Then she faltered, for his mouth was a mere hard line.

'Everard, darling,' she said entreatingly, lifting her face to his, 'let's be friends--please let's be friends--I'm so sorry--so sorry----'

His eyes ran over her. It was evident that all she had on was that blanket. A strange fury came into his face, and he turned his back on her and marched with a heavy tread to the door, a tread that made Lucy, for some reason she couldn't at first understand, think of Elgar. Why Elgar? part of her asked, puzzled, while the rest of her was blankly watching Wemyss. Of course: the march: _Pomp and Circ.u.mstance_.

At the door he turned and said, 'Since you thrust yourself into my room when I have shown you I don't desire your company you force me to leave it.'

Then he added, his voice sounding queer and through his teeth, 'You'd better go and put your clothes on. I a.s.sure you I'm proof against s.e.xual allurements.'

Then he went out.

Lucy stood looking at the door. s.e.xual allurements? What did he mean?

Did he think--did he mean----

She flushed suddenly, and gripping her blanket tight about her she too marched to the door, her eyes bright and fixed.

Considering the blanket, she walked upstairs with a good deal of dignity, and pa.s.sed the bedroom door just as Lizzie, her arms full of a complete set of clothing, came out of it.

'Lumme!' once more exclaimed Lizzie, who seemed marked down for shocks; and dropped a hairbrush and a shoe.

Disregarding her, Lucy proceeded up the next flight with the same dignity, and having reached Vera's room crossed to the fire, where she stood in silence while Lizzie, who had hurried after her and was reproaching her for having gone downstairs like that, dressed her and brushed her hair.

She was quite silent. She didn't move. She was miles away from Lizzie, absorbed in quite a new set of astonished, painful thoughts. But at the end, when Lizzie asked her if there was anything more she could do, she looked at her a minute and then, having realised her, put out her hand and laid it on her arm.

'Thank you _very_ much for everything,' she said earnestly.

'I'm terribly sorry about that window, mum,' said Lizzie, who was sure she had been the cause of trouble. 'I don't know what come over me to forget it.'

Lucy smiled faintly at her. 'Never mind,' she said; and she thought that if it hadn't been for that window she and Everard--well, it was no use thinking like that; perhaps there would have been something else.

Lizzie went. She was a recent acquisition, and was the only one of the servants who hadn't known the late Mrs. Wemyss, but she told herself that anyhow she preferred this one. She went; and Lucy stood where she had left her, staring at the floor, dropping back into her quite new set of astonished, painful thoughts.

Everard,--that was an outrage, that about s.e.xual allurements; just simply an outrage. She flushed at the remembrance of it; her whole body seemed to flush hot. She felt as though never again would she be able to bear him making love to her. He had spoilt that. But that was a dreadful way to feel, that was destructive of the very heart of marriage. No, she mustn't let herself,--she must stamp that feeling out; she must forget what he had said. He couldn't really have meant it. He was still in a temper. She oughtn't to have gone down. But how could she know? All this was new to her, a new side of Everard. Perhaps, she thought, watching the reflection of the flames flickering on the shiny, slippery oak floor, only people with tempers should marry people with tempers. They would understand each other, say the same sorts of things, tossing them backwards and forwards like a fiery, hissing ball, know the exact time it would last, and be saved by their vivid emotions from the deadly hurt, the deadly loneliness of the one who couldn't get into a rage.

Loneliness.

She lifted her head and looked round the room.

No, she wasn't lonely. There was still----

Suddenly she went to the bookshelves, and began pulling out the books quickly, hungrily reading their names, turning over their pages in a kind of starving hurry to get to know, to get to understand, Vera....

XXI

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 b.u.t.toned round in what looked like Alpine Sport gaiters, and the baize flap that protected the keys had b.u.t.tons all along it from one end to the other. In order to play, these b.u.t.tons 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 b.u.t.ton 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 b.u.t.toned all its b.u.t.tons; 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 b.u.t.toned.

Stay--no; one b.u.t.tonhole gaped.

He stooped closer and put out his hand to b.u.t.ton it, and found the b.u.t.ton gone. No b.u.t.ton. 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 b.u.t.ton off?'

The parlourmaid, on looking closer, did see that, and said so.