'Isn't it your business to attend to this room?'

She admitted that it was.

'b.u.t.tons 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 b.u.t.tons 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----

She, however, merely said, 'No sir.'

'Only wear and tear makes them come off,' Wemyss announced; and continuing judicially, emphasising his words with a raised forefinger, he said: 'Now attend to me. This piano hasn't been used for years. Do you hear that? Not for years. To my certain knowledge not for years.

Therefore the cover cannot have been unb.u.t.toned legitimately, it cannot have been unb.u.t.toned by any one authorised to unb.u.t.ton it.

Therefore----'

He pointed his finger straight at her and paused. 'Do you follow me?' he asked sternly.

The parlourmaid hastily rea.s.sembled her wandering thoughts. 'Yes sir,'

she said.

'Therefore some one unauthorised has unb.u.t.toned the cover, and some one unauthorised has played on the piano. Do you understand?'

'Yes sir,' said the parlourmaid.

'It is hardly credible,' he went on, 'but nevertheless the conclusion can't be escaped, that some one has actually taken advantage of my absence to play on that piano. Some one in this house has actually dared----'

'There's the tuner,' said the parlourmaid tentatively, not sure if that would be an explanation, for Wemyss's lucid sentences, almost of a legal lucidity, invariably confused her, but giving the suggestion for what it was worth. 'I understood the orders was to let the tuner in once a quarter, sir. Yesterday was his day. He played for a hour. And 'ad the baize and everything off, and the lid leaning against the wall.'

True. True. The tuner. Wemyss had forgotten the tuner. The tuner had standing instructions to come and tune. Well, why couldn't the fool-woman have reminded him sooner? But the tuner having tuned didn't excuse the parlourmaid's not having sewn on the b.u.t.ton the tuner had pulled off.

He told her so.

'Yes sir,' she said.

'You will have that b.u.t.ton on in five minutes,' he said, pulling out his watch. 'In five minutes exactly from now that b.u.t.ton will be on. I shall be staying in this room, so shall see for myself that you carry out my orders.'

'Yes sir,' said the parlourmaid.

He walked to the window and stood staring at the wild afternoon. She remained motionless where she was.

What a birthday he was having. And with what joy he had looked forward to it. It seemed to him very like the old birthdays with Vera, only so much more painful because he had expected so much. Vera had got him used to expecting very little; but it was Lucy, his adored Lucy, who was inflicting this cruel disappointment on him. Lucy! Incredible. And she to come down in that blanket, tempting him, very nearly getting him that way rather than by the only right and decent way of sincere and obvious penitence. Why, even Vera had never done a thing like that, not once in all the years.

'Let's be friends,' says Lucy. Friends! Yes, she did say something about sorry, but what about that blanket? Sorrow with no clothes on couldn't possibly be genuine. It didn't go together with that kind of appeal. It was not the sort of combination one expected in a wife. Why couldn't she come down and apologise properly dressed? G.o.d, her little shoulder sticking out--how he had wanted to seize and kiss it ... but then that would have been giving in, that would have meant her triumph. Her triumph, indeed--when it was she, and she only, who had begun the whole thing, running out of the room like that, not obeying him when he called, humiliating him before that d.a.m.ned Lizzie....

He thrust his hands into his pockets and turned away with a jerk from the window.

There, standing motionless, was the parlourmaid.

'What? You still here?' he exclaimed. 'Why the devil don't you go and fetch that b.u.t.ton?'

'I understood your orders was none of us is to leave rooms without your permission, sir.'

'You'd better be quick then,' he said, looking at his watch. 'I gave you five minutes, and three of them have gone.'

She disappeared; and in the servants' sitting-room, while she was hastily searching for her thimble and a b.u.t.ton that would approximately do, she told the others what they already knew but found satisfaction in repeating often, that if it weren't that Wemyss was most of the week in London, not a day, not a minute, would she stay in the place.

'There's the wages,' the cook reminded her.

Yes; they were good; higher than anywhere she had heard of. But what was the making of the place was the complete freedom from Monday morning every week to Friday tea-time. Almost anything could be put up with from Friday tea-time till Monday morning, seeing that the rest of the week they could do exactly as they chose, with the whole place as good as belonging to them; and she hurried away, and got back to the drawing-room thirty seconds over time.

