Meanwhile Wemyss had gone into the drawing-room till such time as his
wife should choose to allow him to have his own library to himself
again.
For a long while he walked up and down it thinking bitter things, for he
was very angry. The drawing-room was a big gaunt room, rarely used of
recent years. In the early days, when people called on the newly arrived
Wemysses, there had been gatherings in it,--retaliatory festivities to
the vicar, to the doctor, to the landlord, with a business acquaintance
or two of Wemyss's, wife appended, added to fill out. These festivities,
however, died of inanition. Something was wanting, something necessary
to nourish life in them. He thought of them as he walked about the
echoing room from which the last guest had departed years ago. Vera, of
course. Her fault that the parties had left off. She had been so slack,
so indifferent. You couldn't expect people to come to your house if you
took no pains to get them there. Yet what a fine room for entertaining.
The grand piano, too. Never used. And Vera who made such a fuss about
music, and pretended she knew all about it.
The piano was clothed from head to foot in a heavy red baize cover, even
its legs being buttoned round in what looked like Alpine Sport gaiters,
and the baize flap that protected the keys had buttons all along it from
one end to the other. In order to play, these buttons had first to be
undone,--Wemyss wasn't going to have the expensive piano not taken care
of. It had been his wedding present to Vera--how he had loved that
woman!--and he had had the baize clothes made specially, and had
instructed Vera that whenever the piano was not in use it was to have
them on, properly fastened.
What trouble he had had with her at first about it. She was always
forgetting to button it up again. She would be playing, and get up and
go away to lunch, or tea, or out into the garden, and leave it uncovered
with the damp and dust getting into it, and not only uncovered but with
its lid open. Then, when she found that he went in to see if she had
remembered, she did for a time cover it up in the intervals of playing,
but never buttoned all its buttons; invariably he found that some had
been forgotten. It had cost £150. Women had no sense of property. They
were unfit to have the charge of valuables. Besides, they got tired of
them. Vera had actually quite soon got tired of the piano. His present.
That wasn't very loving of her. And when he said anything about it she
wouldn't speak. Sulked. How profoundly he disliked sulking. And she, who
had made such a fuss about music when first he met her, gave up playing,
and for years no one had touched the piano. Well, at least it was being
taken care of.
From habit he stooped and ran his eye up its gaiters.
All buttoned.
Stay--no; one buttonhole gaped.
He stooped closer and put out his hand to button it, and found the
button gone. No button. Only an end of thread. How was that?
He straightened himself, and went to the fireplace and rang the bell.
Then he waited, looking at his watch. Long ago he had timed the
distances between the different rooms and the servants' quarters,
allowing for average walking and one minute's margin for getting under
way at the start, so that he knew exactly at what moment the parlourmaid
ought to appear.
She appeared just as time was up and his finger was moving towards the
bell again.
'Look at that piano-leg,' said Wemyss.
The parlourmaid, not knowing which leg, looked at all three so as to be
safe.
'What do you see?' he asked.
The parlourmaid was reluctant to say. What she saw was piano-legs, but
she felt that wasn't the right answer.
'What do you _not_ see?' Wemyss asked, louder.
This was much more difficult, because there were so many things she
didn't see; her parents, for instance.
'Are you deaf, woman?' he inquired.
She knew the answer to that, and said it quickly. 'No sir,' she said.
'Look at that piano-leg, I say,' said Wemyss, pointing with his pipe.
It was, so to speak, the off fore-leg at which he pointed, and the
parlourmaid, relieved to be given a clue, fixed her eye on it earnestly.
'What do you see?' he asked. 'Or, rather, what do you not see?'
The parlourmaid looked hard at what she saw, leaving what she didn't see
to take care of itself. It seemed unreasonable to be asked to look at
what she didn't see. But though she looked, she could see nothing to
justify speech. Therefore she was silent.
'Don't you see there's a button off?'
The parlourmaid, on looking closer, did see that, and said so.
'Isn't it your business to attend to this room?'
She admitted that it was.
'Buttons don't come off of themselves,' Wemyss informed her.
The parlourmaid, this not being a question, said nothing.
'Do they?' he asked loudly.
'No sir,' said the parlourmaid; though she could have told him many a
story of things buttons did do of themselves, coming off in your hand
when you hadn't so much as begun to touch them. Cups, too. The way cups
would fall apart in one's hand----