Mrs Keeling had much enjoyed the sense of added pomp and dignity which
her husband’s mayoralty gave her. She liked seeing placards in the
streets that a concert in aid of some charity was given under the
patronage of the Lady Mayoress, and would rustle into the arm-chair
reserved for her in the middle of the front-row with the feeling that
she had got this concert up, and was responsible not only for the
assistance it gave to the charity in question, but for the excellence of
the performance. She assumed a grander and more condescending air at her
parties, and distinctly began to unbend to the inhabitants of Alfred
Road instead of associating with them as equals. She knew her position
as Lady Mayoress; it almost seemed to her that it was she who had raised
her husband to the civic dignity, and when one morning she found among
her letters an invitation from Lady Inverbroom for herself and him to
dine and sleep one day early in December, at their place a few miles
outside Bracebridge, she was easily able to see through the insincerity
of Lady Inverbroom’s adding that it would give her husband such pleasure
to show Mr Keeling his library. It was an amiable insincerity, but
Emmeline was secretly sure that the Lady Mayoress was the desired guest.
She tried without success to control the trembling of her voice when she
telephoned to Keeling--who had just left for the Stores (those vulgar
stores)--the gratifying request. He was quite pleased to accept it, but
she could detect no trembling in his voice. But men controlled their
feelings better than women....
She took the parlour-maid as her maid, though her husband altogether
refused to pass off the boy covered with buttons as his valet, and
enjoyed a moment’s supreme triumph when she was able to reply to Lady
Inverbroom, who hoped, when she showed her her room that she would ask
the house-maid for anything she required, that she had brought her own
maid. Then Lady Inverbroom (to hide her natural confusion) had poked the
fire for her and pointed out the position of the bathroom, which
communicated with her bedroom. Certainly that was most convenient, and
dinner would be at half-past eight.
Mrs Keeling felt a little strange: the magnificence of this great house
rather overawed her, and she had to remind herself several times, as she
dressed, that she was Lady Mayoress. There were quantities of tall
liveried footmen standing about when she went down, but she remembered
to put her nose in the air to about the angle at which Lady Inverbroom’s
nose was naturally levelled, and walked by them with an unseeing eye, as
if they were pieces of familiar furniture. She had soup on a silver
plate, and was quite successful in avoiding what she would have called
‘a scroopy noise’ made with her spoon as she fed herself off that
unusual material. Then when Lord Inverbroom alluded casually to the
great Reynolds over the chimney piece, she flattered herself that she
made a very apposite remark when, after duly admiring it, she said, ‘And
who is the heir to all this beautiful property?’ for she was well aware
that her hosts were childless. There were no guests in the house, except
themselves, and though it would have been nice to let slip the names of
illustrious people when alluding to this visit afterwards in
Bracebridge, she felt glad at the time that there was no one else, for
she was on the verge of feeling shy, which would never have done for a
Lady Mayoress.
A few small incidents during dinner rather surprised her; once Lady
Inverbroom, in helping herself to some hot sauce let a drop of it fall
on the fingers of the footman who handed it to her. Instantly she turned
round in her chair and said in a voice of real concern (just as if the
man had not been a piece of furniture), ‘I beg your pardon; I hope I
didn’t burn you!’ After dinner again, when cigarettes came round, she
was rather astonished at being offered one, and holding her head very
high, turned abruptly away. No doubt it was a mistake, but there would
have been words at the Cedars next morning, if the parlour-maid had
offered a cigarette to any lady. Indeed she was rather astonished that
Lord Inverbroom lit his without first asking her if she minded the
perfume.
But what surprised her even more than her hostess’s politeness to a
footman, or the handing of a cigarette to herself, was her husband’s
obvious unconcern with the magnificence of his surroundings. He seemed
perfectly at his ease, and though there was nothing in his manner which
suggested a sort of haughty polish which she felt was suitable in these
exalted places, he behaved as simply as if he was at home. In fact his
simplicity almost made his wife blush once, when, on the occasion of a
large puff of smoke coming down the chimney he said to Lord Inverbroom,
‘I can show you a new cowl which will quite stop that.’ But Lord
Inverbroom did not seem the least uncomfortable at this sudden peeping
out of the mercantile cloven hoof, and merely replied that a cowl that
would prevent that chimney from smoking would be worth its weight in
gold. That was very tactful, and Mrs Keeling was vexed that her husband
would not leave the subject: instead he laughed and said that the cowl
in question did not cost much more than its weight in iron. Then luckily
the talk drifted away on to books, and though Mrs Keeling knew that by
all the rules of polite behaviour her husband should have been engaging
his hostess in light conversation while she talked to her host, Keeling
and Lord Inverbroom quite lost themselves in discussing some Italian
book with pictures that had lately appeared. Lord Inverbroom said he
could not afford it, which must be a joke....
