XVI

Those who go to Strorley, and cross the bridge to the other side of the

river, have only to follow the towpath for a little to come to The

Willows. It can also be reached by road, through a white gate down a

lane that grows more and more willowy as it gets nearer the river and

the house, but is quite passable for carts and even for cars, except

when there are floods. When there are floods this lane disappears, and

when the floods have subsided it is black and oozing for a long time

afterwards, with clouds of tiny flies dancing about in it if the weather

is at all warm, and the shoes of those who walk stick in it and come

off, and those who drive, especially if they drive a car, have trouble.

But all is well once a second white gate is reached, on the other side

of which is a gravel sweep, a variety of handsome shrubs, nicely kept

lawns, and The Willows. There are no big trees in the garden of The

Willows, because it was built in the middle of meadows where there

weren't any, but all round the iron railings of the square garden--the

house being the centre of the square--and concealing the wire netting

which keeps the pasturing cows from thrusting their heads through and

eating the shrubs, is a fringe of willows. Hence its name.

'A house,' said Wemyss, explaining its name to Lucy on the morning of

their arrival, 'should always be named after whatever most insistently

catches the eye.'

'Then oughtn't it to have been called The Cows?' asked Lucy; for the

meadows round were strewn thickly as far as she could see with recumbent

cows, and they caught her eye much more than the tossing bare willow

branches.

'No,' said Wemyss, annoyed. 'It ought not have been called The Cows.'

'No--of course I didn't mean that,' she said hastily.

Lucy was nervous, and said what first came into her head, and had been

saying things of this nature the whole journey down. She didn't want to,

she knew he didn't like it, but she couldn't stop.

They had just arrived, and were standing on the front steps while the

servants unloaded the fly that had brought them from the station, and

Wemyss was pointing out what he wished her to look at and admire from

that raised-up place before taking her indoors. Lucy was glad of any

excuse that delayed going indoors, that kept her on the west side of the

house, furthest away from the terrace and the library window. Indoors

would be the rooms, the unaltered rooms, the library past whose

window..., the sitting-room at the top of the house out of whose

window..., the bedroom she was going to sleep in with the very bed....

It was too miserably absurd, too unbalanced of her for anything but

shame and self-contempt, how she couldn't get away from the feeling that

indoors waiting for her would be Vera.

It was a grey, windy morning, with low clouds scurrying across the

meadows. The house was raised well above flood level, and standing on

the top step she could see how far the meadows stretched beyond the

swaying willow hedge. Grey sky, grey water, green fields,--it was all

grey and green except the house, which was red brick with handsome stone

facings, and made, in its exposed position unhidden by any trees, a

great splotch of vivid red in the landscape.

'Like blood,' said Lucy to herself; and was immediately ashamed.

'Oh, how bracing!' she cried, spreading out her arms and letting the

wind blow her serge wrap out behind her like a flag. It whipped her

skirt round her body, showing its slender pretty lines, and the

parlourmaid, going in and out with the luggage, looked curiously at this

small juvenile new mistress. 'Oh, I love this wind--don't take me

indoors yet----'

Wemyss was pleased that she should like the wind, for was it not by the

time it reached his house part, too, of his property? His face, which

had clouded a little because of The Cows, cleared again.

But she didn't really like the wind at all, she never had liked anything

that blustered and was cold, and if she hadn't been nervous the last

thing she would have done was to stand there letting it blow her to

pieces.

'And what a lot of laurels!' she exclaimed, holding on her hat with one

hand and with the other pointing to a corner filled with these shrubs.

'Yes. I'll take you round the garden after lunch,' said Wemyss. 'We'll

go in now.'

'And--and laurustinus. I love laurustinus----'

'Yes. Vera planted that. It has done very well. Come in now----'

'And--look, what are those bare things without any leaves yet?'

'I'll show you everything after lunch, Lucy. Come in----' And he put his

arm about her shoulders, and urged her through the door the maid was

holding open with difficulty because of the wind.

There she was, then, actually inside The Willows. The door was shut

behind her. She looked about her shrinkingly.

They were in a roomy place with a staircase in it.

