look,' he said to the parlourmaid, pointing.
+
+The parlourmaid looked.
+
+'I notice you don't say anything,' he said to her after a silence in
+which she continued to look, and Lucy, taken aback again, stood
+uncertain by the chair she had got up from. 'I don't wonder. There's
+nothing you can possibly say to excuse such carelessness.'
+
+'Lizzie----' began the parlourmaid.
+
+'Don't put it on to Lizzie.'
+
+The parlourmaid ceased putting it on to Lizzie and was dumb.
+
+'Come along, little Love,' said Wemyss, turning to Lucy and holding out
+his hand. 'It makes one pretty sick, doesn't it, to see that not even
+one's own father gets dusted.'
+
+'Is that your father?' asked Lucy, hurrying to his side and offering no
+opinion about dusting.
+
+It could have been no one else's. It was Wemyss grown very enormous,
+Wemyss grown very old, Wemyss displeased. The photograph had been so
+arranged that wherever you moved to in the room Wemyss's father watched
+you doing it. He had been watching Lucy from between those two windows
+all through her first lunch, and must, flashed through Lucy's brain,
+have watched Vera like that all through her last one.
+
+'How long has he been there?' she asked, looking up into Wemyss's
+father's displeased eyes which looked straight back into hers.
+
+'Been there?' repeated Wemyss, drawing her away for he wanted his
+coffee. 'How can I remember? Ever since I've lived here, I should think.
+He died five years ago. He was a wonderful old man, nearly ninety. He
+used to stay here a lot.'
+
+Opposite this picture hung another, next to the door that led into the
+hall,--also a photograph enlarged to life-size. Lucy had noticed neither
+of these pictures when she came in, because the light from the windows
+was in her eyes. Now, turning to go out through the door led by Wemyss,
+she was faced by this one.
+
+It was Vera. She knew at once; and if she hadn't she would have known
+the next minute, because he told her.
+
+'Vera,' he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, as it were introducing them.
+
+'Vera,' repeated Lucy under her breath; and she and Vera--for this
+photograph too followed one about with its eye--stared at each other.
+
+It must have been taken about twelve years earlier, judging from the
+clothes. She was standing, and in a day dress that yet had a train to it
+trailing on the carpet, and loose, floppy sleeves and a high collar. She
+looked very tall, and had long thin fingers. Her dark hair was drawn up
+from her ears and piled on the top of her head. Her face was thin and
+seemed to be chiefly eyes,--very big dark eyes that stared out of the
+absurd picture in a kind of astonishment, and her mouth had a little
+twist in it as though she were trying not to laugh.
+
+Lucy looked at her without moving. So this was Vera. Of course. She had
+known, though she had never constructed any image of her in her mind,
+had carefully avoided doing it, that she would be like that. Only older;
+the sort of Vera she must have been at forty when she died,--not
+attractive like that, not a young woman. To Lucy at twenty-two, forty
+seemed very old; at least, if you were a woman. In regard to men, since
+she had fallen in love with some one of forty-five who was certainly the
+youngest thing she had ever come across, she had rearranged her ideas of
+age, but she still thought forty very old for a woman. Vera had been
+thin and tall and dark in her idea of her, just as this Vera was thin
+and tall and dark; but thin bonily, tall stoopingly, and her dark hair
+was turning grey. In her idea of her, too, she was absent-minded and not
+very intelligent; indeed, she was rather troublesomely unintelligent,
+doing obstinate, foolish things, and at last doing that fatal,
+obstinate, foolish thing which so dreadfully ended her. This Vera was
+certainly intelligent. You couldn't have eyes like that and be a fool.
+And the expression of her mouth,--what had she been trying not to laugh
+at that day? Did she know she was going to be enlarged and hang for
+years in the bleak dining-room facing her father-in-law, each of them
+eyeing the other from their walls, while three times a day the originals
+sat down beneath their own pictures at the long table and ate? Perhaps
+she laughed, thought Lucy, because else she might have cried; only that
+would have been silly, and she couldn't have been silly,--not with those
+eyes, not with those straight, fine eyebrows. But would she, herself,
+presently be photographed too and enlarged and hung there? There was
+room next to Vera, room for just one more before the sideboard began.
+How very odd it would be if she were hung up next to Vera, and every day
+three times as she went out of the room was faced by Everard's wives.
+And how quaint to watch one's clothes as the years went by leaving off
+being pretty and growing more absurd. Really for such purposes one ought
+to be just wrapped round in a shroud. Fashion didn't touch shrouds; they
+always stayed the same. Besides, how suitable, thought Lucy, gazing into
+her dead predecessor's eyes; one would only be taking time by the
+forelock....
+
+'Come along.' said Wemyss, drawing her away, 'I want my coffee. Don't
+you think it's a good idea,' he went on, as he led her down the hall to
+the library door, 'to have life-sized photographs instead of those
+idiotic portraits that are never the least like people?'
+
+'Oh, a _very_ good idea,' said Lucy mechanically, bracing herself for
+the library. There was only one room in the house she dreaded going into
+more than the library, and that was the sitting-room on the top
+floor,--her sitting-room and Vera's.
+
+'Next week we'll go to a photographer's in London and have my little
+girl done,' said Wemyss, pushing open the library door, 'and then I'll
+have her exactly as God made her, without some artist idiot or other
+coming butting-in with his idea of her. God's idea of her is good enough
+for me. They won't have to enlarge much,' he laughed, 'to get _you_
+life-size, you midge. Vera was five foot ten. Now isn't this a fine
+room? Look--there's the river. Isn't it jolly being so close to it? Come
+round here--don't knock against my writing-table, now. Look--there's
+only the towpath between the river and the garden. Lord, what a beastly
+day. It might just as easily have been a beautiful spring day and us
+having our coffee out on the terrace. Don't you think this is a
+beautiful look-out,--so typically English with the beautiful green lawn
+and the bit of lush grass along the towpath, and the river. There's no
+river like it in the world, is there, little Love. Say you think it's
+the most beautiful river in the world'--he hugged her close--'say you
+think it's a hundred times better than that beastly French one we got so
+sick of with all those chateaux.'
+
+'Oh, a _hundred_ times better,' said Lucy.
+
+They were standing at the window, with his arm round her shoulder. There
+was just room for them between it and the writing-table. Outside was the
+flagged terrace, and then a very green lawn with worms and blackbirds on
+it and a flagged path down the middle leading to a little iron gate.
+There was no willow hedge along the river end of the square garden, so
+as not to interrupt the view,--only the iron railings and wire-netting.
+Terra-cotta vases, which later on would be a blaze of geraniums, Wemyss
+explained, stood at intervals on each side of the path. The river,
+swollen and brown, slid past Wemyss's frontage very quickly that day,
+for there had been much rain. The clouds scudding across the sky before
+the wind were not in such a hurry but that every now and then they let
+loose a violent gust of ram, soaking the flags of the terrace again just
+as the wind had begun to dry them up. How could he stand there, she
+thought, holding her tight so that she couldn't get away, making her
+look out at the very place on those flags not two yards off....
+
+But the next minute she thought how right he really was, how absolutely
+the only way this was to do the thing. Perfect simplicity was the one
+way to meet this situation successfully; and she herself was so far from
+simplicity that here she was shrinking, not able to bear to look,
+wanting only to hide her face,--oh, he was wonderful, and she was the
+most ridiculous of fools.
+
+She pressed very close to him, and put up her face to his, shutting her
+eyes, for so she shut out the desolating garden with its foreground of
+murderous flags.
+
+'What is it, little Love?' asked Wemyss.
+
+'Kiss me,' she said; and he laughed and kissed her, but hastily, because
+he wanted her to go on admiring the view.
+
+She still, however, held up her face. 'Kiss my eyes,' she whispered,
+keeping them shut. 'They're tired----'
+
+He laughed again, but with a slight impatience, and kissed her eyes; and
+then, suddenly struck by her little blind face so close to his, the
+strong light from the big window showing all its delicate curves and
+delicious softnesses, his Lucy's face, his own little wife's, he kissed
+her really, as she loved him to kiss her, becoming absorbed only in his
+love.
+
+'Oh, I love you, love you----' murmured Lucy, clinging to him, making
+secret vows of sensibleness, of wholesomeness, of a determined,
+unfailing future simplicity.
+
+'Aren't we happy,' he said, pausing in his kisses to gaze down at what
+was now his face, for was it not much more his than hers? Of course it
+was his. She never saw it, except when she specially went to look, but
+he saw it all the time; she only had duties in regard to it, but he was
+on the higher plane of only having joys. She washed it, but he kissed
+it. And he kissed it when he liked and as much as ever he liked. 'Isn't
+it wonderful being married,' he said, gazing down at this delightful
+thing that was his very own for ever.
+
+'Oh--wonderful!' murmured Lucy, opening her eyes and gazing into his.
+
+Her face broke into a charming smile. 'You have the dearest eyes,' she
+said, putting up her finger and gently tracing his eyebrows with it.
+
+Wemyss's eyes, full at that moment of love and pride, were certainly
+dear eyes, but a noise at the other end of the room made Lucy jump so in
+his arms, gave her apparently such a fright, that when he turned his
+head to see who it was daring to interrupt them, daring to startle his
+little girl like that, and beheld the parlourmaid, his eyes weren't dear
+at all but very angry.
+
+The parlourmaid had come in with the coffee; and seeing the two
+interlaced figures against the light of the big window had pulled up
+short, uncertain what to do. This pulling up had jerked a spoon off its
+saucer onto the floor with a loud rattle because of the floor not having
+a carpet on it and being of polished oak, and it was this noise that
+made Lucy jump so excessively that her jump actually made Wemyss jump
+too.
+
+In the parlourmaid's untrained phraseology there had been a good deal of
+billing and cooing during luncheon, and even in the hall before luncheon
+there were examples of it, but what she found going on in the library
+was enough to make anybody stop dead and upset things,--it was such, she
+said afterwards in the kitchen, that if she didn't know for a fact that
+they were really married she wouldn't have believed it. Married people
+in the parlourmaid's experience didn't behave like that. What affection
+there was was exhibited before, and not after, marriage. And she went on
+to describe the way in which Wemyss--thus briefly and irreverently did
+they talk of their master in the kitchen--had flown at her for having
+come into the library. 'After telling me to,' she said. 'After saying,
+"We'll 'ave coffee in the library."' And they all agreed, as they had
+often before agreed, that if it weren't that he was in London half the
+time they wouldn't stay in the place five minutes.
+
+Meanwhile Wemyss and Lucy were sitting side by side in two enormous
+chairs facing the unlit library fire drinking their coffee. The fire was
+only lit in the evenings, explained Wemyss, after the 1st of April; the
+weather ought to be warm enough by then to do without fires in the
+daytime, and if it wasn't it was its own look-out.
+
+'Why did you jump so?' he asked. 'You gave me such a start. I couldn't
+think what was the matter.'
+
+'I don't know,' said Lucy, faintly flushing. 'Perhaps'--she smiled at
+him over the arm of the enormous chair in which she almost totally
+disappeared--'because the maid caught us.'
+
+'Caught us?'
+
+'Being so particularly affectionate.'
+
+'I like that,' said Wemyss. 'Fancy feeling guilty because you're being
+affectionate to your own husband.'
+
+'Oh, well,' laughed Lucy, 'don't forget I haven't had him long.'
+
+'You're such a complicated little thing. I shall have to take you
+seriously in hand and teach you to be natural. I can't have you having
+all sorts of finicking ideas about not doing this and not doing the
+other before servants. Servants don't matter. I never consider them.'
+
+'I wish you had considered the poor parlourmaid,' said Lucy, seeing that
+he was in an unoffended frame of mind. 'Why did you give her such a
+dreadful scolding?'
+
+'Why? Because she made you jump so. You couldn't have jumped more if you
+had thought it was a ghost. I won't have your flesh being made to
+creep.'
+
+'But it crept much worse when I heard the things you said to her.'
+
+'Nonsense. These people have to be kept in order. What did the woman
+mean by coming in like that?'
+
+'Why, you told her to bring us coffee.'
+
+'But I didn't tell her to make an infernal noise by dropping spoons all
+over the place.'
+
+'That was because she got just as great a fright when she saw us as I
+did when I heard her.'
+
+'I don't care what she got. Her business is not to drop things. That's
+what I pay her for. But look here--don't you go thinking such a lot of
+tangled-up things and arguing. Do, for goodness sake, try and be
+simple.'
+
+'I feel _very_ simple,' said Lucy, smiling and putting out her hand to
+him, for his face was clouding. 'Do you know, Everard, I believe what's
+the matter with me is that I'm _too_ simple.'
+
+Wemyss roared, and forgot how near he was getting to being hurt. 'You
+simple! You're the most complicated----'
+
+'No I'm not. I've got the untutored mind and uncontrolled emotions of a
+savage. That's really why I jumped.'
+
+'Lord,' laughed Wemyss, 'listen to her how she talks. Anybody might
+think she was clever, saying such big long words, if they didn't know
+she was just her Everard's own little wife. Come here, my little
+savage--come and sit on your husband's knee and tell him all about it.'
+
+He held out his arms, and Lucy got up and went into them and he rocked
+her and said, 'There, there--was it a little untutored savage then----'
+
+But she didn't tell him all about it, first because by now she knew that
+to tell him all about anything was asking for trouble, and second
+because he didn't really want to know. Everard, she was beginning to
+realise with much surprise, preferred not to know. He was not merely
+incurious as to other people's ideas and opinions, he definitely
+preferred to be unconscious of them.
+
+This was a great contrast to the restless curiosity and interest of her
+father and his friends, to their insatiable hunger for discussion, for
+argument; and it much surprised Lucy. Discussion was the very salt of
+life for them,--a tireless exploration of each other's ideas, a clashing
+of them together, and out of that clashing the creation of fresh ones.
+To Everard, Lucy was beginning to perceive, discussion merely meant
+contradiction, and he disliked contradiction, he disliked even
+difference of opinion. 'There's only one way of looking at a thing, and
+that's the right way,' as he said, 'so what's the good of such a lot of
+talk?'
+
+The right way was his way; and though he seemed by his direct,
+unswerving methods to succeed in living mentally in a great calm, and
+though after the fevers of her father's set this was to her immensely
+restful, was it really a good thing? Didn't it cut one off from growth?
+Didn't it shut one in an isolation? Wasn't it, frankly, rather like
+death? Besides, she had doubts as to whether it were true that there was
+only one way of looking at a thing, and couldn't quite believe that his
+way was invariably the right way. But what did it matter after all,
+thought Lucy, snuggled up on his knee with one arm round his neck,
+compared to the great, glorious fact of their love? That at least was
+indisputable and splendid. As to the rest, truth would go on being truth
+whether Everard saw it or not; and if she were not going to be able to
+talk over things with him she could anyhow kiss him, and how sweet that
+was, thought Lucy. They understood each other perfectly when they
+kissed. What, indeed, when such sweet means of communion existed, was
+the good of a lot of talk?
+
+'I believe you're asleep' said Wemyss, looking down at the face on his
+breast.
+
+'Sound,' said Lucy, smiling, her eyes shut.
+
+'My baby.'
+
+'My Everard.'
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+But this only lasted as long as his pipe lasted. When that was finished
+he put her off his knee, and said he was now ready to gratify her
+impatience and show her everything; they would go over the house first,
+and then the garden and outbuildings.
+
+No woman was ever less impatient than Lucy. However, she pulled her hat
+straight and tried to seem all readiness and expectancy. She wished the
+wind wouldn't howl so. What an extraordinary dreary place the library
+was. Well, any place would be dreary at half-past two o'clock on such an
+afternoon, without a fire and with the rain beating against the window,
+and that dreadful terrace just outside.
+
+Wemyss stooped to knock out the ashes of his pipe on the bars of the
+empty grate, and Lucy carefully kept her head turned away from the
+window and the terrace towards the other end of the room. The other end
+was filled with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, and the books, in
+neat rows and uniform editions, were packed so tightly in the shelves
+that no one but an unusually determined reader would have the energy to
+wrench one out. Reading was evidently not encouraged, for not only were
+the books shut in behind glass doors, but the doors were kept locked and
+the key hung on Wemyss's watch-chain. Lucy discovered this when Wemyss,
+putting his pipe in his pocket, took her by the arm and walked her down
+the room to admire the shelves. One of the volumes caught her eye, and
+she tried to open the glass door to take it out and look at it. 'Why,'
+she said surprised, 'it's locked.'
+
+'Of course,' said Wemyss.
+
+'Why but then nobody can get at them.'
+
+'Precisely.'
+
+'But----'
+
+'People are so untrustworthy about books. I took pains to arrange mine
+myself, and they're all in first-class-bindings and I don't want them
+taken out and left lying anywhere by Tom, Dick, and Harry. If any one
+wants to read they can come and ask me. Then I know exactly what is
+taken, and can see that it is put back.' And he held up the key on his
+watch-chain.
+
+'But doesn't that rather discourage people?' asked Lucy, who was
+accustomed to the most careless familiarity in intercourse with books,
+to books loose everywhere, books overflowing out of their shelves, books
+in every room, instantly accessible books, friendly books, books used to
+being read aloud, with their hospitable pages falling open at a touch.
+
+'All the better,' said Wemyss. '_I_ don't want anybody to read my books.'
+
+Lucy laughed, though she was dismayed inside. 'Oh Everard--' she said,
+'not even me?'
+
+'You? You're different. You're my own little girl. Whenever you want to,
+all you've got to do is to come and say, "Everard, your Lucy wants to
+read," and I'll unlock the bookcase.'
+
+'But--I shall be afraid I may be disturbing you.'
+
+'People who love each other can't ever disturb each other.'
+
+'That's true,' said Lucy.
+
+'And they shouldn't ever be afraid of it.'
+
+'I suppose they shouldn't,' said Lucy.
+
+'So be simple, and when you want a thing just say so.' Lucy said she
+would, and promised with many kisses to be simple, but she couldn't help
+privately thinking it a difficult way of getting at a book.
+
+'Macaulay, Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, British Poets, English Men of
+Letters, _Encyclopaedia Britannica_--I think there's about everything,'
+said Wemyss, going over the gilt names on the backs of the volumes with
+much satisfaction as he stood holding her in front of them. 'Whiteley's
+did it for me. I said I had room for so and so many of such and such
+sizes of the best modern writers in good bindings. I think they did it
+very well, don't you little Love?'
+
+'_Very_ well,' said Lucy, eyeing the shelves doubtfully.
+
+She was of those who don't like the feel of prize books in their hands,
+and all Wemyss's books might have been presented as prizes to deserving
+schoolboys. They were handsome; their edges--she couldn't see them, but
+she was sure--were marbled. They wouldn't open easily, and one's thumbs
+would have to do a lot of tiring holding while one's eyes tried to peep
+at the words tucked away towards the central crease. These were books
+with which one took no liberties. She couldn't imagine idly turning
+their pages in some lazy position out on the grass. Besides, their pages
+wouldn't be idly turned; they would be, she was sure, obstinate with
+expensiveness, stiff with the leather and gold of their covers.
+
+Lucy stared at them, thinking all this so as not to think other things.
+What she wanted to shut out was the wind sobbing up and down that
+terrace behind her, and the consciousness of the fierce intermittent
+squalls of rain beating on its flags, and the certainty that
+upstairs.... Had Everard _no_ imagination, she thought, with a sudden
+flare of rebellion, that he should expect her to use and to like using
+the very sitting-room where Vera----
+
+With a quick shiver she grabbed at her thoughts and caught them just in
+time.
+
+'Do you like Macaulay?' she asked, lingering in front of the bookcase,
+for he was beginning to move her off towards the door.
+
+'I haven't read him,' said Wemyss, still moving her.
+
+'Which of all these do you like best?' she asked, holding back.
+
+'Oh, I don't know,' said Wemyss, pausing a moment, pleased by her
+evident interest in his books. 'I haven't much time for reading, you
+must remember. I'm a busy man. By the time I've finished my day's work,
+I'm not inclined for much more than the evening paper and a game of
+bridge.'
+
+'But what will you do with me, who don't play bridge?'
+
+'Lord, you don't suppose I shall want to play bridge now that I've got
+you?' he said. 'All I shall want is just to sit and look at you.'
+
+She turned red with swift pleasure, and laughed, and hugged the arm that
+was thrust through hers leading her to the door. How much she adored
+him; when he said dear, absurd, simple things like that, how much she
+adored him!
+
+'Come upstairs now and take off your hat,' said Wemyss. 'I want to see
+what my bobbed hair looks like in my home. Besides, aren't you dying to
+see our bedroom?'
+
+'Dying,' said Lucy, going up the oak staircase with a stout, determined
+heart.
+
+The bedroom was over the library, and was the same size and with the
+same kind of window. Where the bookcase stood in the room below, stood
+the bed: a double, or even a treble, bed, so very big was it, facing the
+window past which Vera--it was no use, she couldn't get away from
+Vera--having slept her appointed number of nights, fell and was
+finished. But she wasn't finished. If only she had slipped away out of
+memory, out of imagination, thought Lucy ... but she hadn't, she
+hadn't--and this was her room, and that intelligent-eyed thin thing had
+slept in it for years and years, and for years and years the
+looking-glass had reflected her while she had dressed and undressed,
+dressed and undressed before it--regularly, day after day, year after
+year--oh, what a trouble--and her thin long hands had piled up her
+hair--Lucy could see her sitting there piling it on the top of her small
+head--sitting at the dressing-table in the window past which she was at
+last to drop like a stone--horribly--ignominiously--all anyhow--and
+everything in the room had been hers, every single thing in it had been
+Vera's, including Ev----
+
+Lucy made a violent lunge after her thoughts and strangled them.
+
+Meanwhile Wemyss had shut the door and was standing looking at her
+without moving.
+
+'Well?' he said.
+
+She turned to him nervously, her eyes still wide with the ridiculous
+things she had been thinking.
+
+'Well?' he said again.
+
+She supposed he meant her to praise the room, so she hastily began,
+saying what a good view there must be on a fine day, and how very
+comfortable it was, such a nice big looking-glass--she loved a big
+looking-glass--and such a nice sofa--she loved a nice sofa--and what a
+very big bed--and what a lovely carpet----
+
+'Well?' was all Wemyss said when her words came to an end.
+
+'What is it, Everard?'
+
+'I'm waiting,' he said.
+
+'Waiting?'
+
+'For my kiss.'
+
+She ran to him.
+
+'Yes,' he said, when she had kissed him, looking down at her solemnly,
+'_I_ don't forget these things. _I_ don't forget that this is the first
+time my own wife and I have stood together in our very own bedroom.'
+
+'But Everard I didn't forget--I only----'
+
+She cast about for something to say, her arms still round his neck, for
+the last thing she could have told him was what she had been
+thinking--oh, how he would have scolded her for being morbid, and oh,
+how right he would have been!--and she ended by saying as lamely and as
+unfortunately as she had said it in the chateau of Amboise--'I only
+didn't remember.'
+
+Luckily this time his attention had already wandered away from her.
+'Isn't it a jolly room?' he said. 'Who's got far and away the best
+bedroom in Strorley? And who's got a sitting-room all for herself, just
+as jolly? And who spoils his little woman?'
+
+Before she could answer, he loosened her hands from his neck and said,
+'Come and look at yourself in the glass. Come and see how small you are
+compared to the other things in the room.' And with his arms round her
+shoulders he led her to the dressing-table.
+
+'The other things?' laughed Lucy; but like a flame the thought was
+leaping in her brain, 'Now what shall I do if when I look into this I
+don't see myself but Vera? It's _accustomed_ to Vera....'
+
+'Why, she's shutting her eyes. Open them, little Love,' said Wemyss,
+standing with her before the glass and seeing in it that though he held
+her in front of it she wasn't looking at the picture of wedded love he
+and she made, but had got her eyes tight shut.
+
+With his free hand he took off her hat and threw it on to the sofa; then
+he laid his head on hers and said, 'Now look.'
+
+Lucy obeyed; and when she saw the sweet picture in the glass the face of
+the girl looking at her broke into its funny, charming smile, for
+Everard at that moment was at his dearest, Everard boyishly loving her,
+with his good-looking, unlined face so close to hers and his proud eyes
+gazing at her. He and she seemed to set each other off; they were
+becoming to each other.
+
+Smiling at him in the glass, a smile tremulous with tenderness, she put
+up her hand and stroked his face. 'Do you know who you've married?' she
+asked, addressing the man in the glass.
+
+'Yes,' said Wemyss, addressing the girl in the glass.
