One night early in December Norah Propert was busily engaged in the
sitting-room of her brother’s house just off the market-place at
Bracebridge. She had left him over a book and a cigarette in the
dining-room, and as soon as she had finished her supper had gone across
the passage to her work again. The room was very simply decorated: to
Mrs Keeling’s plush-and-mirror eye it would have seemed to be hardly
decorated at all. There were a few framed photographs or cheap
reproductions of famous pictures on the walls, a book-case held some
three hundred volumes, the floor had a fawn-coloured drugget on it, and
there was not a square inch of plush anywhere.
The table at which she worked was covered with small cardboard slips,
bearing in her neat minute handwriting the titles and the authors of the
books in Mr Keeling’s library. Each appeared twice, once under its
author, once under its title, and these she was sorting out into an
alphabetical file from which she would compile her catalogue. She had
been at work on it for about a fortnight, and the faint hopes she had
originally entertained of getting it finished by the end of the year had
now completely vanished. He had been buying books in very large
numbers; already wing-bookcases had begun to invade the floor space of
his room, and he intended in the spring to build out farther into the
garden. But Norah was not at all sure that she regretted the vanishing
of those hopes: the work interested her, and she had the true
book-lover’s pride in making all the equipment connected with books as
perfect as it could be. Three times a week she went with her brother
after supper for a couple of hours’ work in Mr Keeling’s library: the
other evenings she brought into order at home the collection of slips
she had made there.
Those evenings spent at Mr Keeling’s house had a great attraction for
her. She enjoyed the work itself, and as she made her slips she had
refreshing glances at the books. It was a leisurely performance, not
like her swift work in the office. Charles helped her in it, making
author-slips or illustration-slips as she made title-slips. There was a
fire on the hearth, a tray of sandwiches for them before they left, and
more often than not Mr Keeling came and sat with them for half an hour,
unpacking fresh volumes if any had come in, and looking through the
book-catalogues that were sent him. And Norah was honest enough with
herself to confess that it was not the work alone that interested her.
Friendship, no less than friendship sudden and to her quite unexpected,
had been the flower of the original enmity between her and the man, who
was never ‘sir’ to her even in the office now. It dated from the moment
when he had made his unreserved apology to her over the matter of the
book-plates. She knew what it must cost to a man of his type to say what
he had said to his typewriter, and she had to revise all her previous
estimates of him, and add him up honestly again. She found the total a
very different one from that which she had supposed was correct. True, a
woman does not like or dislike a man directly because of his qualities,
but his qualities are the soil from which her like or dislike springs.
They are part at any rate of his personality, in which she finds charm
or repulsiveness. The upshot was, to take it at its smallest measure,
that instead of disliking her work for him, she had grown to like it,
because it was for him that she did it.
She was deep in her work now when her brother joined her. Charles was
suffering from a cold of paralysing severity, and she looked up with a
certain anxiety as a fit of coughing took him, for he was liable to bad
bronchitis.
‘Charles, you ought to go to bed,’ she said, ‘and stop there to-morrow.’
‘I dare say, but I shan’t,’ said Charles hoarsely.
‘Why? It is very unwise of you. I’ll tell Mr Keeling as soon as I get
there in the morning. I’m sure he’ll think you were right.’
‘Oh, I shall be better,’ said he. ‘Considering that he saw me through
an illness last year, the least I can do is to hold on as long as I
can.’
‘So that he may have the pleasure of seeing you through another one this
year,’ remarked Norah.
‘Don’t be so optimistic. I may die instead.’
‘You can if you like,’ she said, ‘but it would worry me very much.’
Charles subsided into his book again for a little, but presently put it
down.
‘What about your work at Keeling’s to-morrow night?’ he said, ‘if I’m
not fit to come out? You can’t very well go up there alone, can you?’
Norah paused before she answered.
‘Why on earth not?’ she said. ‘I sit with him alone all day in his
office. Besides, I know he has a dinner-party to-morrow. I shan’t see
him.’
‘And how do you know that?’ he asked.
‘Because a note came to the office from his wife, which I opened, not
knowing her writing, which had something to do with it. He began
dictating a reply for me to type-write, but I suggested he had better
write a note himself.’
‘What awful impertinence!’
‘He didn’t think so. He’s rather touching. He said, “Then you don’t
despair of making a gentleman of me in time.”’
‘I remember you told me once he was a cad. I shall go to bed, I think.’
‘You had much better. And do let me tell him you have stopped there
to-morrow morning she said.
‘I doubt it. Good-night. I dare say I shall be all right to-morrow.’
Charles was no better next day, but merely obstinate, and went up to his
work, as usual, with his sister. Keeling appeared shortly after, and, as
usual, began the dictation. Now and then he gave sharp glances at Norah,
and before long stopped in the middle of a letter.
‘What’s the matter, Miss Propert?’ he said. ‘Better tell me and not
waste time, unless it’s private.’
He had no difficulty in making her look at him now. She looked up with a
half smile.
