Two days went by undisturbed by the least manifestation from Wemyss.
Miss Entwhistle wrote to him on each of the afternoons, telling him of
Lucy's progress and of what the doctor said about her, and on each of
the evenings she lay down on the sofa to sleep feeling excessively
insecure, for how very likely that he would come down by some late train
and walk in, and then there she would be. In spite of that, she would
have been very glad if he had walked in, it would have seemed more
natural; and she couldn't help wondering whether the little thing in the
bed wasn't thinking so too. But nothing happened. He didn't come, he
didn't write, he made no sign of any sort. 'Curious,' said Miss
Entwhistle to herself; and forbore to criticise further.
They were peaceful days. Lucy was getting better all the time, though
still kept carefully in bed by the doctor, and Miss Entwhistle felt as
much justified in being in the house as Chesterton or Lizzie, for she
was performing duties under a doctor's directions. Also the weather was
quiet and sunshiny. In fact, there was peace.
On Thursday the doctor said Lucy might get up for a few hours and sit on
the sofa; and there, its asperities softened by pillows, she sat and had
tea, and through the open window came the sweet smells of April. The
gardener was mowing the lawn, and one of the smells was of the cut
grass; Miss Entwhistle had been out for a walk, and found some
windflowers and some lovely bright green moss, and put them in a bowl;
the doctor had brought a little bunch of violets out of his garden; the
afternoon sun lay beautifully on the hills across the river; the river
slid past the end of the garden tranquilly; and Miss Entwhistle, pouring
out Lucy's tea and buttering her toast, felt that she could at that
moment very nearly have been happy, in spite of its being The Willows
she was in, if there hadn't, in the background, brooding over her day
and night, been that very odd and disquieting silence of Everard's.
As if Lucy knew what she was thinking, she said--it was the first time
she had talked of him--'You know, Aunt Dot, Everard will have been
fearfully busy this week, because of having been away so long.'
'Oh of course,' agreed Miss Entwhistle with much heartiness. 'I'm sure
the poor dear has been run off his legs.'
'He didn't--he hasn't----'
Lucy flushed and broke off.
'I suppose,' she began again after a minute, 'there's been nothing from
him? No message, I mean? On the telephone or anything?'
'No, I don't think there has--not since our talk the first day,' said
Miss Entwhistle.
'Oh? Did he telephone the first day?' asked Lucy quickly. 'You never
told me.'
'You were asleep nearly all that day. Yes,' said Miss Entwhistle,
clearing her throat, 'we had a--we had quite a little talk.'
'What did he say?'
'Well, he naturally wanted you to be well enough to go up to London, and
of course he was very sorry you couldn't.'
Lucy looked suddenly much happier.
'Yes,' said Miss Entwhistle, as though in answer to the look.
'He hates writing letters, you know, Aunt Dot,' Lucy said presently.
'Men do,' said Miss Entwhistle. 'It's very curious,' she continued
brightly, 'but men _do_.'
'And he hates telephoning. It was wonderful for him to have telephoned
that day.'
'Men,' said Miss Entwhistle, 'are very funny about some things.'
'To-day is Thursday, isn't it,' said Lucy. 'He ought to be here by one
o'clock to-morrow.'
Miss Entwhistle started. 'To-morrow?' she repeated. 'Really? Does he? I
mean, ought he? Somehow I had supposed Saturday. The week-end somehow
suggests Saturdays to me.'
'No. He--we,' Lucy corrected herself, 'come down on Fridays. He's sure
to be down in time for lunch.'
'Oh is he?' said Miss Entwhistle, thinking a great many things very
quickly. 'Well, if it is his habit,' she went on, 'I am sure too that he
will. Do you remember how we set our clocks by him when he came to tea
in Eaton Terrace?'
Lucy smiled, and the remembrance of those days of love, and of all his
dear, funny ways, flooded her heart and washed out for a moment the
honeymoon, the birthday, everything that had happened since.
Miss Entwhistle couldn't but notice the unmistakable love-look. '_Oh_
I'm so glad you love each other so much,' she said with all her heart.
'You know, Lucy, I was afraid that perhaps this house----'
She stopped, because adequately to discuss The Willows in all its
aspects needed, she felt, perfect health on both sides.
'Yes, I don't think a house matters when people love each other,' said
Lucy.