+
+'No you don't,' she said. 'But I'll tell you. You've married the
+completest of fools.'
+
+'Now what has the little thing got into its head this time?' he said,
+kissing her hair, and watching himself doing it.
+
+'Everard, you must help me,' she murmured, holding his face tenderly
+against hers. 'Please, my beloved, help me, teach me----'
+
+'That, Mrs. Wemyss, is a very proper attitude in a wife,' he said. And
+the four people laughed at each other, the two Lucys a little
+quiveringly.
+
+'Now come and I'll introduce you to your sitting-room,' he said,
+disengaging himself. 'We'll have tea up there. The view is really
+magnificent.'
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+The wind made more noise than ever at the top of the house, and when
+Wemyss tried to open the door to Vera's sitting-room it blew back on
+him.
+
+'Well I'm damned,' he said, giving it a great shove.
+
+'Why?' asked Lucy nervously.
+
+'Come in, come in,' he said impatiently, pressing the door open and
+pulling her through.
+
+There was a great flapping of blinds and rattling of blind cords, a
+whirl of sheets of notepaper, an extra wild shriek of the wind, and then
+Wemyss, hanging on to the door, shut it and the room quieted down.
+
+'That slattern Lizzie!' he exclaimed, striding across to the fireplace
+and putting his finger on the bell-button and keeping it there.
+
+'What has she done?' asked Lucy, standing where he had left her just
+inside the door.
+
+'Done? Can't you see?'
+
+'You mean'--she could hardly get herself to mention the fatal
+thing--'you mean--the window?'
+
+'On a day like this!'
+
+He continued to press the bell. It was a very loud bell, for it rang
+upstairs as well as down in order to be sure of catching Lizzie's ear in
+whatever part of the house she might be endeavouring to evade it, and
+Lucy, as she listened to its strident, persistent summons of a Lizzie
+who didn't appear, felt more and more on edge, felt at last that to
+listen and wait any longer was unbearable.
+
+'Won't you wear it out?' she asked, after some moments of nothing
+happening and Wemyss still ringing.
+
+He didn't answer. He didn't look at her. His finger remained steadily on
+the button. His face was extraordinarily like the old man's in the
+enlarged photograph downstairs. Lucy wished for only two things at that
+moment, one was that Lizzie shouldn't come, and the other was that if
+she did she herself might be allowed to go and be somewhere else.
+
+'Hadn't--hadn't the window better be shut?' she suggested timidly
+presently, while he still went on ringing and saying nothing--'else when
+Lizzie opens the door won't all the things blow about again?'
+
+He didn't answer, and went on ringing.
+
+Of all the objects in the world that she could think of, Lucy most
+dreaded and shrank from that window; nevertheless she began to feel that
+as Everard was engaged with the bell and apparently wouldn't leave it,
+it behoved her to put into practice her resolution not to be a fool but
+to be direct and wholesome, and go and shut it herself. There it was,
+the fatal window, huge as the one in the bedroom below and the one in
+the library below that, yawning wide open above its murderous low sill,
+with the rain flying in on every fresh gust of wind and wetting the
+floor and the cushions of the sofa and even, as she could see, those
+sheets of notepaper off the writing-table that had flown in her face
+when she came in and were now lying scattered at her feet. Surely the
+right thing to do was to shut the window before Lizzie opened the door
+and caused a second convulsion? Everard couldn't, because he was ringing
+the bell. She could and she would; yes, she would do the right thing,
+and at the same time be both simple and courageous.
+
+'I'll shut it,' she said, taking a step forward.
+
+She was arrested by Wemyss's voice. 'Confound it!' he cried. 'Can't you
+leave it alone?'
+
+She stopped dead. He had never spoken to her like that before. She had
+never heard that voice before. It seemed to hit her straight on the
+heart.
+
+'Don't interfere,' he said, very loud.
+
+She was frozen where she stood.
+
+'Tiresome woman,' he said, still ringing.
+
+She looked at him. He was looking at her.
+
+'Who?' she breathed.
+
+'You.'
+
+Her heart seemed to stop beating. She gave a little gasp, and turned her
+head to right and left like something trapped, something searching for
+escape. Everard--where was her Everard? Why didn't he come and take care
+of her? Come and take her away--out of that room--out of that room----
+
+There were sounds of steps hurrying along the passage, and then there
+was a great scream of the wind and a great whirl of the notepaper and a
+great blowing up on end off her forehead of her short hair, and Lizzie
+was there panting on the threshold.
+
+'I'm sorry, sir,' she panted, her hand on her chest, 'I was changing my
+dress----'
+
+'Shut the door, can't you?' cried Wemyss, about whose ears, too,
+notepaper was flying. 'Hold on to it--don't let it go, damn you!'
+
+'Oh--oh----' gasped Lucy, stretching out her hands as though to keep
+something off, 'I think I--I think I'll go downstairs----'
+
+And before Wemyss realised what she was doing, she had turned and
+slipped through the door Lizzie was struggling with and was gone.
+
+'Lucy!' he shouted, 'Lucy! Come back at once!' But the wind was too much
+for Lizzie, and the door dragged itself out of her hands and crashed to.
+
+As though the devil were after her Lucy ran along the passage. Down the
+stairs she flew, down past the bedroom landing, down past the gong
+landing, down into the hall and across it to the front door, and tried
+to pull it open, and found it was bolted, and tugged and tugged at the
+bolts, tugged frantically, getting them undone at last, and rushing out
+on to the steps.
+
+There an immense gust of rain caught her full in the face.
+Splash--bang--she was sobered. The rain splashed on her as though a
+bucket were being emptied at her, and the door had banged behind her
+shutting her out. Suddenly horrified at herself she turned quickly, as
+frantic to get in again as she had been to get out. What was she doing?
+Where was she running to? She must get in, get in--before Everard could
+come after her, before he could find her standing there like a drenched
+dog outside his front door. The wind whipped her wet hair across her
+eyes. Where was the handle? She couldn't find it. Her hair wouldn't keep
+out of her eyes; her thin serge skirt blew up like a balloon and got in
+the way of her trembling fingers searching along the door. She must get
+in--before he came--what had possessed her? Everard--he couldn't have
+meant--he didn't mean--what would he think--what _would_ he think--oh,
+where was that handle?
+
+Then she heard heavy footsteps on the other side of the door, and
+Wemyss's voice, still very loud, saying to somebody he had got with
+him, 'Haven't I given strict orders that this door is to be kept
+bolted?'--and then the sound of bolts being shot.
+
+'Everard! Everard!' Lucy cried, beating on the door with both hands,
+'I'm here--out here--let me in--Everard! Everard!'
+
+But he evidently heard nothing, for his footsteps went away again.
+
+Snatching her hair out of her eyes, she looked about for the bell and
+reached up to it and pulled it violently. What she had done was
+terrible. She must get in at once, face the parlourmaid's astonishment,
+run to Everard. She couldn't imagine his thoughts. Where did he suppose
+she was? He must be searching the house for her. He would be dreadfully
+upset. Why didn't the parlourmaid come? Was she changing her dress too?
+No--she had waited at lunch all ready in her black afternoon clothes.
+Then why didn't she come?
+
+Lucy pulled the bell again and again, at last keeping it down, using up
+its electricity as squanderously as Wemyss had used it upstairs. She was
+wet to the skin by this time, and you wouldn't have recognised her
+pretty hair, all dark now and sticking together in lank strands.
+
+Everard--why, of course--Everard had only spoken like that out of
+fear--fear and love. The window--of course he would be terrified lest
+she too, trying to shut that fatal window, that great heavy fatal
+window, should slip.... Oh, of course, of course--how could she have
+misunderstood--in moments of danger, of dreadful anxiety for one's
+heart's beloved, one did speak sharply, one did rap out commands. It was
+because he loved her so _much_.... Oh, how lunatic of her to have
+misunderstood!
+
+At last she heard some one coming, and she let go of the bell and braced
+herself to meet the astonished gaze of the parlourmaid with as much
+dignity as was possible in one who only too well knew she must be
+looking like a drowning cat, but the footsteps grew heavy as they got
+nearer, and it was Wemyss who, after pulling back the bolts, opened the
+door.
+
+'Oh Everard!' Lucy exclaimed, running in, pursued to the last by the
+pelting rain, 'I'm so glad it's you--oh I'm so sorry I----'
+
+Her voice died away; she had seen his face.
+
+He stooped to bolt the lower bolt.
+
+'Don't be angry, darling Everard,' she whispered, laying her arm on his
+stooping shoulder.
+
+Having finished with the bolt Wemyss straightened himself, and then,
+putting up his hand to the arm still round his shoulder, he removed it.
+'You'll make my coat wet,' he said; and walked away to the library door
+and went in and shut it.
+
+For a moment she stood where he had left her, collecting her scattered
+senses; then she went after him. Wet or not wet, soaked and dripping as
+she was, ridiculous scarecrow with her clinging clothes, her lank hair,
+she must go after him, must instantly get the horror of misunderstanding
+straight, tell him how she had meant only to help over that window, tell
+him how she had thought he was saying dreadful things to her when he was
+really only afraid for her safety, tell him how silly she had been,
+silly, silly, not to have followed his thoughts quicker, tell him he
+must forgive her, be patient with her, help her, because she loved him
+so much and she knew--oh, she knew--how much he loved her....
+
+Across the hall ran Lucy, the whole of her one welter of anxious
+penitence and longing and love, and when she got to the door and turned
+the handle it was locked.
+
+He had locked her out.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+Her hand slid slowly off the knob. She stood quite still. How _could_
+he.... And she knew now that he had bolted the front door knowing she
+was out in the rain. How _could_ he? Her body was motionless as she
+stood staring at the locked door, but her brain was a rushing confusion
+of questions. Why? Why? This couldn't be Everard. Who was this
+man--pitiless, cruel? Not Everard. Not her lover. Where was he, her
+lover and husband? Why didn't he come and take care of her, and not let
+her be frightened by this strange man....
+
+She heard a chair being moved inside the room, and then she heard the
+creak of leather as Wemyss sat down in it, and then there was the rustle
+of a newspaper being opened. He was actually settling down to read a
+newspaper while she, his wife, his love--wasn't he always telling her
+she was his little Love?--was breaking her heart outside the locked
+door. Why, but Everard--she and Everard; they understood each other;
+they had laughed, played together, talked nonsense, been friends....
+
+For an instant she had an impulse to cry out and beat on the door, not
+to care who heard, not to care that the whole house should come and
+gather round her naked misery; but she was stopped by a sudden new
+wisdom. It shuddered down on her heart, a wisdom she had never known or
+needed before, and held her quiet. At all costs there mustn't be two of
+them doing these things, at all costs these things mustn't be doubled,
+mustn't have echoes. If Everard was like this he must be like it alone.
+She must wait. She must sit quiet till he had finished. Else--but oh, he
+_couldn't_ be like it, it _couldn't_ be true that he didn't love her.
+Yet if he did love her, how could he ... how could he....
+
+She leaned her forehead against the door and began softly to cry. Then,
+afraid that she might after all burst out into loud, disgraceful
+sobbing, she turned and went upstairs.
+
+But where could she go? Where in the whole house was any refuge, any
+comfort? The only person who could have told her anything, who could
+have explained, who _knew_, was Vera. Yes--she would have understood.
+Yes, yes--Vera. She would go to Vera's room, get as close to her mind as
+she could,--search, find something, some clue....
+
+It seemed now to Lucy, as she hurried upstairs, that the room in the
+house she had most shrunk from was the one place where she might hope to
+find comfort. Oh, she wasn't frightened any more. Everything was trying
+to frighten her, but she wasn't going to be frightened. For some reason
+or other things were all trying together to-day to see if they could
+crush her, beat out her spirit. But they weren't going to....
+
+She jerked her wet hair out of her eyes as she climbed the stairs. It
+kept on getting into them and making her stumble. Vera would help her.
+Vera never was beaten. Vera had had fifteen years of not being beaten
+before she--before she had that accident. And there must have been heaps
+of days just like this one, with the wind screaming and Vera up in her
+room and Everard down in his--locked in, perhaps--and yet Vera had
+managed, and her spirit wasn't beaten out. For years and years, panted
+Lucy--her very thoughts came in gasps--Vera lived up here winter after
+winter, years, years, years, and would have been here now if she
+hadn't--oh, if only Vera weren't dead! If _only, only_ Vera weren't
+dead! But her mind lived on--her mind was in that room, in every
+littlest thing in it----
+
+Lucy stumbled up the last few stairs completely out of breath, and
+opening the sitting-room door stood panting on the threshold much as
+Lizzie had done, her hand on her chest.
+
+This time everything was in order. The window was shut, the scattered
+notepaper collected and tidily on the writing-table, the rain on the
+floor wiped up, and a fire had been lit and the wet cushions were drying
+in front of it. Also there was Lizzie, engaged in conscience-stricken
+activities, and when Lucy came in she was on her knees poking the fire.
+She was poking so vigorously that she didn't hear the door open,
+especially not with that rattling and banging of the window going on;
+and on getting up and seeing the figure standing there panting, with
+strands of lank hair in its eyes and its general air of neglect and
+weather, she gave a loud exclamation.
+
+'Lumme!' exclaimed Lizzie, whose origin and bringing-up had been
+obscure.
+
+She had helped carry in the luggage that morning, so she had seen her
+mistress before and knew what she was like in her dry state. She never
+could have believed, having seen her then all nicely fluffed out, that
+there was so little of her. Lizzie knew what long-haired dogs look like
+when they are being soaped, and she was also familiar with cats as
+they appear after drowning; yet they too surprised her, in spite of
+familiarity, each time she saw them in these circumstances by their want
+of real substance, of stuffing. Her mistress looked just like that,--no
+stuffing at all; and therefore Lizzie, the poker she was holding
+arrested in mid-air on its way into its corner, exclaimed Lumme.
+
+Then, realising that this weather-beaten figure must certainly be
+catching its death of cold, she dropped the poker and hurrying across
+the room and talking in the stress of the moment like one girl to
+another, she felt Lucy's sleeve and said, 'Why, you're wet to the bones.
+Come to the fire and take them sopping clothes off this minute, or
+you'll be laid up as sure as sure----' and pulled her over to the fire;
+and having got her there, and she saying nothing at all and not
+resisting, Lizzie stripped off her clothes and shoes and stockings,
+repeating at frequent intervals as she did so, 'Dear, dear,' and
+repressing a strong desire to beg her not to take on, lest later,
+perhaps, her mistress mightn't like her to have noticed she had been
+crying. Then she snatched up a woollen coverlet that lay folded on the
+end of the sofa, rolled her tightly round in it, sat her in a chair
+right up close to the fender, and still talking like one girl to another
+said, 'Now sit there and don't move while I fetch dry things--I won't be
+above a minute--now you promise, don't you----' and hurrying to the door
+never remembered her manners at all till she was through it, whereupon
+she put in her head again and hastily said, 'Mum,' and disappeared.
+
+She was away, however, more than a minute. Five minutes, ten minutes
+passed and Lizzie, feverishly unpacking Lucy's clothes in the bedroom
+below, and trying to find a complete set of them, and not knowing what
+belonged to which, didn't come back.
+
+Lucy sat quite still, rolled up in Vera's coverlet. Obediently she
+didn't move, but stared straight into the fire, sitting so close up to
+it that the rest of the room was shut out. She couldn't see the window,
+or the dismal rain streaming down it. She saw nothing but the fire,
+blazing cheerfully. How kind Lizzie was. How comforting kindness was. It
+was a thing she understood, a normal, natural thing, and it made her
+feel normal and natural just to be with it. Lizzie had given her such a
+vigorous rub-down that her skin tingled. Her hair was on ends, for that
+too had had a vigorous rubbing from Lizzie, who had taken her apron to
+it feeling that this was an occasion on which one abandoned convention
+and went in for resource. And as Lucy sat there getting warmer and
+warmer, and more and more pervaded by the feeling of relief and
+well-being that even the most wretched feel if they take off all their
+clothes, her mind gradually calmed down, it left off asking agonised
+questions, and presently her heart began to do the talking.
+
+She was so much accustomed to find life kind, that given a moment of
+quiet like this with somebody being good-natured and back she slipped to
+her usual state, which was one of affection and confidence. Lizzie
+hadn't been gone five minutes before Lucy had passed from sheer
+bewildered misery to making excuses for Everard; in ten minutes she was
+seeing good reasons for what he had done; in fifteen she was blaming
+herself for most of what had happened. She had been amazingly idiotic to
+run out of the room, and surely quite mad to run out of the house. It
+was wrong, of course, for him to bolt her out, but he was angry, and
+people did things when they were angry that horrified them afterwards.
+Surely people who easily got angry needed all the sympathy and
+understanding one could give them,--not to be met by despair and the
+loss of faith in them of the person they had hurt. That only turned
+passing, temporary bad things into a long unhappiness. She hadn't known
+he had a temper. She had only, so far, discovered his extraordinary
+capacity for being offended. Well, if he had a temper how could he help
+it? He was born that way, as certainly as if he had been born lame.
+Would she not have been filled with tenderness for his lameness if he
+had happened to be born like that? Would it ever have occurred to her to
+mind, to feel it as a grievance?
+
+The warmer Lucy got the more eager she grew to justify Wemyss. In the
+middle of the reasons she was advancing for his justification, however,
+it suddenly struck her that they were a little smug. All that about
+people with tempers needing sympathy,--who was she, with her impulses
+and impatiences--with her, as she now saw, devastating impulses and
+impatiences--to take a line of what was very like pity. Pity! Smug,
+odious word; smug, odious thing. Wouldn't she hate it if she thought he
+pitied her for her failings? Let him be angry with her failings, but not
+pity her. She and her man, they needed no pity from each other; they had
+love. It was impossible that anything either of them did or was should
+_really_ touch that.
+
+Very warm now in Vera's blanket, her face flushed by the fire, Lucy
+asked herself what could really put out that great, glorious, central
+blaze. All that was needed was patience when he.... She gave herself a
+shake,--there she was again, thinking smugly. She wouldn't think at all.
+She would just take things as they came, and love, and love.
+
+Then the vision of Everard, sitting solitary with his newspaper and by
+this time, too, probably thinking only of love, and anyhow not happy,
+caused one of those very impulses to lay hold of her which she had a
+moment before been telling herself she would never give way to again.
+She was aware one had gripped her, but this was a good impulse,--this
+wasn't a bad one like running out into the rain: she would go down and
+have another try at that door. She was warmed through now and quite
+reasonable, and she felt she couldn't another minute endure not being at
+peace with Everard. How silly they were. It was ridiculous. It was like
+two children fighting. Lizzie was so long bringing her clothes; she
+couldn't wait, she must sit on Everard's knee again, feel his arms round
+her, see his eyes looking kind. She would go down in her blanket. It
+wrapped her up from top to toe. Only her feet were bare; but they were
+quite warm, and anyhow feet didn't matter.
+
+So Lucy padded softly downstairs, making hardly a sound, and certainly
+none that could be heard above the noise of the wind by Lizzie in the
+bedroom, frantically throwing clothes about.
+
+She knocked at the library door.
+
+Wemyss's voice said, 'Come in.'
+
+So he had unlocked it. So he had hoped she would come.
+
+He didn't, however, look round. He was sitting with his back to the door
+at the writing-table in the window, writing.
+
+'I want my flowers in here,' he said, without turning his head.
+
+So he had rung. So he thought it was the parlourmaid. So he hadn't
+unlocked the door because he hoped she would come.
+
+But his flowers,--he wanted his birthday flowers in there because they
+were all that were left to him of his ruined birthday.
+
+When she heard this order Lucy's heart rushed out to him. She shut the
+door softly and with her bare feet making no sound went up behind him.
+
+He thought the parlourmaid had shut the door, and gone to carry out his
+order. Feeling an arm put round his shoulder he thought the parlourmaid
+hadn't gone to carry out his order, but had gone mad instead.
+
+'Good God!' he exclaimed, jumping up.
+
+At the sight of Lucy in her blanket, with her bare feet and her confused
+hair, his face changed. He stared at her without speaking.
+
+'I've come to tell you--I've come to tell you----' she began.
+
+Then she faltered, for his mouth was a mere hard line.
+
+'Everard, darling,' she said entreatingly, lifting her face to his,
+'let's be friends--please let's be friends--I'm so sorry--so sorry----'
+
+His eyes ran over her. It was evident that all she had on was that
+blanket. A strange fury came into his face, and he turned his back on
+her and marched with a heavy tread to the door, a tread that made Lucy,
+for some reason she couldn't at first understand, think of Elgar. Why
+Elgar? part of her asked, puzzled, while the rest of her was blankly
+watching Wemyss. Of course: the march: _Pomp and Circumstance_.
+
+At the door he turned and said, 'Since you thrust yourself into my room
+when I have shown you I don't desire your company you force me to leave
+it.'
+
+Then he added, his voice sounding queer and through his teeth, 'You'd
+better go and put your clothes on. I assure you I'm proof against sexual
+allurements.'
+
+Then he went out.
+
+Lucy stood looking at the door. Sexual allurements? What did he mean?
+Did he think--did he mean----
+
+She flushed suddenly, and gripping her blanket tight about her she too
+marched to the door, her eyes bright and fixed.
+
+Considering the blanket, she walked upstairs with a good deal of
+dignity, and passed the bedroom door just as Lizzie, her arms full of a
+complete set of clothing, came out of it.
+
+'Lumme!' once more exclaimed Lizzie, who seemed marked down for shocks;
+and dropped a hairbrush and a shoe.
+
+Disregarding her, Lucy proceeded up the next flight with the same
+dignity, and having reached Vera's room crossed to the fire, where she
+stood in silence while Lizzie, who had hurried after her and was
+reproaching her for having gone downstairs like that, dressed her and
+brushed her hair.
+
+She was quite silent. She didn't move. She was miles away from Lizzie,
+absorbed in quite a new set of astonished, painful thoughts. But at the
+end, when Lizzie asked her if there was anything more she could do, she
+looked at her a minute and then, having realised her, put out her hand
+and laid it on her arm.
+
+'Thank you _very_ much for everything,' she said earnestly.
+
+'I'm terribly sorry about that window, mum,' said Lizzie, who was sure
+she had been the cause of trouble. 'I don't know what come over me to
+forget it.'
+
+Lucy smiled faintly at her. 'Never mind,' she said; and she thought that
+if it hadn't been for that window she and Everard--well, it was no use
+thinking like that; perhaps there would have been something else.
+
+Lizzie went. She was a recent acquisition, and was the only one of the
+servants who hadn't known the late Mrs. Wemyss, but she told herself
+that anyhow she preferred this one. She went; and Lucy stood where she
+had left her, staring at the floor, dropping back into her quite new set
+of astonished, painful thoughts.
+
+Everard,--that was an outrage, that about sexual allurements; just
+simply an outrage. She flushed at the remembrance of it; her whole body
+seemed to flush hot. She felt as though never again would she be able to
+bear him making love to her. He had spoilt that. But that was a dreadful
+way to feel, that was destructive of the very heart of marriage. No, she
+mustn't let herself,--she must stamp that feeling out; she must forget
+what he had said. He couldn't really have meant it. He was still in a
+temper. She oughtn't to have gone down. But how could she know? All this
+was new to her, a new side of Everard. Perhaps, she thought, watching
+the reflection of the flames flickering on the shiny, slippery oak
+floor, only people with tempers should marry people with tempers. They
+would understand each other, say the same sorts of things, tossing them
+backwards and forwards like a fiery, hissing ball, know the exact time
+it would last, and be saved by their vivid emotions from the deadly
+hurt, the deadly loneliness of the one who couldn't get into a rage.
+
+Loneliness.
+
+She lifted her head and looked round the room.
+
+No, she wasn't lonely. There was still----
+
+Suddenly she went to the bookshelves, and began pulling out the books
+quickly, hungrily reading their names, turning over their pages in a
+kind of starving hurry to get to know, to get to understand, Vera....
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Meanwhile Wemyss had gone into the drawing-room till such time as his
+wife should choose to allow him to have his own library to himself
+again.
+
+For a long while he walked up and down it thinking bitter things, for he
+was very angry. The drawing-room was a big gaunt room, rarely used of
+recent years. In the early days, when people called on the newly arrived
+Wemysses, there had been gatherings in it,--retaliatory festivities to
+the vicar, to the doctor, to the landlord, with a business acquaintance
+or two of Wemyss's, wife appended, added to fill out. These festivities,
+however, died of inanition. Something was wanting, something necessary
+to nourish life in them. He thought of them as he walked about the
+echoing room from which the last guest had departed years ago. Vera, of
+course. Her fault that the parties had left off. She had been so slack,
+so indifferent. You couldn't expect people to come to your house if you
+took no pains to get them there. Yet what a fine room for entertaining.