In consequence of the two men talking together she was left to Lady
Inverbroom, but as she had taken the trouble to read the small
paragraphs in a Society journal that day, she could give her little
tit-bits of information about the movements of the King and the Royal
Family, while with half an ear she continued to listen to her husband,
so as to interrupt in case he tended to unsuitable topics again. But she
was so dumbfoundered when, à propos of book-plates (which sounded safe
enough), she heard Lord Inverbroom say that he had a charming one lately
made for him by a Miss Propert, that the apposite talk she was engaged
in died on her lips.
‘She has just made one for me,’ said her husband. ‘Perhaps you didn’t
know that she lives in Bracebridge with her brother. She is my secretary
and typewriter.’
‘Indeed? I wonder if you would let her come over here one day. I should
like to show her my books with her book-plate in them. Saturday,
perhaps, if that is a half-holiday. Would she come to lunch, do you
think, and spend the afternoon?’
Mrs Keeling was quite horrified; she longed for her husband to tell him
that Miss Propert was quite a humble sort of person. Then luckily it
occurred to her that no doubt the idea was that she should have her
lunch in the housekeeper’s room. This relieved her mind, and she
continued to tell Lady Inverbroom the last news from Windsor. Shortly
afterwards, with a little pressing on the part of her hostess, she was
induced to precede her out of the dining-room, leaving the men alone.
The new wing of the hospital was a subject about which Lord Inverbroom
wanted to talk to his guest, and for a little while that engaged them.
This open weather had allowed the building to go on apace, and by the
end of March the wing should be advanced enough to permit of the opening
ceremony. The Board of hospital directors would see to that, and Lord
Inverbroom sketched out his idea for the day. The ceremony of the
opening he proposed should be in the morning, and for it he hoped to
secure the presence of a very distinguished personage. Lunch would
follow, and if Mr Keeling approved, he would at the luncheon announce
the name of the munificent giver. Then he paused a moment.
‘Mr Keeling,’ he said, ‘I think there is no doubt that the Prime
Minister would wish to submit your name to the King as the recipient of
some honour in public recognition of your munificence. Would you allow
me in confidence to tell him who our benefactor is? And would you in
case he sees the matter as I do, be disposed to accept a baronetcy? I
may say that I do not think there is the slightest doubt that he will
agree with me. Perhaps first you would like to mention it to Mrs
Keeling.’
Keeling had no doubts on this subject at all, and felt sure his wife
would have none. He was not in the least a snob, and to wish to be a
baronet implied nothing of the kind.
‘I should be very much gratified and honoured,’ he said.
‘Very well. Perhaps you would mention it to your wife and let me know.
The town and county generally owe you the deepest debt of gratitude.’
Now there was another subject on which Keeping had made up his mind to
speak to Lord Inverbroom, and this intelligence encouraged him to do so.
By purchasing the freehold of the County Club, he had acquired the right
of membership, but with that streak of pride which was characteristic of
him, he did not want to get elected to the Club as a right. He had,
since he had made the purchase, thought this over, and wished to stand
for election, could he secure a proposer and seconder, like any other
candidate. That being so, he did not intend to tell Lord Inverbroom that
he would, ex officio, become a member of the Club at the next
quarter-day, when he entered into possession of his property, but had
determined to ask him if he, as president, would propose him in the
ordinary course. The next election, he had already ascertained, took
place early in April, when his blushing honours as benefactor to the
hospital and baronet would be fresh upon him. There could be no more
suitable opportunity for his request than the present.
‘I wonder if you would do me a great favour,’ he said bluntly.
‘I feel sure it would be a pleasure to me to do you any favour that is
in my power,’ said the other.
‘Would you then be kind enough to propose me for election to the County
Club next April?’ said Keeling.
There was a pause, the very slightest, quite imperceptible to Keeling,
though John would probably have noticed it. But instantly Lord
Inverbroom made up his mind that it was quite impossible to refuse this
thing which he wished had not been asked. He had not the smallest
personal objection to having Keeling as a member, but in that
infinitesimal pause he divined, he was afraid unerringly, the feeling of
the club generally. Ridiculous it might be, as many class-distinctions
are, but he knew that it existed, and in general he shared it. He
succeeded, however, in keeping cordiality in his voice, in consenting to
do what he felt unable to refuse.
‘I shall be delighted to,’ he said. ‘Have you got a seconder? Ah, I
think that is not necessary when the President proposes a candidate. I
will certainly put down your name when I go into Bracebridge next.’
Again there was a slight pause, and he rose, trying to avoid the
appearance of breaking off a distasteful subject.
‘Well, Mr Keeling,’ he said. ‘I mean to keep you up a long time in my
library to-night, so shall we go into the drawing-room at once, till the
ladies go up to bed? Dear me, that awful chimney! It would be very good
of you if you would let me have the cowl you told me of.’
Late as it was when Keeling went upstairs, he found a jubilant and
wakeful wife waiting for him, with a positive cargo of questions and
impressions which she had to unload at once. Her elation took a
condescending and critical form, and she neither wanted nor paused for
answers.