'Not a bit. Not a bit,' agreed Miss Entwhistle. Not even, she thought
robustly, when it was a house with a recent dreadful history. Love--she
hadn't herself experienced it, but what was an imagination for except to
imagine with?--love was so strong an armour that nothing could reach one
and hurt one through it. That was why lovers were so selfish. They sat
together inside their armour perfectly safe, entirely untouchable,
completely uninterested in what happened to the rest of the world.
'Besides,' she went on aloud, 'you'll alter it.'
Lucy's smile at that was a little sickly. Aunt Dot's optimism seemed to
her extravagant. She was unable to see herself altering The Willows.
'You'll have all your father's furniture and books to put about,' said
Aunt Dot, continuing in optimism. 'Why, you'll be able to make the place
really quite--quite----'
She was going to say habitable, but ate another piece of toast instead.
'Yes, I expect I'll have the books here, anyhow,' said Lucy. 'There's a
sitting-room upstairs with room in it.'
'Is there?' said Miss Entwhistle, suddenly very attentive.
'Lots of room. It's to be my sitting-room, and the books could go there.
Except that--except that----'
'Except what?' asked Miss Entwhistle.
'I don't know. I don't much want to alter that room. It was Vera's.'
'I should alter it beyond recognition,' said Miss Entwhistle firmly.
Lucy was silent. She felt too flabby, after her three days with a
temperature, to engage in discussion with anybody firm.
'That's to say,' said Miss Entwhistle, 'if you like having the room at
all. I should have thought----'
'Oh yes, I like having the room,' said Lucy, flushing.
Then it was Miss Entwhistle who was silent; and she was silent because
she didn't believe Lucy really could like having the actual room from
which that unfortunate Vera met her death. It wasn't natural. The child
couldn't mean it. She needed feeding up. Perhaps they had better not
talk about rooms; not till Lucy was stronger. Perhaps they had better
not talk at all, because everything they said was bound in the
circumstances to lead either to Everard or Vera.
'Wouldn't you like me to read aloud to you a little while before you go
back to bed?' she asked, when Lizzie came in to clear away the
tea-things.
Lucy thought this a very good idea. 'Oh do, Aunt Dot,' she said; for she
too was afraid of what talking might lead to. Aunt Dot was phenomenally
quick. Lucy felt she couldn't bear it, she simply couldn't bear it, if
Aunt Dot were to think that perhaps Everard.... So she said quite
eagerly, 'Oh do, Aunt Dot,' and not until she had said it did she
remember that the books were locked up, and the key was on Everard's
watch-chain. Then she sat looking up at Aunt Dot with a startled,
conscience-stricken face.
'What is it, Lucy?' asked Miss Entwhistle, wondering why she had turned
red.
Just in time Lucy remembered that there were Vera's books. 'Do you mind
very much going up to the sitting-room?' she asked. 'Vera's books----'
Miss Entwhistle did mind very much going up to the sitting-room, and saw
no reason why Vera's books should be chosen. Why should she have to read
Vera's books? Why did Lucy want just those, and look so odd and guilty
about it? Certainly the child needed feeding up. It wasn't natural, it
was unwholesome, this queer attraction she appeared to feel towards
Vera.
She didn't say anything of this, but remarked that there was a room
called the library in the house which suggested books, and hadn't she
better choose something from out of that,--go down, instead of go up.
Lucy, painfully flushed, looked at her. Nothing would induce her to tell
her about the key. Aunt Dot would think it so ridiculous.
'Yes, but Everard----' she stammered. 'They're rather special books--he
doesn't like them taken out of the room----'
'Oh,' said Miss Entwhistle, trying hard to avoid any opinion of any
sort.
'But I don't see why you should go up all those stairs, Aunt Dot
darling,' Lucy went on. 'Lizzie will, won't you, Lizzie? Bring down some
of the books--any of them. An armful.'
Lizzie, thus given _carte blanche_, brought down the six first books
from the top shelf, and set them on the table beside Lucy.
Lucy recognised the cover of one of them at once, it was _Wuthering
Heights_.
Miss Entwhistle took it up, read its title in silence, and put it down
again.
The next one was Emily Brontë's collected poems.
Miss Entwhistle took it up, read its title in silence, and put it down
again.
The third one was Thomas Hardy's _Time's Laughing-Stocks_.
Miss Entwhistle took it up, read its title in silence, and put it down
again.
The other three were Baedekers.
'Well, I don't think there's anything I want to read here,' she said.
Lizzie asked if she should take them away then, and bring some more; and
presently she reappeared with another armful.
These were all Baedekers.
'Curious,' said Miss Entwhistle.