+The grand piano, too. Never used. And Vera who made such a fuss about
+music, and pretended she knew all about it.
+
+The piano was clothed from head to foot in a heavy red baize cover, even
+its legs being buttoned round in what looked like Alpine Sport gaiters,
+and the baize flap that protected the keys had buttons all along it from
+one end to the other. In order to play, these buttons had first to be
+undone,--Wemyss wasn't going to have the expensive piano not taken care
+of. It had been his wedding present to Vera--how he had loved that
+woman!--and he had had the baize clothes made specially, and had
+instructed Vera that whenever the piano was not in use it was to have
+them on, properly fastened.
+
+What trouble he had had with her at first about it. She was always
+forgetting to button it up again. She would be playing, and get up and
+go away to lunch, or tea, or out into the garden, and leave it uncovered
+with the damp and dust getting into it, and not only uncovered but with
+its lid open. Then, when she found that he went in to see if she had
+remembered, she did for a time cover it up in the intervals of playing,
+but never buttoned all its buttons; invariably he found that some had
+been forgotten. It had cost L150. Women had no sense of property. They
+were unfit to have the charge of valuables. Besides, they got tired of
+them. Vera had actually quite soon got tired of the piano. His present.
+That wasn't very loving of her. And when he said anything about it she
+wouldn't speak. Sulked. How profoundly he disliked sulking. And she, who
+had made such a fuss about music when first he met her, gave up playing,
+and for years no one had touched the piano. Well, at least it was being
+taken care of.
+
+From habit he stooped and ran his eye up its gaiters.
+
+All buttoned.
+
+Stay--no; one buttonhole gaped.
+
+He stooped closer and put out his hand to button it, and found the
+button gone. No button. Only an end of thread. How was that?
+
+He straightened himself, and went to the fireplace and rang the bell.
+Then he waited, looking at his watch. Long ago he had timed the
+distances between the different rooms and the servants' quarters,
+allowing for average walking and one minute's margin for getting under
+way at the start, so that he knew exactly at what moment the parlourmaid
+ought to appear.
+
+She appeared just as time was up and his finger was moving towards the
+bell again.
+
+'Look at that piano-leg,' said Wemyss.
+
+The parlourmaid, not knowing which leg, looked at all three so as to be
+safe.
+
+'What do you see?' he asked.
+
+The parlourmaid was reluctant to say. What she saw was piano-legs, but
+she felt that wasn't the right answer.
+
+'What do you _not_ see?' Wemyss asked, louder.
+
+This was much more difficult, because there were so many things she
+didn't see; her parents, for instance.
+
+'Are you deaf, woman?' he inquired.
+
+She knew the answer to that, and said it quickly. 'No sir,' she said.
+
+'Look at that piano-leg, I say,' said Wemyss, pointing with his pipe.
+
+It was, so to speak, the off fore-leg at which he pointed, and the
+parlourmaid, relieved to be given a clue, fixed her eye on it earnestly.
+
+'What do you see?' he asked. 'Or, rather, what do you not see?'
+
+The parlourmaid looked hard at what she saw, leaving what she didn't see
+to take care of itself. It seemed unreasonable to be asked to look at
+what she didn't see. But though she looked, she could see nothing to
+justify speech. Therefore she was silent.
+
+'Don't you see there's a button off?'
+
+The parlourmaid, on looking closer, did see that, and said so.
+
+'Isn't it your business to attend to this room?'
+
+She admitted that it was.
+
+'Buttons don't come off of themselves,' Wemyss informed her.
+
+The parlourmaid, this not being a question, said nothing.
+
+'Do they?' he asked loudly.
+
+'No sir,' said the parlourmaid; though she could have told him many a
+story of things buttons did do of themselves, coming off in your hand
+when you hadn't so much as begun to touch them. Cups, too. The way cups
+would fall apart in one's hand----
+
+She, however, merely said, 'No sir.'
+
+'Only wear and tear makes them come off,' Wemyss announced; and
+continuing judicially, emphasising his words with a raised forefinger,
+he said: 'Now attend to me. This piano hasn't been used for years. Do
+you hear that? Not for years. To my certain knowledge not for years.
+Therefore the cover cannot have been unbuttoned legitimately, it cannot
+have been unbuttoned by any one authorised to unbutton it.
+Therefore----'
+
+He pointed his finger straight at her and paused. 'Do you follow me?' he
+asked sternly.
+
+The parlourmaid hastily reassembled her wandering thoughts. 'Yes sir,'
+she said.
+
+'Therefore some one unauthorised has unbuttoned the cover, and some one
+unauthorised has played on the piano. Do you understand?'
+
+'Yes sir,' said the parlourmaid.
+
+'It is hardly credible,' he went on, 'but nevertheless the conclusion
+can't be escaped, that some one has actually taken advantage of my
+absence to play on that piano. Some one in this house has actually
+dared----'
+
+'There's the tuner,' said the parlourmaid tentatively, not sure if that
+would be an explanation, for Wemyss's lucid sentences, almost of a legal
+lucidity, invariably confused her, but giving the suggestion for what it
+was worth. 'I understood the orders was to let the tuner in once a
+quarter, sir. Yesterday was his day. He played for a hour. And 'ad the
+baize and everything off, and the lid leaning against the wall.'
+
+True. True. The tuner. Wemyss had forgotten the tuner. The tuner had
+standing instructions to come and tune. Well, why couldn't the
+fool-woman have reminded him sooner? But the tuner having tuned didn't
+excuse the parlourmaid's not having sewn on the button the tuner had
+pulled off.
+
+He told her so.
+
+'Yes sir,' she said.
+
+'You will have that button on in five minutes,' he said, pulling out his
+watch. 'In five minutes exactly from now that button will be on. I shall
+be staying in this room, so shall see for myself that you carry out my
+orders.'
+
+'Yes sir,' said the parlourmaid.
+
+He walked to the window and stood staring at the wild afternoon. She
+remained motionless where she was.
+
+What a birthday he was having. And with what joy he had looked forward
+to it. It seemed to him very like the old birthdays with Vera, only so
+much more painful because he had expected so much. Vera had got him used
+to expecting very little; but it was Lucy, his adored Lucy, who was
+inflicting this cruel disappointment on him. Lucy! Incredible. And she
+to come down in that blanket, tempting him, very nearly getting him that
+way rather than by the only right and decent way of sincere and obvious
+penitence. Why, even Vera had never done a thing like that, not once in
+all the years.
+
+'Let's be friends,' says Lucy. Friends! Yes, she did say something about
+sorry, but what about that blanket? Sorrow with no clothes on couldn't
+possibly be genuine. It didn't go together with that kind of appeal. It
+was not the sort of combination one expected in a wife. Why couldn't she
+come down and apologise properly dressed? God, her little shoulder
+sticking out--how he had wanted to seize and kiss it ... but then that
+would have been giving in, that would have meant her triumph. Her
+triumph, indeed--when it was she, and she only, who had begun the whole
+thing, running out of the room like that, not obeying him when he
+called, humiliating him before that damned Lizzie....
+
+He thrust his hands into his pockets and turned away with a jerk from
+the window.
+
+There, standing motionless, was the parlourmaid.
+
+'What? You still here?' he exclaimed. 'Why the devil don't you go and
+fetch that button?'
+
+'I understood your orders was none of us is to leave rooms without your
+permission, sir.'
+
+'You'd better be quick then,' he said, looking at his watch. 'I gave you
+five minutes, and three of them have gone.'
+
+She disappeared; and in the servants' sitting-room, while she was
+hastily searching for her thimble and a button that would approximately
+do, she told the others what they already knew but found satisfaction in
+repeating often, that if it weren't that Wemyss was most of the week in
+London, not a day, not a minute, would she stay in the place.
+
+'There's the wages,' the cook reminded her.
+
+Yes; they were good; higher than anywhere she had heard of. But what was
+the making of the place was the complete freedom from Monday morning
+every week to Friday tea-time. Almost anything could be put up with from
+Friday tea-time till Monday morning, seeing that the rest of the week
+they could do exactly as they chose, with the whole place as good as
+belonging to them; and she hurried away, and got back to the
+drawing-room thirty seconds over time.
+
+Wemyss, however, wasn't there with his watch. He was on his way upstairs
+to the top of the house, telling himself as he went that if Lucy chose
+to take possession of his library he would go and take possession of her
+sitting-room. It was only fair. But he knew she wasn't now in the
+library. He knew she wouldn't stay there all that time. He wanted an
+excuse to himself for going to where she was. She must beg his pardon
+properly. He could hold out--oh, he could hold out all right for any
+length of time, as she'd find out very soon if she tried the sulking
+game with him--but to-day it was their first day in his home; it was his
+birthday; and though nothing could be more monstrous than the way she
+had ruined everything, yet if she begged his pardon properly he would
+forgive her, he was ready to take her back the moment she showed real
+penitence. Never was a woman loved as he loved Lucy. If only she would
+be penitent, if only she would properly and sincerely apologise, then he
+could kiss her again. He would kiss that little shoulder of hers, make
+her pull her blouse back so that he could see it as he saw it down in
+the library, sticking out of that damned blanket--God, how he loved
+her....
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+The first thing he saw when he opened the door of the room at the top of
+the house was the fire.
+
+A fire. He hadn't ordered a fire. He must look into that. That officious
+slattern Lizzie----
+
+Then, before he had recovered from this, he had another shock. Lucy was
+on the hearthrug, her head leaning against the sofa, sound asleep.
+
+So that's what she had been doing,--just going comfortably to sleep,
+while he----
+
+He shut the door and walked over to the fireplace and stood with his
+back to it looking down at her. Even his heavy tread didn't wake her. He
+had shut the door in the way that was natural, and had walked across the
+room in the way that was natural, for he felt no impulse in the presence
+of sleep to go softly. Besides, why should she sleep in broad daylight?
+Wemyss was of opinion that the night was for that. No wonder she
+couldn't steep at night if she did it in the daytime. There she was,
+sleeping soundly, completely indifferent to what he might be doing.
+Would a really loving woman be able to do that? Would a really devoted
+wife?
+
+Then he noticed that her face, the side of it he could see, was much
+swollen, and her nose was red. At least, he thought, she had had some
+contrition for what she had done before going to sleep. It was to be
+hoped she would wake up in a proper frame of mind. If so, even now some
+of the birthday might be saved.
+
+He took out his pipe and filled it slowly, his eyes wandering constantly
+to the figure on the floor. Fancy that thing having the power to make or
+mar his happiness. He could pick that much up with one hand. It looked
+like twelve, with its long-stockinged relaxed legs, and its round,
+short-haired head, and its swollen face of a child in a scrape. Make or
+mar. He lit his pipe, repeating the phrase to himself, struck by it,
+struck by the way it illuminated his position of bondage to love.
+
+All his life, he reflected, he had only asked to be allowed to lavish
+love, to make a wife happy. Look how he had loved Vera: with the utmost
+devotion till she had killed it, and nothing but trouble as a reward.
+Look how he loved that little thing on the floor. Passionately. And in
+return, the first thing she did on being brought into his home as his
+bride was to quarrel and ruin his birthday. She knew how keenly he had
+looked forward to his birthday, she knew how the arrangements of the
+whole honeymoon, how the very date of the wedding, had hinged on this
+one day; yet she had deliberately ruined it. And having ruined it, what
+did she care? Comes up here, if you please, and gets a book and goes
+comfortably to sleep over it in front of the fire.
+
+His mouth hardened still more. He pulled the arm-chair up and sat down
+noisily in it, his eyes cold with resentment.
+
+The book Lucy had been reading had dropped out of her hand when she fell
+asleep, and lay open on the floor at his feet. If she used books in such
+a way, Wemyss thought, he would be very careful how he let her have the
+key of his bookcase. This was one of Vera's,--Vera hadn't taken any care
+of her books either; she was always reading them. He slanted his head
+sideways to see the title, to see what it was Lucy had considered more
+worth her attention than her conduct that day towards her husband.
+_Wuthering Heights_. He hadn't read it, but he fancied he had heard of
+it as a morbid story. She might have been better employed, on their
+first day at home, than in shutting herself away from him reading a
+morbid story.
+
+It was while he was looking at her with these thoughts stonily in his
+eyes that Lucy, wakened by the smell of his pipe, opened hers. She
+saw Everard sitting close to her, and had one of those moments
+of instinctive happiness, of complete restoration to unshadowed
+contentment, which sometimes follow immediately on waking up, before
+there has been time to remember. It seems for a wonderful instant as
+though all in the world were well. Doubts have vanished. Pain is gone.
+And sometimes the moment continues even beyond remembrance.
+
+It did so now with Lucy. When she opened her eyes and saw Everard, she
+smiled at him a smile of perfect confidence. She had forgotten
+everything. She woke up after a deep sleep and saw him, her dear love,
+sitting beside her. How natural to be happy. Then, the expression on his
+face bringing back remembrance, it seemed to her in that first serene
+sanity, that clear-visioned moment of spirit unfretted by body, that
+they had been extraordinarily silly, taking everything the other one
+said and did with a tragicness....
+
+Only love filled Lucy after the deep, restoring sleep. 'Dearest one,'
+she murmured drowsily, smiling at him, without changing her position.
+
+He said nothing to that; and presently, having woken up more, she got on
+to her knees and pulled herself across to him and curled up at his feet,
+her head against his knee.
+
+He still said nothing. He waited. He would give her time. Her words had
+been familiar, but not penitent. They had hardly been the right
+beginning for an expression of contrition; but he would see what she
+said next.
+
+What she said next was, 'Haven't we been silly,'--and, more familiarity,
+she put one arm round his knees and held them close against her face.
+
+'We?' said Wemyss. 'Did you say we?'
+
+'Yes,' said Lucy, her cheek against his knee. 'We've been wasting time.'
+
+Wemyss paused before he made his comment on this. 'Really,' he then
+said, 'the way you include me shows very little appreciation of your
+conduct.'
+
+'Well, _I've_ been silly then,' she said, lifting her head and smiling
+up at him.
+
+She simply couldn't go on with indignations. Perhaps they were just
+ones. It didn't matter if they were. Who wanted to be in the right in a
+dispute with one's lover? Everybody, oh, but everybody who loved, would
+passionately want always to have been in the wrong, never, never to have
+been right. That one's beloved should have been unkind,--who wanted that
+to be true? Who wouldn't do anything sooner than have not been mistaken
+about it? Vividly she saw Everard as he was before their marriage; so
+dear, so boyish, such fun, her playmate. She could say anything to him
+then. She had been quite fearless. And vividly, too, she saw him as he
+was when first they met, both crushed by death,--how he had comforted
+her, how he had been everything that was wonderful and tender. All that
+had happened since, all that had happened on this particular and most
+unfortunate day, was only a sort of excess of boyishness: boyishness on
+its uncontrolled side, a wave, a fit of bad temper provoked by her not
+having held on to her impulses. That locking her out in the rain,--a
+schoolboy might have done that to another schoolboy. It meant nothing,
+except that he was angry. That about sexual allure----oh, well.
+
+'I've been very silly,' she said earnestly.
+
+He looked down at her in silence. He wanted more than that. That wasn't
+nearly enough. He wanted much more of humbleness before he could bring
+himself to lift her on to his knee, forgiven. And how much he wanted her
+on his knee.
+
+'Do you realise what you've done?' he asked.
+
+'Yes,' said Lucy. 'And I'm so sorry. Won't we kiss and be friends?'
+
+'Not yet, thank you. I must be sure first that you understand how
+deliberately wicked you've been.'
+
+'Oh, but I haven't been deliberately wicked!' exclaimed Lucy, opening
+her eyes wide with astonishment. 'Everard, how can you say such a
+thing?'
+
+'Ah, I see. You are still quite impenitent, and I am sorry I came up.'
+
+He undid her arm from round his knees, put her on one side, and got out
+of the chair. Rage swept over him again.
+
+'Here I've been sitting watching you like a dog,' he said, towering over
+her, 'like a faithful dog while you slept, waiting patiently till you
+woke up and only wanting to forgive you, and you not only callously
+sleep after having behaved outrageously and allowed yourself to exhibit
+temper before the whole house on our very first day together in my
+home--well knowing, mind you, what day it is--but when I ask you for
+some sign, some word, some assurance that you are ashamed of yourself
+and will not repeat your conduct, you merely deny that you have done
+anything needing forgiveness.'
+
+He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, his face twitching with anger, and
+wished to God he could knock the opposition out of Lucy as easily.
+
+She, on the floor, sat looking up at him, her mouth open. What could she
+do with Everard? She didn't know. Love had no effect; saying she was
+sorry had no effect.
+
+She pushed her hair nervously behind her ears with both hands. 'I'm sick
+of quarrels,' she said.
+
+'So am I,' said Wemyss, going towards the door thrusting his pipe into
+his pocket. 'You've only got yourself to thank for them.'
+
+She didn't protest. It seemed useless. She said, 'Forgive me, Everard.'
+
+'Only if you apologise.'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Yes what?' He paused for her answer.
+
+'I do apologise.'
+
+'You admit you've been deliberately wicked?'
+
+'Oh yes.'
+
+He continued towards the door.
+
+She scrambled to her feet and ran after him. 'Please don't go,' she
+begged, catching his arm. 'You know I can't bear it, I can't bear it if
+we quarrel----'
+
+'Then what do you mean by saying "Oh yes," in that insolent manner?'
+
+'Did it seem insolent? I didn't mean--oh, I'm so tired of this----'
+
+'I daresay. You'll be tireder still before you've done. _I_ don't get
+tired, let me tell you. You can go on as long as you choose,--it won't
+affect me.'
+
+'Oh do, do let's be friends. I don't want to go on. I don't want
+anything in the world except to be friends. Please kiss me, Everard, and
+say you forgive me----'
+
+He at least stood still and looked at her.
+
+'And do believe I'm so, so sorry----'
+
+He relented. He wanted, extraordinarily, to kiss her. 'I'll accept it if
+you assure me it is so,' he said.
+
+'And do, do let's be happy. It's your birthday----'
+
+'As though I've forgotten that.'
+
+He looked at her upturned face; her arm was round his neck now. 'Lucy, I
+don't believe you understand my love for you,' he said solemnly.
+
+'No,' said Lucy truthfully, 'I don't think I do.'
+
+'You'll have to learn.'
+
+'Yes,' said Lucy; and sighed faintly.
+
+'You mustn't wound such love.'
+
+'No,' said Lucy. 'Don't let us wound each other ever any more, darling
+Everard.'
+
+'I'm not talking of each other. I'm talking at this moment of myself in
+relation to you. One thing at a time, please.'
+
+'Yes,' said Lucy. 'Kiss me, won't you, Everard? Else I shan't know we're
+really friends.'
+
+He took her head in his hands, and bestowed a solemn kiss of pardon on
+her brow.
+
+She tried to coax him back to cheerfulness. 'Kiss my eyes too,' she
+said, smiling at him, 'or they'll feel neglected.'
+
+He kissed her eyes.
+
+'And now my mouth, please, Everard.'
+
+He kissed her mouth, and did at last smile.
+
+'And now won't we go to the fire and be cosy?' she asked, her arm in
+his.
+
+'By the way, who ordered the fire?' he inquired in his ordinary voice.
+
+'I don't know. It was lit when I came up. Oughtn't it to have been?'
+
+'Not without orders. It must have been that Lizzie. I'll ring and find
+out----'
+
+'Oh, don't ring!' exclaimed Lucy, catching his hand,--she felt she
+couldn't bear any more ringing. 'If you do she'll come, and I want us to
+be alone together.'
+
+'Well, whose fault is it we haven't been alone together all this time?'
+he asked.
+
+'Ah, but we're friends now--you mustn't go back to that any more,' she
+said, anxiously smiling and drawing his hand through her arm.
+
+He allowed her to lead him to the arm-chair, and sitting in it did at
+last feel justified in taking her on his knee.
+
+'How my own Love spoils things,' he said, shaking his head at her with
+fond solemnity when they were settled in the chair.
+
+And Lucy, very cautious now, only said gently, 'But I never _mean_ to.'
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+She sat after that without speaking on his knee, his arms round her, her
+head on his breast.
+
+She was thinking.
+
+Try as she might to empty herself of everything except acceptance and
+love, she found that only her body was controllable. That lay quite
+passive in Wemyss's arms; but her mind refused to lie passive, it would
+think. Strange how tightly one's body could be held, how close to
+somebody else's heart, and yet one wasn't anywhere near the holder. They
+locked you up in prisons that way, holding your body tight and thinking
+they had got you, and all the while your mind--you--was as free as the
+wind and the sunlight. She couldn't help it, she struggled hard to feel
+as she had felt when she woke up and saw him sitting near her; but the
+way he had refused to be friends, the complete absence of any readiness
+in him to meet her, not half, nor even a quarter, but a little bit of
+the way, had for the first time made her consciously afraid of him.
+
+She was afraid of him, and she was afraid of herself in relation to him.
+He seemed outside anything of which she had experience. He appeared not
+to be--he anyhow had not been that day--generous. There seemed no way,
+at any point, by which one could reach him. What was he _really_ like?
+How long was it going to take her really to know him? Years? And she
+herself,--she now knew, now that she had made their acquaintance, that
+she couldn't at all bear scenes. Any scenes. Either with herself, or in
+her presence with other people. She couldn't bear them while they were
+going on, and she couldn't bear the exhaustion of the long drawn-out
+making up at the end. And she not only didn't see how they were to be
+avoided--for no care, no caution would for ever be able to watch what
+she said, or did, or looked, or, equally important, what she didn't say,
+or didn't do, or didn't look--but she was afraid, afraid with a most
+dismal foreboding, that some day after one of them, or in the middle of
+one of them, her nerve would give out and she would collapse. Collapse
+deplorably; into just something that howled and whimpered.
+
+This, however, was horrible. She mustn't think like this. Sufficient
+unto the day, she thought, trying to make herself smile, is the
+whimpering thereof. Besides, she wouldn't whimper, she wouldn't go to
+pieces, she would discover a way to manage. Where there was so much love
+there must be a way to manage.
+
+He had pulled her blouse back, and was kissing her shoulder and asking
+her whose very own wife she was. But what was the good of love-making if
+it was immediately preceded or followed or interrupted by anger? She was
+afraid of him. She wasn't in this kissing at all. Perhaps she had been
+afraid of him unconsciously for a long while. What was that abjectness
+on the honeymoon, that anxious desire to please, to avoid offending, but
+fear? It was love afraid; afraid of getting hurt, of not going to be
+able to believe whole-heartedly, of not going to be able--this was the
+worst--to be proud of its beloved. But now, after her experiences
+to-day, she had a fear of him more separate, more definite, distinct
+from love. Strange to be afraid of him and love him at the same time.
+Perhaps if she didn't love him she wouldn't be afraid of him. No, she
+didn't think she would then, because then nothing that he said would
+reach her heart. Only she couldn't imagine that. He _was_ her heart.
+
+'What are you thinking of?' asked Wemyss, who having finished with her
+shoulder noticed how quiet she was.
+
+She could tell him truthfully; a moment sooner and she couldn't have. 'I
+was thinking,' she said, 'that you are my heart.'
+
+'Take care of your heart then, won't you?' said Wemyss.
+
+'We both will,' said Lucy.
+
+'Of course,' said Wemyss. 'That's understood. Why state it?'
+
+She was silent a minute. Then she said, 'Isn't it nearly tea-time?'
+
+'By Jove, yes,' he exclaimed, pulling out his watch. 'Why, long past. I
+wonder what that fool--get up, little Love--' he brushed her off his
+lap--'I'll ring and find out what she means by it.'
+
+Lucy was sorry she had said anything about tea. However, he didn't keep
+his finger on the bell this time, but rang it normally. Then he stood
+looking at his watch.
+
+She put her arm through his. She longed to say, 'Please don't scold
+her.'
+
+'Take care,' he said, his eyes on his watch. 'Don't shake me----'
+
+She asked what he was doing.
+
+'Timing her,' he said. 'Sh--sh--don't talk. I can't keep count if you
+talk.'
+
+She became breathlessly quiet and expectant. She listened anxiously for
+the sound of footsteps. She did hope Lizzie would come in time. Lizzie
+was so nice,--it would be dreadful if she got a scolding. Why didn't she
+come? There--what was that? A door going somewhere. Would she do it?
