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 Return this book on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. A 
 charge is made on all overdue 
 books. 
 
 University of Illinois Library 
 
 
 
 
 
 NG 34 Wot 
 SEP 1 5 1994 
 
 Ata |4 
 
 L161—H41 
 

 
 
 
 Satay eh 
 
 
 
Books by “Elizabeth”? 
 
 ADVENTURES OF ELIZABETH IN RUGEN 
 APRIL BABY’S BOOK OF TUNES 
 CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS 
 ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN 
 FRAULEIN SCHMIDT AND MR. ANSTRUTHER 
 PRINCESS PRISCILLA’S FORTNIGHT 
 SOLITARY SUMMER 
 
 THE BENEFACTRESS 
 
 THE CARAVANERS 
 
 THE PASTOR'S WIFE 
 
 VERA 
 
VERA 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 ‘““HLIZABETH 
 AND HER GERMAN GARDEN” 
 
 GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 1921 
 
 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
 INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 
 

 
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VERA 
 
 I 
 
 ‘ N y HEN the doctor had gone, and the two 
 
 women from the village he had been waiting 
 
 for were upstairs shut in with her dead 
 
 father, Lucy went out into the garden and stood lean- 
 ing on the gate staring at the sea. 
 
 Her father had died at nine o’clock that morning, 
 and it was now twelve. The sun beat on her bare head ; 
 and the burnt-up grass along the top of the cliff, and 
 the dusty road that passed the gate, and the glittering 
 sea, and the few white clouds hanging in the sky, all 
 blazed and glared in an extremity of silent, motionless 
 heat and light. 
 
 Into this emptiness Lucy stared, motionless herself, 
 as if she had been carved in stone. There was not a 
 sail on the sea, nor a line of distant smoke from any 
 steamer, neither was there once the flash of a bird’s 
 wing brushing across the sky. Movement seemed 
 smitten rigid. Sound seemed to have gone to sleep. 
 
 Lucy stood staring at the sea, her face as empty of 
 expression as the bright blank world before her. Her 
 father had been dead three hours, and she felt nothing. 
 
 1 
 
2 VERA 
 
 It was just a week since they had arrived in Corn- 
 wall, she and he, full of hope, full of pleasure in the 
 pretty little furnished house they had taken for August 
 and September, full of confidence in the good the pure 
 air was going to do him. But there had always been 
 confidence; there had never been a moment during 
 the long years of his fragility when confidence had even 
 been questioned. He was delicate, and she had taken 
 care of him. She had taken care of him and he had 
 _ been delicate ever since she could remember. And ever 
 since she could remember he had been everything in 
 life to her. She had had no thought since she grew 
 up for anybody but her father. There was no room for 
 any other thought, so completely did he fill her heart. 
 They had done everything together, shared everything 
 together, dodged the winters together, settled in charm- 
 ing places, seen the same beautiful things, read the 
 same books, talked, laughed, had friends,—heaps of 
 friends; wherever they were her father seemed at once 
 to have friends, adding them to the mass he had already. 
 She had not been away from him a day for years; she 
 had had no wish to go away. Where and with whom 
 could she be so happy as with him? All the years were 
 years of sunshine. There had been no winters; nothing 
 but summer, summer, and sweet scents and soft skies, 
 and patient understanding with her slowness—for he 
 had the nimblest mind—and love. He was the most 
 amusing companion to her, the most generous friend, 
 the most illuminating guide, the most adoring father; 
 and now he was dead, and she felt nothing. 
 
VERA 3 
 
 Her father. Dead. For ever. 
 
 She said the words over to herself. They meant 
 nothing. 
 
 She was going to be alone. Without him. Always. 
 
 She said the words over to herself. They meant 
 nothing. 
 
 Up in that room with its windows wide open, shut 
 away from her with the two village women, he was 
 lying dead. He had smiled at her for the last time, said 
 all he was ever going to say to her, called her the last 
 of the sweet, half-teasing names he loved to invent for 
 her. Why, only a few hours ago they were having 
 breakfast together and planning what they would do 
 that day. Why, only yesterday they drove together 
 after tea towards the sunset, and he had seen, with his 
 quick eyes that saw everything, some unusual grasses 
 by the road side, and had stopped and gathered them, 
 excited to find such rare ones, and had taken them back 
 with him to study, and had explained them to her 
 and made her see profoundly interesting, important 
 things in them, in these grasses which, till he touched 
 them, had seemed just grasses. That is what he did 
 with everything,—touched it into life and delight. The 
 grasses lay in the dining-room now, waiting for him to 
 work on them, spread out where he had put them on 
 some blotting-paper in the window. She had seen them 
 as she came through on her way to the garden; and she 
 had seen, too, that the breakfast was still there, the 
 breakfast they had had together, still as they had left 
 it, forgotten by the servants in the surprise of death. 
 
4, VERA 
 
 He had fallen down as he got up from it. Dead. In 
 aninstant. No time for anything, for a cry, for a look. 
 Gone. Finished. Wiped out. 
 
 What a beautiful day it was; and so hot! He loved 
 heat. They were lucky in the weather. ... 
 
 Yes, there were sounds after all,—she suddenly 
 noticed them; sounds from the room upstairs, a busy 
 moving about of discreet footsteps, the splash of water, 
 crockery being carefully set down. Presently the women 
 would come and tell her everything was ready, and she 
 could go back to him again. The women had tried to 
 comfort her when they arrived; and so had the servants, 
 and so had the doctor. Comfort her! And she felt 
 nothing. 
 
 Lucy stared at the sea, thinking these things, ex- 
 amining the situation as a curious one but unconnected 
 with herself, looking at it with a kind of cold compre- 
 hension. Her mind was quite clear. Every detail of 
 what had happened was sharply before her. She knew 
 everything, and she felt nothing,—like God, she said to 
 herself; yes, exactly like God. 
 
 Footsteps came along the road, which was hidden by 
 the garden’s fringe of trees and bushes for fifty yards 
 on either side of the gate, and presently a man passed 
 between her eyes and the sea. She did not notice him, 
 for she was noticing nothing but her thoughts, and he 
 passed in front of her quite close, and was gone. 
 