‘Well, I’m sure it’s been a very pleasant if a very quiet evening,’ she
said. ‘There’s nothing nicer than to dine, as you may say, tête-à-tête
like that and have a little agreeable conversation afterwards, not but
what I should have been sorry to have as tough a pheasant as that served
at my table, for I declare I could hardly get my teeth into it though it
did come on a silver plate, and nothing but a nut and an apple for
dessert, though you can get choice grapes so cheap now. But there! what
does that matter when you dine with friends? Such a pleasant talk as I
had too with Lady Inverbroom, who, I’m sure, is a very sensible and
agreeable sort of woman. Nothing very gifted, I dare say, but a great
deal of common sense. Common sense now! I often wish it was commoner.
But the time passed so quickly while you and Lord Inverbroom were
talking together in the dining-room that I was quite surprised when you
came in. The soup, too, did you not find it insipid? But I expect Lady
Inverbroom does not have the sort of cook that I have always been
accustomed to. No jewels either, just that little diamond brooch, which
made me feel that I was too fine with the beautiful pearl pendant you
gave me for my birthday. Don’t you agree with me, Thomas?’
‘You have talked about fifty things, my dear. I don’t know which you
want me to agree with you about,’ said he.
‘Well, we will let it pass. Was it not odd that Lord Inverbroom had a
book-plate by your Miss Propert? Quite a coincidence! But you made me
feel quite hot when you talked about supplying him with a chimney-cowl,
just as if he was a customer. Not that it really matters, and I thought
you got on wonderfully well, though no doubt you felt a little strange
at first. And what did you and Lord Inverbroom talk about when we left
you? Books, I suppose.’
Keeling sat down by the fire.
‘If you want to know I will tell you,’ he said.
‘Of course I want to know. What should I ask for unless I wanted to
know? Parkinson tells me they had quite a common supper in the room,
nothing out of the way, just some of the fish that was left over and
cold beef. I must ask Lady Inverbroom to drop in to lunch some day when
she is in Bracebridge, and let her see how a pheasant should be served.’
‘I am going to tell you what we talked about, if you will be quiet for a
moment. You do not yet know that I have given them the new wing to the
hospital----’
‘What? You gave the new wing. Well, to think of your having kept me in
the dark all this time! I do call that very generous, but generous you
always are, as I’ve often told Mamma, about your money. I suppose that
will cost a great deal of money.’
‘Yes, a great deal. Kindly allow me to get on. You are not to tell
anybody about it till the day it is opened, when it will be announced.
Lord Inverbroom thinks I shall be given a baronetcy. He suggested that I
should tell you and see what you thought about it.’
Mrs Keeling sat straight up in bed.
‘Well, I never!’ she said. ‘Indeed Mamma was right when she said some
people got on in the world. Sir Thomas Keeling, Bart., and Lady Keeling.
It sounds very well, does it not? I do call that money well laid out,
however much it was--Sir Thomas and Lady Keeling! I hope Parkinson will
pick it up quickly, and not stumble over it. “My lady” instead of
“Ma’am.” She will have to practise.’
It was easy to see out of the depths of futilities that Mrs Keeling was
pleased, and her husband retired to his dressing-room and shut the door
on her raptures.
* * * * *
It was largely the remembrance of this visit, and the future accession
of dignity which it had foreshadowed that inspired Mrs Keeling, as she
drove home in her victoria after morning-service at St Thomas’s, a few
Sundays later, with so comfortable a sense of her general felicity. The
thought of being addressed on her envelopes as Lady Keeling, and by
Parkinson as ‘My lady,’ caused her to take a livelier interest in the
future than she usually did, for the comfortable present was generally
enough for her. And with regard to the present her horizon was
singularly unclouded, apart from the fact that Alice was suffering from
influenza, an infliction which her mother bore very calmly. Her mind was
not nimble, and it took her all the time that the slowly-lolloping horse
occupied in traversing the road from the church to The Cedars in
surveying those horizons, and running over, as she had just been bidden
to do by Mr Silverdale in his sermon, her numerous causes for
thankfulness. She hardly knew where to begin, but the pearl-pendant,
which her husband had given her on her birthday, and now oscillated with
the movement of the carriage on the platinum chain round her ample neck,
formed a satisfactory starting-point. It really was very handsome, and
since she did not hold with the mean-spirited notion that presents were
only tokens of affection, and that the kind thought that prompted a gift
was of greater value than its cash-equivalent, she found great pleasure
in the size and lustre of the pearl. Indeed she rather considered the
value of the gift to be the criterion of the kindness of thought that
had prompted it, and by that standard her husband’s thought had been
very kind indeed. She had never known a kinder since, now many years
ago, he had given her the half-hoop of diamonds that sparkled on her
finger. And this gift had been all ‘of a piece’ with his general
conduct. She knew for a fact that he was going to behave with his usual
generosity at Christmas to her mother, and he had promised herself and
Alice a fortnight’s holiday at Brighton in February. Perhaps he would
come with them, but it was more likely that business would detain him.
She found she did not care whether he came or not. It was her duty to be
contented, whatever happened, when everything was so pleasant.