+Would she?
+
+Running steps came along the passage outside. Wemyss put his watch away.
+'Five seconds to spare,' he said. 'That's the way to teach them to
+answer bells,' he added with satisfaction.
+
+'Did you ring, sir?' inquired Lizzie, opening the door.
+
+'Why is tea late?'
+
+'It's in the library, sir.'
+
+'Kindly attend to my question. I asked why tea was late.'
+
+'It wasn't late to begin with, sir,' said Lizzie.
+
+'Be so good as to make yourself clear.'
+
+Lizzie, who had felt quite clear, here became befogged. She did her
+best, however. 'It's got late through waiting to be 'ad, sir,' she said.
+
+'I'm afraid I don't follow you. Do you?' he asked, turning to Lucy.
+
+She started. 'Yes,' she said.
+
+'Really. Then you are cleverer than I am,' said Wemyss.
+
+Lizzie at this--for she didn't want to make any more trouble for the
+young lady--made a further effort to explain. 'It was punctual in the
+library, sir, at 'alf-past four if you'd been there to 'ave it. The tea
+was punctual, sir, but there wasn't no one to 'ave it.'
+
+'And pray by whose orders was it in the library?'
+
+'I couldn't say, sir. Chesterton----'
+
+'Don't put it on to Chesterton.'
+
+'I was thinking,' said Lizzie, who was more stout-hearted than the
+parlourmaid and didn't take cover quite so frequently in dumbness, 'I
+was thinking p'raps Chesterton knew. I don't do the tea, sir.'
+
+'Send Chesterton,' said Wemyss.
+
+Lizzie disappeared with the quickness of relief. Lucy, with a nervous
+little movement, stooped and picked up _Wuthering Heights_, which was
+still lying face downward on the floor.
+
+'Yes,' said Wemyss. 'I like the way you treat books.'
+
+She put it back on its shelf. 'I went to sleep, and it fell down,' she
+said. 'Everard,' she went on quickly, 'I must go and get a handkerchief.
+I'll join you in the library.'
+
+'I'm not going into the library. I'm going to have tea here. Why should
+I have tea in the library?'
+
+'I only thought as it was there----'
+
+'I suppose I can have tea where I like in my own house?'
+
+'But of course. Well, then, I'll go and get a handkerchief and come back
+here.'
+
+'You can do that some other time. Don't be so restless.'
+
+'But I--I _want_ a handkerchief this minute,' said Lucy.
+
+'Nonsense; here, have mine,' said Wemyss; and anyhow it was too late to
+escape, for there in the door stood Chesterton.
+
+She was the parlourmaid. Her name has not till now been mentioned. It
+was Chesterton.
+
+'Why is tea in the library?' Wemyss asked.
+
+'I understood, sir, tea was always to be in the library,' said
+Chesterton.
+
+'That was while I was by myself. I suppose it wouldn't have occurred to
+you to inquire whether I still wished it there now that I am not by
+myself.'
+
+This floored Chesterton. Her ignorance of the right answer was complete.
+She therefore said nothing, and merely stood.
+
+But he didn't let her off. 'Would it?' he asked suddenly.
+
+'No sir,' she said, dimly feeling that 'Yes sir' would land her in
+difficulties.
+
+'No. Quite so. It wouldn't. Well, you will now go and fetch that tea and
+bring it up here. Stop a minute, stop a minute--don't be in such a
+hurry, please. How long has it been made?'
+
+'Since half-past four, sir.'
+
+'Then you will make fresh tea, and you will make fresh toast, and you
+will cut fresh bread and butter.'
+
+'Yes sir.'
+
+'And another time you will have the goodness to ascertain my wishes
+before taking upon yourself to put the tea into any room you choose to
+think fit.'
+
+'Yes sir.'
+
+She waited.
+
+He waved.
+
+She went.
+
+'That'll teach her,' said Wemyss, looking refreshed by the encounter.
+'If she thinks she's going to get out of bringing tea up here by putting
+it ready somewhere else she'll find she's mistaken. Aren't they a set?
+_Aren't_ they a set, little Love?'
+
+'I--don't know,' said Lucy nervously.
+
+'You don't know!'
+
+'I mean, I don't know them yet. How can I know them when I've only just
+come?'
+
+'You soon will, then. A lazier set of careless, lying----'
+
+'Do tell me what that picture is, Everard,' she interrupted, quickly
+crossing the room and standing in front of it. 'I've been wondering and
+wondering.'
+
+'You can see what it is. It's a picture.'
+
+'Yes. But where's the place?'
+
+'I've no idea. It's one of Vera's. She didn't condescend to explain it.'
+
+'You mean she painted it?'
+
+'I daresay. She was always painting.'
+
+Wemyss, who had been filling his pipe, lit it and stood smoking in front
+of the fire, occasionally looking at his watch, while Lucy stared at the
+picture. Lovely, lovely to run through that door out into the open, into
+the warmth and sunshine, further and further away....
+
+It was the only picture in the room; indeed, the room was oddly bare,--a
+thin room, with no carpet on its slippery floor, only some infrequent
+rugs, and no curtains. But there had been curtains, for there were the
+rods with rings on them, so that somebody must have taken Vera's
+curtains away. Lucy had been strangely perturbed when she noticed this.
+It was Vera's room. Her curtains oughtn't to have been touched.
+
+The long wall opposite the fireplace had nothing at all on its
+sand-coloured surface from the door to the window except a tall narrow
+looking-glass in a queerly-carved black frame, and the picture. But how
+that one picture glowed. What glorious weather they were having in it!
+It wasn't anywhere in England, she was sure. It was a brilliant, sunlit
+place, with a lot of almond trees in full blossom,--an orchard of them,
+apparently, standing in grass that was full of little flowers, very gay
+little flowers, of kinds she didn't know. And through the open door in
+the wall there was an amazing stretch of hot, vivid country. It
+stretched on and on till it melted into an ever so far away lovely blue.
+There was an effect of immense spaciousness, of huge freedom. One could
+feel oneself running out into it with one's face to the sun, flinging up
+one's arms in an ecstasy of release, of escape....
+
+'It's somewhere abroad,' she said, after a silence.
+
+'I daresay,' said Wemyss.
+
+'Used you to travel much?' she asked, still examining the picture,
+fascinated.
+
+'She refused to.'
+
+'She refused to?' echoed Lucy, turning round.
+
+She looked at him wonderingly. That seemed not only unkind of Vera, but
+extraordinarily--yes, energetic. The exertion required for refusing
+Everard something he wanted was surely enormous, was surely greater than
+any but the most robust-minded wife could embark upon. She had had one
+small experience of what disappointing him meant in that question of
+Christmas, and she hadn't been living with him then, and she had had all
+the nights to recover in; yet the effect of that one experience had been
+to make her give in at once when next he wanted something, and it was
+because of last Christmas that she was standing married in that room
+instead of being still, as both she and her Aunt Dot had intended, six
+months off it.
+
+'Why did she refuse?' she asked, wondering.
+
+Wemyss didn't answer for a moment. Then he said, 'I was going to say you
+had better ask her, but you can't very well do that, can you.'
+
+Lucy stood looking at him. 'Yes,' she said, 'she does seem
+extraordinarily near, doesn't she. This room is full----'
+
+'Now Lucy I'll have none of that. Come here.'
+
+He held out his hand. She crossed over obediently and took it.
+
+He pulled her close and ruffled her hair. He was in high spirits again.
+His encounters with the servants had exhilarated him.
+
+'Who's my duddely-umpty little girl?' he asked. 'Tell me who's my
+duddely-umpty little girl. Quick. Tell me----' And he caught her round
+the waist and jumped her up and down.
+
+Chesterton, bringing in the tea, arrived in the middle of a jump.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+There appeared to be no tea-table. Chesterton, her arms stretched taut
+holding the heavy tray, looked round. Evidently tea up there wasn't
+usual.
+
+'Put it in the window,' said Wemyss, jerking his head towards the
+writing-table.
+
+'Oh----' began Lucy quickly; and stopped.
+
+'What's the matter?' asked Wemyss.
+
+'Won't it--be draughty?'
+
+'Nonsense. Draughty. Do you suppose I'd tolerate windows in my house
+that let in draughts?'
+
+Chesterton, resting a corner of the tray on the table, was sweeping a
+clear space for it with her hand. Not that much sweeping was needed, for
+the table was big and all that was on it was the notepaper which earlier
+in the afternoon had been scattered on the floor, a rusty pen or two,
+some pencils whose ends had been gnawed as the pencils of a child at its
+lessons are gnawed, a neglected-looking inkpot, and a grey book with
+_Household Accounts_ in dark lettering on its cover.
+
+Wemyss watched her while she arranged the tea-things.
+
+'Take care, now--take care,' he said, when a cup rattled in its saucer.
+
+Chesterton, who had been taking care, took more of it; and _le trop_
+being _l'ennemi du bien_ she was so unfortunate as to catch her cuff in
+the edge of the plate of bread and butter.
+
+The plate tilted up; the bread and butter slid off; and only by a
+practised quick movement did she stop the plate from following the bread
+and butter and smashing itself on the floor.
+
+'There now,' said Wemyss. 'See what you've done. Didn't I tell you to be
+careful? It isn't,' he said, turning to Lucy, 'as if I hadn't _told_ her
+to be careful.'
+
+Chesterton, on her knees, was picking up the bread and butter which
+lay--a habit she had observed in bread and butter under circumstances of
+this kind--butter downwards.
+
+'You will fetch a cloth,' said Wemyss.
+
+'Yes sir.'
+
+'And you will cut more bread and butter.'
+
+'Yes sir.'
+
+'That makes two plates of bread and butter wasted to-day entirely owing
+to your carelessness. They shall be stopped out of your----Lucy, where
+are you going?'
+
+'To fetch a handkerchief. I must have a handkerchief, Everard. I can't
+for ever use yours.'
+
+'You'll do nothing of the kind. Lizzie will bring you one. Come back at
+once. I won't have you running in and out of the room the whole time. I
+never knew any one so restless. Ring the bell and tell Lizzie to get you
+one. What is she for, I should like to know?'
+
+He then resumed and concluded his observations to Chesterton. 'They
+shall be stopped out of your wages. That,' he said, 'will teach you.'
+
+And Chesterton, who was used to this, and had long ago arranged with the
+cook that such stoppages should be added on to the butcher's book, said,
+'Yes sir.'
+
+When she had gone--or rather withdrawn, for a plain word like gone
+doesn't justly describe the noiseless decorum with which Chesterton
+managed the doors of her entrances and exits--and when Lizzie, too, had
+gone after bringing a handkerchief, Lucy supposed they would now have
+tea; she supposed the moment had at last arrived for her to go and sit
+in that window.
+
+The table was at right angles to it, so that sitting at it you had
+nothing between one side of you and the great pane of glass that reached
+nearly to the floor. You could look sheer down on to the flags below.
+She thought it horrible, gruesome to have tea there, and the very first
+day, before she had had a moment's time to get used to things. Such
+detachment on the part of Everard was either just stark wonderful--she
+had already found noble explanations for it--or it was so callous that
+she had no explanation for it at all; none, that is, that she dared
+think of. Once more she decided that his way was really the best and
+simplest way to meet the situation. You took the bull by the horns. You
+seized the nettle. You cleared the air. And though her images, she felt,
+were not what they might be, neither was anything else that day what it
+might be. Everything appeared to reflect the confusion produced by
+Wemyss's excessive lucidity of speech.
+
+'Shall I pour out the tea?' she asked presently, preparing, then, to
+take the bull by the horns; for he remained standing in front of the
+fire smoking in silence. 'Just think,' she went on, making an effort to
+be gay, 'this is the first time I shall pour out tea in my----'
+
+She was going to say 'My own home,' but the words wouldn't come off her
+tongue. Wemyss had repeatedly during the day spoken of his home, but not
+once had he said 'our' or 'your'; and if ever a house didn't feel as if
+it in the very least belonged, too, to her, it was this one.
+
+'Not yet,' he said briefly.
+
+She wondered. 'Not yet?' she repeated.
+
+'I'm waiting for the bread and butter.'
+
+'But won't the tea get cold?'
+
+'No doubt. And it'll be entirely that fool's fault.'
+
+'But----' began Lucy, after a silence.
+
+'Buts again?'
+
+'I was only thinking that if we had it now it wouldn't be cold.'
+
+'She must be taught her lesson.'
+
+Again she wondered. 'Won't it rather be a lesson to us?' she asked.
+
+'For God's sake, Lucy, don't argue. Things have to be done properly in
+my house. You've had no experience of a properly managed household. All
+that set you were brought up in--why, one only had to look at them to
+see what a hugger-mugger way they probably lived. It's entirely the
+careless fool's own fault that the tea will be cold. _I_ didn't ask her
+to throw the bread and butter on the floor, did I?'
+
+And as she said nothing, he asked again. 'Did I?' he asked.
+
+'No,' said Lucy.
+
+'Well then,' said Wemyss.
+
+They waited in silence.
+
+Chesterton arrived. She put the fresh bread and butter on the table, and
+then wiped the floor with a cloth she had brought.
+
+Wemyss watched her closely. When she had done--and Chesterton being good
+at her work, scrutinise as he might he could see no sign on the floor of
+overlooked butter--he said, 'You will now take the teapot down and bring
+some hot tea.'
+
+'Yes sir,' said Chesterton, removing the teapot.
+
+A line of a hymn her nurse used to sing came into Lucy's head when she
+saw the teapot going. It was:
+
+     What various hindrances we meet--
+
+and she thought the next line, which she didn't remember, must have
+been:
+
+     Before at tea ourselves we seat.
+
+But though one portion of her mind was repeating this with nervous
+levity, the other was full of concern for the number of journeys up and
+down all those stairs the parlourmaid was being obliged to make. It
+was--well, thoughtless of Everard to make her go up and down so often.
+Probably he didn't realise--of course he didn't--how very many stairs
+there were. When and how could she talk to him about things like this?
+When would he be in such a mood that she would be able to do so without
+making them worse? And how, in what words sufficiently tactful,
+sufficiently gentle, would she be able to avoid his being offended? She
+must manage somehow. But tact--management--prudence--all these she had
+not yet in her life needed. Had she the smallest natural gift for them?
+Besides, each of them applied to love seemed to her an insult. She had
+supposed that love, real love, needed none of these protections. She had
+thought it was a simple, sturdy growth that could stand anything....
+Why, here was the parlourmaid already, teapot and all. How very quick
+she had been!
+
+Chesterton, however, hadn't so much been quick as tactful, managing, and
+prudent. She had been practising these qualities on the other side of
+the door, whither she had taken the teapot and quietly waited with it a
+few minutes, and whence she now brought it back. She placed it on the
+table with admirable composure; and when Wemyss, on her politely asking
+whether there were anything else he required, said, 'Yes. You will now
+take away that toast and bring fresh,' she took the toast also only as
+far as the other side of the door, and waited with it there a little.
+
+Lucy now hoped they would have tea. 'Shall I pour it out?' she asked
+after a moment a little anxiously, for he still didn't move and she
+began to be afraid the toast might be going to be the next hindrance; in
+which case they would go round and round for the rest of the day, never
+catching up the tea at all.
+
+But he did go over and sit down at the table, followed by her who hardly
+now noticed its position, so much surprised and absorbed was she by his
+methods of housekeeping.
+
+'Isn't it monstrous,' he said, sitting down heavily, 'how we've been
+kept waiting for such a simple thing as tea. I tell you they're the most
+slovenly----'
+
+There was Chesterton again, bearing the toast-rack balanced on the tip
+of a respectful ringer.
+
+This time even Lucy realised that it must be the same toast, and her
+hand, lifted in the act of pouring out tea, trembled, for she feared the
+explosion that was bound to come.
+
+How extraordinary. There was no explosion. Everard hadn't--it seemed
+incredible--noticed. His attention was so much fixed on what she was
+doing with his cup, he was watching her so carefully lest she should
+fill it a hair's-breadth fuller than he liked, that all he said to
+Chesterton as she put the toast on the table was, 'Let this be a lesson
+to you.' But there was no gusto in it; it was quite mechanical.
+
+'Yes sir,' said Chesterton.
+
+She waited.
+
+He waved.
+
+She went.
+
+The door hadn't been shut an instant before Wemyss exclaimed, 'Why, if
+that slovenly hussy hasn't forgotten----' And too much incensed to
+continue he stared at the tea-tray.
+
+'What? What?' asked Lucy startled, also staring at the tea-tray.
+
+'Why, the sugar.'
+
+'Oh, I'll call her back--she's only just gone----'
+
+'Sit down, Lucy.'
+
+'But she's just outside----'
+
+'Sit _down_, I tell you.'
+
+Lucy sat.
+
+Then she remembered that neither she nor Everard ever had sugar in their
+tea, so naturally there was no point in calling Chesterton back.
+
+'Oh, of course,' she said, smiling nervously, for what with one thing
+and another she was feeling shattered, 'how stupid of me. We don't want
+sugar.'
+
+Wemyss said nothing. He was studying his watch, timing Chesterton. Then
+when the number of seconds needed to reach the kitchen had run out, he
+got up and rang the bell.
+
+In due course Lizzie appeared. It seemed that the rule was that this
+particular bell should be answered by Lizzie.
+
+'Chesterton,' said Wemyss.
+
+In due course Chesterton appeared. She was less composed than when she
+brought back the teapot, than when she brought back the toast. She tried
+to hide it, but she was out of breath.
+
+'Yes sir?' she said.
+
+Wemyss took no notice, and went on drinking his tea.
+
+Chesterton stood.
+
+After a period of silence Lucy thought that perhaps it was expected of
+her as mistress of the house to tell her about the sugar; but then as
+they neither of them wanted any....
+
+After a further period of silence, during which she anxiously debated
+whether it was this that they were all waiting for, she thought that
+perhaps Everard hadn't heard the parlourmaid come in; so she said--she
+was ashamed to hear how timidly it came out--'Chesterton is here,
+Everard.'
+
+He took no notice, and went on eating bread and butter.
+
+After a further period of anxious inward debate she concluded that it
+must after all be expected of her, as mistress of the house, to talk of
+the sugar; and the sugar was to be talked of not because they needed it
+but on principle. But what a roundabout way; how fatiguing and
+difficult. Why didn't Everard say what he wanted, instead of leaving her
+to guess?
+
+'I think----' she stammered, flushing, for she was now very timid
+indeed, 'you've forgotten the sugar, Chesterton.'
+
+'Will you not interfere!' exclaimed Wemyss very loud, putting down his
+cup with a bang.
+
+The flush on Lucy's face vanished as if it had been knocked out. She sat
+quite still. If she moved, or looked anywhere but at her plate, she knew
+she would begin to cry. The scenes she had dreaded had not included any
+with herself in the presence of servants. It hadn't entered her head
+that these, too, were possible. She must hold on to herself; not move;
+not look. She sat absorbed in that one necessity, fiercely concentrated.
+Chesterton must have gone away and come back again, for presently she
+was aware that sugar was being put on the tea-tray; and then she was
+aware that Everard was holding out his cup.
+
+'Give me some more tea, please,' he said, 'and for God's sake don't
+sulk. If the servants forget their duties it's neither your nor my
+business to tell them what they've forgotten,--they've just got to look
+and see, and if they don't see they've just got to stand there looking
+till they do. It's the only way to teach them. But for you to get
+sulking on the top of it----'
+
+She lifted the teapot with both hands, because one hand by itself too
+obviously shook. She succeeded in pouring out the tea without spilling
+it, and in stopping almost at the very moment when he said, 'Take care,
+take care--you're filling it too full.' She even succeeded after a
+minute or two in saying, holding carefully on to her voice to keep it
+steady, 'I'm not--sulking. I've--got a headache.'
+
+And she thought desperately, 'The only thing to be done with marriage is
+to let it wash over one.'
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+For the rest of that day she let it wash; unresistingly. She couldn't
+think any more. She couldn't feel any more,--not that day. She really
+had a headache; and when the dusk came, and Wemyss turned on the lights,
+it was evident even to him that she had, for there was no colour at all
+in her face and her eyes were puffed and leaden.
+
+He had one of his sudden changes. 'Come here,' he said, reaching out and
+drawing her on to his knee; and he held her face against his breast, and
+felt full of maternal instincts, and crooned over her. 'Was it a poor
+little baby,' he crooned. 'Did it have a headache then----' And he put
+his great cool hand on her hot forehead and kept it there.
+
+Lucy gave up trying to understand anything at all any more. These swift
+changes,--she couldn't keep up with them; she was tired, tired....
+
+They sat like that in the chair before the fire, Wemyss holding his hand
+on her forehead and feeling full of maternal instincts, and she an
+unresisting blank, till he suddenly remembered he hadn't shown her the
+drawing-room yet. The afternoon had not proceeded on the lines laid down
+for it in his plans, but if they were quick there was still time for the
+drawing-room before dinner.
+
+Accordingly she was abruptly lifted off his knee. 'Come along, little
+Love,' he said briskly. 'Come along. Wake up. I want to show you
+something.'
+
+And the next thing she knew was that she was going downstairs, and
+presently she found herself standing in a big cold room, blinking in the
+bright lights he had switched on at the door.
+
+'This,' he said, holding her by the arm, 'is the drawing-room. Isn't it
+a fine room.' And he explained the piano, and told her how he had found
+a button off, and he pointed out the roll of rugs in a distant corner
+which, unrolled, decorated the parquet floor, and he drew her attention
+to the curtains,--he had no objections to curtains in a drawing-room, he
+said, because a drawing-room was anyhow a room of concessions; and he
+asked her at the end, as he had asked her at the beginning, if she
+didn't think it a fine room.
+
+Lucy said it was a very fine room.
+
+'You'll remember to put the cover on properly when you've finished
+playing the piano, won't you,' he said.
+
+'Yes I will,' said Lucy. 'Only I don't play,' she added, remembering she
+didn't.
+
+'That's all right then,' he said, relieved.
+
+They were still standing admiring the proportions of the room, its
+marble fireplace and the brilliancy of its lighting--'The test of good
+lighting,' said Wemyss, 'is that there shouldn't be a corner of a room
+in which a man of eighty can't read his newspaper'--when the gong began.
+
+'Good Lord,' he said, looking at his watch, 'it'll be dinner in ten
+minutes. Why, we've had nothing at all of the afternoon, and I'd planned
+to show you so many things. Ah,' he said, turning and shaking his head
+at her, his voice changing to sorrow, 'whose fault has that been?'
+
+'Mine,' said Lucy.
+
+He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face, gazing at it and
+shaking his head slowly. The light, streaming into her swollen eyes,
+hurt them and made her blink.
+
+'Ah, my Lucy,' he said fondly, 'little waster of happiness--isn't it
+better simply to love your Everard than make him unhappy?'
+
+'Much better,' said Lucy, blinking.
+
+There was no dressing for dinner at The Willows, for that, explained
+Wemyss, was the great joy of home, that you needn't ever do anything you
+don't want to in it, and therefore, he said, ten minutes' warning was
+ample for just washing one's hands. They washed their hands together in
+the big bedroom, because Wemyss disapproved of dressing-rooms at home
+even more strongly than on honeymoons in hotels. 'Nobody's going to
+separate me from my own woman,' he said, drying his hands and eyeing her
+with proud possessiveness while she dried hers; their basins stood side
+by side on the brown mottled marble of the washstand. 'Are they,' he
+said, as she dried in silence.
+
+'No,' said Lucy.
+
+'How's the head?' he said.
+
+'Better,' she said.
+
+'Who's got a forgiving husband?' he said.
+
+'I have,' she said.
+
+'Smile at me,' he said.
+
+She smiled at him.
+
+At dinner it was Vera who smiled, her changeless little strangled smile,
+with her eyes on Lucy. Lucy's seat had its back to Vera, but she knew
+she had only to turn her head to see her eyes fixed on her, smiling. No
+one else smiled; only Vera.
+
+Lucy bent her head over her plate, trying to escape the unshaded light
+that beat down on her eyes, sore with crying, and hurt. In front of her
+was the bowl of kingcups, the birthday flowers. Just behind Wemyss stood
+Chesterton, in an attitude of strained attention. Dimly through Lucy's
+head floated thoughts: Seeing that Everard invariably spent his
+birthdays at The Willows, on that day last year at that hour Vera was
+sitting where she, Lucy, now was, with the kingcups glistening in front
+of her, and Everard tucking his table napkin into his waistcoat, and
+Chesterton waiting till he was quite ready to take the cover off the
+soup; just as Lucy was seeing these things this year Vera saw them last
+year; Vera still had three months of life ahead of her then, three more
+months of dinners, and Chesterton, and Everard tucking in his napkin.