‘How did you guess there was anything the matter?’ she asked.
‘How do I guess it is warm or cold? I feel it. Tell me.’
‘I’m rather anxious about Charles,’ she said. ‘He has got an appalling
cough.’
‘Have you sent for the doctor?’
‘No. He insisted on coming up to his work.’
Keeling got up.
‘I’ll soon settle that,’ he said, going out.
He came back in a very short space of time.
‘You’ll find him in bed when you get home,’ he said.
‘Oh, thank you so much. I am so grateful.’
‘You needn’t be. I told him he wanted to make me pay a big doctor’s
bill for him instead of his paying a little one. He deserved that for
being so idiotic as to come out. Read the letter, please, which we
stopped in the middle of.’
All day the work went forward as usual: there was a heavy budget to
answer, and it was not till nearly six that Norah had her letters ready
for his signature. He made no payment to her for such over-time work,
for the balance was more often on the other side, and she got away
before her time. As he passed her back the last of the batch, he said,--
‘You are coming to the library this evening, are you not?’
‘I had meant to, if it is convenient to you.’
‘Perfectly. Perhaps you would leave a line on the table to say how your
brother is. I don’t suppose I shall see you to-night.’
* * * * *
Mrs Keeling’s party that night, which sat down very punctually at
half-past seven, and would disperse at half-past ten, was of the
only-a-few-friends nature. Julia Fyson, Alice’s bosom friend, whom she
had begun to dislike very cordially, was there, with her father and
mother, the former, small and depressed, the latter, large and
full-blooded and of a thoroughly poisonous nature. The four Keelings
were there, and the extremely ladylike young woman whom Hugh had lately
led to the altar. She was a shade too lady-like, if anything, and never
forgot to separate her little finger from the others when she was
holding a cup or glass. They were ten in all, Mr Silverdale and Dr
Inglis completing the number. As was usual at the table of that generous
housekeeper Mrs Keeling, there were vast quantities of nitrogenous food
provided in many courses, and it was not till nine that the dining-room
door was opened, on the run, by Mr Silverdale to let the ladies leave
the room. He made a suitable remark to each as she passed him, and Julia
Fyson and Alice, with waists and arms interlaced, stopped to talk to him
as they went out. Precisely at that moment, while they were all in the
Gothic hall together, the boy covered with buttons opened the front door
and admitted Norah Propert. The door into the dining-room was still
being held wide by Silverdale, as the interlaced young ladies answered
his humorous laments over the setting of the sun now that the ladies
were leaving, and through it Keeling standing at the head of the table
saw Norah there. She had had but one moment for thought as the
front-door was opened to her, but the light from the hall streamed full
on to the step and she judged it better to come in than, having been
already seen, retreat again. Without looking up she walked across to the
library door while still Mrs Fyson stared, and let herself in. She heard
the dining-room door opposite close again while she fumbled for the
switch of the electric light; she heard indistinguishable murmurs from
the hall. Only one caught her ear intelligibly when Mrs Keeling said,
‘Oh, Mr Keeling’s typewriter. She is cataloguing his books.’
It had begun to snow thickly outside, and she stood for a minute or two
before the fire, shaking from her cloak the frozen petals, which fizzed
on the coals. Certainly she had felt a disconcertment at the moment of
her entry and passage through the hall, had found fault with the ill
luck that had caused her to meet the gorged galaxy from the dining-room
on the one and only night when her brother had not been with her. But
the encounter did not long trouble her, and like warmth coming over
frozen limbs, the fact of being here alone gave her a thrill of pleasure
that surprised her. She was in his secret garden all by herself, without
Charles to intrude his presence, without even Keeling himself. She did
not want him here now; she was surrounded with him, and presently she
plunged like some ecstatic diver into the work she had come to do for
him. Soon the buzz of men’s conversation drifted past the door,
prominent among which was Silverdale’s expressive and high-pitched
voice, and without intention she found herself listening for Keeling’s.
Then the murmur was cut off by the sound of a shutting door, and she
went on with her work on the catalogue cards. Faint tinkles of a piano
were heard as Alice performed several little pieces, faint screams as
Julia Fyson sang. Keeling was there, no doubt, and still she did not
want him in his bodily presence. He was more completely with her in this
room empty but for herself.
She had settled in her own mind to get away before the party broke up,
but she grew absorbed in her work, and it came with something of a
surprise and shock to her when again she heard the gabble of mixed
voices outside, saying what a pleasant evening they had had, and
realized that she must wait till those compliments were finished. She
had not yet written the note which Keeling had asked her to leave on the
table, regarding her brother’s health, and this she did now as she
waited, giving a promising account of him. Soon the front-door closed
for the last time, leaving silence in the hall, and she heard a
well-known foot cross it in the direction of the drawing-room, pause and
then come back. Keeling entered.
‘Good-evening, Miss Propert,’ he said. ‘I want you, if you will, to
leave your work now, and come into the drawing-room to talk to my wife
and daughter for a few minutes, while I ring for a cab for you. It is
snowing hard.’
