She must have been sitting there twenty minutes.
She was afraid to look up at the clock, afraid to move an eyelid lest she
should disturb him.
The library had the same nice, leathery, tobaccoey smell. Rough under her
fingers the same little sharp tongue of leather scratched up from the arm
of her chair. The hanging, half-open fans of the ash-tree would be making
the same Japanese pattern in the top left hand pane of the third window.
She wanted to see it again to make sure of the pattern, but she was
afraid to look up.
If she looked up she would see him.
She mustn't. It would disturb him horribly. He couldn't write if he
thought you were looking at him.
It was wonderful that he could go on like that, with somebody in the
room, that he let you sit in it when he was writing. The big man.
She had asked him whether she hadn't better go away and come back again,
and he had said No, he didn't want her to go away. He wouldn't keep her
waiting more than five minutes.
It was unbelievable that she should be sitting there, in that room, as if
nothing had happened; as if _they_ were there; as if they might come in
any minute; as if they had never gone. A week ago she would have said it
was impossible, she couldn't do it, for anybody, no matter how big or how
celebrated he was.
Why, after ten years--it must be ten years--she couldn't even bear to go
past the house while other people were in it. She hated them, the people
who took Greffington Hall for the summer holidays and the autumn
shooting. She would go round to Renton by Jackson's yard and the fields
so as not to see it. But when the brutes were gone and the yellow blinds
were down in the long rows of windows that you saw above the grey garden
wall, she liked to pass it and look up and pretend that the house was
only waiting for them, only sleeping its usual winter sleep, resting till
they came back.
It _was_ ten years since they had gone.
No. If Richard Nicholson hadn't been Mr. Sutcliffe's nephew, she
couldn't, no matter how big and how celebrated he was, or how badly he
wanted her help or she wanted his money.
No matter how wonderful and important it would feel to be Richard
Nicholson's secretary.
It wasn't really his money that she wanted. It would be worth while
doing it for nothing, for the sake of knowing him. She had read his
_Euripides_.
She wondered: Supposing he kept her, how long would it last? He was in
the middle of his First Series of _Studies in Greek Literature_; and
there would be two, or even three if he went on.
He had taken Greffington Hall for four months. When he went back to London
he would have to have somebody else.
Perhaps he would tell her that, after thinking it over, he had found he
didn't want her. Then to-day would be the end of it.
If she looked up she would see him.
She knew what she would see: the fine, cross upper lip lifted backwards
by the moustache, the small grizzled brown moustache, turned up, that
made it look crosser. The narrow, pensive lower lip, thrust out by its
light jaw. His nose--quite a young nose--that wouldn't be Roman, wouldn't
be Sutcliffe; it looked out over your head, tilted itself up to sniff the
world, obstinate, alert. His eyes, young too, bright and dark, sheltered,
safe from age under the low straight eyebrows. They would never have
shabby, wrinkled sagging lids. Dark brown hair, grey above his ears,
clipped close to stop its curling like his uncle's. He liked to go
clipped and clean. You felt that he liked his own tall, straight
slenderness.
The big library rustled with the quick, irritable sound of his writing.
It stopped. He had finished. He looked at the clock. She heard a small,
commiserating sound.
"Forgive me. I really thought it would only take five minutes. How on
earth do you manage to keep so quiet? I should have known if a mouse had
moved."
He turned towards her. He leaned back in his chair. "You don't mind my
smoking?"
He was settling himself. Now she would know.
"Well," he said, "if I did keep you waiting forty minutes, it was a good
test, wasn't it?"
He meditated.
"I'm always changing my secretaries because of something. The last one
was admirable, but I couldn't have stood her in the room when I was
writing.... Besides, you work better."
"Can you tell? In a week?"
"Yes. I can tell.... Are you sure you can spare me four months?"
"Easily."
"Five? Six?"
"If you were still here."
"I shan't be. I shall be in London.... Couldn't you come up?"
"I couldn't, possibly."
His cross mouth and brilliant, irritated eyes questioned her.
"I couldn't leave my mother."