+How queer. What a dream it all was. On that last of his birthdays at
+which Vera would ever be present, did any thought of his next birthday
+cross her mind? How strange it would have seemed to her if she could
+have seen ahead, and seen her, Lucy, sitting in her chair. The same
+chair; everything just the same; except the wife. '_Souvent femme
+varie_,' floated vaguely across her tired brain. She ate her soup
+sitting all crooked with fatigue ... life was exactly like a dream....
+
+Wemyss, absorbed in the scrutiny of his food and the behaviour of
+Chesterton, had no time to notice anything Lucy might be doing. It was
+the rule that Chesterton, at meals, should not for an instant leave the
+room. The furthest she was allowed was a door in the dark corner
+opposite the door into the hall, through which at intervals Lizzie's arm
+thrust dishes. It was the rule that Lizzie shouldn't come into the room,
+but, stationary on the other side of this door, her function was to
+thrust dishes through it; and to her from the kitchen, pattering
+ceaselessly to and fro, came the tweeny bringing the dishes. This had
+all been thought out and arranged very carefully years ago by Wemyss,
+and ought to have worked without a hitch; but sometimes there were
+hitches, and Lizzie's arm was a minute late thrusting in a dish. When
+this happened Chesterton, kept waiting and conscious of Wemyss
+enormously waiting at the end of the table, would put her head round the
+door and hiss at Lizzie, who then hurried to the kitchen and hissed at
+the tweeny, who for her part didn't dare hiss at the cook.
+
+To-night, however, nothing happened that was not perfect. From the way
+Chesterton had behaved about the tea, and the way Lizzie had behaved
+about the window, Wemyss could see that during his four weeks' absence
+his household had been getting out of hand, and he was therefore more
+watchful than ever, determined to pass nothing over. On this occasion he
+watched in vain. Things went smoothly from start to finish. The tweeny
+ran, Lizzie thrust, Chesterton deposited, dead on time. Every dish was
+hot and punctual, or cold and punctual, according to what was expected
+of it; and Wemyss going out of the dining-room at the end, holding Lucy
+by the arm, couldn't but feel he had dined very well. Perhaps, though,
+his father's photograph hadn't been dusted,--it would be just like them
+to have disregarded his instructions. He went back to look, and Lucy,
+since he was holding her by the arm, went too. No, they had even done
+that; and there was nothing further to be said except, with great
+sternness to Chesterton, eyeing her threateningly, 'Coffee at once.'
+
+The evening was spent in the library reading Wemyss's school reports,
+and looking at photographs of him in his various stages,--naked and
+crowing; with ringlets, in a frock; in knickerbockers, holding a hoop; a
+stout schoolboy; a tall and slender youth; thickening; still thickening;
+thick,--and they went to bed at ten o'clock.
+
+Somewhere round midnight Lucy discovered that the distances of the
+treble bed softened sound; either that, or she was too tired to hear
+anything, for she dropped out of consciousness with the heaviness of a
+released stone.
+
+Next day it was finer. There were gleams of sun; and though the wind
+still blew, the rain held off except for occasional spatterings. They
+got up very late--breakfast on Sundays at The Willows was not till
+eleven--and went and inspected the chickens. By the time they had done
+that, and walked round the garden, and stood on the edge of the river
+throwing sticks into it and watching the pace at which they were whirled
+away on its muddy and disturbed surface, it was luncheon time. After
+luncheon they walked along the towpath, one behind the other because it
+was narrow and the grass at the sides was wet. Wemyss walked slowly, and
+the wind was cold. Lucy kept close to his heels, seeking shelter under,
+as it were, his lee. Talk wasn't possible because of the narrow path and
+the blustering wind, but every now and then Wemyss looked down over his
+shoulder at her. 'Still there?' he asked; and Lucy said she was.
+
+They had tea punctually at half-past four up in Vera's sitting-room, but
+without, this time, a fire--Wemyss had rectified Lizzie's tendency to be
+officious--and after tea he took her out again to show her how his
+electricity was made, while the gardener who saw to the machinery, and
+the boy who saw to the gardener, stood by in attendance.
+
+There was a cold sunset,--a narrow strip of gold below heavy clouds,
+like a sullen, half-open eye. The prudent cows dotted the fields
+motionlessly, lying on their dry bite of grass. The wind blew straight
+across from the sunset through Lucy's coat, wrap herself in it as
+tightly as she might, while they loitered among outhouses and examined
+the durability of the railings. Her headache, in spite of her good
+night, hadn't gone, and by dinner time her throat felt sore. She said
+nothing to Wemyss, because she was sure she would be well in the
+morning. Her colds never lasted. Besides she knew, for he had often told
+her, how much he was bored by the sick.
+
+At dinner her cheeks were very red and her eyes very bright.
+
+'Who's my pretty little girl,' said Wemyss, struck by her.
+
+Indeed he was altogether pleased with her. She had been his own Lucy
+throughout the day, so gentle and sweet, and hadn't once said But, or
+tried to go out of rooms. Unquestioningly acquiescent she had been; and
+now so pretty, with the light full on her, showing up her lovely
+colouring.
+
+'Who's my pretty little girl,' he said again, laying his hand on hers,
+while Chesterton looked down her nose.
+
+Then he noticed she had a knitted scarf round her shoulders, and he
+said, 'Whatever have you got that thing on in here for?'
+
+'I'm cold,' said Lucy.
+
+'Cold! Nonsense. You're as warm as a toast. Feel my hand compared to
+yours.'
+
+Then she did tell him she thought she had caught cold, and he said,
+withdrawing his hand and his face falling, 'Well, if you have it's only
+what you deserve when you recollect what you did yesterday.'
+
+'I suppose it is,' agreed Lucy; and assured him her colds were all over
+in twenty-four hours.
+
+Afterwards in the library when they were alone, she asked if she hadn't
+better sleep by herself in case he caught her cold, but Wemyss wouldn't
+hear of such a thing. Not only, he said, he never caught colds and
+didn't believe any one else who was sensible ever did, but it would take
+more than a cold to separate him from his wife. Besides, though of
+course she richly deserved a cold after yesterday--'Who's a shameless
+little baggage,' he said, pinching her ear, 'coming down with only a
+blanket on----' somehow, though he had been so angry at the time, the
+recollection of that pleased him--he could see no signs of her having
+got one. She didn't sneeze, she didn't blow her nose----
+
+Lucy agreed, and said she didn't suppose it was anything really, and she
+was sure she would be all right in the morning.
+
+'Yes--and you know we catch the early train up,' said Wemyss. 'Leave
+here at nine sharp, mind.'
+
+'Yes,' said Lucy. And presently, for she was feeling very uncomfortable
+and hot and cold in turns, and had a great longing to creep away and be
+alone for a little while, she said that perhaps, although she knew it
+was very early, she had better go to bed.
+
+'All right,' said Wemyss, getting up briskly. 'I'll come too.'
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+He found her, however, very trying that night, the way she would keep on
+turning round, and it reached such a pitch of discomfort to sleep with
+her, or rather endeavour to sleep with her, for as the night went on she
+paid less and less attention to his requests that she should keep still,
+that at about two o'clock, staggering with sleepiness, he got up and
+went into a spare room, trailing the quilt after him and carrying his
+pillows, and finished the night in peace.
+
+When he woke at seven he couldn't make out at first where he was, nor
+why, on stretching out his arm, he found no wife to be gathered in. Then
+he remembered, and he felt most injured that he should have been turned
+out of his own bed. If Lucy imagined she was going to be allowed to
+develop the same restlessness at night that was characteristic of her by
+day, she was mistaken; and he got up to go and tell her so.
+
+He found her asleep in a very untidy position, the clothes all dragged
+over to her side of the bed and pulled up round her. He pulled them back
+again, and she woke up, and he got into bed and said, 'Come here,'
+stretching out his arm, and she didn't come.
+
+Then he looked at her more closely, and she, looking at him with heavy
+eyes, said something husky. It was evident she had a very tiresome cold.
+
+'What an untruth you told me,' he exclaimed, 'about not having a cold in
+the morning!'
+
+She again said something husky. It was evident she had a very tiresome
+sore throat.
+
+'It's getting on for half-past seven,' said Wemyss. 'We've got to leave
+the house at nine sharp, mind.'
+
+Was it possible that she wouldn't leave the house at nine sharp? The
+thought that she wouldn't was too exasperating to consider. He go up to
+London alone? On this the first occasion of going up after his marriage?
+He be alone in Lancaster Gate, just as if he hadn't a wife at all? What
+was the good of a wife if she didn't go up to London with one? And all
+this to come upon him because of her conduct on his birthday.
+
+'Well,' he said, sitting up in bed and looking down at her, 'I hope
+you're pleased with the result of your behaviour.'
+
+But it was no use saying things to somebody who merely made husky
+noises.
+
+He got out of bed and jerked up the blinds. 'Such a beautiful day, too,'
+he said indignantly.
+
+When at a quarter to nine the station cab arrived, he went up to the
+bedroom hoping that he would find her after all dressed and sensible and
+ready to go, but there she was just as he had left her when he went to
+have his breakfast, dozing and inert in the tumbled bed.
+
+'You'd better follow me by the afternoon train,' he said, after staring
+down at her in silence. 'I'll tell the cab. But in any case,' he said,
+as she didn't answer, 'in _any_ case, Lucy, I expect you to-morrow.'
+
+She opened her eyes and looked at him languidly.
+
+'Do you hear?' he said.
+
+She made a husky noise.
+
+'Good-bye,' he said shortly, stooping and giving the top of her head a
+brief, disgusted kiss. The way the consequences of folly fell always on
+somebody else and punished him.... Wemyss could hardly give his _Times_
+the proper attention in the train for thinking of it.
+
+That day Miss Entwhistle, aware of the return from the honeymoon on the
+Friday, and of the week-end to be spent at The Willows, and of the
+coming up to Lancaster Gate early on the Monday morning for the inside
+of the week, waited till twelve o'clock, so as to allow plenty of time
+for Wemyss no longer to be in the house, and then telephoned. Lucy and
+she were to lunch together. Lucy had written to say so, and Miss
+Entwhistle wanted to know if she wouldn't soon be round. She longed
+extraordinarily to fold that darling little child in her arms again. It
+seemed an eternity since she saw her radiantly disappearing in the taxi;
+and the letters she had hoped to get during the honeymoon hadn't been
+letters at all, but picture postcards.
+
+A man's voice answered her,--not Wemyss's. It was, she recognised, the
+voice of the pale servant, who with his wife attended to the Lancaster
+Gate house. They inhabited the basement, and emerged from it up into the
+light only if they were obliged. Bells obliged them to emerge, and
+Wemyss's bath and breakfast, and after his departure to his office the
+making of his bed; but then the shades gathered round them again till
+next morning, because for a long while now once he had left the house he
+hadn't come back till after they were in bed. His re-marriage was going
+to disturb them, they were afraid, and the pale wife had forebodings
+about meals to be cooked; but at the worst the disturbance would only be
+for the three inside days of the week, and anything could be borne when
+one had from Friday to Monday to oneself; and as the morning went on,
+and no one arrived from Strorley, they began to take heart, and had
+almost quite taken it when the telephone bell rang.
+
+It didn't do it very often, for Wemyss had his other addresses, at the
+office, at the club, so that Twite, wanting in practice, was not very
+good at dealing with it. Also the shrill bell vibrating through the
+empty house, so insistent, so living, never failed to agitate both
+Twites. It seemed to them uncanny; and Mrs. Twite, watching Twite being
+drawn up by it out of his shadows, like some quiet fish sucked
+irresistibly up to gasp on the surface, was each time thankful that she
+hadn't been born a man.
+
+She always went and listened at the bottom of the kitchen stairs, not
+knowing what mightn't happen to Twite up there alone with that voice,
+and on this occasion she heard the following:
+
+'No, ma'am, not yet, ma'am.'
+
+'I couldn't say, ma'am.'
+
+'No, no news, ma'am.'
+
+'Oh yes, ma'am, on Friday night.'
+
+'Yes, ma'am, first thing Saturday.'
+
+'Yes, it is, ma'am--very strange, ma'am.'
+
+And then there was silence. He was writing, she knew, on the pad
+provided by Wemyss for the purpose.
+
+This was the most trying part of Twite's duties. Any message had to be
+written down and left on the hall table, complete with the time of its
+delivery, for Wemyss to see when he came in at night. Twite was not a
+facile writer. Words confused him. He was never sure how they were
+spelt. Also he found it very difficult to remember what had been said,
+for there was a hurry and an urgency about a voice on the telephone that
+excited him and prevented his giving the message his undivided
+attention. Besides, when was a message not a message? Wemyss's orders
+were to write down messages. Suppose they weren't messages, must he
+still write? Was this, for instance, a message?
+
+He thought he had best be on the safe side, and laboriously wrote it
+down.
+
+     Miss Henwissel rang up sir to know if you was come and if so when
+     you was coming and what orders we ad and said it was very strange
+     12.15.
+
+He had only just put this on the table and was about to descend to his
+quiet shades when off the thing started again.
+
+This time it was Wemyss.
+
+'Back to-night late as usual,' he said.
+
+'Yes sir,' said Twite. 'There's just been a----'
+
+But he addressed emptiness.
+
+Meanwhile Miss Entwhistle, after a period of reflection, was ringing up
+Strorley 19. The voice of Chesterton, composed and efficient, replied;
+and the effect of her replies was to make Miss Entwhistle countermand
+lunch and pack a small bag and go to Paddington.
+
+Trains to Strorley at that hour were infrequent and slow, and it wasn't
+till nearly five that she drove down the oozy lane in the station cab
+and, turning in at the white gate, arrived at The Willows. That sooner
+or later she would have to arrive at The Willows now that she was
+related to it by marriage was certain, and she had quite made up her
+mind, during her four weeks' peace since the wedding, that she was going
+to dismiss all foolish prejudices against the place from her mind and
+arrive at it, when she did arrive, with a stout heart and an unclouded
+countenance. After all, there was much in that _mot_ of her nephew's:
+'Somebody has died everywhere.' Yet, as the cab heaved her nearer to the
+place along the oozy lane, she did wish that it wasn't in just this
+house that Lucy lay in bed. Also she had misgivings at being there
+uninvited. In a case of serious illness naturally such misgivings
+wouldn't exist; but the maid's voice on the telephone had only said Mrs.
+Wemyss had a cold and was staying in bed, and Mr. Wemyss had gone up to
+London by the usual train. It couldn't be much that was wrong, or he
+wouldn't have gone. Hadn't she, she thought uneasily as she found
+herself uninvited within Wemyss's gates, perhaps been a little
+impulsive? Yet the idea of that child alone in the sinister house----
+
+She peered out of the cab window. Not at all sinister, she said,
+correcting herself severely; all most neat. Perfect order. Shrubs as
+they should be. Strong railings. Nice cows.
+
+The cab stopped. Chesterton came down the steps and opened its door.
+Nice parlourmaid. Most normal.
+
+'How is Mrs. Wemyss?' asked Miss Entwhistle.
+
+'About the same I believe, ma'am,' said Chesterton; and inquired if she
+should pay the man.
+
+Miss Entwhistle paid the man, and then proceeded up the steps followed
+by Chesterton carrying her bag. Fine steps. Handsome house.
+
+'Does she know I'm coming?'
+
+'I believe the housemaid did mention it, ma'am.'
+
+Nice roomy hall. With a fire it might be quite warm. Fine windows. Good
+staircase.
+
+'Do you wish for tea, ma'am?'
+
+'No thank you. I should like to go up at once, if I may.'
+
+'If you please, ma'am.'
+
+At the turn of the stairs, where the gong was, Miss Entwhistle stood
+aside and let Chesterton precede her. 'Perhaps you had better go and
+tell Mrs. Wemyss I am here,' she said.
+
+'If you please, ma'am.'
+
+Miss Entwhistle waited, gazing at the gong with the same benevolence she
+had brought to bear on everything else. Fine gong. She also gazed at the
+antlers on the wall, for the wall continued to bristle with antlers
+right up to the top of the house. Magnificent collection.
+
+'If you please, ma'am,' said Chesterton, reappearing, tiptoeing gingerly
+to the head of the stairs.
+
+Miss Entwhistle went up. Chesterton ushered her into the bedroom,
+closing the door softly behind her.
+
+Miss Entwhistle knew Lucy was small, but not how small till she saw her
+in the treble bed. There really did appear to be nothing of her except a
+little round head. 'Why, but you've shrunk!' was her first exclamation.
+
+Lucy, who was tucked up to her chin by Lizzie, besides having a wet
+bandage encased in flannel round her throat, could only move her eyes
+and smile. She was on the side of the bed farthest from the door, and
+Miss Entwhistle had to walk round it to reach her. She was still hoarse,
+but not as voiceless as when Wemyss left in the morning, for Lizzie had
+been diligently plying her with things like hot honey, and her face, as
+her eyes followed Miss Entwhistle's approach, was one immense smile. It
+really seemed too wonderful to be with Aunt Dot again; and there was a
+peace about being ill, a relaxation from strain, that had made her quiet
+day, alone in bed, seem sheer bliss. It was so plain that she couldn't
+move, that she couldn't do anything, couldn't get up and go in trains,
+that her conscience was at rest in regard to Everard; and she lay in the
+blessed silence after he left, not minding how much her limbs ached
+because of the delicious tranquillity of her mind. The window was open,
+and in the garden the birds were busy. The wind had dropped. Except for
+the birds there was no sound. Divine quiet. Divine peace. The luxury of
+it after the week-end, after the birthday, after the honeymoon, was
+extraordinary. Just to be in bed by oneself seemed an amazingly
+felicitous condition.
+
+'Lovely of you to come,' she said hoarsely, smiling broadly and looking
+so unmistakably contented that Miss Entwhistle, as she bent over her and
+kissed her hot forehead, thought, 'It's a success. He's making her
+happy.'
+
+'You darling little thing,' she said, smoothing back her hair. 'Fancy
+seeing you again like this!'
+
+'Yes,' said Lucy, heavy-eyed and smiling. 'Lovely,' she whispered, 'to
+see you. Tea, Aunt Dot?'
+
+It was evidently difficult for her to speak, and her forehead was
+extremely hot.
+
+'No, I don't want tea.'
+
+'You'll stay?'
+
+'Yes,' said Miss Entwhistle, sitting down by the pillow and continuing
+to smooth back her hair. 'Of course I'll stay. How did you manage to
+catch such a cold, I wonder?'
+
+She was left to wonder, undisturbed by any explanations of Lucy's.
+Indeed it was as much as Lucy could manage to bring out the most
+necessary words. She lay contentedly with her eyes shut, having her hair
+stroked back, and said as little as possible.
+
+'Everard--' said Miss Entwhistle, stroking gently, 'is he coming back
+to-night?'
+
+'No,' whispered Lucy contentedly.
+
+Aunt Dot stroked in silence.
+
+'Has your temperature been taken?' she asked presently.
+
+'No,' whispered Lucy contentedly.
+
+'Oughtn't you--' after another pause 'to see a doctor?'
+
+'No,' whispered Lucy contentedly. Delicious, simply delicious, to lie
+like that having one's hair stroked back by Aunt Dot, the dear, the
+kind, the comprehensible.
+
+'So sweet of you to come,' she whispered again.
+
+Well, thought Miss Entwhistle as she sat there softly stroking and
+watching Lucy's face of complete content while she dozed off even after
+she was asleep the corners of her mouth still were tucked up in a
+smile--it was plain that Everard was making the child happy. In that
+case he certainly must be all that Lucy had assured her he was, and she,
+Miss Entwhistle, would no doubt very quickly now get fond of him. Of
+course she would. No doubt whatever. And what a comfort, what a relief,
+to find the child happy. Backgrounds didn't matter where there was
+happiness. Houses, indeed. What did it matter if they weren't the sort
+of houses you would, left to yourself, choose so long as in them dwelt
+happiness? What did it matter what their past had been so long as their
+present was illuminated by contentment? And as for furniture, why, that
+only became of interest, of importance, when life had nothing else in
+it. Loveless lives, empty lives, filled themselves in their despair with
+beautiful furniture. If you were really happy you had antlers.
+
+In this spirit, while she stroked and Lucy slept, Miss Entwhistle's eye,
+full of benevolence, wandered round the room. The objects in it, after
+her own small bedroom in Eaton Terrace and its necessarily small
+furniture, all seemed to her gigantic. Especially the bed. She had never
+seen a bed like it before, though she had heard of such beds in history.
+Didn't Og the King of Bashan have one? But what an excellent plan, for
+then you could get away from each other. Most sensible. Most wholesome.
+And a certain bleakness about the room would soon go when Lucy's little
+things got more strewn about,--her books, and photographs, and pretty
+dressing-table silver.
+
+Miss Entwhistle's eye arrived at and dwelt on the dressing-table. On it
+were two oval wooden-backed brushes without handles. Hairbrushes. Men's.
+Also shaving things. And, hanging over one side of the looking-glass,
+were three neckties.
+
+She quickly recovered. Most friendly. Most companionable. But a feeling
+of not being in Lucy's room at all took possession of her, and she
+fidgeted a little. With no business to be there whatever, she was in a
+strange man's bedroom. She averted her eyes from Wemyss's toilet
+arrangements, they were the last things she wanted to see; and, in
+averting them, they fell on the washstand with its two basins and on an
+enormous red-brown indiarubber sponge. No such sponge was ever Lucy's.
+The conclusion was forced upon her that Lucy and Everard washed side by
+side.
+
+From this, too, she presently recovered. After all, marriage was
+marriage, and you did things in marriage that you would never dream of
+doing single. She averted her eyes from the washstand. The last thing
+she wanted to do was to become familiar with Wemyss's sponge.
+
+Her eyes, growing more and more determined in their benevolence, gazed
+out of the window. How the days were lengthening. And really a beautiful
+look-out, with the late afternoon light reflected on the hills across
+the river. Birds, too, twittering in the garden,--everything most
+pleasant and complete. And such a nice big window. Lots of air and
+light. It reached nearly to the floor. Two housemaids at least, and
+strong ones, would be needed to open or shut it,--ah no, there were
+cords. A thought struck her: This couldn't be the room, that couldn't be
+the window, where----
+
+She averted her eyes from the window, and fixed them on what seemed to
+be the only satisfactory resting-place for them, the contented face on
+the pillow. Dear little loved face. And the dear, pretty hair,--how
+pretty young hair was, so soft and thick. No, of course it wasn't the
+window; that tragic room was probably not used at all now. How in the
+world had the child got such a cold. She could hear by her breathing
+that her chest was stuffed up, but evidently it wasn't worrying her, or
+she wouldn't in her sleep look so much pleased. Yes; that room was
+either shut up now and never used, or--she couldn't help being struck by
+yet another thought--it was a spare room. If so, Miss Entwhistle said to
+herself, it would no doubt be her fate to sleep in it. Dear me, she
+thought, taken aback.
+
+But from this also she presently recovered; and remembering her
+determination to eject all prejudices merely remarked to herself, 'Well,
+well.' And, after a pause, was able to add benevolently, 'A house of
+varied interest.'
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Later on in the dining-room, when she was reluctantly eating the meal
+prepared for her--Lucy still slept, or she would have asked to be
+allowed to have a biscuit by her bedside--Miss Entwhistle said to
+Chesterton, who attended her, Would she let her know when Mr. Wemyss
+telephoned, as she wished to speak to him.
+
+She was feeling more and more uneasy as time passed as to what Everard
+would think of her uninvited presence in his house. It was natural; but
+would he think so? What wasn't natural was for her to feel uneasy,
+seeing that the house was also Lucy's, and that the child's face had
+hardly had room enough on it for the width of her smile of welcome.
+There, however, it was,--Miss Entwhistle felt like an interloper. It was
+best to face things. She not only felt like an interloper but, in
+Everard's eyes, she was an interloper. This was the situation: His wife
+had a cold--a bad cold, but not anything serious; nobody had sent for
+his wife's aunt; nobody had asked her to come; and here she was. If
+that, in Everard's eyes, wasn't being an interloper Miss Entwhistle was
+sure he wouldn't know one if he saw one.