‘Oh, I would rather not do that,’ said Norah. ‘I have got great big
overshoes: there they are filling up the corner of the room; I shan’t
mind the snow. And, Mr Keeling, go back to the drawing-room, and say
I’ve gone.’
It was clear to each of them that the same situation, that of Norah
having been seen entering the house alone after dinner, and going to his
private room, was in the mind of each of them. Norah, for her part, had
a secret blush for the fact that she considered the incident at all, but
her reply had revealed that she did, for she remembered that her brother
had alluded to the question of her coming up here alone. But Keeling saw
no absurdity in, so to speak, regularizing the situation, and his
solution commended itself to him more than hers.
‘I should prefer that you came and were introduced to Mrs Keeling,’ he
said. ‘I think that is better.’
Norah got up, smiling at him. Her internal blush had filtered through to
her face.
‘If you think it best, I will,’ she said. ‘Whatever we do, don’t let us
waste time here.’
‘Come then,’ he said.
He showed her the way to the drawing-room, where his wife and Alice were
standing by the fire.
‘I have brought in Miss Propert,’ he said, ‘while I am getting a cab for
her to take her home. It is snowing heavily. And this is my daughter,
Miss Propert.’
Mrs Keeling made a great effort with herself to behave as befitted a
mayoress and the daughter of a P. and O. captain. She thought it
outrageous of her husband to have brought the girl in here without
consulting her, not being clever enough to see the obvious wisdom, both
from his standpoint and that of the girl, of his doing so. But she had
the fairness to admit in her own mind that it was not the girl’s fault:
Mr Keeling had told her to come into the drawing-room, and naturally she
came. Therefore she behaved to her as befitted the Mayoress talking to a
typewriter, and was very grand and condescending.
‘I am sure you are very useful to Mr Keeling,’ she said, ‘in helping to
arrange his books, and it must be a great treat to you to have access to
so large a library, if you are fond of reading.’
The pretentious solemnity of this was not lost on Norah’s sense of
humour. She was rather annoyed at the whole affair, but it was absurd
not to see the lighter side of it, and answer accordingly.
‘Yes, I am very lucky,’ she said. ‘I was lucky in London too, where I
had access to the library at the British Museum.’
This seemed a very proper speech to Mrs Keeling. It was delivered in
clear, pleasant tones, with the appearance of respect, and she could not
make out why Alice gave one of her queer, crooked smiles, or why she
said,--
‘I suppose that is bigger than my father’s, Miss Propert.’
Norah looked up at her, laughing.
‘At a guess I should say it was,’ she said.
Decidedly there was something here that Mrs Keeling did not wholly
comprehend, and when she did not comprehend she called it being kept in
the dark. She comprehended, however, that Norah was exceedingly
good-looking, and that there was a certain air about her, which she
supposed came from reading books. Simultaneously she remembered Mrs
Fyson asking her who it was who had come in and passed into Mr Keeling’s
library; and on being informed that lady had said, ‘How very odd,’ and
at once changed the subject. Instantly she began to consider if it was
very odd. But for the present she determined that nothing should mar the
perfect behaviour of the Mayoress.
‘Pray sit down, Miss Propert,’ she said. ‘I fancy your brother is one of
Mr Keeling’s clerks too.’
‘Yes; he usually comes with me in the evening,’ said Norah, ‘but he is
in bed with a very bad cold.’
‘Indeed. Oh, indeed!’ said Mrs Keeling.
Conversation came to a dead halt here, and again Mrs Keeling, with
growing resentment, took in Norah from head to foot. The seconds were
beaten out sonorously by the pink clock on the chimney-piece, and at
last Norah, now growing thoroughly uncomfortable in this hostile
atmosphere, rose.
‘I think Mr Keeling had much better not bother about a cab for me,’ she
said. ‘I can perfectly well walk home.’
Mrs Keeling became a shade statelier, without abatement of her extremely
proper behavior.
‘Mr Keeling will do as he thinks wisest about that,’ she said.
It seemed, however, not to be in Mr Keeling’s power to do what he
thought wisest, for after a minute or two of ringing silence, he
appeared with the news that there were no cabs to be got. It was snowing
heavily and they were all out.
Norah held out her hand to Mrs Keeling. ‘I won’t keep you up any
longer,’ she said. ‘I shall walk home at once.’
‘It’s impossible,’ said he, ‘there’s nearly a foot of snow now.’
‘All the more reason for getting home before there are two,’ said she.
‘I’ll see you home then,’ he said. ‘You can’t go alone.’
‘Indeed you shall do nothing of the sort,’ said she. ‘It is quite
unnecessary. I absolutely forbid it.’
For a moment it was a mere tussle of will between them, and Norah’s
reasons were the stronger. She looked at him a moment, and knew she had
won, and without more words went back to the library and put on her
over-boots, and gathered up the book-slips she had made that evening. He
followed her as far as the hall, and waited for her.