Wemyss, however, wasn't there with his watch. He was on his way upstairs to the top of the house, telling himself as he went that if Lucy chose to take possession of his library he would go and take possession of her sitting-room. It was only fair. But he knew she wasn't now in the library. He knew she wouldn't stay there all that time. He wanted an excuse to himself for going to where she was. She must beg his pardon properly. He could hold out--oh, he could hold out all right for any length of time, as she'd find out very soon if she tried the sulking game with him--but to-day it was their first day in his home; it was his birthday; and though nothing could be more monstrous than the way she had ruined everything, yet if she begged his pardon properly he would forgive her, he was ready to take her back the moment she showed real penitence. Never was a woman loved as he loved Lucy. If only she would be penitent, if only she would properly and sincerely apologise, then he could kiss her again. He would kiss that little shoulder of hers, make her pull her blouse back so that he could see it as he saw it down in the library, sticking out of that d.a.m.ned blanket--G.o.d, how he loved her....

XXII

The first thing he saw when he opened the door of the room at the top of the house was the fire.

A fire. He hadn't ordered a fire. He must look into that. That officious slattern Lizzie----

Then, before he had recovered from this, he had another shock. Lucy was on the hearthrug, her head leaning against the sofa, sound asleep.

So that's what she had been doing,--just going comfortably to sleep, while he----

He shut the door and walked over to the fireplace and stood with his back to it looking down at her. Even his heavy tread didn't wake her. He had shut the door in the way that was natural, and had walked across the room in the way that was natural, for he felt no impulse in the presence of sleep to go softly. Besides, why should she sleep in broad daylight?

Wemyss was of opinion that the night was for that. No wonder she couldn't steep at night if she did it in the daytime. There she was, sleeping soundly, completely indifferent to what he might be doing.

Would a really loving woman be able to do that? Would a really devoted wife?

Then he noticed that her face, the side of it he could see, was much swollen, and her nose was red. At least, he thought, she had had some contrition for what she had done before going to sleep. It was to be hoped she would wake up in a proper frame of mind. If so, even now some of the birthday might be saved.

He took out his pipe and filled it slowly, his eyes wandering constantly to the figure on the floor. Fancy that thing having the power to make or mar his happiness. He could pick that much up with one hand. It looked like twelve, with its long-stockinged relaxed legs, and its round, short-haired head, and its swollen face of a child in a sc.r.a.pe. Make or mar. He lit his pipe, repeating the phrase to himself, struck by it, struck by the way it illuminated his position of bondage to love.

All his life, he reflected, he had only asked to be allowed to lavish love, to make a wife happy. Look how he had loved Vera: with the utmost devotion till she had killed it, and nothing but trouble as a reward.

Look how he loved that little thing on the floor. Pa.s.sionately. And in return, the first thing she did on being brought into his home as his bride was to quarrel and ruin his birthday. She knew how keenly he had looked forward to his birthday, she knew how the arrangements of the whole honeymoon, how the very date of the wedding, had hinged on this one day; yet she had deliberately ruined it. And having ruined it, what did she care? Comes up here, if you please, and gets a book and goes comfortably to sleep over it in front of the fire.

His mouth hardened still more. He pulled the arm-chair up and sat down noisily in it, his eyes cold with resentment.

The book Lucy had been reading had dropped out of her hand when she fell asleep, and lay open on the floor at his feet. If she used books in such a way, Wemyss thought, he would be very careful how he let her have the key of his bookcase. This was one of Vera's,--Vera hadn't taken any care of her books either; she was always reading them. He slanted his head sideways to see the t.i.tle, to see what it was Lucy had considered more worth her attention than her conduct that day towards her husband.

_Wuthering Heights_. He hadn't read it, but he fancied he had heard of it as a morbid story. She might have been better employed, on their first day at home, than in shutting herself away from him reading a morbid story.

It was while he was looking at her with these thoughts stonily in his eyes that Lucy, wakened by the smell of his pipe, opened hers. She saw Everard sitting close to her, and had one of those moments of instinctive happiness, of complete restoration to unshadowed contentment, which sometimes follow immediately on waking up, before there has been time to remember. It seems for a wonderful instant as though all in the world were well. Doubts have vanished. Pain is gone.

And sometimes the moment continues even beyond remembrance.

It did so now with Lucy. When she opened her eyes and saw Everard, she smiled at him a smile of perfect confidence. She had forgotten everything. She woke up after a deep sleep and saw him, her dear love, sitting beside her. How natural to be happy. Then, the expression on his face bringing back remembrance, it seemed to her in that first serene sanity, that clear-visioned moment of spirit unfretted by body, that they had been extraordinarily silly, taking everything the other one said and did with a tragicness....