Darkness and silence then descended on the house. In one of the upper
rooms a light would appear behind the blind; a light which sometimes
moved from room to room, as though someone were carrying it about; and
it had been seen, also, in the shop through the chinks of the shutters.
But, although the curious had often lingered round the door, no one had
ever been seen to emerge after dark.
The face of the house and the closed door kept their counsel as to
whatever might be enacted behind them. All that the town ever knew was
that evening after evening Lydia Protheroe was undisturbed at her own
occupations, and although it was improbable to imagine that occupations
otherwise than innocent could engage the leisure of so decent and
correct a lady, there grew up, nevertheless, an impression of some
mischievous background to the frontage of honest trade which everyone
was allowed to see.
Why did she remain in this insignificant town, she who both by wealth
and repute was amply justified to move herself and her chattels to
London? Why had she chosen this ancient house, with its latticed windows
and overhanging gables in a narrow side-street, rather than one of the
new buildings in the main street, where were the other shops that,
unashamed, did not have to tuck themselves away? Why did she sleep there
alone at nights, among her oddments that were enough, when the mystery
of dusk began to shroud them, to give an ordinary Christian the shivers?
Why did she hold herself so frigidly aloof from the conviviality of the
town? Perfectly civil always, they would say that much for her; and
quite the lady, they would say that too. And good to the poor; oh,
absurdly! That was only another one of the grievances they had against
her: she spoilt the market for everybody else. But why—the questions
would begin again. There was a mutter of innuendo; and yet, when they
were pinned down to it, there was not one of her fellow townsmen who
could say that she was otherwise than harmless. And they were all afraid
of her, although she never said a sharp word; and they all respected
her, grudgingly, and admitted her rigid integrity. But when these
admissions had been extracted from them, the questions and the mutter
would begin again.
Nobody knew whether she herself was aware of them; if she was, then she
treated them with complete indifference. In point of fact, her mental
isolation was such that she had long since ceased to bother her head
about what people might say or might leave unsaid; she imagined herself
encased in armour like the knight who stood eternally on the lowest step
of her stair. She was happy. If she was forbidding, it was because she
wanted no intimacy; she wanted to keep her happiness to herself. There
were moments when she even resented the intrusion of customers into her
shop, and the presence of the three assistants and the servant, but she
tried to be severe with herself over this crotchet. Generally her
severity was successful; but sometimes her resentment gained the upper
hand, and on those occasions she would observe her hirelings with real
dislike, angry with them because they, poor souls, went innocently on
with their business, turning over the wares in the course of serving
customers, until Miss Protheroe, unable longer to endure the sight of
their hands fumbling among the objects got together by her and so dear
to her heart, descended upon them from behind the counting-desk and
brushed them aside, not rudely, for Miss Protheroe was never rude, but
with a thin disdain that was twice as humiliating. For years she was
deeply ashamed after these manifestations; then she grew to be less
ashamed, and they increased in frequency. She became, coldly, more
autocratic; would not have anything touched without her permission;
received any comment with a scornful disapproval that would not permit
her to answer. She was happy, but she was only truly and completely
happy after six o’clock, when she had turned the key in the lock and was
left alone in the house.
And yet she had a weakness, an inconsistency; she fretted over the
defection of her family.
It was absurd. She wanted independence, and she had got it, full
measure, pressed down and running over. She had been glad. She had been
unobserved, left alone to do the little daring, extravagant things which
bubbled up so surprisingly from beneath that ladylike exterior, little
things like pretending she was a boy in her brother’s overcoat, and
drawing his pipe from the pocket to put it between her teeth. She had
always done them surreptitiously, even though she knew she was quite
alone. Sometimes she had made up her face with her own grease-paints,
and, to the light of her candle, minced round the shop in a wig and a
bustle. These were not things she would have had the courage to do with
her family in the neighbourhood. She had believed that she would shed
her family quite lightly, blissfully, and for some time she had even
deluded herself into the conviction that this was so. Then she was
forced to the realization that their conduct had, in fact, sunk very
deeply into the tender parts of her being. This realization took a long
time to come. She had her first misgivings when she found that she could
not think of them without a surge of anger uneasily allied to a surge of
pain. Their silence had surprised her extremely. Daily she had expected
to have some news of them; she had expected that they would trace her
out—nothing easier—and many times in her mind she rehearsed the scene
when one of their number, probably Bertie, would appear in the doorway
of the room, and turn by turn, menacing, cajoling, and alarmed, would
try to persuade her to return. These persuasions she would reject; of
that she had been fully determined. It was not that she hankered after
forgiveness and the evening circle round the lamp; it was not that she
had desired the rôle of the prodigal child, picturesque and doubly
precious after her escapade; no, it was not that she had wanted her
family, but rather that she had wanted her family to want her. And not
that alone. It was not, as she told herself plaintively, merely the
petty, personal grievance that had hurt her. It was a wider, deeper
injury. She despised them—she was compelled to despise them—because of
their miserable cautiousness, their rejection of her, who was of their
own blood, when she became a danger to their respectability. How politic
they had been! how sage! She hated them because they had made her
ashamed of them. They had become, to her, symbolic of that wary, chary
majority whose enemy she was.
For the appearance of Bertie, however, she had waited in vain. They had
made no attempt to retrieve her, nothing to show that they cared whether
she lived or died, starved or prospered. Her expectation had turned to
surprise, surprise to indignation. When it had finally become quite
clear that they intended to take no steps towards getting her back, she
accepted their indifference with a shrug that she tried to make equally
indifferent. But the sore had remained; more, it had eaten its way down
into her. There was no affection left now; but before she died she would
be even with them. It was not a sore that impaired her happiness. Rather
she nursed it, as she nursed all the secrets of her inner life; and it
provided an incentive, if she had needed one, a sort of aim and _raison
d’être_. Not a day passed but she wondered whether they heard the name
of the celebrated Lydia Protheroe, and connected it with that of the
little Alice they had so improvidently driven from their midst. She
hoped so; spitefully she hoped so. She even contemplated going to
London, where her reputation would widen with more chance of reaching
their ears; but she could not uproot herself from her old clandestine
house. She loved it, for the sake of six o’clock and the turning of the
key in the lock.
So she lived with her two passionate secrets side by side: her
vindictiveness and her absorption in the unreality of her own existence.
The one intensified the other. An outcast from the auspices of
middle-class propriety, she was driven into the refuge of her queer
fantastic world. She sought that refuge fanatically, it was a facet of
her vindictiveness. From out of that world of shadows she should, some
day, thrust the rapier of mischief into the paunch of their gross
solidity. It was all a little confused in her mind. But she felt that
she owned, by right of citizenship—unshared citizenship, and consequent
sovereignty, a sovereignty like that of Adam in Eden—she felt that she
owned those privileges which had always given to the hero of mythical
combat an advantage so preponderatingly unfair and so divine: the cap of
invisibility, the armour that no sword could pierce, the sword that
could pierce all armour, the winged shoes, the nightingale for
counsellor, the philtre of oblivion, the mirror of prophecy. And at
night, flitting round her house or down into her shop, to the echo of
her own low laughter, now masked, now sandalled, now casqued within a
head incongruous to the body and more incongruous to the feet, like the
unfolding in a game of drawing Consequences, she knew herself elusive,
evanescent, protean.
But no one must know, no one must suspect.