Vera

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 allNo 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 gänzlich 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, anæmic 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 groundShe 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 cheekbones,—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–'