 But he had seen her, and had stared hard at her for 
 - the brief instant it took to pass the gate. Her face and 
 its expression had surprised him. He was not a very 
 
VERA 5 
 
 observant man, and at that moment was even less so 
 than usual, for he was particularly and deeply absorbed 
 in his own affairs; yet when he came suddenly on the 
 motionless figure at the gate, with its wide-open eyes 
 that simply looked through him as he went by, uncon- 
 scious, obviously, that any one was going by, his atten- 
 tion was surprised away from himself and almost he 
 had stopped to examine the strange creature more 
 closely. His code, however, prevented that, and he 
 continued along the further fifty yards of bushes and 
 trees that hid the other half of the garden from the 
 road, but more slowly, slower and slower, till at the 
 end of the garden where the road left it behind and 
 went on very solitarily over the bare grass on the top 
 of the cliffs, winding in and out with the ins and 
 outs of the coast for as far as one could see, he hesi- 
 tated, looked back, went on a yard or two, hesitated 
 again, stopped and took off his hot hat and wiped 
 his forehead, looked at the bare country and the long 
 twisting glare of the road ahead, and then very slowly 
 turned and went past the belt of bushes towards the 
 gate again. 
 
 He said to himself as he went: “My God, I’m so 
 lonely. I can’t stand it. I must speak to some one. 
 I shall go off my head 2 
 
 For what had happened to this man—his name was 
 Wemyss—was that public opinion was forcing him into 
 retirement and inactivity at the very time when he most 
 needed company and distraction. He had to go away 
 by himself, he had to withdraw for at the very least a 
 
 
 
6 VERA 
 
 week from his ordinary life, from his house on the river 
 where he had just begun his summer holiday, from his 
 house in London where at least there were his clubs, 
 because of this determination on the part of public 
 opinion that he should for a space be alone with his 
 sorrow. Alone with sorrow,—of all ghastly things for 
 aman to be alone with! It was an outrage, he felt, to 
 condemn a man to that; it was the cruellest form of 
 solitary confinement. He had to come to Cornwall because 
 it took a long time to get to, a whole day in the train 
 there and a whole day in the train back, clipping the 
 week, the minimum of time public opinion insisted on 
 for respecting his bereavement, at both ends; but 
 still that left five days of awful loneliness, of wandering 
 about the cliffs by himself trying not to think, without 
 a soul to speak to, without a thing to do. He couldn’t 
 play bridge because of public opinion. Everybody knew 
 what had happened to him. It had been in all the 
 papers. ‘The moment he said his name they would 
 know. It was so recent. Only last week. ... 
 
 No, he couldn’t bear this, he must speak to some 
 one. That girl,—with those strange eyes she wasn’t 
 just ordinary. She wouldn’t mind letting him talk 
 to her for a little, perhaps sit in the garden with 
 her a little. She would understand. 
 
 Wemyss was like a child in his misery. He very 
 nearly cried outright when he got to the gate and took 
 off his hat, and the girl looked at him blankly just as 
 if she still didn’t see him and hadn’t heard him when 
 
VERA 7 
 
 he said, “Could you let me have a glass of water? 
 I—it’s so hot 41 
 
 He began to stammer because of her eyes. “I—I’m 
 horribly thirsty—the heat i 
 
 He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his 
 forehead. He. certainly looked very hot. His face was 
 red and distressed, and his forehead dripped. He was 
 all puckered, like an unhappy baby. And the girl 
 looked so cool, so bloodlessly cool. Her hands, folded 
 on the top bar of the gate, looked more than cool, they 
 looked cold; like hands in winter, shrunk and small 
 with cold. She had bobbed hair, he noticed, so that it 
 was impossible to tell how old she was, brown hair 
 from which the sun was beating out bright lights; and 
 her small face had no colour except those wide eyes 
 fixed on his and the colour of her rather big mouth; 
 but even her mouth seemed frozen. 
 
 ‘Would it be much bother ** began Wemyss 
 again; and then his situation overwhelmed him. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ‘You would be doing a greater kindness than you 
 know,” he said, his voice trembling with unhappiness, 
 “if you would let me come into the garden a minute 
 and rest.” 
 
 At the sound of the genuine wretchedness in his voice 
 Lucy’s blank eyes became a little human. It got 
 through to her consciousness that this distressed warm 
 stranger was appealing to her for something. 
 
 “Are you so hot?” she asked, really seeing him for 
 the first time. 
 
8 VERA 
 
 “Yes, I’m hot,” said Wemyss. “But it isn’t that. 
 I’ve had a misfortune—a terrible misfortune——” 
 
 He paused, overcome by the remembrance of it, by 
 the unfairness of so much horror having overtaken 
 him. 
 
 ‘““Oh, I’m sorry,” said Lucy vaguely, still miles away 
 from him, deep in indifference. “Have you lost any- 
 thing?” 
 
 “Good God, not that sort of misfortune!” cried 
 Wemyss. “Let me come in a minute—into the garden 
 a minute—just to sit a minute with a human being. 
 You would be doing a great kindness. Because you’re 
 a stranger I can talk to you about it if you'll let me. 
 Just because we’re strangers I could talk. I haven’t 
 spoken to a soul but servants and official people since 
 —since it happened. For two days I haven’t spoken 
 
 bP 
 
 
 
 at all to a living soul—I shall go mad 
 
 His voice shook again with his unhappiness, with 
 his astonishment at his unhappiness. 
 
 Lucy didn’t think two days very long not to speak 
 to anybody in, but there was something overwhelming 
 about the strange man’s evident affliction that roused 
 her out of her apathy; not much,—she was still pro- 
 foundly detached, observing from another world, as it 
 were, this extreme heat and agitation, but at least she 
 saw him now, she did with a faint curiosity consider 
 him. He was like some elemental force in his direct- 
 ness. He had the quality of an irresistible natural 
 phenomenon. But she did not move from her position 
 
VERA 9 
 
 at the gate, and her eyes continued, with the unwaver- 
 ingness he thought so odd, to stare into his. 
 
 “IT would gladly have let you come in,” she said, “‘if 
 you had come yesterday, but to-day my father died.” 
 
 Wemyss looked at her in astonishment. She had 
 said it in as level and ordinary a voice as if she had been 
 remarking, rather indifferently, on the weather. 
 