This imaginative flight into the future fatigued her, or at any rate
demanded an effort on the part of her brain, and very naturally she went
back to the blessings that she found it easier to call to mind since
they already existed. Quite high among these, a little lower perhaps
than the pleasure of being Lady Mayoress, but higher than the fact that
Alice was distinctly better this morning, was the sensible way in which
her husband had behaved about those odd evening visits of Miss Propert
when she worked at his library catalogue. Faint was the remembrance of
that unpleasant moment when she had suddenly appeared among all the
guests at the close of dinner, and was subsequently introduced into the
drawing-room. But after that those visits had ceased altogether, and
instead Miss Propert came in the middle of the morning when her husband
was at his office. That was perfectly in accordance with the rules of
correct behaviour, and when she chanced to meet Norah going into the
library or leaving it at the conclusion of her work, she always had a
civil and condescending word for her. She had no doubt whatever that the
girl was a very decent young woman in her station of life, which was as
much as could be said about anybody.
At this point she sat rather more upright in her carriage in order to be
able to show how distant and stately was her recognition of Mrs Fyson,
who was walking (not driving) in her direction. She gave her quite a
little bow without the hint of a smile, for that was just how she felt
to Mrs Fyson, and the more clearly Mrs Fyson grasped that fact the
better. She could barely see Mrs Fyson, that was the truth of it, and it
was not wholly the sunlit mist of Inverbroom magnificence that obscured
her. It is true that since the Inverbroom visit (followed up by a Lady
Inverbroom lunch at The Cedars, when she had shown her how a pheasant
should be served) Mrs Keeling had adopted to Alfred Road generally the
attitude of a slowly-ascending balloon, hovering, bathed in sun; over
the darkling and low-lying earth below it, and this would very usefully
tend to prepare Alfred Road for the greater elevation to which she would
suddenly shoot up, as by some release of ballast, when in the spring a
certain announcement of honours should be promulgated. But it was not
only that Alfred Road was growing dim and shadowy beneath her that
prompted this stateliness to Mrs Fyson. That misguided lady (not a true
lady) had been going about Bracebridge assuring her friends that Mr
Silverdale had been so very attentive to her daughter Julia, that she
was daily expecting that Mr Silverdale would seek an interview with Mr
Fyson, and Julia a blushing one with her. Now, as Mrs Keeling was daily
expecting a similar set of interviews to take place at The Cedars, it
was clear that unless Mr Silverdale contemplated bigamist proposals
(which would certainly be a very great change from his celibate
convictions) Mrs Fyson must be considered a mischievous and jealous
tatler. Several days ago Alice had appeared suddenly in her mother’s
boudoir, murdering sleep like Macbeth, to inform her that she was never
going to speak to Julia again, nor wished to hear her name mentioned.
She gave no reason, nor did Mrs Keeling need one, for this severance of
relations beyond saying that certain remarks of Mrs Fyson were the
immediate cause. She then immediately went to bed with influenza, which
her mother attributed to rage and shock.
This, though the last of Mrs Fyson’s misdeeds, was not the first, and
Mrs Keeling almost forgot the duty of thankfulness for blessings when
she remembered that dreadful occasion. Shortly after Norah’s final
appearance in the evening, Mrs Fyson had called, and under the pretext
of a digestion-visit after her dinner had hissed out a series of
impertinent questions as to how ‘it had all ended.’ Fool though she
might be, Mrs Keeling was not of that peculiarly hopeless sort that
confides domestic difficulties to the ears of gossips, and had with some
appearance of astonishment merely said that she and Miss Propert had had
a very pleasant chat while Mr Keeling was telephoning for a cab to take
Miss Propert home. On which Mrs Fyson had looked exactly like a ferret
and said, ‘Did he bring her into your drawing-room? That was _very_
clever!’
The remembrance of this odious suggestion was the only thing that seemed
to cloud the serenity of Mrs Keeling’s horizon: indeed it scarcely did
that, and corresponded rather to a very slight fall in the barometer,
though no signs of untoward weather were anywhere visible. She did not
often think of it, but she knew that it had not (like so many more
important things) entirely vanished from her mind, and when she did
think of it, it produced this slight declension from weather otherwise
set fair. But immediately afterwards her thistle-down reflections would
flutter away to the pearl-pendant, the Inverbroom visit, and the
baronetage.
She had arrived at the front door of The Cedars, and as it was rather
too cold to wait for the boy covered with buttons to remove her rug, she
managed to do that for herself. Just as she stepped into the Gothic
porch, the front-door opened and Norah came out. This was something of a
surprise: it had not previously occurred to her that the catalogue-work
went on on Sundays. But it was no business of hers whether her husband’s
secretary chose to behave in an unsabbatical if not heathenish manner.
That was quite her own concern, and a small elephantine reproach was all
that the occasion demanded.
‘Why, Miss Propert,’ she said. ‘Fancy working on Sunday morning when all
good people are at church!’
Norah looked not only surprised but startled, but she instantly
recovered herself.
