Her hand slid slowly off the knob. She stood quite still. How _could_
he.... And she knew now that he had bolted the front door knowing she
was out in the rain. How _could_ he? Her body was motionless as she
stood staring at the locked door, but her brain was a rushing confusion
of questions. Why? Why? This couldn't be Everard. Who was this
man--pitiless, cruel? Not Everard. Not her lover. Where was he, her
lover and husband? Why didn't he come and take care of her, and not let
her be frightened by this strange man....
She heard a chair being moved inside the room, and then she heard the
creak of leather as Wemyss sat down in it, and then there was the rustle
of a newspaper being opened. He was actually settling down to read a
newspaper while she, his wife, his love--wasn't he always telling her
she was his little Love?--was breaking her heart outside the locked
door. Why, but Everard--she and Everard; they understood each other;
they had laughed, played together, talked nonsense, been friends....
For an instant she had an impulse to cry out and beat on the door, not
to care who heard, not to care that the whole house should come and
gather round her naked misery; but she was stopped by a sudden new
wisdom. It shuddered down on her heart, a wisdom she had never known or
needed before, and held her quiet. At all costs there mustn't be two of
them doing these things, at all costs these things mustn't be doubled,
mustn't have echoes. If Everard was like this he must be like it alone.
She must wait. She must sit quiet till he had finished. Else--but oh, he
_couldn't_ be like it, it _couldn't_ be true that he didn't love her.
Yet if he did love her, how could he ... how could he....
She leaned her forehead against the door and began softly to cry. Then,
afraid that she might after all burst out into loud, disgraceful
sobbing, she turned and went upstairs.
But where could she go? Where in the whole house was any refuge, any
comfort? The only person who could have told her anything, who could
have explained, who _knew_, was Vera. Yes--she would have understood.
Yes, yes--Vera. She would go to Vera's room, get as close to her mind as
she could,--search, find something, some clue....
It seemed now to Lucy, as she hurried upstairs, that the room in the
house she had most shrunk from was the one place where she might hope to
find comfort. Oh, she wasn't frightened any more. Everything was trying
to frighten her, but she wasn't going to be frightened. For some reason
or other things were all trying together to-day to see if they could
crush her, beat out her spirit. But they weren't going to....
She jerked her wet hair out of her eyes as she climbed the stairs. It
kept on getting into them and making her stumble. Vera would help her.
Vera never was beaten. Vera had had fifteen years of not being beaten
before she--before she had that accident. And there must have been heaps
of days just like this one, with the wind screaming and Vera up in her
room and Everard down in his--locked in, perhaps--and yet Vera had
managed, and her spirit wasn't beaten out. For years and years, panted
Lucy--her very thoughts came in gasps--Vera lived up here winter after
winter, years, years, years, and would have been here now if she
hadn't--oh, if only Vera weren't dead! If _only, only_ Vera weren't
dead! But her mind lived on--her mind was in that room, in every
littlest thing in it----
Lucy stumbled up the last few stairs completely out of breath, and
opening the sitting-room door stood panting on the threshold much as
Lizzie had done, her hand on her chest.
This time everything was in order. The window was shut, the scattered
notepaper collected and tidily on the writing-table, the rain on the
floor wiped up, and a fire had been lit and the wet cushions were drying
in front of it. Also there was Lizzie, engaged in conscience-stricken
activities, and when Lucy came in she was on her knees poking the fire.
She was poking so vigorously that she didn't hear the door open,
especially not with that rattling and banging of the window going on;
and on getting up and seeing the figure standing there panting, with
strands of lank hair in its eyes and its general air of neglect and
weather, she gave a loud exclamation.
'Lumme!' exclaimed Lizzie, whose origin and bringing-up had been
obscure.
She had helped carry in the luggage that morning, so she had seen her
mistress before and knew what she was like in her dry state. She never
could have believed, having seen her then all nicely fluffed out, that
there was so little of her. Lizzie knew what long-haired dogs look like
when they are being soaped, and she was also familiar with cats as
they appear after drowning; yet they too surprised her, in spite of
familiarity, each time she saw them in these circumstances by their want
of real substance, of stuffing. Her mistress looked just like that,--no
stuffing at all; and therefore Lizzie, the poker she was holding
arrested in mid-air on its way into its corner, exclaimed Lumme.
Then, realising that this weather-beaten figure must certainly be
catching its death of cold, she dropped the poker and hurrying across
the room and talking in the stress of the moment like one girl to
another, she felt Lucy's sleeve and said, 'Why, you're wet to the bones.