 Then he had a moment of insight. His own calamity 
 had illuminated him. He who had never known pain, 
 who had never let himself be worried, who had never 
 let himself be approached in his life by a doubt, had for 
 the last week lived in an atmosphere of worry and pain, 
 and of what, if he allowed himself to think, to become 
 morbid, might well grow into a most unfair, tormenting 
 doubt. He understood, as he would not have under- 
 stood a week ago, what her whole attitude, her rigidity 
 meant. He stared at her a moment while she stared 
 straight back at him, and then his big warm hands 
 dropped on to the cold ones folded on the top bar of the 
 gate, and he said, holding them firmly though they made 
 no attempt to move, “So that’s it. So that’s why. 
 Now I know.” 
 
 And then he added, with the simplicity his own 
 situation was putting into everything he did, “That 
 settles it. We two stricken ones must talk together.” 
 
 And still covering her hands with one of his, with the 
 other he unlatched the gate and walked in, 
 
II 
 
 i: was a seat under a mulberry tree on 
 the little lawn, with its back to the house and 
 the gaping windows, and Wemyss, spying it 
 
 out, led Lucy to it as if she were a child, holding her 
 
 by the hand. | 
 
 She went with him indifferently. What did it matter 
 whether she sat under the mulberry tree or stood at 
 the gate? This convulsed stranger—was he real? Was 
 anything real? Let him tell her whatever it was he 
 wanted to tell her, and she would listen, and get him 
 his glass of water, and then he would go his way and 
 by that time the women would have finished upstairs 
 and she could be with her father again. 
 
 “T’ll fetch the water,” she said when they got to the 
 seat. 
 
 “No, Sit down,” said Wemyss. 
 
 She sat down. So did he, letting her hand go. It 
 dropped on the seat, palm upwards, between them. 
 
 “It’s strange our coming across each other like this,” 
 he said, looking at her while she looked indifferently 
 straight in front of her at the sun on the grass beyond 
 the shade of the mulberry tree, at a mass of huge 
 fuchsia bushes a little way off. “I’ve been going 
 through hell—and so must you have been. Good God, 
 
 10 
 
VERA 11 
 what hell! Do you mind if I tell you? You'll under- 
 
 stand because of your own ay 
 
 Lucy didn’t mind. She didn’t mind anything. She 
 merely vaguely wondered that he should think she had 
 been going through hell. Hell and her darling father; 
 
 
 
 how quaint it sounded. She began to suspect that she 
 was asleep. All this wasn’t really happening. Her 
 father wasn’t dead. Presently the housemaid would 
 come in with the hot water and wake her to the usual 
 cheerful day. The man sitting beside her,=he seemed 
 rather vivid for a dream, it was true; so detailed, with 
 his flushed face and the perspiration on his forehead, 
 besides the feel of his big warm hand a moment ago and 
 the small puffs of heat that came from his clothes when 
 he moved. But it was so unlikely ... everything 
 that had happened since breakfast was so umlikely. 
 This man, too, would resolve himself soon into just 
 something she had had for dinner last night, and she 
 would tell her father about her dream at breakfast, 
 and they would laugh. 
 
 She stirred uneasily. It wasn’t adream. It was real. 
 
 “The story is unbelievably horrible,’ Wemyss was 
 saying in a high aggrievement, looking at her little 
 head with the straight cut hair, and her grave profile. 
 How old was she? Eighteen? Twenty-eight? Impos- 
 sible to tell exactly with hair cut like that, but young 
 anyhow compared to him; very young perhaps com- 
 pared to him who was well over forty, and so much 
 scarred, so deeply scarred, by this terrible thing that 
 had happened to him. 
 
12 VERA 
 
 “It’s so horrible that I wouldn’t talk about it if you 
 were going to mind,” he went on, “but you can’t mind 
 because you’re a stranger, and it may help you with 
 your own trouble, because whatever you may suffer 
 I’m suffering much worse, so then you'll see yours isn’t 
 so bad. And besides I must talk to some one—I should 
 go mad iH 
 
 This was certainly a dream, thought Lucy. Things 
 didn’t happen like this when one was awake,— grotesque 
 
 
 
 things. 
 
 She turned her head and looked at him. No, it 
 wasn’t a dream. No dream could be so solid as the 
 man beside her. What was he saying? 
 
 He was saying in a tormented voice that he was 
 Wemyss. 
 
 “You are Wemyss,” she repeated gravely, 
 
 It made no impression on her. She didn’t mind his 
 being Wemyss. 
 
 “I’m the Wemyss the newspapers were full of last 
 week,” he said, seeing that the name left her un- 
 moved. ‘My God,” he went on, again wiping his fore- ~ 
 head, but as fast as he wiped it more beads burst 
 out, ‘‘those posters—to see one’s own name staring 
 at one everywhere on posters!” 
 
 ““Why was your name on posters?” said Lucy. 
 
 She didn’t want to know; she asked mechanically, 
 her ear attentive only to the sounds from the open 
 windows of the room upstairs. 
 
 “Don’t you read newspapers here?” was his answer. 
 
 “T don’t think we do,” she said, listening. ‘‘We’ve 
 
VERA 13 
 
 been settling in. I don’t think we’ve remembered to 
 order any newspapers yet.” 
 
 A look of some, at any rate, relief from the pressure 
 he was evidently struggling under came into Wemyss’s 
 face. “Then I can tell you the real version,” he said, 
 “without your being already filled up with the mon- 
 strous suggestions that were made at the inquest. 
 As though I hadn’t suffered enough as it was! As 
 though it hadn’t been terrible enough alread i 
 
 “The inquest?” repeated Lucy. 
 
 Again she turned her head and looked at him. ‘Has 
 your trouble anything to do with—death?” 
 
 “Why, you don’t suppose anything else would reduce 
 me to the state I’m in?” 
 
 “Oh, I’m sorry,’’ she said; and into her eyes and into 
 her voice came a different expression, something living, 
 something gentle. ‘I hope it wasn’t anybody you— 
 loved ?”” 
 
 “It was my wife,” said Wemyss. 
 
 He got up quickly, so near was he to crying at the 
 thought of it, at the thought of all he had endured, 
 and turned his back on her and began stripping the 
 leaves off the branches above his head. 
 