‘I know; it is wicked of me,’ she said. ‘But I so much wanted to get on
with my work. You are back early, aren’t you?’
This was true: the sermon on the duty of thankfulness had been short
though joyous, and there was no Litany. Mrs Keeling had already
congratulated herself on that, for she would have time to rest well
before lunch and perhaps see Alice when she had rested. But when after a
few more gracious remarks, she found herself in the hall, she did not
immediately go to her boudoir to rest. Perhaps some little noise from
the library, only half-consciously heard, caused her to pause, and then,
Mrs Fyson’s unforgotten remark occurring to her, she went to that door
and opened it. Her husband, whom she supposed to be at the cathedral,
was standing in front of the fire.
‘Back from Cathedral already, Thomas?’ she said.
‘Yes, my dear, and you from church. I sat in the nave, if you want to
know, and came out before the sermon.’
He paused a moment.
‘Probably you met Miss Propert at the door,’ he said. ‘She has been
working at the catalogue, I find. How is Alice this morning? Have you
seen her?’
The pearl-pendant gently wagged at Mrs Keeling’s throat: Mrs Fyson’s
comment gently stirred in her head. She would have said this was clever
too, this introduction of Miss Propert’s name without waiting for his
wife to mention it. Clever or not, it served its immediate purpose, for
she gave him news of Alice.
‘The sooner you take her off to the seaside the better,’ he said.
‘Change of air will do her good. I should go this week, if I were you.’
It seemed to Mrs Keeling that this was not being clever but stupid. She
felt that it was a designed diversion to distract her thoughts. She was
being ‘pearl-pendanted’ again without the pearl, and was not going to be
put off like that.
‘Oh, I have too many engagements to think of that,’ she said, ‘and you
would not be able to come with me!’
‘There is little chance of that whenever you go,’ said he.
An awful, an ill-inspired notion came into poor Mrs Keeling’s head. She
determined on light good-humoured banter. Her intentions were excellent,
her performance deplorable.
‘Too busy over the catalogue, eh?’ she asked. ‘Coming away before the
sermon too. Naughty, as Mr Silverdale would say. Oh, I understand, my
dear.’
The effect of this light humour was not at all what she had anticipated.
He turned swiftly round to her, with a face appallingly grim.
‘Never mind what Mr Silverdale would say,’ he said. ‘Tell me what it is
that you understand. Now, quick, what is it you understand?’
She retreated a step with a fallen face.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘Dear me, what is the matter? It was only
my joke.’
Instantly he saw his mistake. He had had the opportunity to treat the
subject in the same playful spirit. But he had been unable to: it was
all too serious to him. The grim Puritan streak in him, which had not
prevented his falling in love with Norah, made it impossible for him to
jest or suffer a jest about it. He was not a flirt, and did not care to
have that tawdry cloak thrown on to his shoulders. But he had made a
mistake: he ought to have accepted that ridiculous decoration with a
grin as ridiculous. Now he tried to recapture the belated inanity.
‘Ah, you’re just chaffing me,’ he said, ‘and there’s no harm in that.
But I didn’t care for what Mr Silverdale would say. He’s naughty too, if
he’s not going to ask poor Alice to marry him, when she’s recovered from
her influenza. Or have you done as I asked you, and cut your daughter
out yourself? That’s a joke too: one bad joke deserves another,
Emmeline.’
Suddenly it struck him that the situation was parallel to, but more
significant than that which had occurred in her drawing-room when Norah
had come into it for a few minutes one snowy evening. Then, as now, his
wife had hinted at an underlying truth, which he was aware of: then, as
now, he had scolded her for the ridiculous suggestion her words implied.
But to-day the same situation was intensified, it presented itself to
him in colours many tones more vivid, even as the underlying truth had
become of far greater concern to him. And, unless he was mistaken, it
had become much more real to his wife. Her first vague, stupid (but
truly-founded) suspicion had acquired solidity in her mind. He doubted
whether he could, so to speak, bomb it to bits by the throwing to her of
a pearl-pendant.
She looked at him a moment with eyes behind which there smouldered a
real though a veiled hostility, and he found himself wishing that she
would put it into words, and repeat definitely and seriously the
accusation at which her dismal little jest about the work of the
catalogue keeping him here in Bracebridge, had hinted. Then he could
have denied it more explicitly, and with a violence that might have
impressed her. But his roughness, his fierce challenging of her stupid
chaff had effectively frightened her off any such repetition, and she
gave him no opportunity of denial or defence. Only, as she left him,
with the intention of seeing Alice before lunch, he noted this
intensified situation. It had become more explosive, more dangerous, and
now instead of taking it boldly out into the open, and encouraging it
to explode, with, probably, no very destructive results, he had caused
his wife to lock it up in the confined space of her own mind, hiding it
away from his anger or his ridicule. But it was doubtful whether she had
detached the smouldering fuse of her own suspicions. They were at
present of no very swiftly inflammable stuff: there was but a vague
sense that her husband was more interested in Norah than he should be,
and had he answered her chaff with something equally light, she might
easily have put out that smouldering fuse. But he had not done that: he
had flared and scolded, and his attempt to respond in the same spirit
was hopelessly belated. She began to wonder whether Mrs Fyson was not
right.... True, Mrs Fyson had said very little, but that little appeared
now to be singularly suggestive.
