In London Wemyss went through his usual day, except that he was kept
longer than he liked at his office by the accumulation of business and
by having a prolonged difference of opinion, ending in dismissal, with a
typist who had got out of hand during his absence to the extent of
answering him back. It was five before he was able to leave--and even
then he hadn't half finished, but he declined to be sacrificed
further--and proceed as usual to his club to play bridge. He had a great
desire for bridge after not having played for so long, and it was
difficult, doing exactly the things he had always done, for him to
remember that he was married. In fact he wouldn't have remembered if he
hadn't felt so indignant; but all day underneath everything he did,
everything he said and thought, lay indignation, and so he knew he was
married.
Being extremely methodical he had long ago divided his life inside and
out into compartments, each strictly separate, each, as it were, kept
locked till the proper moment for its turn arrived, when he unlocked it
and took out its contents,--work, bridge, dinner, wife, sleep,
Paddington, The Willows, or whatever it was that it contained. Having
finished with the contents, the compartment was locked up and dismissed
from his thoughts till its turn came round again. A honeymoon was a
great shake-up, but when it occurred he arranged the date of its
cessation as precisely as the date of its inauguration. On such a day,
at such an hour, it would come to an end, the compartments would once
more be unlocked, and regularity resumed. Bridge was the one activity
which, though it was taken out of its compartment at the proper time,
didn't go into it again with any sort of punctuality. Everything else,
including his wife, was locked up to the minute; but bridge would stay
out till any hour. On each of the days in London, the Mondays to
Fridays, he proceeded punctually to his office, and from thence
punctually to his club and bridge. He always lunched and dined at his
club. Other men, he was aware, dined not infrequently at home, but the
explanation of that was that their wives weren't Vera.
The moment, then, that Wemyss found himself once more doing the usual
things among the usual surroundings, he felt so exactly as he used to
that he wouldn't have remembered Lucy at all if it hadn't been for that
layer of indignation at the bottom of his mind. Going up the steps of
his club he was conscious of a sense of hard usage, and searching for
its cause remembered Lucy. His wife now wasn't Vera, and yet he was to
dine at his club exactly as if she were. His wife was Lucy; who, instead
of being where she ought to be, eagerly awaiting his return to Lancaster
Gate--it was one of his legitimate grievances against Vera that she
didn't eagerly await--she was having a cold at Strorley. And why was she
having a cold at Strorley? And why was he, a newly-married man, deprived
of the comfort of his wife and going to spend the evening exactly as he
had spent all the evenings for months past?
Wemyss was very indignant, but he was also very desirous of bridge. If
Lucy had been waiting for him he would have had to leave off bridge
before his desire for it had been anything like sated,--whatever wives
one had they shackled one,--and as it was he could play as long as he
wanted to and yet at the same time remain justly indignant. Accordingly
he wasn't nearly as unhappy as he thought he was; not, at any rate, till
the moment came for going solitary to bed. He detested sleeping by
himself. Even Vera had always slept with him.
Altogether Wemyss felt that he had had a bad day, what with the
disappointment of its beginning, and the extra work at the office, and
no decent lunch 'Positively only time to snatch a bun and a glass of
milk,' he announced, amazed, to the first acquaintance he met in the
club. 'Just fancy, only time to snatch----' but the acquaintance had
melted away and losing rather heavily at bridge, and going back to
Lancaster Gate to find from the message left by Twite that that annoying
aunt of Lucy's had cropped up already.
Usually Wemyss was amused by Twite's messages, but nothing about this
one amused him. He threw down the wrong number one impatiently,--Twite
was really a hopeless imbecile; he would dismiss him; but the other one
he read again. 'Wanted to know all about us, did she. Said it was very
strange, did she. Like her impertinence,' he thought. She had lost no
time in cropping up, he thought. Of how completely Miss Entwhistle had,
in fact, cropped he was of course unaware.
Yes, he had had a bad day, and he was going to have a lonely night. He
went upstairs feeling deeply hurt, and winding his watch.