‘Don’t look at my feet,’ she said gaily. ‘They are officially invisible
like the legs of the Queen of Spain.’
The grim mouth smiled, and the stern eyes grew kindly. She knew that
transformation so well now.
‘You are very obstinate,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you let me walk home with
you?’
‘I am right,’ she said. ‘And I think your plan was wrong.’
‘They weren’t rude to you?’ he asked, growing grim again.
‘Ah, you shouldn’t have asked that,’ she said. ‘They were exceedingly
polite.’
He let her out into the snow, and felt that fire went with her; then
returned to the drawing-room where he found unquestionable ice. Little
sour wreaths of mist were already afloat in Mrs Keeling’s mind, which,
though not yet condensed into actual thought, were chilling down to it
in that narrow receptacle. Alice took her embroidery, and went upstairs,
but his wife sat rather upright by the fire, looking at the evening
paper which she held upside down. She meant to behave with perfect
propriety again, but wished him to begin, so as to launch her propriety
on a fair and even keel.
For his part he had known so many of those evenings, when the
dinner-party went away precisely at half-past ten, and he was left to
hear long comments by his wife on the soup and the beef and the grouse
and the pudding and the savoury, and what Dr Inglis said, and what Mrs
Fyson thought. He hoped, when he first came back, after seeing Norah
fade into the snow-storm, that he was to be regaled with such
reminiscences, but hoped rather against hope. No reminiscences came to
his aid, and he began to be aware, from the ice-bound conditions, that
he must expect something far less jovial and trivial. But he had no
accusing conscience, and if she chose to read her evening paper upside
down in silence, he could at least read the morning paper the right way
up. Then, as he would not give her a lead, make some remark, that is to
say, to which she could take exception, she had to begin.
‘I must say I am surprised at your not seeing Miss Propert home,’ she
said. ‘After bringing her into my drawing-room and forcing me to be
civil to her, you might have had the civility yourself to see her to her
house.’
He was aware that she was intending to exercise the dead-weight
somewhere. It was not many weeks ago that she had brought it into play
regarding Mr Silverdale and his Romish practices, when she had refused
to leave his church for the simpler rites of the Cathedral. He had
yielded there, because he did not really care whether she and Alice
chose to attend a milliner-church or not. They might if they liked: it
did not seriously matter. But the dead-weight, if she was intending to
exercise it over the question of Norah, mattered very much.
‘Would it have pleased you better if I had seen her home?’ he asked.
‘I can’t say whether I should have been pleased or not,’ she said. ‘It
didn’t happen. But I’m sure I don’t know why you sent your typewriter in
here to talk to me. I don’t know what you think I should find to say to
her. With Alice here too.’
She had said too much, and knew it the moment she had said it. But the
mists had congealed, and she felt obliged, as she would have expressed
it, say, to Mrs Fyson, to speak her mind. She did not really speak her
mind; she spoke what some perfectly groundless jealousy dictated to her.
He dropped the paper, and stood up by the fireplace.
‘You said, “With Alice here too,”’ he said. ‘Oblige me by telling me
what you mean.’
She saw that in a reasonable frame of mind she would not have meant
anything. But she was cross and surfeited, and the cold in the head
which had spared her so long was seriously threatening. She wanted, out
of sheer perverseness, to defend an indefensible position.
‘Well, I’m sure Alice must have thought it very odd your bringing your
typewriter into my drawing-room,’ she said.
‘No, you didn’t mean that!’ said Keeling.
Mrs Keeling got up.
‘If you only want to contradict me,’ she said, ‘you can do it by
yourself, Thomas. I’m not going to answer you. That rude girl came in
here----’
‘Rude? You said, “rude.” How was she rude?’
He knew he was being unwise in bandying stupid words with his wife. But
she continued to make accusations, and his want of breeding, to use a
general term, did not allow him to pass them over in the silence that he
knew they deserved.
‘How was she rude?’ he repeated.
‘She said something about the British Museum Library that I did not
understand,’ she said.
‘And because you couldn’t understand, you think she was rude? Was that
it?’
‘Well, if you had heard her say it----’ she began.
‘You know I did not. But I am quite certain that Miss Propert was not
rude. And now about Alice’s being here, when I brought her in. What of
that? I wish you to tell me if you meant anything. If you did not, I
wish you to say so.’
He knew quite well that he was adopting a bullying tone. But he had no
inclination to be bullied himself. One or other of them had to be
vanquished over this, and he was quite determined that he would not hold
the white flag. There was something to be fought for, something which he
could not give up.
‘You must allow it was very odd that your secretary should appear in the
middle of my dinner-party,’ she said, ‘and simply stroll across to your
room. I had been talking of your room half dinner-time with Mr Fyson,
saying that none of us was allowed there. And then, in came this
girl----’
He cut her short.
‘What has that to do with Alice?’ he repeated.