* * * * *
The various sale departments at the Stores were thronged all day from
morning to night during this week before Christmas with crowds of
purchasers, but the correspondence on business matters, such as engaged
Norah, fell off as the holidays approached, and next morning, when she
arrived, she found not more than a dozen letters for her to open.
Charles, however, was being worked off his feet in the book-department,
where were a hundred types of suitable Christmas gifts (the more
expensive being bound in stuffed morocco, so that the sides of them
resembled flattish cushions) and Norah intended, as soon as she had
finished her shorthand transcription, to proceed at once with the
typewriting, and then ask leave of Keeling to go and help her brother.
He arrived but a few minutes after her, and in half an hour her
shorthand dictation was finished.
‘I was going to typewrite these at once,’ she said, ‘if you’ll allow me,
and then go and help Charles in the book department.’
Keeling pushed back his chair as he often did when he was disposed for a
few minutes’ talk, putting a gap between himself and his business table.
He gave her a smile and a long look.
‘Have you seen the books?’ he said. ‘I’m almost ashamed to get a profit
out of such muck. Beastly paper, beastly printing, and squash bindings.
The more expensive they are, the more loathsome.’
She laughed.
‘They are pretty bad,’ she said. ‘But there’s a big sale for them. May I
go and help Charles?’
‘And not do any work in my library this morning?’ he asked.
‘Unless you wish me to.’
He paused.
‘I do rather,’ he said. ‘I want that work to go on as usual. Monday is
your regular day to go there.’
Now yesterday, when Norah met Mrs Keeling in the porch, the latter had
been so very normal and condescending that she had scarcely given
another thought to the encounter. Mrs Keeling had often met her coming
or going to her work, and had always a word for her even as she had had
yesterday. But instantly now, when Keeling expressed a wish that she
should go there this morning, she connected it in her mind with that
meeting.
‘I will go if you like,’ she said.
‘I shall be obliged if you will. I have a certain reason for wishing it.
It’s a rubbishy reason enough, and I needn’t bother you with it.’
She looked up at him, and it was clear to each when their eyes met, that
the same species of thought was in the mind of both: both at any rate
were thinking of what had occurred yesterday. But immediately she looked
away again, silently pondering something, and he, watching her, saw that
soft frown like a vertical pencil-mark appear between her eyebrows. Then
it cleared again, and she looked at him with a smile that conveyed her
comprehension of the ‘rubbishy reason,’ and a sudden flush that came
over her face confirmed that to him. Naturally it was as awkward, even
as impossible for her to speak of it, as it was for him; she could but
consent to go or refuse to.
‘I expect I see your point,’ she said. ‘I will go.’
For the first time it occurred to him that she had a voice in the
matter, that it was only fair to her to suggest that she should give up
these visits to his house altogether. He would not be there when she
went, but she understood now (indeed she had understood long ago, when
she made her entry into the dinner-party) that Mrs Keeling had, so to
speak, her eye on them. It was due to Norah that she should be allowed
to say whether she wanted that eye taken off her.
‘Don’t go unless you wish,’ he said suddenly. ‘Give up the catalogue
altogether if you like.’
The moment he suggested that, her whole nature, her consciousness of the
entire innocence of her visits there, was up in arms against the
proposal. Not to go there would imply that there was a reason for not
going there, and there was none. Whatever had passed between Mrs Keeling
and her husband yesterday was no business of hers; she intended to
finish her work. This conclusion was comprised in the decision with
which she answered him.
‘Why should I give up the catalogue?’ she said. ‘I have no intention of
doing so unless you tell me to. My business is to finish it.’
Keeling hesitated: he wanted to say something to her which showed,
however remotely, the gleam of his feelings, something which should let
that spark of unspoken comprehension flash backwards and forwards again.
‘Yes, it’s just a matter of business, isn’t it?’ he said.
She met his eyes with complete frankness: there was nothing to show
whether she had caught the suggestion that lurked in his speech or not.
‘Then shall I go down to your house now, and get on with my business?’
she said.
He was half disappointed, half pleased. But, wisely, he gave up the idea
of conveying to her that there was anything more than ‘business’ for him
in her working among his books. If she understood that her handling
them, her passing hours in his room, her preparing his catalogue was
something so utterly different from what it would have been if any one
else was doing it for him, she would have found the hint of that in what
he had said. If she did not--well, it was exactly there that the
disappointment came in. He pulled his chair a little nearer to the table
again, where his work lay.
‘There is one other thing,’ he said. ‘You get four days’ holiday at
Christmas, you and your brother. Are you going to spend them here?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Then take my advice and make your brother go to the seaside with you
instead. You’ve been rather overworked lately and he has too. A change
would do you both good.’