+
+In her life she had read many books, and was familiar with those elderly
+relatives frequently to be met in them, and usually female, who intrude
+into a newly married _menage_ and make themselves objectionable to one
+of the parties by sympathising with the other one. There was no cause
+for sympathy here, and if there ever should be Miss Entwhistle would
+certainly never sympathise except from a neutral place. She wouldn't
+come into a man's house, and in the very act of being nourished by his
+food sympathise with his wife; she would sympathise from London. Her
+honesty of intention, her single-mindedness, were, she knew, complete.
+She didn't feel, she knew she wasn't, in the least like these relatives
+in books, and yet as she sat in Everard's chair--obviously it was his;
+the upholstered seat was his very shape, inverted--she was afraid,
+indeed she was certain, he would think she was one of them.
+
+There she was, she thought, come unasked, sitting in his place, eating
+his food. He usedn't to like her; would he like her any the better for
+this? From a desire not to have meals of his she had avoided tea, but
+she hadn't been able to avoid dinner, and with each dish set before
+her--dishes produced surprisingly, as she couldn't but observe, at the
+end of an arm thrust to the minute through a door--she felt more and
+more acutely that she was in his eyes, if he could only see her, an
+interloper. No doubt it was Lucy's house too, but it didn't feel as if
+it were, and she would have given much to be able to escape back to
+London that night.
+
+But whatever Everard thought of her intrusion she wasn't going to leave
+Lucy. Not alone in that house; not to wake up to find herself alone in
+that house. Besides, who knew how such a chill would develop? There
+ought of course to have been a doctor. When Everard rang up, as he would
+be sure to the last thing to ask how Lucy was, she would go to the
+telephone, announce her presence, and inquire whether it wouldn't be as
+well to have a doctor round in the morning.
+
+Therefore she asked Chesterton to let her know when Mr. Wemyss
+telephoned; and Chesterton, surprised, for it was not Wemyss's habit to
+telephone to The Willows, all his communications coming on postcards,
+paused just an instant before replying, 'If you please, ma'am.'
+
+Chesterton wondered what Wemyss was expected to telephone about. It
+wouldn't have occurred to her that it might be about the new Mrs.
+Wemyss's health, because he had not within her recollection ever
+telephoned about the health of a Mrs. Wemyss. Sometimes the previous
+Mrs. Wemyss's health gave way enough for her to stay in bed, but no
+telephoning from London had in consequence taken place. Accordingly she
+wondered what message could be expected.
+
+'What time would Mr. Wemyss be likely to ring up?' asked Miss Entwhistle
+presently, more for the sake of saying something than from a desire to
+know. She was going to that telephone, but she didn't want to, she was
+in no hurry for it, it wasn't impatience to meet Wemyss's voice making
+her talk to Chesterton; what was making her talk was the dining-room.
+
+For not only did its bareness afflict her, and its glaring light, and
+its long empty table, and the way Chesterton's footsteps echoed up and
+down the uncarpeted floor, but there on the wall was that poor thing
+looking at her, she had no doubt whatever as to who it was standing up
+in that long slim frock looking at her, and she was taken aback. In
+spite of her determination to like all the arrangements, it did seem to
+her tactless to have her there, especially as she had that trick of
+looking so very steadily at one; and when she turned her eyes away from
+the queer, suppressed smile, she didn't like what she saw on the other
+wall either,--that enlarged old man, that obvious progenitor.
+
+Having caught sight of both these pictures, which at night were much
+more conspicuous than by day, owing to the brilliant unshaded lighting,
+Miss Entwhistle had no wish to look at them again, and carefully looked
+either at her plate or at Chesterton's back as she hurried down the room
+to the dish being held out at the end of the remarkable arm; but being
+nevertheless much disturbed by their presence, and by the way she knew
+they weren't taking their eyes off her however carefully she took hers
+off them, she asked Chesterton what time Wemyss would be likely to
+telephone merely in order to hear the sound of a human voice.
+
+Chesterton then informed her that her master never did telephone to The
+Willows, so that she was unable to say what time he would.
+
+'But,' said Miss Entwhistle, surprised, 'you have a telephone.'
+
+'If you please, ma'am,' said Chesterton.
+
+Miss Entwhistle didn't like to ask what, then, the telephone was for,
+because she didn't wish to embark on anything even remotely approaching
+a discussion of Everard's habits, so she wondered in silence.
+
+Chesterton, however, presently elucidated. She coughed a little first,
+conscious that to volunteer a remark wasn't quite within her idea of
+the perfect parlourmaid, and then she said, 'It's owing to local
+convenience, ma'am. We find it indispensable in the isolated situation
+of the 'ouse. We gives our orders to the tradesmen by means of the
+telephone. Mr. Wemyss installed it for that purpose, he says, and
+objects to trunk calls because of the charges and the waste of Mr.
+Wemyss's time at the other end, ma'am.'
+
+'Oh,' said Miss Entwhistle.
+
+'If you please, ma'am,' said Chesterton.
+
+Miss Entwhistle said nothing more. With her eyes fixed on her plate in
+order to avoid those other eyes, she wondered what she had better do. It
+was half-past eight, and Everard hadn't rung up. If he were going to be
+anxious enough not to mind the trunk-call charge he would have been
+anxious enough before this. That he hadn't rung up showed he regarded
+Lucy's indisposition as slight. What, then, would he say to her
+uninvited presence there? Nothing, she was afraid, that would be really
+hospitable. And she had just eaten a pudding of his. It seemed to curdle
+up within her.
+
+'No, _no_ coffee, thank you,' she said hastily, on Chesterton's
+inquiring if she wished it served in the library. She had had dinner
+because she couldn't help herself, urged to it by the servants, but she
+needn't proceed to extras. And the library,--wasn't it in the library
+that Everard was sitting the day that poor smiling thing ... yes, she
+remembered Lucy telling her so. No, she would not have coffee in the
+library.
+
+But now about telephoning. Really the only thing to do, the only way of
+dignity, was to ring him up. Useless waiting any more for him to do it;
+evidently he wasn't going to. She would ring him up, tell him she was
+there, and ask--she clung particularly to the doctor idea, because his
+presence would justify hers if the doctor hadn't better look in in the
+morning.
+
+Thus it was that, sitting quiet in their basement, the Twites were
+startled about nine o'clock that evening by the telephone bell. It
+sounded more uncanny than ever up there, making all that noise by itself
+in the dark; and when, hurrying up anxiously to it, Twite applied his
+ear, all that happened was that an extremely short-tempered voice told
+him to hold on.
+
+Twite held on, listening hard and hearing nothing.
+
+'Say 'Ullo, Twite,' presently advised Mrs. Twite from out of the anxious
+silence at the foot of the kitchen stairs.
+
+''Ullo,' said Twite half-heartedly.
+
+'Must be a wrong number,' said Mrs. Twite, after more silence. ''Ang it
+up, and come and finish your supper.'
+
+A very small voice said something very far away. Twite strained every
+nerve to hear. He hadn't yet had to face a trunk call, and he thought
+the telephone was fainting.
+
+''Ullo?' he said anxiously, trying to make the word sound polite.
+
+'It's a wrong number,' said Mrs. Twite, after further waiting. ''Ang it
+up.'
+
+The voice, incredibly small, began to talk again, and Twite, unable to
+hear a word, kept on saying with increasing efforts to sound polite,
+''Ullo?'Ullo?'
+
+''Ang it up,' said Mrs. Twite, who from the bottom of the stairs was
+always brave.
+
+'That's what it is,' said Twite at last, exhausted. 'It's a wrong
+number.' And he went to the writing-pad and wrote:
+
+     A wrong number rang up sir believed to be a lady 9.10.
+
+So Miss Entwhistle at the other end was defeated, and having done her
+best and not succeeded she decided to remain quiescent, at any rate
+till the morning. Quiescent and uncritical. She wouldn't worry; she
+wouldn't criticise; she would merely think of Everard in those terms
+of amiability which were natural to her.
+
+But while she was waiting for the call in the cold hall there had been a
+moment when her fixed benevolence did a little loosen. Chesterton,
+seeing that she shivered, had suggested the library for waiting in,
+where she said there was a fire, but Miss Entwhistle preferred to be
+cold in the hall than warm in the library; and standing in that bleak
+place she saw a line of firelight beneath a door, which she then knew
+must be the library. Accordingly she then also knew that Lucy's bedroom
+was exactly above the library, for looking up she could see its door
+from where she stood; so that it was out of that window.... Her
+benevolence for a moment did become unsteady. He let the child sleep
+there, he made the child sleep there....
+
+She soon, however, had herself in hand again. Lucy didn't mind, so why
+should she? Lucy was asleep there at that moment, with a look of
+complete content on her face. But there was one thing Miss Entwhistle
+decided she would do: Lucy shouldn't wake up by any chance in the night
+and find herself in that room alone,--window or no window, she would
+sleep there with her.
+
+This was a really heroic decision, and only love for Lucy made it
+possible. Apart from the window and what she believed had happened at
+it, apart from the way that poor thing's face in the photograph haunted
+her, there was the feeling that it wasn't Lucy's bedroom at all but
+Everard's. It was oddly disagreeable to Miss Entwhistle to spend the
+night, for instance, with Wemyss's sponge. She debated in the spare-room
+when she was getting ready for bed--a small room on the other side of
+the house, with a nice high window-sill--whether she wouldn't keep her
+clothes on. At least then she would feel more strange, at least she
+would feel less at home. But how tiring. At her age, if she sat up all
+night--and in her clothes no lying down could be comfortable--she would
+be the merest rag next morning, and quite unable to cope on the
+telephone with Everard. And she really must take out her hairpins; she
+couldn't sleep a wink with them all pressing on her head. Yet the
+familiarity of being in that room among the neckties without her
+hairpins.... She hesitated, and argued, and all the while she was slowly
+taking out her hairpins and taking off her clothes.
+
+At the last moment, when she was in her nightgown and her hair was
+neatly plaited and she was looking the goodest of tidy little women, her
+courage failed her. No, she couldn't go. She would stay where she was,
+and ring and ask that nice housemaid to sleep with Mrs. Wemyss in case
+she wanted anything in the night.
+
+She did ring; but by the time Lizzie came Miss Entwhistle, doubting the
+sincerity of her motives, had been examining them. Was it really the
+neckties? Was it really the sponge? Wasn't it, at bottom, really the
+window?
+
+She was ashamed. Where Lucy could sleep she could sleep. 'I rang,' she
+said, 'to ask you to be so kind as to help me carry my pillow and
+blankets into Mrs. Wemyss's room. I'm going to sleep on the sofa there.'
+
+'Yes ma'am,' said Lizzie, picking them up. 'The sofa's very short and
+'aid, ma'am. 'Adn't you better sleep in the bed?'
+
+'No,' said Miss Entwhistle.
+
+'There's plenty of room, ma'am. Mrs. Wemyss wouldn't know you was in it,
+it's such a large bed.'
+
+'I will sleep on the sofa,' said Miss Entwhistle.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+In London Wemyss went through his usual day, except that he was kept
+longer than he liked at his office by the accumulation of business and
+by having a prolonged difference of opinion, ending in dismissal, with a
+typist who had got out of hand during his absence to the extent of
+answering him back. It was five before he was able to leave--and even
+then he hadn't half finished, but he declined to be sacrificed
+further--and proceed as usual to his club to play bridge. He had a great
+desire for bridge after not having played for so long, and it was
+difficult, doing exactly the things he had always done, for him to
+remember that he was married. In fact he wouldn't have remembered if he
+hadn't felt so indignant; but all day underneath everything he did,
+everything he said and thought, lay indignation, and so he knew he was
+married.
+
+Being extremely methodical he had long ago divided his life inside and
+out into compartments, each strictly separate, each, as it were, kept
+locked till the proper moment for its turn arrived, when he unlocked it
+and took out its contents,--work, bridge, dinner, wife, sleep,
+Paddington, The Willows, or whatever it was that it contained. Having
+finished with the contents, the compartment was locked up and dismissed
+from his thoughts till its turn came round again. A honeymoon was a
+great shake-up, but when it occurred he arranged the date of its
+cessation as precisely as the date of its inauguration. On such a day,
+at such an hour, it would come to an end, the compartments would once
+more be unlocked, and regularity resumed. Bridge was the one activity
+which, though it was taken out of its compartment at the proper time,
+didn't go into it again with any sort of punctuality. Everything else,
+including his wife, was locked up to the minute; but bridge would stay
+out till any hour. On each of the days in London, the Mondays to
+Fridays, he proceeded punctually to his office, and from thence
+punctually to his club and bridge. He always lunched and dined at his
+club. Other men, he was aware, dined not infrequently at home, but the
+explanation of that was that their wives weren't Vera.
+
+The moment, then, that Wemyss found himself once more doing the usual
+things among the usual surroundings, he felt so exactly as he used to
+that he wouldn't have remembered Lucy at all if it hadn't been for that
+layer of indignation at the bottom of his mind. Going up the steps of
+his club he was conscious of a sense of hard usage, and searching for
+its cause remembered Lucy. His wife now wasn't Vera, and yet he was to
+dine at his club exactly as if she were. His wife was Lucy; who, instead
+of being where she ought to be, eagerly awaiting his return to Lancaster
+Gate--it was one of his legitimate grievances against Vera that she
+didn't eagerly await--she was having a cold at Strorley. And why was she
+having a cold at Strorley? And why was he, a newly-married man, deprived
+of the comfort of his wife and going to spend the evening exactly as he
+had spent all the evenings for months past?
+
+Wemyss was very indignant, but he was also very desirous of bridge. If
+Lucy had been waiting for him he would have had to leave off bridge
+before his desire for it had been anything like sated,--whatever wives
+one had they shackled one,--and as it was he could play as long as he
+wanted to and yet at the same time remain justly indignant. Accordingly
+he wasn't nearly as unhappy as he thought he was; not, at any rate, till
+the moment came for going solitary to bed. He detested sleeping by
+himself. Even Vera had always slept with him.
+
+Altogether Wemyss felt that he had had a bad day, what with the
+disappointment of its beginning, and the extra work at the office, and
+no decent lunch 'Positively only time to snatch a bun and a glass of
+milk,' he announced, amazed, to the first acquaintance he met in the
+club. 'Just fancy, only time to snatch----' but the acquaintance had
+melted away and losing rather heavily at bridge, and going back to
+Lancaster Gate to find from the message left by Twite that that annoying
+aunt of Lucy's had cropped up already.
+
+Usually Wemyss was amused by Twite's messages, but nothing about this
+one amused him. He threw down the wrong number one impatiently,--Twite
+was really a hopeless imbecile; he would dismiss him; but the other one
+he read again. 'Wanted to know all about us, did she. Said it was very
+strange, did she. Like her impertinence,' he thought. She had lost no
+time in cropping up, he thought. Of how completely Miss Entwhistle had,
+in fact, cropped he was of course unaware.
+
+Yes, he had had a bad day, and he was going to have a lonely night. He
+went upstairs feeling deeply hurt, and winding his watch.
+
+But after much solid sleep he felt better; and at breakfast he said to
+Twite, who always jumped when he addressed him, 'Mrs. Wemyss will be
+coming up to-day.'
+
+Twite's brain didn't work very fast owing to the way it spent most of
+its time dormant in a basement, and for a moment he thought--it startled
+him that his master had forgotten the lady was dead. Ought he to remind
+him? What a painful dilemma.... However, he remembered the new Mrs.
+Wemyss just in time not to remind him, and to say 'Yes sir,' without too
+perceptible a pause. His mind hadn't room in it to contain much, and it
+assimilated slowly that which it contained. He had only been in Wemyss's
+service three months before the Mrs. Wemyss he found there died. He was
+just beginning to assimilate her when she ceased to be assimilatable,
+and to him and his wife in their quiet subterraneous existence it had
+seemed as if not more than a week had passed before there was another
+Mrs. Wemyss. Far was it from him to pass opinions on the rapid marriages
+of gentlemen, but he couldn't keep up with these Mrs. Wemysses. His
+mind, he found, hadn't yet really realised the new one. He knew she was
+there somewhere, for he had seen her briefly on the Saturday morning,
+and he knew she would presently begin to disturb him by needing meals,
+but he easily forgot her. He forgot her now, and consequently for a
+moment had the dreadful thought described above.
+
+'I shall be in to dinner,' said Wemyss.
+
+'Yes sir,' said Twite.
+
+Dinner. There usedn't to be dinner. His master hadn't been in once to
+dinner since Twite knew him. A tray for the lady, while there was a
+lady; that was all. Mrs. Twite could just manage a tray. Since the lady
+had left off coming up to town owing to her accident, there hadn't been
+anything. Only quiet.
+
+He stood waiting, not having been waved out of the room, and anxiously
+watching Wemyss's face, for he was a nervous man.
+
+Then the telephone bell rang.
+
+Wemyss, without looking up, waved him out to it and went on with his
+breakfast; and after a minute, noticing that he neither came back nor
+could be heard saying anything beyond a faint, propitiatory ''Ullo,'
+called out to him.
+
+'What is it?' Wemyss called out.
+
+'I can't hear, sir,' Twite's distressed voice answered from the hall.
+
+'Fool,' said Wemyss, appearing, table-napkin in hand.
+
+'Yes sir,' said Twite.
+
+He took the receiver from him, and then the Twites--Mrs. Twite from the
+foot of the kitchen stairs and Twite lingering in the background because
+he hadn't yet been waved away--heard the following:
+
+'Yes yes. Yes, speaking. Hullo. Who is it?'
+
+'What? I can't hear. What?'
+
+'Miss who? En--oh, good-morning, How distant your voice sounds.'
+
+'What? Where? _Where_?'
+
+'Oh really.'
+
+Here the person at the other end talked a great deal.
+
+'Yes. Quite. But then you see she wasn't.'
+
+More prolonged talk from the other end.
+
+'What? She isn't coming up? Indeed she is. She's expected. I've
+ordered----'
+
+'What? I can't hear. The doctor? You're sending for the doctor?'
+
+'I daresay. But then you see I consider it isn't.'
+
+'I daresay, I daresay. No, of course I can't. How can I leave my
+work----'
+
+'Oh, very well, very well. I daresay. No doubt. She's to come up for all
+that as arranged, tell her, and if she needs doctors there are more of
+them here anyhow than--what? Can't possibly?'
+
+'I suppose you know you're taking a great deal upon yourself
+unasked----'
+
+'What? What?'
+
+A very rapid clear voice cut in. 'Do you want another three minutes?' it
+asked.
+
+He hung up the receiver with violence. 'Oh, damn the woman, damn the
+woman,' he said, so loud that the Twites shook like reeds to hear him.
+
+At the other end Miss Entwhistle was walking away lost in thought. Her
+position was thoroughly unpleasant. She disliked extraordinarily that
+she should at that moment contain an egg and some coffee which had once
+been Wemyss's. She would have breakfasted on a cup of tea only, if it
+hadn't been that Lucy was going to need looking after that day, and the
+looker-after must be nourished. As she went upstairs again, a faint red
+spot on each cheek, she couldn't help being afraid that she and Everard
+would have to exercise patience before they got to be fond of each
+other. On the telephone he hardly did himself justice, she thought.
+
+Lucy hadn't had a good night. She woke up suddenly from what was
+apparently a frightening dream soon after Miss Entwhistle had composed
+herself on the sofa, and had been very restless and hot for a long time.
+There seemed to be a great many things about the room that she didn't
+like. One of them was the bed. Probably the poor little thing was
+bemused by her dream and her feverishness, but she said several things
+about the bed which showed that it was on her mind. Miss Entwhistle had
+warmed some milk on a spirit-lamp provided by Lizzie, and had given it
+to her and soothed her and petted her. She didn't mention the window,
+for which Miss Entwhistle was thankful; but when first she woke up from
+her frightening dream and her aunt hurried across to her, she had stared
+at her and actually called her Everard--her, in her meek plaits. When
+this happened Miss Entwhistle made up her mind that the doctor should be
+sent for the first thing in the morning. About six she tumbled into an
+uncomfortable sleep again, and Miss Entwhistle crept out of the room and
+dressed. Certainly she was going to have a doctor round, and hear what
+he had to say; and as soon as she was strengthened by breakfast she
+would do her duty and telephone to Everard.
+
+This she did, with the result that she returned to Lucy's room with a
+little red spot on each cheek; and when she looked at Lucy, still
+uneasily sleeping and breathing as though her chest were all sore, the
+idea that she was to get up and travel to London made the red spots on
+Miss Entwhistle's cheeks burn brighter. She calmed down, however, on
+remembering that Everard couldn't see how evidently poorly the child
+was, and told herself that if he could he would be all tenderness. She
+told herself this, but she didn't believe it; and then she was vexed
+that she didn't believe it. Lucy loved him. Lucy had looked perfectly
+pleased and content yesterday before she became so ill. One mustn't
+judge a man by his way with a telephone.
+
+At ten o'clock the doctor came. He had been in Strorley for years, and
+was its only doctor. He was one of those guests who used to dine at The
+Willows in the early days of Wemyss's possession of it. Occasionally he
+had attended the late Mrs. Wemyss; and the last time he had been in the
+house was when he was sent for suddenly on the day of her death. He, in
+common with the rest of Strorley, had heard of Wemyss's second marriage,
+and he shared the general shocked surprise. Strorley, which looked such
+an unconscious place, such a torpid, unconscious riverside place, was
+nevertheless intensely sensitive to shocks, and it hadn't at all
+recovered from the shock of that poor Mrs. Wemyss's death and the very
+dreadful inquest, when the fresh shock of another Mrs. Wemyss arriving
+on the scene made it, as it were, reel anew, and made it reel worse.
+Marriage so quickly on the heels of that terrible death? The Wemysses
+were only week-enders and summer holiday people, so that it wasn't quite
+so scandalous to have them in Strorley as it would have been if they
+were unintermittent residents, yet it was serious enough. That inquest
+had been in all the newspapers. To have a house in one's midst which
+produced doubtful coroner's verdicts was a blot on any place, and
+the new Mrs. Wemyss couldn't possibly be anything but thoroughly
+undesirable. Of course no one would call on her. Impossible. And when
+the doctor was rung up and asked to come round, he didn't tell his wife
+where he was going, because he didn't wish for trouble.
+
+Chesterton--how well he remembered Chesterton; but after all, it was
+only the other day that he was there last--ushered him into the library,
+and he was standing gloomily in front of the empty grate, looking
+neither to the right nor to the left for he disliked the memories
+connected with the flags outside the window, and wishing he had a
+partner because then he would have sent him instead, when a spare little
+lady, bland and pleasant, came in and said she was the patient's aunt.
+An educated little lady; not at all the sort of relative he would have
+expected the new Mrs. Wemyss to have.
+
+There was a general conviction in Strorley that the new Mrs. Wemyss must
+have been a barmaid, a typist, or a nursery governess,--was, that is,
+either very bold, very poor, or very meek. Else how could she have
+married Wemyss? And this conviction had reached and infected even the
+doctor, who was a busy man off whom gossip usually slid. When, however,
+he saw Miss Entwhistle he at once was sure that there was nothing in it.
+This wasn't the aunt of either the bold, the poor, or the meek; this was
+just a decent gentlewoman. He shook hands with her, really pleased to
+see her. Everybody was always pleased to see Miss Entwhistle, except
+Wemyss.
+
+'Nothing serious, I hope?' asked the doctor.
+
+Miss Entwhistle said she didn't think there was, but that her nephew----
+
+'You mean Mr. Wemyss?'
+
+She bowed her head. She did mean Mr. Wemyss. Her nephew. Her nephew,
+that is, by marriage.
+
+'Quite,' said the doctor.
+
+Her nephew naturally wanted his wife to go up and join him in London.
+
+'Naturally,' said the doctor.
+
+And she wanted to know when she would be fit to go.
+
+'Then let us go upstairs and I'll tell you,' said the doctor.
+
+This was a very pleasant little lady, he thought as he followed her up
+the well-known stairs, to have become related to Wemyss immediately on
+the top of all that affair. Now he would have said himself that after
+such a ghastly thing as that most women----
+
+But here they arrived in the bedroom and his sentence remained
+unfinished, because on seeing the small head on the pillow of the treble
+bed he thought, 'Why, he's married a child. What an extraordinary
+thing.'
+
+'How old is she?' he asked Miss Entwhistle, for Lucy was still uneasily
+sleeping; and when she told him he was surprised.
+
+'It's because she's out of proportion to the bed,' explained Miss
+Entwhistle in a whisper. 'She doesn't usually look so inconspicuous.'