 Lucy watched him, leaning forward a little on both 
 hands. “Tell me about it,’ she said presently, very 
 gently. 
 
 He came back and dropped down heavily beside her 
 again, and with many interjections of astonishment 
 that such a ghastly calamity could have happened to 
 him, to him who till now had never 
 
 
 
 
 
14 VERA 
 “Yes,” said Lucy, comprehendingly and gravely, 
 
 33 
 
 
 
 ‘“‘yes—I know 
 
 —had never had anything to do with—well, with 
 calamities, he told her the story. 
 
 They had gone down, he and his wife, as they did 
 every 25th of July, for the summer to their house on 
 the river, and he had been looking forward to a glorious 
 time of peaceful doing nothing after months of London, 
 just lying about in a punt and reading and smoking and 
 resting—London was an awful place for tiring one out 
 —and they hadn’t been there twenty-four hours before 
 his wife—before his wife—— 
 
 The remembrance of it was too grievous to him. He 
 couldn’t go on. 
 
 “Was she—very ill?” asked Lucy gently, to give 
 him time to recover. “I think that would almost be 
 better. One would be a little—at least one would be 
 a little prepared i 
 
 “She wasn’t ill at all,” cried Wemyss. ‘“‘She just— 
 died.”” 
 
 “Oh—like father!” exclaimed Lucy, roused now 
 altogether. It was she now who laid her hand on his. 
 
 Wemyss seized it between both his, and went on 
 
 
 
 quickly. 
 
 He was writing letters, he said, in the library at his 
 table in the window where he could see the terrace and 
 the garden and the river; they had had tea together 
 only an hour before; there was a flagged terrace along 
 that side of the house, the side the library was on and 
 all the principal rooms; and all of a sudden there was 
 
VERA 15 
 
 a great flash of shadow between him and the light; 
 come and gone instantaneously; and instantaneously 
 then there was a thud; he would never forget it, that 
 thud; and there outside his window on the flags 
 
 “Oh, don’t—oh, don’t ? gasped Lucy. 
 
 “It was my wife,” Wemyss hurried on, not able now 
 to stop, looking at Lucy while he talked with eyes of 
 amazed horror. “Fallen out of the top room of the 
 house—her sitting-room because of the view—it was in 
 a straight line with the library window—she dropped 
 
 past my window like a stone—she was smashed— 
 33 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 smashed. 
 
 “Oh, don’t—oh 2 
 
 ‘‘Now can you wonder at the state I’m in?” he cried. 
 “Can you wonder if I’m nearly off my head? And 
 forced to be by myself—forced into retirement for what 
 the world considers a proper period of mourning, with 
 nothing to think of but that ghastly inquest.” 
 
 He hurt her hand, he gripped it so hard. 
 
 “If you hadn’t let me come and talk to you,” 
 he said, “I believe ’'d have pitched myself over the 
 cliff there this afternoon and made an end of it.” 
 
 “But how—but why—how could she fall?” whispered 
 Lucy, to whom poor Wemyss’s misfortune seemed more 
 frightful than anything she had ever heard of. 
 
 She hung on his words, her eyes on his face, her lips 
 parted, her whole body an agony of sympathy. Life— 
 how terrible it was, and how unsuspected! One went 
 on and on, never dreaming of the sudden dreadful day 
 when the coverings were going to be dropped and one 
 
 
 
16 VERA 
 
 would see it was death after all, that it had been death 
 all the time, death pretending, death waiting. Her 
 father, so full of love and interests and plans,—gone, 
 finished, brushed away as if he no more mattered than 
 some insect one unseeingly treads on as one walks; 
 and this man’s wife—dead in an instant, dead so far 
 more cruelly, so horribly... . 
 
 “TY had often told her to be careful of that win- 
 dow,”” Wemyss answered in a voice that almost sounded 
 like anger; but all the time his tone had been one of 
 high anger at the wanton, outrageous cruelty of fate. 
 “It was a very low one, and the floor was slippery. 
 Oak. Every floor in my house is polished oak. I had 
 them put in myself. She must have been leaning out 
 and her feet slipped away behind her. That would make 
 her fall head foremost a 
 
 “Oh—oh ”? said Lucy, shrinking. What could 
 she do, what could she say to help him, to soften at 
 least these dreadful memories? 
 
 “And then,” Wemyss went on after a moment, as 
 unaware as Lucy was that she was tremblingly stroking 
 his hand, “at the inquest, as though it hadn’t all been 
 awful enough for me already, the jury must actually 
 get wrangling about the cause of death.” 
 
 “The cause of death?’ echoed Lucy. ‘“But—she 
 fell.” 
 
 “Whether it were an accident or done on purpose.” 
 
 “Done on Ff 
 
 ‘*Suicide.” 
 
 “Oh. 99 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
VERA 1% 
 
 She drew in her breath quickly. 
 
 “But—it wasn’t?” 
 
 “How could it be? She was my wife, without a 
 care in the world, everything done for her, no troubles, 
 nothing on her mind, nothing wrong with her health. 
 We had been married fifteen years, and I was devoted 
 to her—devoted to her.” 
 
 He banged his knee with his free hand. His voice 
 was full of indignant tears. 
 
 “Then why did the jury: 4 
 
 “My wife had a fool of a maid—TI never could stand 
 that woman—and it was something she said at the 
 inquest, some invention or other about what my wife 
 had said to her. You know what servants are. It 
 upset some of the jury. You know juries are made up 
 of anybody and everybody—butcher, baker, and candle- 
 stick-maker—quite uneducated most of them, quite at 
 the mercy of any suggestion. And so instead of a 
 verdict of death by misadventure, which would have 
 been the right one, it was an open verdict.” 
 
 “Oh, how terrible—how terrible for you,” breathed 
 Lucy, her eyes on his, her mouth twitching with 
 sympathy. 
 
 “You'd have seen all about it if you had read the 
 papers last week,” said Wemyss, more quietly. It had 
 done him good to get it out and talked over. 
 
 He looked down at her upturned face with its horror- 
 stricken eyes and twitching mouth. ‘Now tell me about 
 yourself,” he said, touched with compunction; nothing 
 that had happened to her could be so horrible as what 
 
 
 
18 VERA 
 
 had happened to him, still she too was newly smitten, 
 they had met on a common ground of disaster, Death 
 himself had been their introducer. 
 