Then Lucy remembered that she, too, beneath her distress on Saturday
when she pulled out one after the other of Vera's books in her haste to
understand her, to get comfort, to get, almost she hoped, counsel, had
felt surprise at the number of Baedekers. The greater proportion of the
books in Vera's shelves were guide-books and time-tables. But there had
been other things,--'If you were to bring some out of a different part
of the bookcase,' she suggested to Lizzie; who thereupon removed the
Baedekers, and presently reappeared with more books.
This time they were miscellaneous, and Miss Entwhistle turned them over
with a kind of reverential reluctance. That poor thing; this day last
year she was probably reading them herself. It seemed sacrilege for two
strangers.... Merciful that one couldn't see into the future. What would
the poor creature have thought of the picture presented at that
moment,--the figure in the blue dressing-gown, sitting in the middle of
all the things that had been hers such a very little while before? Well,
perhaps she would have been glad they weren't hers any longer, glad that
she had finished, was done with them. These books suggested such
tiredness, such a--yes, such a wish for escape.... There was more
Hardy,--all the poems this time in one volume. There was Pater--_The
Child in the House_ and _Emerald Uthwart_--Miss Entwhistle, familiar
with these, shook her head: that peculiar dwelling on death in them,
that queer, fascinated inability to get away from it, that beautiful but
sick wistfulness no, she certainly wouldn't read these. There was a book
called _In the Strange South Seas_; and another about some island in the
Pacific; and another about life in the desert; and one or two others,
more of the flamboyant guide-book order, describing remote, glowing
places....
Suddenly Miss Entwhistle felt uncomfortable. She put down the book she
was holding, and folded her hands in her lap and gazed out of the window
at the hills on the other side of the river. She felt as if she had been
prying, and prying unpardonably. The books people read,--was there ever
anything more revealing? No, she refused to examine Vera's books
further. And apart from that horrible feeling of prying upon somebody
defenceless, upon somebody pitiful, she didn't wish to allow the thought
these books suggested to get any sort of hold on her mind. It was
essential, absolutely essential, that it shouldn't. And if Lucy ever----
She got up and went to the window. Lucy's eyes followed her, puzzled.
The gardener was still mowing the lawn, working very hard at it as
though he were working against time. She watched his back, bent with
hurry as he and the boy laboriously pushed and pulled the machine up and
down; and then she caught sight of the terrace just below, and the
flags.
This was a dreadful house. Whichever way one looked one was entangled in
a reminder. She turned away quickly, and there was that little loved
thing in her blue wrapper, propped up on Vera's pillows, watching her
with puzzled anxiety. Nothing could harm that child, she was safe, so
long as she loved and believed in Everard; but suppose some day--suppose
gradually--suppose a doubt should creep into her mind whether perhaps,
after all, Vera's fall ... suppose a question should get into her head
whether perhaps, after all, Vera's death----?
Aunt Dot knew Lucy's face so well that it seemed absurd to examine it
now, searching for signs in its features and expression of enough
character, enough nerves, enough--this, if there were enough of it,
might by itself carry her through--sense of humour. Yes, she had a
beautiful sweep of forehead; all that part of her face was lovely--so
calm and open, with intelligent, sweet eyes. But were those dear eyes
intelligent enough? Was not sweetness really far more manifest in them
than intelligence? After that her face went small, and then, looking
bigger than it was because of her little face, was her kind, funny
mouth. Generous; easily forgiving; quick to be happy; quick to
despair,--Aunt Dot, looking anxiously at it, thought she saw all this in
the shape of Lucy's mouth. But had the child strength? Had she the
strength that would be needed equally--supposing that doubt and that
question should ever get into her head--for staying or for going; for
staying or for running ... oh, but running, running, for her very
_life_....
With a violent effort Miss Entwhistle shook herself free from these
thoughts. Where in heaven's name was her mind wandering to? It was
intolerable, this tyranny of suggestion in everything one looked at
here, in everything one touched. And Lucy, who was watching her and who
couldn't imagine why Aunt Dot should be so steadfastly gazing at her
mouth, naturally asked, 'Is anything the matter with my face?'
Then Miss Entwhistle managed to smile, and came and sat down again
beside the sofa. 'No,' she said, taking her hand. 'But I don't think I
want to read after all. Let us talk.'
And holding Lucy's hand, who looked a little afraid at first but soon
grew content on finding what the talk was to be about, she proceeded to
discuss supper, and whether a poached egg or a cup of beef-tea contained
the greater amount of nourishment.