‘I was going to say that, only you always interrupt me,’ she said. ‘Then
when our guests are gone, you bring her in here, just as if she was
Julia Fyson, into my drawing-room. And Alice--well, Alice would think it
very odd too, just as Mrs Fyson did. Of course it was not that which Mrs
Fyson thought odd: I know you will try to catch me up, and ask me how
Mrs Fyson knew, but that is always your way, Thomas. I know quite well
that Mrs Fyson had gone away before you brought her in here.’
‘I don’t want to catch you up,’ he said. ‘I only want to know why Alice
should not be here when I bring Miss Propert in to wait for a cab. You
can’t give me any reason because there is no reason. Let’s get that
clear, and then I want to talk about something else.’
Suddenly the whole of the vague internal movements of her mind flashed
into his vision, as intelligible as some perfectly simple business
proposition. She had a certain justification too: it was awkward that
Norah had run into the exit of the ladies, that his wife had been saying
that none of them ever entered the library. He knew the mind of
Bracebridge pretty well, the slightly malicious construction that women
like Mrs Fyson would find themselves compelled to put on it all. He knew
also the mind of his wife, and the effect which it clearly had had on
her. Her sense of propriety, of dignity had been assaulted: it was a
queer thing to have happened. Then there was Norah’s presence in her
drawing-room. He had insisted on that, for, at the moment, it seemed the
most straightforward thing to do. But he was beginning to think it had
been a mistake. Something about the girl, her beauty (and never had that
struck him so forcibly as when he saw her standing by Alice), her air of
breeding, of education, of simplicity in front of those draped easels
and painted looking-glasses had stirred some long latent potentiality
for jealousy in his wife. It was that suggestion which suddenly enraged
him.
‘Don’t be such a damned fool, Emmeline,’ he said angrily, answering his
own thoughts. He had divined hers quite correctly, and the justice that
lay behind this rude speech struck her full. Her only course was to take
refuge in her own propriety. _She_ knew how to behave.
‘Well, Mr Keeling,’ she said, ‘you can’t expect me to say anything more
about it, if all you want to do is to swear at me. Perhaps you would
like to swear at me again. Pray do.’
‘No, that’s all,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you not to be a damned fool, and I
meant it. The wisest thing you can do is to take my advice.’
She moistened her lips very genteelly with the tip of her tongue.
‘Then if you have finished with that,’ she said, ‘shall we pass on to
the other matter you said you wanted to talk to me about.’
‘By all means. Your Mr Silverdale is stuffing Alice’s head with
ridiculous notions. He’s doing the same to that other girl. Of course
she’s no business of yours or mine, but Alice is. She’ll soon be
fancying herself in love with him, if she doesn’t already.’
‘And do you want my opinion on the subject?’ asked the Mayoress.
‘Of course. I am consulting you.’
‘Then I think you are quite mistaken. They are great friends, and Mr
Silverdale has the most wonderful and spiritual influence over her. She
is quite changed. She is always doing something now for somebody else;
she reads to Mamma, she takes a Sunday school, she is busy and happy
active.’
Mr Keeling considered this.
‘My idea is that she’s doing it all for Mr Silverdale. She could have
read to your mother before Dr Inglis went to the Cathedral. Silverdale
is the somebody she’s doing things for.’
‘It is due to his influence certainly. I know you dislike him, but then
that is your opinion, and it does not agree with other people’s. His
parishioners generally adore him.’
‘Especially the young ladies, and of these especially the silly ones. He
can have an influence with my poor Alice without holding her hand and
whispering to her. He’s a flirt, and I don’t like flirts, especially
those who wrap up their nonsense in religion. Can’t you do something to
stop it? He’s always coming here, isn’t he? I don’t like all that pawing
and touching, and saying it is spiritual influence.’
Mrs Keeling felt shocked at this positively carnal view of Mr
Silverdale’s tendernesses. At the same time she thought they had a
promising aspect besides the spiritual one.
‘Well, I hope you’ll not say or do anything to put him off,’ she said,
the practical side of the question claiming her. ‘I’m sure it’s high
time Alice was married, and never yet has she taken to a young man as
she’s taken to Mr Silverdale.’
Poor Keeling’s head whirled: a moment ago his wife had said that the two
were great friends only on the spiritual plane, now she was saying
precisely what she had begun by contradicting. He was satisfied,
however, that he had her true opinion at last. It did not appear to him
to be worth anything, but there it was. He got up.
‘If I thought Silverdale had the slightest intention of marrying Alice,’
he said, ‘I shouldn’t mind how much he pawed her. But I don’t believe he
has. I’ve a good mind to ask him.’
‘Indeed, I hope you will do nothing so indelicate,’ said she.
A humorous twinkle came into his eye.
‘I wish you would flirt with him yourself, Emmeline,’ he said, ‘and take
him away from Alice. Perhaps you do: some of these clergy flirt with
every decent-looking woman within reach, and you’re twice as handsome as
Alice.’
