Later on in the dining-room, when she was reluctantly eating the meal
prepared for her--Lucy still slept, or she would have asked to be
allowed to have a biscuit by her bedside--Miss Entwhistle said to
Chesterton, who attended her, Would she let her know when Mr. Wemyss
telephoned, as she wished to speak to him.
She was feeling more and more uneasy as time passed as to what Everard
would think of her uninvited presence in his house. It was natural; but
would he think so? What wasn't natural was for her to feel uneasy,
seeing that the house was also Lucy's, and that the child's face had
hardly had room enough on it for the width of her smile of welcome.
There, however, it was,--Miss Entwhistle felt like an interloper. It was
best to face things. She not only felt like an interloper but, in
Everard's eyes, she was an interloper. This was the situation: His wife
had a cold--a bad cold, but not anything serious; nobody had sent for
his wife's aunt; nobody had asked her to come; and here she was. If
that, in Everard's eyes, wasn't being an interloper Miss Entwhistle was
sure he wouldn't know one if he saw one.
In her life she had read many books, and was familiar with those elderly
relatives frequently to be met in them, and usually female, who intrude
into a newly married _ménage_ and make themselves objectionable to one
of the parties by sympathising with the other one. There was no cause
for sympathy here, and if there ever should be Miss Entwhistle would
certainly never sympathise except from a neutral place. She wouldn't
come into a man's house, and in the very act of being nourished by his
food sympathise with his wife; she would sympathise from London. Her
honesty of intention, her single-mindedness, were, she knew, complete.
She didn't feel, she knew she wasn't, in the least like these relatives
in books, and yet as she sat in Everard's chair--obviously it was his;
the upholstered seat was his very shape, inverted--she was afraid,
indeed she was certain, he would think she was one of them.
There she was, she thought, come unasked, sitting in his place, eating
his food. He usedn't to like her; would he like her any the better for
this? From a desire not to have meals of his she had avoided tea, but
she hadn't been able to avoid dinner, and with each dish set before
her--dishes produced surprisingly, as she couldn't but observe, at the
end of an arm thrust to the minute through a door--she felt more and
more acutely that she was in his eyes, if he could only see her, an
interloper. No doubt it was Lucy's house too, but it didn't feel as if
it were, and she would have given much to be able to escape back to
London that night.
But whatever Everard thought of her intrusion she wasn't going to leave
Lucy. Not alone in that house; not to wake up to find herself alone in
that house. Besides, who knew how such a chill would develop? There
ought of course to have been a doctor. When Everard rang up, as he would
be sure to the last thing to ask how Lucy was, she would go to the
telephone, announce her presence, and inquire whether it wouldn't be as
well to have a doctor round in the morning.
Therefore she asked Chesterton to let her know when Mr. Wemyss
telephoned; and Chesterton, surprised, for it was not Wemyss's habit to
telephone to The Willows, all his communications coming on postcards,
paused just an instant before replying, 'If you please, ma'am.'
Chesterton wondered what Wemyss was expected to telephone about. It
wouldn't have occurred to her that it might be about the new Mrs.
Wemyss's health, because he had not within her recollection ever
telephoned about the health of a Mrs. Wemyss. Sometimes the previous
Mrs. Wemyss's health gave way enough for her to stay in bed, but no
telephoning from London had in consequence taken place. Accordingly she
wondered what message could be expected.
'What time would Mr. Wemyss be likely to ring up?' asked Miss Entwhistle
presently, more for the sake of saying something than from a desire to
know. She was going to that telephone, but she didn't want to, she was
in no hurry for it, it wasn't impatience to meet Wemyss's voice making
her talk to Chesterton; what was making her talk was the dining-room.
For not only did its bareness afflict her, and its glaring light, and
its long empty table, and the way Chesterton's footsteps echoed up and
down the uncarpeted floor, but there on the wall was that poor thing
looking at her, she had no doubt whatever as to who it was standing up
in that long slim frock looking at her, and she was taken aback. In
spite of her determination to like all the arrangements, it did seem to
her tactless to have her there, especially as she had that trick of
looking so very steadily at one; and when she turned her eyes away from
the queer, suppressed smile, she didn't like what she saw on the other
wall either,--that enlarged old man, that obvious progenitor.
Having caught sight of both these pictures, which at night were much
more conspicuous than by day, owing to the brilliant unshaded lighting,
Miss Entwhistle had no wish to look at them again, and carefully looked
either at her plate or at Chesterton's back as she hurried down the room
to the dish being held out at the end of the remarkable arm; but being
nevertheless much disturbed by their presence, and by the way she knew
they weren't taking their eyes off her however carefully she took hers
off them, she asked Chesterton what time Wemyss would be likely to
telephone merely in order to hear the sound of a human voice.
Chesterton then informed her that her master never did telephone to The
Willows, so that she was unable to say what time he would.
'But,' said Miss Entwhistle, surprised, 'you have a telephone.'
'If you please, ma'am,' said Chesterton.
Miss Entwhistle didn't like to ask what, then, the telephone was for,
because she didn't wish to embark on anything even remotely approaching
a discussion of Everard's habits, so she wondered in silence.
Chesterton, however, presently elucidated. She coughed a little first,
conscious that to volunteer a remark wasn't quite within her idea of
the perfect parlourmaid, and then she said, 'It's owing to local
convenience, ma'am. We find it indispensable in the isolated situation
of the 'ouse. We gives our orders to the tradesmen by means of the
telephone. Mr. Wemyss installed it for that purpose, he says, and
objects to trunk calls because of the charges and the waste of Mr.
Wemyss's time at the other end, ma'am.'
'Oh,' said Miss Entwhistle.
'If you please, ma'am,' said Chesterton.