‘Oh, I don’t think we shall go away,’ she said.
He fidgeted with his papers a moment. When money concerned business, he
could discuss and bargain with the nonchalance of a man who had passed
his life in making it. But when money began to trespass on the privacies
of life, there was no one in the world more shy of mentioning it.
‘Miss Propert,’ he said, ‘don’t think me impertinent, but if there’s any
question of expense about your going away, please let me advance you the
money I shall be paying you for my catalogue. You’ve done a good deal of
work on it already: it is quite a reasonable proposal.’
The moment he said that Norah knew that she did not want to be paid at
all for her work on the catalogue. When she undertook to do it, he had
just mentioned the question of payment, saying that she would let him
know her charges some time, but since then the thought of what she was
going to charge had not entered her head. And now, when she thought of
those pleasant hours in his library, she disliked the thought of
payment.
‘I don’t want to be paid at all,’ she said. ‘It was most of it work done
in office hours, when otherwise I should have been in the office here. I
have done a certain amount in the evening, but I enjoyed it: I found it
much more amusing than playing Patience.’
‘No, I can’t allow that for a moment,’ he said.
‘What if you have to?’ she asked, smiling.
‘I shall not have the catalogue completed. And I shall insist on paying
for what you have done. I shall get an estimate of your work made and a
price fixed.’
He did not smile back at her: he looked at the table and drummed it with
his fingers, as she had often seen him do when he was discussing some
business point on which he did not intend to yield.
‘Are you serious?’ she asked.
‘I was never more so.’
‘But I have really enjoyed doing it. I--I have done it for the sake of
books. I like doing things for books.’
Keeling stopped his drumming fingers, and looked up with his grim face
relaxing.
‘Don’t remind me of that affair over my book-plate,’ he said. ‘You are
putting me into an odious position. It isn’t generous of you.’
‘What am I to do then?’ she asked.
He took his cheque-book out of his drawer and wrote.
‘Take that on account, please,’ he said. ‘If you want to be
business-like, give me a receipt. And I advise you to spend some of it
on a little holiday.’
She looked at the cheque.
‘I can’t take that as part payment,’ she said. ‘It is fully as much as
the completed catalogue will cover.’
‘You are very obstinate,’ he said. ‘I will get an independent estimate
of what is a fair price for the completed catalogue when you have
finished it, and adjust my payment by that. Will that satisfy you?’
‘Quite. But it seems to me I am far from obstinate. I have given way.’
‘Of course. I credit you with so much sense.’
Suddenly Norah found she did not mind yielding to him. She was rather
surprised at that, for she knew there was some truth in Charles’s
criticism that she preferred her own way to anybody else’s. It was an
amiable way, but she liked having it. But now when Keeling so much took
it for granted that she was going to do as he suggested, she found she
had no objection to it. She wondered why....
‘Thank you very much,’ she said. ‘I will try to persuade Charles to take
your advice too, and come away for a few days. And now I’ll go down to
your house. Oh, your receipt. Shall I write it and file it?’
He had already pulled a sheaf of papers towards him, and was turning
them over.
‘Please,’ he said.
* * * * *
It was a crisp morning, with touches of frost lingering in shadowed
places where the warmth of the primrose-coloured winter sunshine had not
reached them, and Norah preferred walking to taking the bus that would
have set her down at the corner where Alfred Street became Alfred Road.
She was keenly sensitive to the suggestion of brisk sunshine or the
depression of heavy weather, but the kindly vigour of this winter
morning did not wholly account for the exhilaration and glee of her
blood. There was more than that in it: the drench of a December gale
would hardly have affected her to-day. As she went, she let herself
examine for the first time the conditions that for the last six weeks
had caused her every morning to awake with the sense of pleasure and
eager anticipation of the ensuing day. Hitherto she had diverted her
mind from causes, and been contented with effects. Her office-work (that
work which had begun so distastefully) pleased and interested her, her
catalogue work enthralled her, and now she turned round the corner, so
to speak, of herself, and asked herself why this sunshine was spread
over all she did.
She made no reservation on the subject: she told herself that it was
because these things were done with Keeling or for him. With equal
frankness, now that she had brought herself face to face with the
question, she affirmed that she was not in love with him, and as far as
she could know herself at all she knew that to be true. But it was
equally true that she had never met any one who so satisfied her. Never
for a moment had the least hint of sentimentality entered into their
day-long intercourse. He could be, and sometimes was, gruff and grim,
and she accepted his grimnesses and gruffnesses because they were his.
At other times he showed a comprehending consideration for her, and she
welcomed his comprehension and his considerateness, for exactly the
same reason. She knew she would not have cared the toss of a brass
farthing if Mr Silverdale had comprehended her, or a railway porter had
been considerate of her. All her life she had been independent and
industrious, and that had sufficed for her. She had not wanted anything
from anybody except employment and a decent recompense. Her emotional
life had vented itself on those beloved creatures called books, and on
that divine veiled figure called Art that stood behind them, and
prompted, as from behind some theatre-wing, her deft imaginative work in
designing and executing the wood blocks for book-plates. In every one
there is a secret fountain which pours itself out broadcast, or quietly
leaks and so saves itself from bursting. Books and the dreams she wove
into her blocks had given her that leakage, and here had her fountain
thrown up its feather of sparkling waters.