'The hall,' said Wemyss, standing still, his arm round her.

'Yes,' said Lucy.

'Oak,' said Wemyss.

'Yes,' said Lucy.

He gazed round him with a sigh of satisfaction at having got back to it.

'All oak,' he said. 'You'll find nothing gimcrack about _my_ house,

little Love. Where are those flowers?' he added, turning sharply to the

parlourmaid. 'I don't see my yellow flowers.'

'They're in the dining-room, sir,' said the parlourmaid.

'Why aren't they where I could see them the first thing?'

'I understood the orders were they were always to be on the

breakfast-table, sir.'

'Breakfast-table! When there isn't any breakfast?'

'I understood----'

'I'm not interested in what you understood.'

Lucy here nervously interrupted, for Everard sounded suddenly very

angry, by exclaiming, 'Antlers!' and waving her unpinned-down arm in the

direction of the----

'Yes,' said Wemyss, his attention called off the parlourmaid, gazing up

at his walls with pride.

'What a lot,' said Lucy.

'Aren't there. I always said I'd have a hall with antlers in it, and

I've got it.' He hugged her close to his side. 'And I've got you too,'

he said. 'I always get what I'm determined to get.'

'Did you shoot them all yourself?' asked Lucy, thinking the parlourmaid

would take the opportunity to disappear, and a little surprised that she

continued to stand there.

'What? The beasts they belonged to? Not I. If you want antlers the

simple way is to go and buy them. Then you get them all at once, and not

gradually. The hall was ready for them all at once, not gradually. I got

these at Whiteley's. Kiss me.'

This sudden end to his remarks startled Lucy, and she repeated in her

surprise--for there still stood the parlourmaid 'Kiss you?'

'I haven't had my birthday kiss yet.'

'Why, the very first thing when you woke up----'

'Not my real birthday kiss in my own home.'

She looked at the parlourmaid, who was quite frankly looking at her.

Well, if the parlourmaid didn't mind, and Everard didn't mind, why

should she mind?

She lifted her face and kissed him; but she didn't like kissing him or

being kissed in public. What was the point of it? Kissing Everard was a

great delight to her. A mixture of all sorts of wonderful sensations,

and she loved to do it in different ways, tenderly, passionately,

lingeringly, dreamily, amusingly, solemnly; each kind in turn, or in

varied combinations. But among her varied combinations there was nothing

that included a parlourmaid. Consequently her kiss was of the sort that

was to be expected, perfunctory and brief, whereupon Wemyss said,

'Lucy----' in his hurt voice.

She started.

'Oh Everard--what is it?' she asked nervously.

That particular one of his voices always by now made her start, for it

always took her by surprise. Pick her way as carefully as she might

among his feelings there were always some, apparently, that she hadn't

dreamed were there and that she accordingly knocked against. How

dreadful if she had hurt him the very first thing on getting into The

Willows! And on his birthday too. From the moment he woke that morning,

all the way down in the train, all the way in the fly from the station,

she had been unremittingly engaged in avoiding hurting him; an activity

made extra difficult by the unfortunate way her nervousness about the

house at the journey's end impelled her to say the kinds of things she

least wanted to. Irreverent things; such as the silly remark on his

house's name. She had got on much better the evening before at the house

in Lancaster Gate where they had slept, because gloomy as it was it

anyhow wasn't The Willows. Also there was no trace in it that she could

see of such a thing as a woman ever having lived in it. It was a man's

house; the house of a man who has no time for pictures, or interesting

books and furniture. It was like a club and an office mixed up together,

with capacious leather chairs and solid tables and Turkey carpets and

reference books. She found it quite impossible to imagine Vera, or any

other woman, in that house. Either Vera had spent most of her time at

The Willows, or every trace of her had been very carefully removed.