But after much solid sleep he felt better; and at breakfast he said to
Twite, who always jumped when he addressed him, 'Mrs. Wemyss will be
coming up to-day.'
Twite's brain didn't work very fast owing to the way it spent most of
its time dormant in a basement, and for a moment he thought--it startled
him that his master had forgotten the lady was dead. Ought he to remind
him? What a painful dilemma.... However, he remembered the new Mrs.
Wemyss just in time not to remind him, and to say 'Yes sir,' without too
perceptible a pause. His mind hadn't room in it to contain much, and it
assimilated slowly that which it contained. He had only been in Wemyss's
service three months before the Mrs. Wemyss he found there died. He was
just beginning to assimilate her when she ceased to be assimilatable,
and to him and his wife in their quiet subterraneous existence it had
seemed as if not more than a week had passed before there was another
Mrs. Wemyss. Far was it from him to pass opinions on the rapid marriages
of gentlemen, but he couldn't keep up with these Mrs. Wemysses. His
mind, he found, hadn't yet really realised the new one. He knew she was
there somewhere, for he had seen her briefly on the Saturday morning,
and he knew she would presently begin to disturb him by needing meals,
but he easily forgot her. He forgot her now, and consequently for a
moment had the dreadful thought described above.
'I shall be in to dinner,' said Wemyss.
'Yes sir,' said Twite.
Dinner. There usedn't to be dinner. His master hadn't been in once to
dinner since Twite knew him. A tray for the lady, while there was a
lady; that was all. Mrs. Twite could just manage a tray. Since the lady
had left off coming up to town owing to her accident, there hadn't been
anything. Only quiet.
He stood waiting, not having been waved out of the room, and anxiously
watching Wemyss's face, for he was a nervous man.
Then the telephone bell rang.
Wemyss, without looking up, waved him out to it and went on with his
breakfast; and after a minute, noticing that he neither came back nor
could be heard saying anything beyond a faint, propitiatory ''Ullo,'
called out to him.
'What is it?' Wemyss called out.
'I can't hear, sir,' Twite's distressed voice answered from the hall.
'Fool,' said Wemyss, appearing, table-napkin in hand.
'Yes sir,' said Twite.
He took the receiver from him, and then the Twites--Mrs. Twite from the
foot of the kitchen stairs and Twite lingering in the background because
he hadn't yet been waved away--heard the following:
'Yes yes. Yes, speaking. Hullo. Who is it?'
'What? I can't hear. What?'
'Miss who? En--oh, good-morning, How distant your voice sounds.'
'What? Where? _Where_?'
'Oh really.'
Here the person at the other end talked a great deal.
'Yes. Quite. But then you see she wasn't.'
More prolonged talk from the other end.
'What? She isn't coming up? Indeed she is. She's expected. I've
ordered----'
'What? I can't hear. The doctor? You're sending for the doctor?'
'I daresay. But then you see I consider it isn't.'
'I daresay, I daresay. No, of course I can't. How can I leave my
work----'
'Oh, very well, very well. I daresay. No doubt. She's to come up for all
that as arranged, tell her, and if she needs doctors there are more of
them here anyhow than--what? Can't possibly?'
'I suppose you know you're taking a great deal upon yourself
unasked----'
'What? What?'
A very rapid clear voice cut in. 'Do you want another three minutes?' it
asked.
He hung up the receiver with violence. 'Oh, damn the woman, damn the
woman,' he said, so loud that the Twites shook like reeds to hear him.
At the other end Miss Entwhistle was walking away lost in thought. Her
position was thoroughly unpleasant. She disliked extraordinarily that
she should at that moment contain an egg and some coffee which had once
been Wemyss's. She would have breakfasted on a cup of tea only, if it
hadn't been that Lucy was going to need looking after that day, and the
looker-after must be nourished. As she went upstairs again, a faint red
spot on each cheek, she couldn't help being afraid that she and Everard
would have to exercise patience before they got to be fond of each
other. On the telephone he hardly did himself justice, she thought.
Lucy hadn't had a good night. She woke up suddenly from what was
apparently a frightening dream soon after Miss Entwhistle had composed
herself on the sofa, and had been very restless and hot for a long time.