She had not been without certain expression of herself in more human
terms. She had for years borne patiently with a querulous mother, but
her patience and care for her had been the expression of decent and
filial behaviour rather than of herself. When that task was over she had
gone with comradeship to her brother, with whom she had a greater
affinity of tastes. But now, as she walked westwards in the snap of
wintry air and the joy of wintry sun, she realised how completely
sisterhood and the kinship of a bookish mind accounted for her devotion
to him. They were the best of friends, they lived together in the most
amicable equality, in a comfortable atmosphere of courtesy and
affection. She gave and she took, they lived and worked together
equally, and that sense of ‘fairness,’ of reasonable contract between
brother and sister was the root of their harmonious companionship.
And now, so she instinctively recognised, that sort of satisfaction in
human intercourse had become to her childish and elementary. It was good
(nothing could be better) as far as it went, but this morning she felt
as some musician might feel, if he was asked to content himself with a
series of full plain common chords on the piano. Nothing could be better
(as far as it went) than that uncomplicated common chord: nor (as far as
it went) could anything be better than living with so amiable and
understanding a brother. Only now she wanted to give, instead of to give
and take: she wanted to lose the sense of fairness, to serve and not to
be served.
She had the satisfaction--and that made her step the more briskly and
gave the sunshine this mysterious power of exhilaration--of knowing that
she was serving and supplying. She loved the knowledge that never had
Keeling’s typewriting been done for him so flawlessly, that never had
the details of his business, such as came within her ken, been so
unerringly recorded. He might ask for the reference to the minutest
point in a month-old letter, and she could always reinforce his
deficient memory of it, and turn up the letter itself for confirmation
of her knowledge. When days of overwhelming work had occurred, and he
had suggested getting in a second typewriter to assist her, she had
always, with a mixture of pride in her own efficiency, and of jealousy
of a helping hand, proved herself capable of tackling any task that
might be set her. Probably she could not have done it for any one else,
but she could do it for him. It was easier, so she told herself, to do
his work herself, than to instruct anybody else what to do. She allowed
herself just that shade of self-deception, knowing all the time that
there were plenty of ‘routine’ letters that any one else could have done
as well as she. But she did not want anybody else to do them.
She was passing through the disused graveyard of the Cathedral where the
clipped hedge of hornbeam bounded the asphalt path. The browned leaves
still clung to the trees, and she suddenly remembered how she had passed
down this path with Charles, and had said how distasteful it was to work
for a cad. Her own words to hang on the air, even as the leaves still
clung to the hedge, and she tried in vain to remember the mood in which
those words were green as the hornbeam leaves had then been, instead of
being brown and lifeless. Lifeless they were, there was no vitality in
them. They but clung to her memory, as the brown leaves to the hedge.
She was scarcely ashamed of them: she only wondered at them, just as, in
parenthesis of her thought, she wondered at the clothed twigs, when all
the other trees had shed their foliage. They were not evergreen: they
were just dead.
She came out, by this short cut across the Cathedral close, where the
motor-bus would have taken her, and saw the row of separated houses
stretch westward in Alfred Road. A quarter of a mile away was The
Cedars, with the delightful big library, and the abominable residuum of
the house. Very likely she would see Mrs Keeling, or Miss Keeling....
It was not only in matters of office work, of swift shorthand, of
impeccable typewriting that she was of use to him. She guessed that he
found in her a companionship that Mrs Keeling with her pearl-pendant and
her propriety could not supply. Norah knew all about the pearl-pendant:
Mrs Keeling had told her, as it wagged at her throat, that her husband
had given it her on her birthday, and was it not handsome? It was
tremendously handsome: there was no doubt whatever about that. But the
pearl-pendant mattered to Norah exactly as much as did the cheque which
she had just been given. It mattered less, indeed: it did not express
anything.
She faced the conclusion that her vague exhilaration of thought had
brought her to. She did not only serve him in his office: she served him
here in The Cedars. Neither Mrs Keeling nor his daughter could make his
book-catalogue for him. Irrespective of their inability, he would not
have allowed them to attempt it. But she could do it: he gave her access
to his library and a free hand to do as she liked there.
She turned in at the gate and went up the drive to the Gothic porch. He
gave her more than that: he gave her his need of her. He had expressed
that when he had said her catalogue work was a pure matter of business.
What he meant and what she understood was that it was not.
The boy covered with buttons opened the door to her. She hoped that Mrs
Keeling would not be richly crossing the Gothic hall. She wanted only to
get quietly into the library and go on with letter M. Letter M implied a
quantity of cardboard slips.
She wanted to be left alone in the library, working for him. It did not
matter whether he paid her for her work or not. She only wanted to go on
working for him.