Therefore Lucy, helped besides by extreme fatigue, for she had been

sea-sick all the way from Dieppe to Newhaven, Wemyss having crossed that

way because he was fond of the sea, had positively been unable to think

of Vera in those surroundings and had dropped off to sleep directly she

got there and had slept all night; and of course being asleep she

naturally hadn't said anything she oughtn't to have said, so that her

first appearance in Lancaster Gate was a success; and when she woke next

morning, and saw Wemyss's face in such unclouded tranquillity next to

hers as he still slept, she lay gazing at it with her heart brimming

with tender love and vowed that his birthday should be as unclouded

throughout as his dear face was at that moment. She adored him. He was

her very life. She wanted nothing in the world except for him to be

happy. She would watch every word. She really must see to it that on

this day of all days no word should escape her before it had been turned

round in her head at least three times, and considered with the utmost

care. Such were her resolutions in the morning; and here she was not

only saying the wrong things but doing them. It was because she hadn't

expected to be told to kiss him in the presence of a parlourmaid. She

was always being tripped up by the unexpected. She ought by now to have

learned better. How unfortunate.

'Oh Everard--what is it?' she asked nervously; but she knew before he

could answer, and throwing her objections to public caresses to the

winds, for anything was better than that he should be hurt at just that

moment, she put up her free arm and drew his head down and kissed him

again,--lingeringly this time, a kiss of tender, appealing love. What

must it be like, she thought while she kissed him and her heart yearned

over him, to be so fearfully sensitive. It made things difficult for

her, but how much, much more difficult for him. And how wonderful the

way his sensitiveness had developed since marriage. There had been no

sign of it before.

Implicit in her kiss was an appeal not to let anything she said or did

spoil his birthday, to forgive her, to understand. And at the back of

her mind, quite uncontrollable, quite unauthorised, ran beneath these

other thoughts this thought: 'I am certainly abject.'

This time he was quickly placated because of his excitement at getting

home. 'Nobody can hurt me as you can,' was all he said.

'Oh but as though I ever, ever mean to,' she breathed, her arm round his

neck.

Meanwhile the parlourmaid looked on.

'Why doesn't she go?' whispered Lucy, making the most of having got his

ear.

'Certainly not,' said Wemyss out loud, raising his head. 'I might want

her. Do you like the hall, little Love?'

'_Very_ much,' she said, loosing him.

'Don't you think it's a very fine staircase?'

'_Very_ fine,' she said.

He gazed about him with pride, standing in the middle of the Turkey

carpet holding her close to his side.

'Now look at the window,' he said, turning her round when she had had

time to absorb the staircase. 'Look--isn't it a jolly window? No

nonsense about that window. You can really see out of it, and it really

lets in light. Vera'--she winced--'tried to stuff it all up with

curtains. She said she wanted colour, or something. Having got a

beautiful garden to look out at, what does she try to do but shut most

of it out again by putting up curtains.'

The attempt had evidently not succeeded, for the window, which was as

big as a window in the waiting-room of a London terminus, had nothing to

interfere with it but the hanging cord of a drawn-up brown holland

blind. Through it Lucy could see the whole half of the garden on the

right side of the front door with the tossing willow hedge, the meadows,

and the cows. The leafless branches of some creeper beat against it and

made a loud irregular tapping in the pauses of Wemyss's observations.

'Plate glass,' he said.

'Yes,' said Lucy; and something in his voice made her add in a tone of

admiration, 'Fancy.'

Looking at the window they had their backs to the stairs. Suddenly she

heard footsteps coming down them from the landing above.

'Who's that?' she said quickly, with a little gasp, before she could

think, before she could stop, not turning her head, her eyes staring at

the window.

'Who's what?' asked Wemyss. 'You do think it's a jolly window, don't

you, little Love?'

The footsteps on the stairs stopped, and a gong she had noticed at the

angle of the turn was sounded. Her body, which had shrunk together,

relaxed. What a fool she was.

'Lunch,' said Wemyss. 'Come along--but isn't it a jolly window, little

Love?'

'_Very_ jolly.'

He turned her round to march her off to the dining-room, while the

housemaid, who had come down from the landing, continued to beat the

gong, though there they were obeying it under her very nose.

'Don't you think that's a good place to have a gong?' he asked, raising

his voice because the gong, which had begun quietly, was getting rapidly

louder. 'Then when you're upstairs in your sitting-room you'll hear it

just as distinctly as if you were downstairs. Vera----'

But what he was going to say about Vera was drowned this time in the

increasing fury of the gong.