This also was dreadfully indelicate, but it is not to be wondered at
that Mrs Keeling cast a glance into the looking glass, where her
reflection looked out like a Naiad amid the water-lilies, even while she
reproved her husband for the broadness of his suggestion.
‘I never heard of such talk,’ said she. ‘Pray don’t let us have any more
of it. For shame!’
But she went up to her bed in a far better temper than she would
otherwise have done, and quite abandoned any idea of lying awake to
punish him for his previous brutality.
* * * * *
He went back to his library when his wife left him, where an intangible
something of Norah’s presence lingered. There was the chair she had sat
in, there was her note to him about her brother on the table, and the
blotting paper on which she had blotted the entries she had made on the
catalogue cards. He took up the top sheet and held it to the light, so
as to be able to read the titles of the books. There were the authors’
names in big firm capitals, the book-titles in smaller writing but
legible. She had done a lot to-night, for he remembered having put clean
blotting paper for her, and the sheet was covered with impressions. Here
she had been sitting at work, while he talked and listened to those
people in the drawing-room who meant nothing to him....
He laid the sheet down with an impatient exclamation at himself, and
thought over the incident of Norah’s meeting the party of ladies in the
hall. Mrs Fyson had thought it odd, had she? So much the more mistaken
was Mrs Fyson. There was nothing odd about it at all. His wife had been
disposed to take Mrs Fyson’s view, and he had given her his opinion on
that point pretty sharply. Nothing had ever passed between Norah and
himself that might not with perfect propriety have taken place in the
middle of the market-square with Mrs Fyson and all the ladies of
Bracebridge straining their eyes and ears to detect anything which could
have given one of them a single thing to think about. But the complete
truth of that was not the whole truth. A situation which was in process
of formation underlay that truth, and just now that situation had
expressed itself in eloquent silence when he took up the blotting-paper
and read what Norah had written on the cards. He had not given a thought
to the titles of the books and their authors, though probably his eyes
had observed them: his mind had been wholly occupied with the knowledge
that it was she who had written them.
It was that which his wife had expressed in her manner and her words: it
was that for which he had chosen to swear at her. He had given her a
good knock for hinting at it, and had followed up that knock by the
stupid sort of joke about the superiority of her charms to those of
Alice, which she was sure to appreciate. She had done so; she had said,
‘For shame!’ and gone simpering to bed. Perhaps that would take her mind
off the other affair. He sincerely hoped it would, but he distrusted her
stupidity. A cleverer woman would have probably accepted the more
superficial truth that there had never passed between him and Norah a
single intimate word, but a stupid one might easily let a dull unfounded
suspicion take root in her mind. It was difficult to deal with stupid
people: you never knew where their stupidity might break out next.
Emmeline had a certain power of sticking, and Mrs Fyson had a brilliant
imagination. Together they might evolve some odious by-product, one that
would fumble and shove its way into the underlying truth.
He got up with a shrug of the shoulders. There was no use in making
conjectures about it all. Perhaps if he gave Emmeline a pearl-pendant
for her birthday, which fortunately occurred next week, he could
distract her mind. But it was impossible to tell about Emmeline: her
stupidity was an incalculable item.
He went to the front door in order to make sure he had put the chain on,
and then taking it off, opened the door and looked out into the night.
The snow was still falling fast, and the prints of wheels and footsteps
outside were already obliterated. Mr Silverdale had walked home,
light-heartedly predicting a ‘jolly good snowballing match’ with his
boys next day, and Keeling found himself detesting Mr Silverdale with
acute intensity. Norah had walked home also.... In a moment he was back
in the hall, putting on a mackintosh. He would have liked to put on
boots as well but for that he would have had to go up to his
dressing-room next door to his wife’s bedroom. Then gently closing the
door behind him, he went out into the night. He must just walk as far as
her house to make sure she was not still tramping her way through the
snow, and traverse the streets she had traversed. It was absolutely
necessary to satisfy himself about that, and he did not care how
unreasonable it was--rational considerations had no application; an
emotional dictate made him go. There was but a mile of gas-lit
thoroughfare between his house and hers, but he, striving to smother the
emotion he would not admit, told himself that he must be satisfied she
was not still out in this frozen inclement night. He gave that as a sop
to his rational self; but he knew he threw it as to some caged wolf, to
keep it from growling.
There was a moon somewhere above the snow-clouds that already were
beginning to grow thin from the burden they had discharged, and the smug
villas on each side of the road were clearly visible. She had to go up
the length of Alfred Road, then turn down the street that led by St
Thomas’s Vicarage, and emerge into West Street, where she lived with her
brother. Already, a fortnight ago he had ascertained the number of their
house, not asking for it directly, but causing her to volunteer the
information, and since then he had half a dozen times gone through the
street, on his way to and from the Stores in order to take a glance at
it as he passed. He had wanted to know what the house looked like; he
had wanted to construct the circumstances of her life, to know the
aspect of her environment, to see the front-door out of which she came
to her duties as his secretary. That all concerned her, and for that
reason it concerned him. He knew the house well by now: he knew from
chance remarks that he had angled for that her bedroom looked into the
street, that Charles’s looked on to an old disused graveyard behind.