+
+The whispering and being looked at woke Lucy, and the doctor sat down
+beside her and got to business. The result was what Miss Entwhistle
+expected: she had a very violent feverish cold, which might turn into
+anything if she were not kept in bed. If she were, and with proper
+looking after, she would be all right in a few days. He laughed at the
+idea of London.
+
+'How did you come to get such a violent chill?' he asked Lucy.
+
+'I don't--know,' she answered.
+
+'Well, don't talk,' he said, laying her hand down on the quilt--he had
+been holding it while his sharp eyes watched her--and giving it a brief
+pat of farewell. 'Just lie there and get better. I'll send something for
+your throat, and I'll look in again to-morrow.'
+
+Miss Entwhistle went downstairs with him feeling as if she had buckled
+him on as a shield, and would be able, clad in such armour, to face
+anything Everard might say.
+
+'She likes that room?' he asked abruptly, pausing a moment in the hall.
+
+'I can't quite make out,' said Miss Entwhistle. 'We haven't had any talk
+at all yet. It was from that window, wasn't it, that----?'
+
+'No. The one above;'
+
+'The one above? Oh really.'
+
+'Yes. There's a sitting-room. But I was thinking whether being in the
+same bed--well, good-bye. Cheer her up. She'll want it when she's
+better. She'll feel weak. I'll be round to-morrow.'
+
+He went out pulling on his gloves, followed to the steps by Miss
+Entwhistle.
+
+On the steps he paused again. 'How does she like being here?' he asked.
+
+'I don't know,' said Miss Entwhistle. 'We haven't talked at all yet.'
+
+She looked at him a moment, and then added, 'She's very much in love.'
+
+'Ah. Yes. Really. I see. Well, good-bye.'
+
+He turned to go.
+
+'It's wonderful, wonderful,' he said, pausing once more.
+
+'What is wonderful?'
+
+'What love will do.'
+
+'It is indeed,' agreed Miss Entwhistle, thinking of all it had done to
+Lucy.
+
+He seemed as if he were going to say something more, but thought better
+of it and climbed into his dogcart and was driven away.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Two days went by undisturbed by the least manifestation from Wemyss.
+Miss Entwhistle wrote to him on each of the afternoons, telling him of
+Lucy's progress and of what the doctor said about her, and on each of
+the evenings she lay down on the sofa to sleep feeling excessively
+insecure, for how very likely that he would come down by some late train
+and walk in, and then there she would be. In spite of that, she would
+have been very glad if he had walked in, it would have seemed more
+natural; and she couldn't help wondering whether the little thing in the
+bed wasn't thinking so too. But nothing happened. He didn't come, he
+didn't write, he made no sign of any sort. 'Curious,' said Miss
+Entwhistle to herself; and forbore to criticise further.
+
+They were peaceful days. Lucy was getting better all the time, though
+still kept carefully in bed by the doctor, and Miss Entwhistle felt as
+much justified in being in the house as Chesterton or Lizzie, for she
+was performing duties under a doctor's directions. Also the weather was
+quiet and sunshiny. In fact, there was peace.
+
+On Thursday the doctor said Lucy might get up for a few hours and sit on
+the sofa; and there, its asperities softened by pillows, she sat and had
+tea, and through the open window came the sweet smells of April. The
+gardener was mowing the lawn, and one of the smells was of the cut
+grass; Miss Entwhistle had been out for a walk, and found some
+windflowers and some lovely bright green moss, and put them in a bowl;
+the doctor had brought a little bunch of violets out of his garden; the
+afternoon sun lay beautifully on the hills across the river; the river
+slid past the end of the garden tranquilly; and Miss Entwhistle, pouring
+out Lucy's tea and buttering her toast, felt that she could at that
+moment very nearly have been happy, in spite of its being The Willows
+she was in, if there hadn't, in the background, brooding over her day
+and night, been that very odd and disquieting silence of Everard's.
+
+As if Lucy knew what she was thinking, she said--it was the first time
+she had talked of him--'You know, Aunt Dot, Everard will have been
+fearfully busy this week, because of having been away so long.'
+
+'Oh of course,' agreed Miss Entwhistle with much heartiness. 'I'm sure
+the poor dear has been run off his legs.'
+
+'He didn't--he hasn't----'
+
+Lucy flushed and broke off.
+
+'I suppose,' she began again after a minute, 'there's been nothing from
+him? No message, I mean? On the telephone or anything?'
+
+'No, I don't think there has--not since our talk the first day,' said
+Miss Entwhistle.
+
+'Oh? Did he telephone the first day?' asked Lucy quickly. 'You never
+told me.'
+
+'You were asleep nearly all that day. Yes,' said Miss Entwhistle,
+clearing her throat, 'we had a--we had quite a little talk.'
+
+'What did he say?'
+
+'Well, he naturally wanted you to be well enough to go up to London, and
+of course he was very sorry you couldn't.'
+
+Lucy looked suddenly much happier.
+
+'Yes,' said Miss Entwhistle, as though in answer to the look.
+
+'He hates writing letters, you know, Aunt Dot,' Lucy said presently.
+
+'Men do,' said Miss Entwhistle. 'It's very curious,' she continued
+brightly, 'but men _do_.'
+
+'And he hates telephoning. It was wonderful for him to have telephoned
+that day.'
+
+'Men,' said Miss Entwhistle, 'are very funny about some things.'
+
+'To-day is Thursday, isn't it,' said Lucy. 'He ought to be here by one
+o'clock to-morrow.'
+
+Miss Entwhistle started. 'To-morrow?' she repeated. 'Really? Does he? I
+mean, ought he? Somehow I had supposed Saturday. The week-end somehow
+suggests Saturdays to me.'
+
+'No. He--we,' Lucy corrected herself, 'come down on Fridays. He's sure
+to be down in time for lunch.'
+
+'Oh is he?' said Miss Entwhistle, thinking a great many things very
+quickly. 'Well, if it is his habit,' she went on, 'I am sure too that he
+will. Do you remember how we set our clocks by him when he came to tea
+in Eaton Terrace?'
+
+Lucy smiled, and the remembrance of those days of love, and of all his
+dear, funny ways, flooded her heart and washed out for a moment the
+honeymoon, the birthday, everything that had happened since.
+
+Miss Entwhistle couldn't but notice the unmistakable love-look. '_Oh_
+I'm so glad you love each other so much,' she said with all her heart.
+'You know, Lucy, I was afraid that perhaps this house----'
+
+She stopped, because adequately to discuss The Willows in all its
+aspects needed, she felt, perfect health on both sides.
+
+'Yes, I don't think a house matters when people love each other,' said
+Lucy.
+
+'Not a bit. Not a bit,' agreed Miss Entwhistle. Not even, she thought
+robustly, when it was a house with a recent dreadful history. Love--she
+hadn't herself experienced it, but what was an imagination for except to
+imagine with?--love was so strong an armour that nothing could reach one
+and hurt one through it. That was why lovers were so selfish. They sat
+together inside their armour perfectly safe, entirely untouchable,
+completely uninterested in what happened to the rest of the world.
+'Besides,' she went on aloud, 'you'll alter it.'
+
+Lucy's smile at that was a little sickly. Aunt Dot's optimism seemed to
+her extravagant. She was unable to see herself altering The Willows.
+
+'You'll have all your father's furniture and books to put about,' said
+Aunt Dot, continuing in optimism. 'Why, you'll be able to make the place
+really quite--quite----'
+
+She was going to say habitable, but ate another piece of toast instead.
+
+'Yes, I expect I'll have the books here, anyhow,' said Lucy. 'There's a
+sitting-room upstairs with room in it.'
+
+'Is there?' said Miss Entwhistle, suddenly very attentive.
+
+'Lots of room. It's to be my sitting-room, and the books could go there.
+Except that--except that----'
+
+'Except what?' asked Miss Entwhistle.
+
+'I don't know. I don't much want to alter that room. It was Vera's.'
+
+'I should alter it beyond recognition,' said Miss Entwhistle firmly.
+
+Lucy was silent. She felt too flabby, after her three days with a
+temperature, to engage in discussion with anybody firm.
+
+'That's to say,' said Miss Entwhistle, 'if you like having the room at
+all. I should have thought----'
+
+'Oh yes, I like having the room,' said Lucy, flushing.
+
+Then it was Miss Entwhistle who was silent; and she was silent because
+she didn't believe Lucy really could like having the actual room from
+which that unfortunate Vera met her death. It wasn't natural. The child
+couldn't mean it. She needed feeding up. Perhaps they had better not
+talk about rooms; not till Lucy was stronger. Perhaps they had better
+not talk at all, because everything they said was bound in the
+circumstances to lead either to Everard or Vera.
+
+'Wouldn't you like me to read aloud to you a little while before you go
+back to bed?' she asked, when Lizzie came in to clear away the
+tea-things.
+
+Lucy thought this a very good idea. 'Oh do, Aunt Dot,' she said; for she
+too was afraid of what talking might lead to. Aunt Dot was phenomenally
+quick. Lucy felt she couldn't bear it, she simply couldn't bear it, if
+Aunt Dot were to think that perhaps Everard.... So she said quite
+eagerly, 'Oh do, Aunt Dot,' and not until she had said it did she
+remember that the books were locked up, and the key was on Everard's
+watch-chain. Then she sat looking up at Aunt Dot with a startled,
+conscience-stricken face.
+
+'What is it, Lucy?' asked Miss Entwhistle, wondering why she had turned
+red.
+
+Just in time Lucy remembered that there were Vera's books. 'Do you mind
+very much going up to the sitting-room?' she asked. 'Vera's books----'
+
+Miss Entwhistle did mind very much going up to the sitting-room, and saw
+no reason why Vera's books should be chosen. Why should she have to read
+Vera's books? Why did Lucy want just those, and look so odd and guilty
+about it? Certainly the child needed feeding up. It wasn't natural, it
+was unwholesome, this queer attraction she appeared to feel towards
+Vera.
+
+She didn't say anything of this, but remarked that there was a room
+called the library in the house which suggested books, and hadn't she
+better choose something from out of that,--go down, instead of go up.
+
+Lucy, painfully flushed, looked at her. Nothing would induce her to tell
+her about the key. Aunt Dot would think it so ridiculous.
+
+'Yes, but Everard----' she stammered. 'They're rather special books--he
+doesn't like them taken out of the room----'
+
+'Oh,' said Miss Entwhistle, trying hard to avoid any opinion of any
+sort.
+
+'But I don't see why you should go up all those stairs, Aunt Dot
+darling,' Lucy went on. 'Lizzie will, won't you, Lizzie? Bring down some
+of the books--any of them. An armful.'
+
+Lizzie, thus given _carte blanche_, brought down the six first books
+from the top shelf, and set them on the table beside Lucy.
+
+Lucy recognised the cover of one of them at once, it was _Wuthering
+Heights_.
+
+Miss Entwhistle took it up, read its title in silence, and put it down
+again.
+
+The next one was Emily Bronte's collected poems.
+
+Miss Entwhistle took it up, read its title in silence, and put it down
+again.
+
+The third one was Thomas Hardy's _Time's Laughing-Stocks_.
+
+
+Miss Entwhistle took it up, read its title in silence, and put it down
+again.
+
+The other three were Baedekers.
+
+'Well, I don't think there's anything I want to read here,' she said.
+
+Lizzie asked if she should take them away then, and bring some more; and
+presently she reappeared with another armful.
+
+These were all Baedekers.
+
+'Curious,' said Miss Entwhistle.
+
+Then Lucy remembered that she, too, beneath her distress on Saturday
+when she pulled out one after the other of Vera's books in her haste to
+understand her, to get comfort, to get, almost she hoped, counsel, had
+felt surprise at the number of Baedekers. The greater proportion of the
+books in Vera's shelves were guide-books and time-tables. But there had
+been other things,--'If you were to bring some out of a different part
+of the bookcase,' she suggested to Lizzie; who thereupon removed the
+Baedekers, and presently reappeared with more books.
+
+This time they were miscellaneous, and Miss Entwhistle turned them over
+with a kind of reverential reluctance. That poor thing; this day last
+year she was probably reading them herself. It seemed sacrilege for two
+strangers.... Merciful that one couldn't see into the future. What would
+the poor creature have thought of the picture presented at that
+moment,--the figure in the blue dressing-gown, sitting in the middle of
+all the things that had been hers such a very little while before? Well,
+perhaps she would have been glad they weren't hers any longer, glad that
+she had finished, was done with them. These books suggested such
+tiredness, such a--yes, such a wish for escape.... There was more
+Hardy,--all the poems this time in one volume. There was Pater--_The
+Child in the House_ and _Emerald Uthwart_--Miss Entwhistle, familiar
+with these, shook her head: that peculiar dwelling on death in them,
+that queer, fascinated inability to get away from it, that beautiful but
+sick wistfulness no, she certainly wouldn't read these. There was a book
+called _In the Strange South Seas_; and another about some island in the
+Pacific; and another about life in the desert; and one or two others,
+more of the flamboyant guide-book order, describing remote, glowing
+places....
+
+Suddenly Miss Entwhistle felt uncomfortable. She put down the book she
+was holding, and folded her hands in her lap and gazed out of the window
+at the hills on the other side of the river. She felt as if she had been
+prying, and prying unpardonably. The books people read,--was there ever
+anything more revealing? No, she refused to examine Vera's books
+further. And apart from that horrible feeling of prying upon somebody
+defenceless, upon somebody pitiful, she didn't wish to allow the thought
+these books suggested to get any sort of hold on her mind. It was
+essential, absolutely essential, that it shouldn't. And if Lucy ever----
+
+She got up and went to the window. Lucy's eyes followed her, puzzled.
+The gardener was still mowing the lawn, working very hard at it as
+though he were working against time. She watched his back, bent with
+hurry as he and the boy laboriously pushed and pulled the machine up and
+down; and then she caught sight of the terrace just below, and the
+flags.
+
+This was a dreadful house. Whichever way one looked one was entangled in
+a reminder. She turned away quickly, and there was that little loved
+thing in her blue wrapper, propped up on Vera's pillows, watching her
+with puzzled anxiety. Nothing could harm that child, she was safe, so
+long as she loved and believed in Everard; but suppose some day--suppose
+gradually--suppose a doubt should creep into her mind whether perhaps,
+after all, Vera's fall ... suppose a question should get into her head
+whether perhaps, after all, Vera's death----?
+
+Aunt Dot knew Lucy's face so well that it seemed absurd to examine it
+now, searching for signs in its features and expression of enough
+character, enough nerves, enough--this, if there were enough of it,
+might by itself carry her through--sense of humour. Yes, she had a
+beautiful sweep of forehead; all that part of her face was lovely--so
+calm and open, with intelligent, sweet eyes. But were those dear eyes
+intelligent enough? Was not sweetness really far more manifest in them
+than intelligence? After that her face went small, and then, looking
+bigger than it was because of her little face, was her kind, funny
+mouth. Generous; easily forgiving; quick to be happy; quick to
+despair,--Aunt Dot, looking anxiously at it, thought she saw all this in
+the shape of Lucy's mouth. But had the child strength? Had she the
+strength that would be needed equally--supposing that doubt and that
+question should ever get into her head--for staying or for going; for
+staying or for running ... oh, but running, running, for her very
+_life_....
+
+With a violent effort Miss Entwhistle shook herself free from these
+thoughts. Where in heaven's name was her mind wandering to? It was
+intolerable, this tyranny of suggestion in everything one looked at
+here, in everything one touched. And Lucy, who was watching her and who
+couldn't imagine why Aunt Dot should be so steadfastly gazing at her
+mouth, naturally asked, 'Is anything the matter with my face?'
+
+Then Miss Entwhistle managed to smile, and came and sat down again
+beside the sofa. 'No,' she said, taking her hand. 'But I don't think I
+want to read after all. Let us talk.'
+
+And holding Lucy's hand, who looked a little afraid at first but soon
+grew content on finding what the talk was to be about, she proceeded to
+discuss supper, and whether a poached egg or a cup of beef-tea contained
+the greater amount of nourishment.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Also she presently told her, approaching it with caution, for she was
+sure Lucy wouldn't like it, that as Everard was coming down next day she
+thought it better to go back to Eaton Terrace in the morning.
+
+'You two love-birds won't want me,' she said gaily, expecting and
+prepared for opposition; but really, as the child was getting well so
+quickly, there was no reason why she and Everard should be forced to
+begin practising affection for each other here and now. Besides, in the
+small bag she brought there had only been a nightgown and her washing
+things, and she couldn't go on much longer on only that.
+
+To her surprise Lucy not only agreed but looked relieved. Miss
+Entwhistle was greatly surprised, and also greatly pleased. 'She adores
+him,' she thought, 'and only wants to be alone with him. If Everard
+makes her as happy as all that, who cares what he is like to me or to
+anybody else in the world?'
+
+And all the horrible, ridiculous things she had been thinking half an
+hour before were blown away like so many cobwebs.
+
+Just before half-past seven, while she was in her room on the other side
+of the house tidying herself before facing Chesterton and the evening
+meal she had reduced it to the merest skeleton of a meal, but Chesterton
+insisted on waiting, and all the usual ceremonies were observed--she was
+startled by the sound of wheels on the gravel beneath the window. It
+could only be Everard. He had come.
+
+'Dear me,' said Miss Entwhistle to herself,--and she who had planned to
+be gone so neatly before his arrival!
+
+It would be idle to pretend that she wasn't very much perturbed,--she
+was; and the brush with which she was tidying her pretty grey hair shook
+in her hand. Dinner alone with Everard,--well, at least let her be
+thankful that he hadn't arrived a few minutes later and found her
+actually sitting in his chair. What would have happened if he had? Miss
+Entwhistle, for all her dismay, couldn't help laughing. Also, she
+encouraged herself for the encounter by remembering the doctor. Behind
+his authority she was secure. She had developed, since Tuesday, from an
+uninvited visitor into an indispensable adjunct. Not a nurse; Lucy
+hadn't at any moment been positively ill enough for a nurse; but an
+adjunct.
+
+She listened, her brush suspended. There was no mistaking it: it was
+certainly Everard, for she heard his voice. The wheels of the cab, after
+the interval necessary for ejecting him, turned round again on the
+drive, crunching much less, and went away, and presently there was his
+well-known deliberate, heavy tread coming up the uncarpeted staircase.
+Thank God for bedrooms, thought Miss Entwhistle, fervently brushing.
+Where would one be without them and bathrooms,--places of legitimate
+lockings-in, places even the most indignant host was bound to respect?
+
+Now this wasn't the proper spirit in which to go down and begin getting
+fond of Everard and giving him the opportunity of getting fond of her,
+as she herself presently saw. Besides, at that very moment Lucy was
+probably in his arms, all alight with joyful surprise, and if he could
+make Lucy so happy there must be enough of good in him to enable him
+to fulfil the very mild requirements of Lucy's aunt. Just bare
+pleasantness, bare decency would be enough. She stoutly assured herself
+of her certainty of being fond of Everard if only he would let her.
+Sufficiently fond of him, that is; she didn't suppose any affection she
+was going to feel for him would ever be likely to get the better of her
+reason.
+
+Immediately on Wemyss's arrival the silent house had burst into feverish
+life. Doors banged, feet ran; and now Lizzie came hurrying along the
+passage, and knocked at the door and told her breathlessly that dinner
+would be later not for at least another half hour, because Mr. Wemyss
+had come unexpectedly, and cook had to----
+
+She didn't finish the sentence, she was in such a hurry to be off.
+
+Miss Entwhistle, her simple preparations being complete, had nothing
+left to do but sit in one of those wicker work chairs with thin, hard,
+cretonne-covered upholstery, which are sometimes found in inhospitable
+spare-rooms and wait.
+
+She found this bad for her _morale_. There wasn't a book in the room, or
+she would have distracted her thoughts by reading. She didn't want
+dinner. She would have best liked to get into the bed she hadn't yet
+slept once in, and stay there till it was time to go home, but her pride
+blushed scarlet at such a cowardly desire. She arranged herself,
+therefore, in the chair, and, since she couldn't read, tried to remember
+something to say over to herself instead, some poem, or verse of a poem,
+to take her attention off the coming dinner; and she was shocked to
+find, as she sat there with her eyes shut to keep out the light that
+glared on her from the middle of the ceiling, that she could remember
+nothing but fragments: loose bits floating derelict round her mind,
+broken spars that didn't even belong, she was afraid, to any really
+magnificent whole. How Jim would have scolded her,--Jim who forgot
+nothing that was beautiful.
+
+     By nature cool, in pious habits bred,
+     She looked on husbands with a virgin's dread....
+
+Now where did that come from? And why should it come at all?
+
+     Such was the tone and manners of them all
+     No married lady at the house would call....
+
+And that, for instance? She couldn't remember ever having read any poem
+that could contain these lines, yet she must have; she certainly hadn't
+invented them.
+
+And this,--an absurd German thing Jim used to quote and laugh at:
+
+     Der Sultan winkt, Zuleika schweigt,
+     Und zeigt sich gaenzlich abgeneigt....
+
+Why should a thing like that rise now to the surface of her mind and
+float round on it, while all the noble verse she had read and enjoyed,
+which would have been of such use and support to her at this juncture,
+was nowhere to be found, not a shred of it, in any corner of her brain?
+
+What a brain, thought Miss Entwhistle, disgusted, sitting up very
+straight in the wickerwork chair, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes
+shut; what a contemptible, anaemic brain, deserting her like this, only
+able to throw up to the surface when stirred, out of all the store of
+splendid stuff put so assiduously into it during years and years of
+life, couplets.
+
+A sound she hadn't yet heard began to crawl round the house, and, even
+while she wondered what it was, increased and increased till it seemed
+to her at last as if it must fill the universe and reach to Eaton
+Terrace.
+
+It was that gong. Become active. Heavens, and what activity. She
+listened amazed. The time it went on! It went on and on, beating in her
+ears like the crack of doom.
+
+When the three great final strokes were succeeded by silence, she got up
+from her chair. The moment had come. A last couplet floated through her
+brain,--her brain seemed to clutch at it:
+
+     Betwixt the stirrup and the ground
+     She mercy sought, she mercy found....
+
+Now where did that come from? she asked herself distractedly, nervously
+passing one hand over her already perfectly tidy hair and opening the
+door with the other.
+
+There was Wemyss, opening Lucy's door at the same moment.
+
+'Oh how do you do, Everard,' said Miss Entwhistle, advancing with all
+the precipitate and affectionate politeness of one who is greeting not
+only a host but a nephew.
+
+'Quite well thank you,' was Everard's slightly unexpected reply; but
+logical, perfectly logical.
+
+She held out her hand and he shook it, and then proceeded past her to
+her bedroom door, which she had left open, and switched off the light,
+which she had left on.
+
+'Oh I'm sorry,' said Miss Entwhistle.
+
+'That,' she thought, 'is one to Everard.'
+
+She waited for his return, and then walked, followed by him in silence,
+down the stairs.
+
+'How do you find Lucy?' she asked when they had got to the bottom. She
+didn't like Everard's silences; she remembered several of them during
+that difference of opinion he and she had had about where Christmas
+should be spent. They weighed on her; and she had the sensation of
+wriggling beneath them like an earwig beneath a stone, and it humiliated
+her to wriggle.
+
+'Just as I expected,' he said. 'Perfectly well.'
+
+'Oh no--not perfectly well,' exclaimed Miss Entwhistle, a vision of the
+blue-wrapped little figure sitting weakly up against the pillows that
+afternoon before her eyes. 'She is better to-day, but not nearly well.'
+
+'You asked me what I thought, and I've told you,' said Wemyss.
+
+No, it wouldn't be an impulsive affection, hers and Everard's, she
+felt; it would, when it did come, be the result of slow and careful
+preparation,--line upon line, here a little and there a little.
+
+'Won't you go in?' he asked; and she perceived he had pushed the
+dining-room door open and was holding it back with his arm while she,
+thinking this, lingered.
+
+'That,' she thought, 'is another to Everard,'--her second bungle; first
+the light left on in her room, now keeping him waiting.
+
+She hurried through the door, and then, vexed with herself for hurrying,
+walked to her chair with almost an excess of deliberation.
+
+'The doctor----' she began, when they were in their places, and
+Chesterton was hovering in readiness to snatch the cover off the soup
+the instant Wemyss had finished arranging his table-napkin.
+
+'I wish to hear nothing about the doctor,' he interrupted.
+
+Miss Entwhistle gave herself pains to be undaunted, and said with almost
+an excess of naturalness, 'But I'd like to tell you.'
+
+'It is no concern of mine,' he said.