There seemed to be a great many things about the room that she didn't
like. One of them was the bed. Probably the poor little thing was
bemused by her dream and her feverishness, but she said several things
about the bed which showed that it was on her mind. Miss Entwhistle had
warmed some milk on a spirit-lamp provided by Lizzie, and had given it
to her and soothed her and petted her. She didn't mention the window,
for which Miss Entwhistle was thankful; but when first she woke up from
her frightening dream and her aunt hurried across to her, she had stared
at her and actually called her Everard--her, in her meek plaits. When
this happened Miss Entwhistle made up her mind that the doctor should be
sent for the first thing in the morning. About six she tumbled into an
uncomfortable sleep again, and Miss Entwhistle crept out of the room and
dressed. Certainly she was going to have a doctor round, and hear what
he had to say; and as soon as she was strengthened by breakfast she
would do her duty and telephone to Everard.
This she did, with the result that she returned to Lucy's room with a
little red spot on each cheek; and when she looked at Lucy, still
uneasily sleeping and breathing as though her chest were all sore, the
idea that she was to get up and travel to London made the red spots on
Miss Entwhistle's cheeks burn brighter. She calmed down, however, on
remembering that Everard couldn't see how evidently poorly the child
was, and told herself that if he could he would be all tenderness. She
told herself this, but she didn't believe it; and then she was vexed
that she didn't believe it. Lucy loved him. Lucy had looked perfectly
pleased and content yesterday before she became so ill. One mustn't
judge a man by his way with a telephone.
At ten o'clock the doctor came. He had been in Strorley for years, and
was its only doctor. He was one of those guests who used to dine at The
Willows in the early days of Wemyss's possession of it. Occasionally he
had attended the late Mrs. Wemyss; and the last time he had been in the
house was when he was sent for suddenly on the day of her death. He, in
common with the rest of Strorley, had heard of Wemyss's second marriage,
and he shared the general shocked surprise. Strorley, which looked such
an unconscious place, such a torpid, unconscious riverside place, was
nevertheless intensely sensitive to shocks, and it hadn't at all
recovered from the shock of that poor Mrs. Wemyss's death and the very
dreadful inquest, when the fresh shock of another Mrs. Wemyss arriving
on the scene made it, as it were, reel anew, and made it reel worse.
Marriage so quickly on the heels of that terrible death? The Wemysses
were only week-enders and summer holiday people, so that it wasn't quite
so scandalous to have them in Strorley as it would have been if they
were unintermittent residents, yet it was serious enough. That inquest
had been in all the newspapers. To have a house in one's midst which
produced doubtful coroner's verdicts was a blot on any place, and
the new Mrs. Wemyss couldn't possibly be anything but thoroughly
undesirable. Of course no one would call on her. Impossible. And when
the doctor was rung up and asked to come round, he didn't tell his wife
where he was going, because he didn't wish for trouble.
Chesterton--how well he remembered Chesterton; but after all, it was
only the other day that he was there last--ushered him into the library,
and he was standing gloomily in front of the empty grate, looking
neither to the right nor to the left for he disliked the memories
connected with the flags outside the window, and wishing he had a
partner because then he would have sent him instead, when a spare little
lady, bland and pleasant, came in and said she was the patient's aunt.
An educated little lady; not at all the sort of relative he would have
expected the new Mrs. Wemyss to have.
There was a general conviction in Strorley that the new Mrs. Wemyss must
have been a barmaid, a typist, or a nursery governess,--was, that is,
either very bold, very poor, or very meek. Else how could she have
married Wemyss? And this conviction had reached and infected even the
doctor, who was a busy man off whom gossip usually slid. When, however,
he saw Miss Entwhistle he at once was sure that there was nothing in it.
This wasn't the aunt of either the bold, the poor, or the meek; this was
just a decent gentlewoman. He shook hands with her, really pleased to
see her. Everybody was always pleased to see Miss Entwhistle, except
Wemyss.
'Nothing serious, I hope?' asked the doctor.