 “Ts life all—only death?” she breathed, her horror- 
 stricken eyes on his. 
 
 Before he could answer—and what was there to 
 answer to such a question except that of course it- 
 wasn’t, and he and she were just victims of a monstrous 
 special unfairness?—he certainly was; her father had 
 probably died as fathers did, in the usual way in his bed 
 —before he could answer, the two women came out of 
 the house, and with small discreet steps proceeded 
 down the path to the gate. The sun flooded their 
 spare figures and their decent black clothes, clothes 
 kept for these occasions as a mark of respectful 
 sympathy. 
 
 One of them saw Lucy under the mulberry tree and 
 hesitated, and then came across the grass to her with 
 the mincing steps of tact. 
 
 ‘“Here’s somebody coming to speak to you,” said 
 Wemyss, for Lucy was sitting with her back to the 
 path. 
 
 She started and looked round. 
 
 The woman approached hesitatingly, her head on 
 one side, her hands folded, her face pulled into a little 
 smile intended to convey encouragement and pity. 
 
 “The gentleman’s quite ready, miss,” she said softly. 
 
Iil 
 
 LL that day and all the next day Wemyss was 
 A Lucy’s tower of strength and rock of refuge. 
 
 He did everything that had to be done of the 
 business part of death—that extra wantonness of 
 misery thrown in so grimly to finish off the crushing of 
 a mourner who is alone. It is true the doctor was 
 kind and ready to help, but he was a complete 
 stranger; she had never seen him till he was fetched 
 that dreadful morning; and he had other things to see 
 to besides her affairs,—his own patients, scattered 
 widely over a lonely countryside. Wemyss had noth- 
 ing to see to. He could concentrate entirely on Lucy. 
 And he was her friend, linked to her so strangely and 
 so strongly by death. She felt she had known him 
 for ever. She felt that since the beginning of time 
 she and he had been advancing hand in hand towards 
 just this place, towards just this house and garden, 
 towards just this year, this August, this moment 
 of existence. 
 
 Wemyss dropped quite naturally into the place a 
 near male relative would have been in if there had 
 been a near male relative within reach; and his relief 
 at having something to do, something practical and 
 immediate, was so immense that never were funeral 
 
 19 
 
20 VERA 
 
 arrangements made with greater zeal and energy,— 
 really one might almost say with greater gusto. Fresh 
 from the horrors of those other funeral arrangements, 
 clouded as they had been by the silences of friends 
 and the averted looks of neighbours—all owing to the 
 idiotic jurors and their hesitations, and the vindictive- 
 ness of that woman because, he concluded, he had re- 
 fused to raise her wages the previous month—what he 
 was arranging now was so simple and straightforward 
 that it positively was a pleasure. There were no 
 anxieties, there were no worries, and there was a 
 grateful little girl. After each fruitful visit to the 
 undertaker, and he paid several in his zeal, he came 
 back to Lucy and she was grateful; and she was not 
 only grateful, but very obviously glad to get him back. 
 
 He saw she didn’t like it when he went away, off along 
 the top of the cliff on his various business visits, purpose 
 in each step, a different being from the indignantly 
 miserable person who had dragged about that very 
 cliff killing time such a little while before; he could see 
 she didn’t like it. She knew he had to go, she was 
 grateful and immensely expressive of her gratitude— 
 Wemyss thought he had never met any one so ex- 
 pressively grateful—that he should so diligently go, but 
 she didn’t like it. He saw she didn’t like it; he saw 
 that she clung to him; and it pleased him. 
 
 “Don’t be long,’? she murmured each time, looking 
 at him with eyes of entreaty; and when he got back, 
 and stood before her again mopping his forehead, hav- 
 ing triumphantly advanced the funeral arrangements 
 
VERA 21 
 
 another stage, a faint colour came into her face and 
 she had the relieved eyes of a child who has been 
 left alone in the dark and sees its mother coming in 
 with a candle. Vera usedn’t to look like that. Vera 
 had accepted everything he did for her as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 Naturally he wasn’t going to let the poor little girl 
 sleep alone in that house with a dead body, and the 
 strange servants who had been hired together with the 
 house and knew nothing either about her or her father 
 probably getting restive as night drew on, and as likely 
 as not bolting to the village; so he fetched his things 
 from the primitive hotel down in the cove about seven 
 o’clock and announced his intention of sleeping on the 
 drawing-room sofa. He had lunched with her, and had 
 had tea with her, and now was going to dine with her. 
 What she would have done without him Wemyss couldn’t 
 think. 
 
 He felt he was being delicate and tactful in this 
 about the drawing-room sofa. He might fairly have 
 claimed the spare-room bed; but he wasn’t going to 
 take any advantage, not the smallest, of the poor little 
 girl’s situation. The servants, who supposed him to be 
 a relation and had supposed him to be that from the 
 first moment they saw him, big and middle-aged, hold- 
 ing the young lady’s hand under the mulberry tree, 
 were surprised at having to make up a bed in the 
 drawing-room when there were two spare-rooms with 
 beds already in them upstairs, but did so obediently, 
 vaguely imagining: it had something to do with watchful- 
 
22 VERA 
 
 ness and French windows; and Lucy, when he told her 
 he was going to stay the night, was so grateful, so 
 really thankful, that her eyes, red from the waves 
 of grief that had engulfed her at intervals during the 
 afternoon—ever since, that is, the sight of her dead 
 father lying so remote from her, so wrapped, it seemed, 
 in a deep, absorbed attentiveness, had unfrozen her 
 and swept her away into a sea of passionate weeping— 
 filled again with tears, 
 
 “Oh,” she murmured, “how good you are——” 
 
 It was Wemyss who had done all the thinking for 
 her, and in the spare moments between his visits to 
 the undertaker about the arrangements, and to the 
 doctor about the certificate, and to the vicar about the 
 burial, had telegraphed to her only existing relative, 
 an aunt, had sent the obituary notice to The Times, 
 and had even reminded her that she had on a blue 
 frock and asked if she hadn’t better put on a black 
 one; and now this last instance of his thoughtfulness 
 overwhelmed her. 
 