There was the dining-room and the sitting-room in front, and a paling
behind which Michaelmas daisies flourished in a thin row. She cared for
flowers, but not for flowers in a six-inch bed. They rather provoked
her: they were playing at being flowers. She liked them when they grew
in wild woodland spaces, and were not confined between a house-wall and
a row of tiled path.
The empty streets, dumb with snow, flitted silently by him, and as they
passed, he seemed to himself to be standing still while some circular
movement of the earth carried him past the silly Vicarage and into West
Street. It brought him up to the house: it showed him a red blind on the
first floor lit from within. That was what he had come to see, and he
waited a moment on the white pavement opposite watching it. She had got
home, that was all right then, yet still he looked at the blind.
He turned and retraced his steps. Now that the object of his expedition
was secured he was conscious of all the discomforts and absurdity of
what he had been doing. The snow was deep, his evening shoes were wet
through, his mackintosh heavy with clinging flakes, and his rational
self made its voice heard, telling him what a fool’s errand was in
progress. He heard, but his emotional self heeded nothing of that: it
would not argue, it would not answer, it was well satisfied with what
he had done, telling him, now that he was going homewards again, that he
would find there the blotting paper on which she had pressed the wet ink
of her catalogue slips, reminding him that at nine next morning he would
see her again. It would attend to no interruptions, its thoughts
sufficed for itself. But he knew that his reason, his prudence were
ringing him up, as it were, on the telephone. The bell tinkled with
repeated calls for him to listen to what they had to say. But he refused
to take the receiver down; he would not give his ear to their coherent
message, and let them go on summoning him unheeded. He knew all they had
to say, and did not want to hear it again. They took an altogether
exaggerated view of his affairs, when they told him that the situation
might easily develop into a dangerous one. He, with his emotional self
to back him up, knew better than they, and had assured them that his
self-control had the situation well in hand. They need not go on
summoning him, he was not going to attend. In the leafless elms above
there sang in this wintry and snow-bound night the shy strong bird of
romance: never in his life had he heard such rapture of melody.
* * * * *
Despite his fifty years, and the hard dry business atmosphere of his
life, there was something amazingly boyish in the inward agitation in
which Keeling, arriving ten minutes before his time at his office next
morning, awaited Norah’s coming. His midnight excursion, dictated by
some imperative necessity from within had, even if it was not a new
stage in his emotional history, revealed a chapter already written but
not yet read by him. He expected too, quite irrationally, that some
corresponding illumination must have come to the girl, that she, like
himself, must have progressed along a similar stage. He pictured himself
telling her how he had left his house in order to have the satisfaction
of seeing her lit window; he had a humorous word to say about the state
of his dress shoes (in place of which he must not forget to order a pair
from the boot and shoe department this morning). He could see her smile
with eyes and mouth in answer to his youthful confession, as she always
smiled when, as often happened now, some small mutual understanding
flitted to and fro between them, and could easily imagine the tone of
her reply, ‘Oh, but how dreadfully foolish of you, Mr Keeling. You want
to be laid up too, like Charles.’ She would not say more than that, but
there would be that glimmer of comprehension, of acceptance, that showed
she had some share in the adventure, that she allowed it, looked on it
with the kind eye of a friend.
There was never a swifter disillusionment than when she came in, and he
stood up, as he had now learned to do, at her entrance. He had heard
her step along the passage, and the bird of romance, hidden perhaps
behind the sofa or in the case of files, gave out a great jubilant
throatful of song. But next moment it was as if some hand, Mrs Fyson’s
perhaps, had wrung its neck and stopped its singing. She had a perfectly
friendly smile for him, but the smile was not one shade more friendly
than usual, her eyes did not hold lit within them a spark of closer
intimacy than had habitually been there for the last fortnight. Whatever
had happened to him last night, he saw that nothing whatever had
happened to her. No sixth sense had conveyed to her the smallest hint of
his midnight walk: she had been through no nocturnal experiences that
the most sanguine could construe into correspondence with that, and on
the moment he could no more have told her about his midnight walk, or
have been humorous on the subject of disintegrated shoes than he could
have taken her into his arms and kissed her. And by the standard of how
incredibly remote she seemed, he could judge of the distance of his
spirit’s leap towards her, when he stood outside her window last night.
The very absence of any change in her was the light by which he saw the
change in himself.
She had his letters opened for him with her usual speed, but as she
worked he could see by the soft creased line between her eyebrows, even
as he had seen it yesterday morning, when she was anxious about her
brother, that something troubled her. To-day, however, he did not
question her: she might tell him if she felt disposed, and guessing that
it was connected with the events of last night, his instinct told him
that it was for her to speak or be silent. Then, when she had opened the
letters, she placed them by him, and without a word, took up her
writing-block and pencil for the shorthand dictation. But still her brow
did not clear, the smudge of shadow lay perpendicularly between her
eye-brows, as fixed as if it was some soft pencil mark on the skin.