Come to the fire and take them sopping clothes off this minute, or
you'll be laid up as sure as sure----' and pulled her over to the fire;
and having got her there, and she saying nothing at all and not
resisting, Lizzie stripped off her clothes and shoes and stockings,
repeating at frequent intervals as she did so, 'Dear, dear,' and
repressing a strong desire to beg her not to take on, lest later,
perhaps, her mistress mightn't like her to have noticed she had been
crying. Then she snatched up a woollen coverlet that lay folded on the
end of the sofa, rolled her tightly round in it, sat her in a chair
right up close to the fender, and still talking like one girl to another
said, 'Now sit there and don't move while I fetch dry things--I won't be
above a minute--now you promise, don't you----' and hurrying to the door
never remembered her manners at all till she was through it, whereupon
she put in her head again and hastily said, 'Mum,' and disappeared.
She was away, however, more than a minute. Five minutes, ten minutes
passed and Lizzie, feverishly unpacking Lucy's clothes in the bedroom
below, and trying to find a complete set of them, and not knowing what
belonged to which, didn't come back.
Lucy sat quite still, rolled up in Vera's coverlet. Obediently she
didn't move, but stared straight into the fire, sitting so close up to
it that the rest of the room was shut out. She couldn't see the window,
or the dismal rain streaming down it. She saw nothing but the fire,
blazing cheerfully. How kind Lizzie was. How comforting kindness was. It
was a thing she understood, a normal, natural thing, and it made her
feel normal and natural just to be with it. Lizzie had given her such a
vigorous rub-down that her skin tingled. Her hair was on ends, for that
too had had a vigorous rubbing from Lizzie, who had taken her apron to
it feeling that this was an occasion on which one abandoned convention
and went in for resource. And as Lucy sat there getting warmer and
warmer, and more and more pervaded by the feeling of relief and
well-being that even the most wretched feel if they take off all their
clothes, her mind gradually calmed down, it left off asking agonised
questions, and presently her heart began to do the talking.
She was so much accustomed to find life kind, that given a moment of
quiet like this with somebody being good-natured and back she slipped to
her usual state, which was one of affection and confidence. Lizzie
hadn't been gone five minutes before Lucy had passed from sheer
bewildered misery to making excuses for Everard; in ten minutes she was
seeing good reasons for what he had done; in fifteen she was blaming
herself for most of what had happened. She had been amazingly idiotic to
run out of the room, and surely quite mad to run out of the house. It
was wrong, of course, for him to bolt her out, but he was angry, and
people did things when they were angry that horrified them afterwards.
Surely people who easily got angry needed all the sympathy and
understanding one could give them,--not to be met by despair and the
loss of faith in them of the person they had hurt. That only turned
passing, temporary bad things into a long unhappiness. She hadn't known
he had a temper. She had only, so far, discovered his extraordinary
capacity for being offended. Well, if he had a temper how could he help
it? He was born that way, as certainly as if he had been born lame.
Would she not have been filled with tenderness for his lameness if he
had happened to be born like that? Would it ever have occurred to her to
mind, to feel it as a grievance?
The warmer Lucy got the more eager she grew to justify Wemyss. In the
middle of the reasons she was advancing for his justification, however,
it suddenly struck her that they were a little smug. All that about
people with tempers needing sympathy,--who was she, with her impulses
and impatiences--with her, as she now saw, devastating impulses and
impatiences--to take a line of what was very like pity. Pity! Smug,
odious word; smug, odious thing. Wouldn't she hate it if she thought he
pitied her for her failings? Let him be angry with her failings, but not
pity her. She and her man, they needed no pity from each other; they had
love. It was impossible that anything either of them did or was should
_really_ touch that.
Very warm now in Vera's blanket, her face flushed by the fire, Lucy
asked herself what could really put out that great, glorious, central
blaze. All that was needed was patience when he.... She gave herself a
shake,--there she was again, thinking smugly. She wouldn't think at all.
She would just take things as they came, and love, and love.
Then the vision of Everard, sitting solitary with his newspaper and by
this time, too, probably thinking only of love, and anyhow not happy,
caused one of those very impulses to lay hold of her which she had a
moment before been telling herself she would never give way to again.
She was aware one had gripped her, but this was a good impulse,--this
wasn't a bad one like running out into the rain: she would go down and
have another try at that door. She was warmed through now and quite
reasonable, and she felt she couldn't another minute endure not being at
peace with Everard. How silly they were. It was ridiculous. It was like
two children fighting. Lizzie was so long bringing her clothes; she
couldn't wait, she must sit on Everard's knee again, feel his arms round
her, see his eyes looking kind. She would go down in her blanket. It
wrapped her up from top to toe. Only her feet were bare; but they were
quite warm, and anyhow feet didn't matter.
So Lucy padded softly downstairs, making hardly a sound, and certainly
none that could be heard above the noise of the wind by Lizzie in the
bedroom, frantically throwing clothes about.
She knocked at the library door.