 She had been dreading the night, hardly daring to 
 think of it so much did she dread it; and each time he 
 had gone away on his errands, through her heart crept 
 the thought of what it would be like when dusk came 
 and he went away for the last time and she would be 
 alone, all alone in the silent house, and upstairs that 
 strange, wonderful, absorbed thing that used to be her 
 father, and whatever happened to her, whatever awful 
 horror overcame her in the night, whatever danger, he 
 
VERA 23 
 
 wouldn’t hear, he wouldn’t know, he would still lie there 
 content, content... . 
 
 “How good you are!’ she said to Wemyss, her red 
 eyes filling. ‘What would I have done without you?” 
 
 “But what would I have done without you?’ he 
 answered; and they stared at each other, astonished 
 at the nature of the bond between them, at its closeness, 
 at the way it seemed almost miraculously to have been 
 arranged that they should meet on the crest of despair 
 and save each other. 
 
 Till long after the stars were out they sat together 
 on the edge of the cliff, Wemyss smoking while he talked, 
 in a voice subdued by the night and the silence and the 
 occasion, of his life and of the regular healthy calm 
 with which it had proceeded till a week ago. Why this 
 calm should have been interrupted, and so cruelly, he 
 couldn’t imagine. It wasn’t as if he had deserved it. 
 He didn’t know that a man could ever be justified 
 in saying that he had done good, but he, Wemyss, could 
 at least fairly say that he hadn’t done any one any 
 harm. 
 
 “Oh, but you have done good,” said Lucy, her voice, 
 too, dropped into more than ordinary gentleness by the 
 night, the silence, and the occasion; besides which it 
 vibrated with feeling, it was lovely with seriousness, 
 with simple conviction. “Always, always I know that 
 you’ve been doing good,” she said, “being kind. I can’t 
 imagine you anything else but a help to people and 
 a comfort.” 
 
 And Wemyss said, Well, he had done his best and 
 
24 VERA 
 
 tried, and no man could say more, but judging from 
 what—well, what people had said to him, it hadn’t 
 been much of a success sometimes, and often and often 
 he had been hurt, deeply hurt, by being misunderstood. 
 
 And Lucy said, How was it possible to misunderstand 
 him, to misunderstand any one so transparently good, 
 so evidently kind? 
 
 And Wemyss said, Yes, one would think he was 
 easy enough to understand; he was a very natural, 
 simple sort of person, who had only all his life asked 
 for peace and quiet. It wasn’t much to ask. Vera 
 
 “Who is Vera?” asked Lucy. 
 
 “My wife.” 
 
 “Ah, don’t,” said Lucy earnestly, taking his hand 
 very gently in hers. “Don’t talk of that to-night— 
 please don’t let yourself think of it. If I could only, 
 only find the words that would comfort you of 
 
 And Wemyss said that she didn’t need words, that 
 just her being there, being with him, letting him help 
 her, and her not having been mixed up with anything 
 before in his life, was enough. 
 
 ‘“Aren’t we like two children,” he said, his voice, like 
 hers, deepened by feeling, “two scared, unhappy chil- 
 dren, clinging to each other alone in the dark?” 
 
 So they talked on in subdued voices as people do 
 
 
 
 
 
 who are in some holy place, sitting close together, look- 
 ing out at the starlit sea, darkness and coolness gather- 
 ing round them, and the grass smelling sweetly after 
 the hot day, and the little waves, such a long way down, 
 lapping lazily along the shingle, till Wemyss said it 
 
VERA 25 
 
 must be long past bedtime, and she, poor girl, must 
 badly need rest. 
 
 “How old are you?” he asked suddenly, turning to 
 her and scrutinising the delicate faint outline of her 
 face against the night. 
 
 “Twenty-two,” said Lucy. 
 
 “You might just as easily be twelve,’ he said, 
 “except for the sorts of things you say.” 
 
 “It’s my hair,” said Lucy. “My father liked—he 
 liked 
 
 “Don’t,” said Wemyss, in his turn taking her hand. 
 “Don’t cry again. Don’t cry any more to-night. Come 
 —we'll goin. It’s time you were in bed.” 
 
 And he helped her up, and when they got into the 
 light of the hall he saw that she had, this tials success- 
 fully strangled her tears. 
 
 *“Good-night,” she said, when he had lit her candle 
 for her, “‘good-night, and—God bless you.” 
 
 “God bless you,” said Wemyss solemnly, holding her 
 hand in his great warm grip. 
 
 “He has,” said Lucy. “Indeed He has already, in 
 sending me you.” And she smiled up at him. 
 
 For the first time since he had known her—and he 
 too had the feeling that he had known her ever since he 
 could remember—he saw her smile, and the difference 
 it made to her marred, stained face surprised him. 
 
 “Do that again,” he said, staring at her, still holding 
 her hand. 
 
 “Do what?” asked Lucy. 
 
 “Smile,” said Wemyss. 
 
 
 
26 VERA 
 
 Then she laughed; but the sound of it in the silent, 
 brooding house was shocking. 
 
 “Oh,”’ she gasped, stopping short, hanging her head 
 appalled by what it had sounded like. 
 
 “Remember you’re to go to sleep and not think of 
 anything,” Wemyss ordered as she went slowly upstairs. 
 
 And she did fall asleep at once, exhausted but pro- 
 tected, like some desolate baby that had cried itself 
 sick and now had found its mother. 
 
EV; 
 
 LL this, however, came to an end next day 
 a when towards evening Miss Entwhistle, Lucy’s 
 aunt, arrived, 
 
 Wemyss retired to his hotel again and did not 
 reappear till next morning, giving Lucy time to explain 
 him; but either the aunt was inattentive, as she well 
 might be under the circumstances in which she found 
 herself so suddenly, so lamentably placed, or Lucy’s 
 explanations were vague, for Miss Entwhistle took 
 Wemyss for a friend of her dear Jim’s, one of her dear, 
 dear brother’s many friends, and accepted his services 
 as natural and himself with emotion, warmth, and 
 reminiscences. 
 