'Why doesn't she leave off?' Lucy tried to call out to him, straining

her voice to its utmost, for the maid was very good at the gong and was

now extracting the dreadfullest din out of it.

'Eh?' shouted Wemyss.

In the dining-room, whither they were preceded by the parlourmaid, who

at last had left off standing still and had opened the door for them, as

Lucy could hear the gong continuing to be beaten though muffled now by

doors and distance, she again said, 'Why doesn't she leave off?'

Wemyss took out his watch.

'She will in another fifty seconds,' he said.

Lucy's mouth and eyebrows became all inquiry.

'It is beaten for exactly two and a half minutes before every meal,' he

explained.

'Oh?' said Lucy. 'Even when we're visibly collected?'

'She doesn't know that.'

'But she saw us.'

'But she doesn't know it officially.'

'Oh,' said Lucy.

'I had to make that rule,' said Wemyss, arranging his knives and forks

more accurately beside his plate, 'because they would leave off beating

it almost as soon as they'd begun, and then Vera was late and her excuse

was that she hadn't heard. For a time after that I used to have it

beaten all up the stairs right to the door of her sitting-room. Isn't it

a fine gong? Listen----' And he raised his hand.

'_Very_ fine,' said Lucy, who was thoroughly convinced there wasn't a

finer, more robust gong in existence.

'There. Time's up,' he said, as three great strokes were followed by a

blessed silence.

He pulled out his watch again. 'Let's see. Yes--to the tick. You

wouldn't believe the trouble I had to get them to keep time.'

'It's wonderful,' said Lucy.

The dining-room was a narrow room full of a table. It had a window

facing west and a window facing north, and in spite of the uninterrupted

expanses of plate glass was a bleak, dark room. But then the weather was

bleak and dark, and one saw such a lot of it out of the two big windows

as one sat at the long table and watched the rolling clouds blowing

straight towards one from the north-west; for Lucy's place was facing

the north window, on Wemyss's left hand. Wemyss sat at the end of the

table facing the west window. The table was so long that if Lucy had

sat in the usual seat of wives, opposite her husband, communication

would have been difficult,--indeed, as she remarked, she would have

disappeared below the dip of the horizon.

'I like a long table,' said Wemyss to this. 'It looks so hospitable.'

'Yes,' said Lucy a little doubtfully, but willing to admit that its

length at least showed a readiness for hospitality. 'I suppose it does.

Or it would if there were people all round it.'

'People? You don't mean to say you want people already?'

'Good heavens no,' said Lucy hastily. 'Of course I don't. Why, of

course, Everard, I didn't mean that,' she added, laying her hand on his

and smiling at him so as to dispel the gathering cloud on his face; and

once more she flung all thoughts of the parlourmaid to the winds. 'You

know I don't want a soul in the world but you.'

'Well, that's what I thought,' said Wemyss, mollified. 'I know all I

want is you.'

(Was this same parlourmaid here in Vera's time? Lucy asked herself very

privately and unconsciously and beneath the concerned attentiveness she

was concentrating on Wemyss.)

'What lovely kingcups!' she said aloud.

'Oh yes, there they are--I hadn't noticed them. Yes, aren't they?

They're my birthday flowers.' And he repeated his formula: 'It's my

birthday and Spring's.'

But Lucy, of course, didn't know the proper ritual, it being her first

experience of one of Wemyss's birthdays, besides having wished him his

many happy returns hours ago when he first opened his eyes and found

hers gazing at him with love; so all she did was to make the natural but

unfortunate remark that surely Spring began on the 21st of March,--or

was it the 25th? No, that was Christmas Day--no, she didn't mean

that----

'You're always saying things and then saying you didn't mean them,'

interrupted Wemyss, vexed, for he thought that Lucy of all people should

have recognised the allegorical nature of his formula. If it had been

Vera, now,--but even Vera had managed to understand that much. 'I wish

you would begin with what you do mean, it would be so much simpler.

What, pray, _do_ you mean now?'

'I can't think,' said Lucy timidly, for she had offended him again, and

this time she couldn't even remotely imagine how.