To-day the work was not heavy, and nearly an hour before the interval
for lunch he had finished the dictation of his answers. She knew his
business engagements as well as himself, and reminding him that a
land-agent was coming to see him at twelve on some private matter, took
her papers into the little inner room. Then she came back for her
typewriter, which stood on the table in the window where she usually
worked, paused and came over to his table.
‘May I speak to you a moment?’ she asked.
‘Certainly, Miss Propert. What is it?’
She fingered the edge of the table, and with her instinct for tidiness,
put straight a couple of papers that lay there.
‘It’s about last night,’ she said. ‘I told Charles what had happened,
and he doesn’t want me to come up to your house again like that in the
evening. He knows as well as I do----’
She broke off, and the trouble cleared from her face, as she looked up
at him smiling.
‘Charles wanted to write to you,’ she said, ‘but I said I would really
prefer to explain. People are such fools, you know, aren’t they?’
There was mingled chagrin and pleasure for him in this speech. He
admired the frank friendliness with which she spoke: but he would have
liked to have seen in her some consciousness of the underlying truth
which last night he had hugged to himself. But in her frankness there
seemed to be a complete unconsciousness of any of his own sentiments, no
twitter, however remote, of the bird of romance that had sung to him
from the snowy trees.
He assented to the fact that people were fools. ‘But is that the end of
my library catalogue?’ he asked.
‘No; I must finish it. I thought perhaps I could go there for an hour in
the middle of the morning, when you were down here. I could still get
your letters done in time for the evening post. If I went there every
day for an hour I could get through as much as I did on alternate
evenings.’
He knew this to be a sound and sensible plan, but he did not in the
least wish to assent to it. In the first place, it would look as if he
acknowledged some basis of reason in his wife’s attitude the evening
before; in the second place, he would no longer have those half-hours
after dinner in his library with Norah and her brother. He knew that
they had become the pearl of the day to him.
‘But since people are such fools,’ he said, ‘does it matter?’
‘Yes. I think it does. I don’t want to make unpleasantness.’
‘For me?’ he asked. ‘You make none.’
She flushed a little.
‘Yes. Personally I don’t care two straws. But Charles does rather.’
Keeling stood up.
‘I’m ashamed of myself,’ he said. ‘Your brother is perfectly right. Go
down, then, as you suggest in the morning.’
‘We’ll settle it like that then,’ she said. ‘But I am so sorry. I liked
those evenings.’
‘I didn’t object to them myself,’ said he. As she turned, their eyes met
again, and Norah knew she had done right. But that knowledge gave her no
atom of satisfaction.
The land-agent was announced, and Norah left the two together. Of late
years Keeling had been buying both building-sites and houses in
Bracebridge, and Simpson, his agent, had been instructed to inform him
of any desirable site that was coming into the market. But at the
moment he felt singularly little interested in any purchase that Simpson
might recommend.
‘Good-morning, Simpson,’ he said. ‘What have you come about?’
In the next room the typing machine had begun its clacking that came
staccato and subdued through the baize-lined door. That seemed to him
more momentous than anything his agent could tell him about.
‘Well, sir, there’s a building site just beyond your little place,’
began Mr Simpson. ‘It’s coming up next month for sale, but if you make
an offer now, I think you might get it cheap.’
Keeling forced his mind away from the sound that came from next door,
and looked at the map that the agent had spread out. But the purchase
did not appeal to him.
‘Too far out,’ he said. ‘And I think the villa-building is being a bit
overdone. Anything else?’ he said.
‘Yes, sir, if you’ll pay the price, there’s an important site which the
owner wants to sell the freehold of. It’s the site of the County Club.
The price asked seems rather high, but then I consider the Club are
getting their premises absurdly cheap. You might fairly ask a much
higher rental.’
Suddenly Keeling felt himself interested in this, and the clacking of
the typewriter came to his ears no longer.
‘What lease has the Club got?’ he asked.
‘I have ascertained that there is a break in it next Midsummer on both
sides, notice to be given at Lady Day. The present owner had determined
to put up their rent then, and the Committee, I believe, thought that
quite reasonable. But he wants cash, and has instructed me to look out
for a purchaser.’
Keeling had that faculty, which had stood him in such good stead all his
life, of being able to make up his mind quickly when all the data were
put before him. He did not hesitate now, and ten minutes after, when the
details of the ownership and present lease were in his possession, he
had authorised his agent to purchase for him.
‘I gather that the owner wishes the transaction to be private,’ he said.
‘And I wish the same.’
‘Certainly. I think you have made a wise purchase, sir,’ said Simpson.
‘I am told that the landlord is ex-officio a member of the Club.
Good-morning, sir. I will have the deed made out with your lawyer
without delay.’
Keeling nodded. The last speech had given him something to think about.