 Wemyss immediately became her rock as well as 
 Lucy’s, and she in her turn clung to him. Where he 
 had been clung to by one he was now clung to by two, 
 which put an end to talk alone with Lucy. He did not 
 see Lucy alone again once before the funeral, but at 
 least, owing to Miss Entwhistle’s inability to do without 
 him, he didn’t have to spend any more solitary hours. 
 Except breakfast, he had all his meals up in the little 
 house on the cliff, and in the evenings smoked his pipe 
 under the mulberry tree till bedtime sent him away, 
 while Miss Entwhistle in the darkness gently and sol- 
 
 27 
 
28 VERA 
 
 emnly reminisced, and Lucy sat silent, as close to him 
 as she could get. 
 
 The funeral was hurried on by the doctor’s advice, 
 but even so the short notice and the long distance did 
 not prevent James Entwhistle’s friends from coming to 
 it. The small church down in the cove was packed; 
 the small hotel bulged with concerned, grave-faced 
 people. Wemyss, who had done everything and been 
 everything, disappeared in this crowd. Nobody noticed 
 him. None of James Entwhistle’s friends happened— 
 luckily, he felt, with last week’s newspapers still fresh 
 in the public mind—to be his. For twenty-four hours 
 he was swept entirely away from Lucy by this surge of 
 mourners, and at the service in the church could only 
 catch a distant glimpse, from his seat by the door, of 
 her bowed head in the front pew. 
 
 He felt very lonely again. He wouldn’t have stayed 
 in the church a minute, for he objected with a healthy 
 impatience to the ceremonies of death, if it hadn’t been 
 that he regarded himself as the stage-manager, so 
 to speak, of these particular ceremonies, and that it 
 was in a peculiarly intimate sense his funeral. He 
 took a pride in it. Considering the shortness of the 
 time it really was a remarkable achievement, the way 
 he had done it, the smooth way the whole thing was 
 going, But to-morrow,—what would happen to-mor- 
 row, when all these people had gone away again? 
 Would they take Lucy and the aunt with them? Would 
 the house up there be shut, and he, Wemyss, left alone 
 again with his bitter, miserable recollections? He 
 
VERA 29 
 
 wouldn’t, of course, stay on in that place if Lucy were 
 to go, but wherever he went there would be emptiness 
 without her, without her gratefulness, and gentleness, 
 and clinging. Comforting and being comforted,—that 
 is what he and she had been doing to each other for 
 four days, and he couldn’t but believe she would feel 
 the same emptiness without him that he knew he was 
 going to feel without her. 
 
 In the dark under the mulberry tree, while her aunt 
 talked softly and sadly of the past, Wemyss had some- 
 times laid his hand on Lucy’s, and she had never taken 
 hers away. They had sat there, content and comforted 
 to be hand in hand. She had the trust in him, he felt, 
 of a child; the confidence, and the knowledge that she 
 was safe. He was proud and touched to know it, and 
 it warmed him through and through to see how her 
 face lit up whenever he appeared. Vera’s face hadn’t 
 done that. Vera had never understood him, not with 
 fifteen years to do it in, as this girl had in half a day. 
 And the way Vera had died,—it was no use mincing 
 matters when it came to one’s own thoughts, and it had 
 been all of a piece with her life: the disregard for 
 others and of anything said to her for her own good, 
 the determination to do what suited her, to lean out of 
 dangerous windows if she wished to, for instance, not to 
 take the least trouble, the least thought. . . . Imagine 
 _ bringing such horror on him, such unforgettable horror, 
 besides worries and unhappiness without end, by de- 
 liberately disregarding his warnings, his orders in- 
 deed, about that window. Wemyss did feel that if 
 
30 VERA 
 
 one looked at the thing dispassionately it would be 
 difficult to find indifference to the wishes and feelings 
 of others going further. 
 
 Sitting in the church during the funeral service, 
 his arms folded on his chest and his mouth grim with 
 these thoughts, he suddenly caught sight of Lucy’s 
 face. The priest was coming down the aisle in front of 
 the coffin on the way out to the grave, and Lucy and 
 her aunt were following first behind it, 
 
 Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to 
 live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut 
 down, like a flower; he fleeth as tt were a shadow, and 
 never contimueth m one stay... . 
 
 The priest’s sad, disillusioned voice recited the 
 beautiful words as he walked, the afternoon sun from 
 the west window and the open west door pouring on 
 his face and on the faces of the procession that seemed 
 all black and white,—black clothes, white faces. 
 
 The whitest face was Lucy’s, and when Wemyss 
 saw the look on it his mouth relaxed and his heart went 
 soft within him, and he came impulsively out of the 
 shadow and joined her, boldly walking on her other side 
 at the head of the procession, and standing beside her at 
 the grave; and at the awful moment when the first earth 
 was dropped on to the coffin he drew her hand, before 
 everybody, through his arm and held it there tight. 
 
 Nobody was surprised at his standing there with 
 her like that. It was taken quite for granted. He was 
 evidently a relation of poor Jim’s. Nor was anybody 
 surprised when Wemyss, not letting her go again, took 
 
VERA 31 
 
 her home up the cliff, her arm in his just as though he 
 were the chief mourner, the aunt following with some 
 one else. 
 
 He didn’t speak to her or disturb her with any claims 
 on her attention, partly because the path was very 
 steep and he wasn’t used to cliffs, but also because of 
 his feeling that he and she, isolated together by their 
 sorrows, understood without any words. And when they 
 reached the house, the first to reach it from the church 
 just as if, he couldn’t help thinking, they were coming 
 back from their wedding, he told her in his firmest voice 
 to go straight up to her room and lie down, and she 
 obeyed with the sweet obedience of perfect trust. 
 
 “Who is that?’ asked the man who was helping 
 Miss Entwhistle up the cliff, 
 
 “Oh, a very old friend of darling Jim’s,”’ she sobbed, 
 —she had been sobbing without stopping from the first 
 words of the burial service, and was quite unable to 
 leave off. “Mr.—Mr.—We—We—Wenmyss 4 
 
 “Wemyss? I don’t remember coming across him 
 with Jim.” 
 
 “Oh, one of his—his oldest—f—fr—triends,” sobbed 
 poor Miss Entwhistle, got completely out of control. 
 
 Wemyss, continuing in his réle of chief mourner, was 
 the only person who was asked to spend the evening 
 up at the bereaved house. 
 
