Miss Entwhistle started. "To-morrow?" she repeated. "Really? Does he? I mean, ought he? Somehow I had supposed Sat.u.r.day. The week-end somehow suggests Sat.u.r.days 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 circ.u.mstances 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 t.i.tle in silence, and put it down again.
The next one was Emily Bronte"s collected poems.
Miss Entwhistle took it up, read its t.i.tle 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 t.i.tle 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 Sat.u.r.day 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.