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.
x.x.x
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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sage, 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 ganzlich abgeneigt....
Why should a thing like that rise now to the surface of her mind and float round on it, while all the n.o.ble 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 a.s.siduously 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 pa.s.sing 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.