Miss Entwhistle said nothing more. With her eyes fixed on her plate in
order to avoid those other eyes, she wondered what she had better do. It
was half-past eight, and Everard hadn't rung up. If he were going to be
anxious enough not to mind the trunk-call charge he would have been
anxious enough before this. That he hadn't rung up showed he regarded
Lucy's indisposition as slight. What, then, would he say to her
uninvited presence there? Nothing, she was afraid, that would be really
hospitable. And she had just eaten a pudding of his. It seemed to curdle
up within her.
'No, _no_ coffee, thank you,' she said hastily, on Chesterton's
inquiring if she wished it served in the library. She had had dinner
because she couldn't help herself, urged to it by the servants, but she
needn't proceed to extras. And the library,--wasn't it in the library
that Everard was sitting the day that poor smiling thing ... yes, she
remembered Lucy telling her so. No, she would not have coffee in the
library.
But now about telephoning. Really the only thing to do, the only way of
dignity, was to ring him up. Useless waiting any more for him to do it;
evidently he wasn't going to. She would ring him up, tell him she was
there, and ask--she clung particularly to the doctor idea, because his
presence would justify hers--if the doctor hadn't better look in in the
morning.
Thus it was that, sitting quiet in their basement, the Twites were
startled about nine o'clock that evening by the telephone bell. It
sounded more uncanny than ever up there, making all that noise by itself
in the dark; and when, hurrying up anxiously to it, Twite applied his
ear, all that happened was that an extremely short-tempered voice told
him to hold on.
Twite held on, listening hard and hearing nothing.
'Say 'Ullo, Twite,' presently advised Mrs. Twite from out of the anxious
silence at the foot of the kitchen stairs.
''Ullo,' said Twite half-heartedly.
'Must be a wrong number,' said Mrs. Twite, after more silence. ''Ang it
up, and come and finish your supper.'
A very small voice said something very far away. Twite strained every
nerve to hear. He hadn't yet had to face a trunk call, and he thought
the telephone was fainting.
''Ullo?' he said anxiously, trying to make the word sound polite.
'It's a wrong number,' said Mrs. Twite, after further waiting. ''Ang it
up.'
The voice, incredibly small, began to talk again, and Twite, unable to
hear a word, kept on saying with increasing efforts to sound polite,
''Ullo?'Ullo?'
''Ang it up,' said Mrs. Twite, who from the bottom of the stairs was
always brave.
'That's what it is,' said Twite at last, exhausted. 'It's a wrong
number.' And he went to the writing-pad and wrote:
A wrong number rang up sir believed to be a lady 9.10.
So Miss Entwhistle at the other end was defeated, and having done her
best and not succeeded she decided to remain quiescent, at any rate
till the morning. Quiescent and uncritical. She wouldn't worry; she
wouldn't criticise; she would merely think of Everard in those terms
of amiability which were natural to her.
But while she was waiting for the call in the cold hall there had been a
moment when her fixed benevolence did a little loosen. Chesterton,
seeing that she shivered, had suggested the library for waiting in,
where she said there was a fire, but Miss Entwhistle preferred to be
cold in the hall than warm in the library; and standing in that bleak
place she saw a line of firelight beneath a door, which she then knew
must be the library. Accordingly she then also knew that Lucy's bedroom
was exactly above the library, for looking up she could see its door
from where she stood; so that it was out of that window.... Her
benevolence for a moment did become unsteady. He let the child sleep
there, he made the child sleep there....
She soon, however, had herself in hand again. Lucy didn't mind, so why
should she? Lucy was asleep there at that moment, with a look of
complete content on her face. But there was one thing Miss Entwhistle
decided she would do: Lucy shouldn't wake up by any chance in the night
and find herself in that room alone,--window or no window, she would
sleep there with her.
This was a really heroic decision, and only love for Lucy made it
possible. Apart from the window and what she believed had happened at
it, apart from the way that poor thing's face in the photograph haunted
her, there was the feeling that it wasn't Lucy's bedroom at all but
Everard's. It was oddly disagreeable to Miss Entwhistle to spend the
night, for instance, with Wemyss's sponge. She debated in the spare-room
when she was getting ready for bed--a small room on the other side of
the house, with a nice high window-sill--whether she wouldn't keep her
clothes on. At least then she would feel more strange, at least she
would feel less at home. But how tiring. At her age, if she sat up all
night--and in her clothes no lying down could be comfortable--she would
be the merest rag next morning, and quite unable to cope on the
telephone with Everard. And she really must take out her hairpins; she
couldn't sleep a wink with them all pressing on her head. Yet the
familiarity of being in that room among the neckties without her
hairpins.... She hesitated, and argued, and all the while she was slowly
taking out her hairpins and taking off her clothes.
At the last moment, when she was in her nightgown and her hair was
neatly plaited and she was looking the goodest of tidy little women, her
courage failed her. No, she couldn't go. She would stay where she was,
and ring and ask that nice housemaid to sleep with Mrs. Wemyss in case
she wanted anything in the night.
She did ring; but by the time Lizzie came Miss Entwhistle, doubting the
sincerity of her motives, had been examining them. Was it really the
neckties? Was it really the sponge? Wasn't it, at bottom, really the
window?
She was ashamed. Where Lucy could sleep she could sleep. 'I rang,' she
said, 'to ask you to be so kind as to help me carry my pillow and
blankets into Mrs. Wemyss's room. I'm going to sleep on the sofa there.'
'Yes ma'am,' said Lizzie, picking them up. 'The sofa's very short and
'ard, ma'am. 'Adn't you better sleep in the bed?'
'No,' said Miss Entwhistle.
'There's plenty of room, ma'am. Mrs. Wemyss wouldn't know you was in it,
it's such a large bed.'
'I will sleep on the sofa,' said Miss Entwhistle.