+
+'But you're her husband, you know,' said Miss Entwhistle, trying to
+sound pleasant.
+
+'I gave no orders,' said Wemyss.
+
+'But he had to be sent for. The child----'
+
+'So you say. So you said on the telephone. And I told you then you were
+taking a great deal on yourself, unasked.'
+
+Miss Entwhistle hadn't supposed that any one ever talked like this
+before servants. She now knew that she had been mistaken.
+
+'He's your doctor,' said Wemyss.
+
+'My doctor?'
+
+'I regard him entirely as your doctor.'
+
+'I wish, Everard,' said Miss Entwhistle politely, after a pause, 'that I
+understood.'
+
+'You sent for him on your own responsibility, unasked. You must take the
+consequences.'
+
+'I don't know what you mean by the consequences,' said Miss Entwhistle,
+who was getting further and further away from that beginning of
+affection for Everard to which she had braced herself.
+
+'The bill,' said Wemyss.
+
+'Oh,' said Miss Entwhistle.
+
+She was so much surprised that she could only ejaculate just that. Then
+the idea that she was in the act of being nourished by Wemyss's soup
+seemed to her so disagreeable that she put down her spoon.
+
+'Certainly if you wish it,' she said.
+
+'I do,' said Wemyss.
+
+The conversation flagged.
+
+Presently, sitting up very straight, refusing to take any notice of the
+variety and speed of the thoughts rushing round inside her and
+determined to behave as if she weren't minding anything, she said in a
+very clear little voice which she strove to make sound pleasant, 'Did
+you have a good journey down?'
+
+'No,' said Wemyss, waving the soup away.
+
+This as an answer, though no doubt strictly truthful, was too bald for
+much to be done with it. Miss Entwhistle therefore merely echoed, as she
+herself felt foolishly, 'No?'
+
+And Wemyss confirmed his first reply by once more saying, 'No.'
+
+The conversation flagged.
+
+'I suppose,' she then said, making another effort, 'the train was very
+full.'
+
+As this was not a question he was silent, and allowed her to suppose.
+
+The conversation flagged.
+
+'Why is there no fish?' he asked Chesterton, who was offering him
+cutlets.
+
+'There was no time to get any, sir,' said Chesterton.
+
+'He might have known that,' thought Miss Entwhistle.
+
+'You will tell the cook that I consider I have not dined unless there is
+fish.'
+
+'Yes sir,' said Chesterton.
+
+'Goose,' thought Miss Entwhistle.
+
+It was easier, and far less nerve-racking, to regard him indulgently as
+a goose than to let oneself get angry. He was like a great cross
+schoolboy, she thought, sitting there being rude; but unfortunately a
+schoolboy with power.
+
+He ate the cutlets in silence. Miss Entwhistle declined them. She had
+missed her chance, she thought, when the cab was beneath her window and
+all she had to do was to lean out and say, 'Wait a minute.' But then
+Lucy,--ah yes, Lucy. The minute she thought of Lucy she felt she
+absolutely must be friends with Everard. Incredible as it seemed to her,
+and always had seemed from the first, that Lucy should love him, there
+it was,--she did. It couldn't be possible to love him without any
+reason. Of course not. The child knew. The child was wise and tender.
+Therefore Miss Entwhistle made another attempt at resuscitating
+conversation.
+
+Watching her opportunity when Chesterton's back was receding down the
+room towards the outstretched arm at the end, for she didn't mind what
+Wemyss said quite so acutely if Chesterton wasn't looking, she said with
+as natural a voice as she could manage, 'I'm very glad you've come, you
+know. I'm sure Lucy has been missing you very much.'
+
+'Lucy can speak for herself,' he said.
+
+Then Miss Entwhistle concluded that conversation with Everard was too
+difficult. Let it flag. She couldn't, whatever he might feel able to do,
+say anything that wasn't polite in the presence of Chesterton. She
+doubted whether, even if Chesterton were not there, she would be able
+to; and yet continued politeness appeared in the face of his answers
+impossible. She had best be silent, she decided; though to withdraw into
+silence was of itself a humiliating defeat.
+
+When she was little Miss Entwhistle used to be rude. Between the ages of
+five and ten she frequently made faces at people. But not since then.
+Ten was the latest. After that good manners descended upon her, and had
+enveloped her ever since. Nor had any occasion arisen later in her life
+in which she had even been tempted to slough them. Urbane herself, she
+dwelt among urbanities; kindly, she everywhere met kindliness. But she
+did feel now that it might, if only she could so far forget herself,
+afford her solace were she able to say, straight at him, 'Wemyss.'
+
+Just that word. No more. For some reason she was dying to call him
+Wemyss without any Mr. She was sure that if she might only say that one
+word, straight at him, she would feel better; as much relieved as she
+did when she was little and made faces.
+
+Dreadful; dreadful. She cast down her eyes, overwhelmed by the nature of
+her thoughts, and said No thank you to the pudding.
+
+'It is clear,' thought Wemyss, observing her silence and her refusal to
+eat, 'where Lucy gets her sulking from.'
+
+No more words were spoken till, dinner being over, he gave the order for
+coffee in the library.
+
+'I'll go and say good-night to Lucy,' said Miss Entwhistle as they got
+up.
+
+'You'll be so good as to do nothing of the sort,' said Wemyss.
+
+'I--beg your pardon?' inquired Miss Entwhistle, not quite sure she could
+have heard right.
+
+At this point they were both just in front of Vera's portrait on their
+way to the door, and she was looking at each of them, impartially
+strangling her smile.
+
+'I wish to speak to you in the library,' said Wemyss.
+
+'But suppose I don't wish to be spoken to in the library?' leapt to the
+tip of Miss Entwhistle's tongue.
+
+There, however, was Chesterton,--checking, calming.
+
+So she said, instead, 'Do.'
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+She hadn't been into the library yet. She knew the dining-room, the
+hall, the staircase, Lucy's bedroom, the spare-room, the antlers, and
+the gong; but she didn't know the library. She had hoped to go away
+without knowing it. However, she was not to be permitted to.
+
+The newly-lit wood fire blazed cheerfully when they went in, but its
+amiable light was immediately quenched by the electric light Wemyss
+switched on at the door. From the middle of the ceiling it poured down
+so strongly that Miss Entwhistle wished she had brought her sun-shade.
+The blinds were drawn, and there in front of the window was the table
+where Everard had sat writing--she remembered every word of Lucy's
+account of it on that July afternoon of Vera's death. It was now April;
+still well over three months to the first anniversary of that dreadful
+day, and here he was married again, and to, of all people in the world,
+her Lucy. There were so many strong, robust-minded young women in the
+world, so many hardened widows, so many thick-skinned persons of mature
+years wanting a comfortable home, who wouldn't mind Everard because they
+wouldn't love him and therefore wouldn't feel,--why should Fate have
+ordered that it should just be her Lucy? No, she didn't like him, she
+couldn't like him. He might, and she hoped he was, be all Lucy said, be
+wonderful and wholesome and natural and all the rest of it, but if he
+didn't seem so to her what, as far as she was concerned, was the good of
+it?
+
+The fact is that by the time Miss Entwhistle got into the library she
+was very angry. Even the politest worm, she said to herself, the most
+conciliatory, sensible worm, fully conscious that wisdom points to
+patience, will nevertheless turn on its niece's husband if trodden on
+too heavily. The way Wemyss had ordered her not to go up to Lucy....
+Particularly enraging to Miss Entwhistle was the knowledge of her weak
+position, uninvited in his house.
+
+Wemyss, standing on the hearthrug in front of the blaze, filled his
+pipe. How well she knew that attitude and that action. How often she had
+seen both in her drawing-room in London. And hadn't she been kind to
+him? Hadn't she always, when she was hostess and he was guest, been
+hospitable and courteous? No, she didn't like him.
+
+She sat down in one of the immense chairs, and had the disagreeable
+sensation that she was sitting down in Wemyss hollowed out. The two
+little red spots were brightly on her cheek-bones,--had been there,
+indeed, ever since the beginning of dinner.
+
+Wemyss filled his pipe with his customary deliberation, saying nothing.
+'I believe he's enjoying himself,' flashed into her mind. 'Enjoying
+being in a temper, and having me to bully.'
+
+'Well?' she asked, suddenly unbearably irritated.
+
+'Oh it's no good taking that tone with me,' he said, continuing
+carefully to fill his pipe.
+
+'Really, Everard,' she said, ashamed of him, but also ashamed of
+herself. She oughtn't to have let go her grip on herself and said,
+'Well?' with such obvious irritation.
+
+The coffee came.
+
+'No thank you,' said Miss Entwhistle.
+
+He helped himself.
+
+The coffee went.
+
+'Perhaps,' said Miss Entwhistle in a very polite voice when the door had
+been shut by Chesterton, 'you'll tell me what it is you wish to say.'
+
+'Certainly. One thing is that I've ordered the cab to come round for you
+to-morrow in time for the early train.'
+
+'Oh thank you, Everard. That is most thoughtful,' said Miss Entwhistle.
+'I had already told Lucy, when she said you would be down to-morrow,
+that I would go home early.'
+
+'That's one thing,' said Wemyss, taking no notice of this and going on
+carefully filling his pipe. 'The other is, that I don't wish you to see
+Lucy again, either to-night or before you go.'
+
+She looked at him in astonishment. 'But why not?' she asked.
+
+'I'm not going to have her upset.'
+
+'But my dear Everard, don't you see it will upset her much more if I
+don't say good-bye to her? It won't upset her at all if I do, because
+she knows I'm going to-morrow anyhow. Why, what will the child think?'
+
+'Oblige me by allowing me to be the best judge of my own affairs.'
+
+'Do you know I very much doubt if you're that,' said Miss Entwhistle
+earnestly, really moved by his inability to perceive consequences. Here
+he had got everything, everything to make him happy for the rest of his
+life,--the wife he loved adoring him, believing in him, blotting out by
+her mere marrying him every doubt as to the exact manner of Vera's
+death, and all he had to do was to be kind and ordinarily decent. And
+poor Everard--it was absurd of her to mind for him, but she did in fact
+at that moment mind for him, he seemed such a pathetic human being,
+blindly bent on ruining his own happiness--would spoil it all,
+inevitably smash it all sooner or later, if he wasn't able to see,
+wasn't able to understand....
+
+Wemyss considered her remark so impertinent that he felt he would have
+been amply justified in requesting her to leave his house then and
+there, dark or no dark, train or no train. And so he would have done, if
+he hadn't happened to prefer a long rather than a short scene.
+
+'I didn't ask you into my library to hear your opinion of my character,'
+he said, lighting his pipe.
+
+'Well then,' said Miss Entwhistle, for there was too much at stake for
+her to allow herself either to be silenced or goaded, 'let me tell you a
+few things about Lucy's.'
+
+'About Lucy's?' echoed Wemyss, amazed at such effrontery. 'About my
+wife's?'
+
+'Yes,' said Miss Entwhistle, very earnestly. 'It's the sort of character
+that takes things to heart, and she'll be miserable--miserable, Everard,
+and worry and worry if I just disappear as you wish me to without a
+word. Of course I'll go, and I promise I'll never come again unless you
+ask me to. But don't, because you're angry, insist on something that
+will make Lucy extraordinarily unhappy. Let me say good-night to her
+now, and good-bye to-morrow morning. I tell you she'll be terribly
+worried if I don't. She'll think'--Miss Entwhistle tried to smile--'that
+you've turned me out. And then, you see, if she thinks that, she won't
+be able----' Miss Entwhistle hesitated. 'Well, she won't be able to be
+proud of you. And that, my dear Everard--' she looked at him with a
+faint smile of deprecation and apology that she, a spinster, should talk
+of this--'gives love its deepest wound.'
+
+Wemyss stared at her, too much amazed to speak. In his house.... In his
+own house!
+
+'I'm sorry,' she said, still more earnestly, 'if this annoys you, but I
+do want--I really do think it is very important.'
+
+There was then a silence during which they looked at each other, he at
+her in amazement, she at him trying to hope,--hope that he would take
+what she had said in good part. It was so vital that he should
+understand, that he should get an idea of the effect on Lucy of just
+that sort of unkind, even cruel behaviour. His own happiness was
+involved as well. Tragic, tragic for every one if he couldn't be got to
+see....
+
+'Are you aware,' he said, 'that this is my house?'
+
+'Oh Everard----' she said at that, with a movement of despair.
+
+'Are you aware,' he continued, 'that you are talking to a husband of his
+wife?'
+
+Miss Entwhistle said nothing, but leaning her head on her hand looked at
+the fire.
+
+'Are you aware that you thrust yourself into my house uninvited directly
+my back was turned, and have been living in it, and would have gone on
+indefinitely living in it, without any sanction from me unless I had
+come down, as I did come down, on purpose to put an end to such an
+outrageous state of affairs?'
+
+'Of course,' she said, 'that is one way of describing it.'
+
+'It is the way of every reasonable and decent person,' said Wemyss.
+
+'Oh no,' said Miss Entwhistle. 'That is precisely what it isn't. But,'
+she added, getting up from the chair and holding out her hand, 'it is
+your way, and so I think, Everard, I'll say good-night. And good-bye
+too, for I don't expect I'll see you in the morning.'
+
+'One would suppose,' he said, taking no notice of her proffered hand,
+for he hadn't nearly done, 'from your tone that this was your house and
+I was your servant.'
+
+'I assure you I could never imagine it to be my house or you my
+servant.'
+
+'You made a great mistake, I can tell you, when you started interfering
+between husband and wife. You have only yourself to thank if I don't
+allow you to continue to see Lucy.'
+
+She stared at him.
+
+'Do you mean,' she said, after a silence, 'that you intend to prevent my
+seeing her later on too? In London?'
+
+'That, exactly, is my intention.'
+
+Miss Entwhistle stared at him, lost in thought; but he could see he had
+got her this time, for her face had gone visibly pale.
+
+'In that case, Everard,' she said presently, 'I think it my duty----'
+
+'Don't begin about duties. You have no duties in regard to me and my
+household.'
+
+'I think it my duty to tell you that from my knowledge of Lucy----'
+
+'Your knowledge of Lucy! What is it compared to mine, I should like to
+know?'
+
+'Please listen to me. It's most important. From my knowledge of her, I'm
+quite sure she hasn't the staying power of Vera.'
+
+It was now his turn to stare. She was facing him, very pale, with
+shining, intrepid eyes. He had got her in her vulnerable spot he could
+see, or she wouldn't be so white, but she was going to do her utmost to
+annoy him up to the last.
+
+'The staying power of----?' he repeated.
+
+'I'm sure of it. And you must be wise, you must positively have the
+wisdom to take care of your own happiness----'
+
+'Oh good God, you preaching woman!' he burst out. 'How dare you stand
+there in my own house talking to me of Vera?'
+
+'Hush,' said Miss Entwhistle, her eyes shining brighter and brighter in
+her white face. 'Listen to me. It's atrocious that I should have to, but
+nobody ever seems to have told you a single thing in your life. You
+don't seem to know anything at all about women, anything at all about
+human beings. How could you bring a girl like Lucy--any young wife--to
+this house? But here she is, and it still may be all right because she
+loves you so, if you take care, if you are tender and kind. I assure you
+it is nothing to me how angry you are with me, or how completely you
+separate me from Lucy, if only you are kind to her. Don't you realise,
+Everard, that she may soon begin to have a baby, and that then she----'
+
+'You indelicate woman! You incredibly indecent, improper----'
+
+'I don't in the least mind what you say to me, but I tell you that
+unless you take care, unless you're kinder than you're being at this
+moment, it won't be anything like fifteen years this time.'
+
+He repeated, staring, 'Fifteen years this time?'
+
+'Yes. Good-bye.'
+
+And she was gone, and had shut the door behind her before her monstrous
+meaning dawned on him.
+
+Then, when it did, he strode out of the room after her.
+
+She was going up the stairs very slowly.
+
+'Come down,' he said.
+
+She went on as if she hadn't heard him.
+
+'Come down. If you don't come down at once I'll fetch you.'
+
+This, through all her wretchedness, through all her horror, for beating
+in her ears were two words over and over again, _Lucy, Vera_--_Lucy,
+Vera_ struck her as so absurd, the vision of herself, more naturally
+nimble, going on up the stairs just out of Wemyss's reach, with him
+heavily pursuing her, till among the attics at the top he couldn't but
+run her to earth in a cistern, that she had great difficulty in not
+spilling over into a ridiculous, hysterical laugh.
+
+'Very well then,' she said, stopping and speaking in a low voice so that
+Lucy shouldn't be disturbed by unusual sounds, 'I'll come down.' And
+shining, quivering with indomitableness, she did.
+
+She arrived at the bottom of the stairs where he was standing and faced
+him. What was he going to do? Take her by the shoulders and turn her
+out? Not a sign, not the smallest sign of distress or fear should he get
+out of her. Fear of him in relation to herself was the last thing she
+would condescend to feel, but fear for Lucy--for Lucy.... She could very
+easily have cried out because of Lucy, entreated to be allowed to see
+her sometimes, humbled herself, if she hadn't gripped hold of the
+conviction of his delight if she broke down, of his delight at having
+broken her down, at refusing. The thought froze her serene.
+
+'You will now leave my house,' said Wemyss through his teeth.
+
+'Without my hat, Everard?' she inquired mildly.
+
+He didn't answer. He would gladly at that moment have killed her, for he
+thought he saw she was laughing at him. Not openly. Her face was serious
+and her voice polite; but he thought he saw she was laughing at him, and
+beyond anything that could happen to him he hated being defied.
+
+He walked to the front door, reached up and undid the top bolt, stooped
+down and undid the bottom bolt, turned the key, took the chain off,
+pulled the door open, and said, 'There now. Go. And let this be a lesson
+to you.'
+
+'I am glad to see,' said Miss Entwhistle, going out on to the steps with
+dignity, and surveying the stars with detachment, 'that it is a fine
+night.'
+
+He shut and bolted and locked and chained her out, and as soon as he had
+done, and she heard his footsteps going away, and her eyes were a little
+accustomed to the darkness, she went round to the back entrance, rang
+the bell, and asked the astonished tweeny, who presently appeared, to
+send Lizzie to her; and when Lizzie came, also astonished, she asked her
+to be so kind as to go up to her room and put her things in her bag and
+bring her her hat and cloak and purse.
+
+'I'll wait here in the garden,' said Miss Entwhistle, 'and it would be
+most kind, Lizzie, if you were rather quick.'
+
+Then, when she had got her belongings, and Lizzie had put her cloak
+round her shoulders and tried to express, by smoothings and brushings of
+it, her understanding and sympathy, for it was clear to Lizzie and to
+all the servants that Miss Entwhistle was being turned out, she went
+away; she went away past the silent house, through the white gate, up
+through the darkness of the sunken oozy lane, out on to the road where
+the stars gave light, across the bridge, into the village, along the
+road to the station, to wait for whatever train should come.
+
+She walked slower and slower.
+
+She was extraordinarily tired.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+Wemyss went back into the library, and seeing his coffee still on the
+chimney-piece he drank it, and then sat down in the chair Miss
+Entwhistle had just left, and smoked.
+
+He wouldn't go up to Lucy yet; not till he was sure the woman wasn't
+going to try any tricks of knocking at the front door or ringing bells.
+He actually, so inaccurate was his perception of Miss Entwhistle's
+character and methods, he actually thought she might perhaps throw
+stones at the windows, and he decided to remain downstairs guarding his
+premises till this possibility became, with the lapse of time, more
+remote.
+
+Meanwhile the fury of his indignation at the things she had said was
+immensely tempered by the real satisfaction he felt in having turned her
+out. That was the way to show people who was master, and meant to be
+master, in his own house. She had supposed she could do as she liked
+with him, use his house, be waited on by his servants, waste his
+electric light, interfere between him and his wife, say what she chose,
+lecture him, stand there and insult him, and he had showed her very
+quickly and clearly that she couldn't. As to her final monstrous
+suggestion, it merely proved how completely he had got her, how
+accurately he had hit on the punishment she felt most, that she should
+have indulged in such ravings. The ravings of impotence, that's what
+that was. For the rest of his life, he supposed, whenever people
+couldn't get their own way with him, were baffled by his steadfastness
+and consequently became vindictive, they would throw that old story up
+against him. Let them. It wouldn't make him budge, not a hair's-breadth,
+in any direction he didn't choose. Master in his own house,--that's what
+he was.
+
+Curious how women invariably started by thinking they could do as they
+liked with him. Vera had thought so, and behaved accordingly; and she
+had been quite surprised, and even injured, when she discovered she
+couldn't. No doubt this woman was feeling considerably surprised too
+now; no doubt she never dreamt he would turn her out. Women never
+believed he would do the simple, obvious thing. And even when he warned
+them that he would, as he could remember on several occasions having
+warned Vera--indeed, it was recorded in his diary--they still didn't
+believe it. Daunted themselves by convention and the fear of what people
+might think, they imagined that he would be daunted too. Then, when he
+wasn't, and it happened, they were surprised; and they never seemed to
+see that they had only themselves to thank.
+
+He sat smoking and thinking a long time, one ear attentive to any sounds
+which might indicate that Miss Entwhistle was approaching hostilely from
+outside. Chesterton found him sitting like that when she came in to
+remove the coffee cup, and she found him still sitting like that when
+she came in an hour later with his whisky.
+
+It was nearly eleven before he decided that the danger of attack was
+probably over; but still, before he went upstairs, he thought it prudent
+to open the window and step over the sill on to the terrace and just
+look round.
+
+All was as quiet as the grave. It was so quiet that he could hear a
+little ripple where the water was split by a dead branch as the river
+slid gently along. There were stars, so that it was not quite dark; and
+although the April air was moist it was dry under foot. A pleasant night
+for a walk. Well, he would not grudge her that.
+
+He went along the terrace, and round the clump of laurustinus bushes
+which cloaked the servants' entrance, to the front of the house.
+
+Empty. Nobody still lingering on the steps.
+
+He then proceeded as far as the white gate, holding her capable of
+having left it open on purpose,--'In order to aggravate me,' as he put
+it to himself.
+
+It was shut.
+
+He stood leaning on it a minute listening, in case she should be lurking
+in the lane.
+
+Not a sound.
+
+Satisfied that she had really gone, he returned to the terrace and
+re-entered the library, fastening the window carefully and pulling down
+the blind.
+
+What a relief, what an extraordinary relief, to have got rid of her; and
+not just for this once, but for good. Also she was Lucy's only relation,
+so there were no more of them to come and try to interfere between man
+and wife. He was very glad she had behaved so outrageously at the end
+saying that about Vera, for it justified him completely in what he had
+done. A little less bad behaviour, and she would have had to be allowed
+to stay the night; still a little less, and she would have had to come
+to The Willows again, let alone having a free hand in London to
+influence Lucy when he was at his club playing bridge and unable to look
+after her. Yes; it was very satisfactory, and well worth coming down day
+earlier for.
+
+He wound up his watch, standing before the last glimmerings of the fire,
+and felt quite good-humoured again. More than good-humoured,--refreshed
+and exhilarated, as though he had had a cold bath and a thorough
+rub-down. Now for bed and his little Love. What simple things a man
+wanted,--only his woman and peace.
+
+Wemyss finished winding his watch, stretched himself, yawned, and then
+went slowly upstairs, switching off the lights as he went.
+
+In the bedroom there was a night-light burning, and Lucy had fallen
+asleep, tired of waiting for Aunt Dot to come and say good-night, but
+she woke when he came in.
+
+'Is that you, Aunt Dot?' she murmured, even through her sleepiness sure
+it must be, for Everard would have turned on the light.
+
+Wemyss, however, didn't want her to wake up and begin asking questions,
+so he refrained from turning on the light.
+
+'No, it's your Everard,' he said, moving about on tiptoe. 'Sh-sh, now.
+Go to sleep again like a good little girl.'
+
+Through her sleepiness she knew that voice of his; it meant one of
+his pleased moods. How sweet of him to be taking such care not to
+disturb her ... dear Everard ... he and Aunt Dot must have made friends
+then ... how glad she was ... wonderful little Aunt Dot ... before
+dinner he was angry, and she had been so afraid ... afraid ... what a
+relief ... how glad....
+
+But Lucy was asleep again, and the next thing she knew was Everard's arm
+being slid under her shoulders and she being drawn across the bed and
+gathered to his breast.
+
+'Who's my very own baby?' she heard him saying; and she woke up just
+enough sleepily to return his kiss.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Vera, by Elisabeth von Arnim
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