Vera Part 30

She was feeling more and more uneasy as time pa.s.sed 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; n.o.body had sent for his wife's aunt; n.o.body 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 bas.e.m.e.nt, 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 acc.u.mulation 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?