 “T don’t wonder,” said Miss Entwhistle to him at 
 dinner, still with tears in her voice, “at my dear 
 brother’s devotion to you. You have been the greatest 
 help, the greatest comfort sit 
 
 
 
 
 
32 VERA 
 
 And neither Wemyss nor Lucy felt equal to ex- 
 planation. | 
 
 What did it matter? Lucy, fatigued by emotions, 
 her mind bruised by the violent demands that had 
 been made on it the last four days, sat drooping at 
 the table, and merely thought that if her father had 
 known Wemyss it would certainly have been true that 
 he was devoted to him. He hadn’t known him; he 
 had missed him by—yes, by just three hours; and this 
 wonderful friend of hers was the very first good thing 
 that she and her father hadn’t shared. And Wemyss’s 
 attitude was simply that if people insist on jumping at 
 conclusions, why, let them. He couldn’t anyhow begin 
 to expound himself in the middle of a meal, with a 
 parlourmaid handing dishes round and listening. 
 
 But there was an awkward little moment when Miss 
 Entwhistle tearfully wondered—she was eating blanc- 
 mange, the last of a series of cold and pallid dishes with 
 which the imaginative cook, a woman of Celtic origin, 
 had expressed her respectful appreciation of the occa- 
 sion—whether when the will was read it wouldn’t be 
 found that Jim had appointed Mr. Wemyss poor Lucy’s 
 guardian. 
 
 “TI am—dear me, how very hard it is to remember 
 to say I was—my dear brother’s only relative. We 
 belong—belonged to an exiguous family, and naturally 
 I’m no longer as young as I was. There is only—was 
 only—a year between Jim and me, and at any moment 
 I may be——” 
 
VERA 33 
 
 Here Miss Entwhistle was interrupted by a sob, and 
 had to put down her spoon. 
 
 *‘_taken,” she finished after a moment, during which 
 the other two sat silent. 
 
 “When this happens,” she went on presently, a little 
 recovered, “poor Lucy will be without any one, unless 
 Jim thought of this and has appointed a guardian. 
 You, Mr. Weymss, I hope and expect.” 
 
 Neither Lucy nor Wemyss spoke. ‘There was the 
 parlourmaid hovering, and one couldn’t anyhow go 
 into explanations now which ought to have been made 
 four days ago. 
 
 A dead-white cheese was handed round,—something 
 local probably, for it wasn’t any form of cheese with 
 which Wemyss was acquainted, and the meal ended 
 with cups of intensely black cold coffee. And all these 
 carefully thought-out expressions of the cook’s sym- 
 pathy were lost on the three, who noticed nothing; 
 certainly they noticed nothing in the way the cook had 
 intended. Wemyss was privately a little put out by the 
 coffee being cold. He had eaten all the other clammy 
 things patiently, but a man likes his after-dinner coffee 
 hot, and it was new in his experience to have it served 
 cold. He did notice this, and was surprised that neither 
 of his companions appeared to. But there,—women 
 were notoriously insensitive to food; on this point the 
 best of them were unintelligent, and the worst of them 
 were impossible. Vera had been awful about it; he had 
 had to do all the ordering of the meals himself at last, 
 and also the engaging of the cooks. 
 
34 VERA 
 
 He got up from the table to open the door for the 
 ladies feeling inwardly chilled, feeling, as he put it to 
 himself, slabby inside; and, left alone with a dish of 
 black plums and some sinister-looking wine in a de- 
 canter, which he avoided because when he took hold of 
 it ice clinked, he rang the bell as unobtrusively as he 
 could and asked the parlourmaid in a subdued voice, the 
 French window to the garden being open and in the 
 garden being Lucy and her aunt, whether there were 
 such a thing in the house as a whisky and soda. 
 
 The parlourmaid, who was a nice-looking girl and 
 much more at home, as she herself was the first to admit, 
 with gentlemen than with ladies, brought it him, and 
 inquired how he had liked the dinner. 
 
 “Not at all,’ said Wemyss, whose mind on that point 
 was clear. 
 
 “No sir,” said the parlourmaid, nodding sympa- 
 thetically. ‘No sir.” 
 
 She then explained in a discreet whisper, also with 
 one eye on the open window, how the dinner hadn’t 
 been an ordinary dinner and it wasn’t expected that it 
 should be enjoyed, but it was the cook’s tribute to her 
 late master’s burial day,—a master they had only 
 known a week, sad to say, but to whom they had both 
 taken a great fancy, he being so pleasant-spoken and 
 all for giving no trouble. 
 
 Wemyss listened, sipping the comforting drink and 
 smoking a cigar. 
 
 Very different, said the parlourmaid, who seemed glad 
 to talk, would the dinner have been if the cook hadn’t 
 
VERA 35 
 
 liked the poor gentleman. Why, in one place where she 
 and the cook were together, and the lady was taken 
 just as the cook would have given notice if she hadn’t 
 been because she was such a very dishonest and un- 
 punctual lady, besides not knowing her place—no lady, 
 of course, and never was—when she was taken, not 
 sudden like this poor gentleman but bit by bit, on the 
 day of her funeral the cook sent up a dinner you’d never 
 think of,—she was like that, all fancy. Lucky it was 
 that the family didn’t read between the lines, for it 
 began with fried soles 
 
 The parlourmaid paused, her eye anxiously on the 
 window. Wemyss sat staring at her. 
 
 “Did you say fried soles?” he asked, staring at her. 
 
 “Yes sir. Fried soles. I didn’t see anything in that 
 either at first. It’s how you spell it makes the differ- 
 ence, Cook said. And the next course was’”—her voice 
 dropped almost to inaudibleness—‘“‘devilled bones.” 
 
 Wemyss hadn’t so much as smiled for nearly a fort- 
 night, and now to his horror, for what could it possibly 
 sound like to the two mourners on the lawn, he gave a 
 sudden dreadful roar of laughter. He could hear it 
 sounding hideous himself, 
 
 The noise he made horrified the parlourmaid as 
 much as it did him. She flew to the window and shut 
 it. Wemyss, in his effort to strangle the horrid thing, 
 choked and coughed, his table-napkin up to his face, 
 his body contorted. He was very red, and the parlour- 
 maid watched him in terror. He had seemed at first 
 to be laughing, though what Uncle Wemyss (thus did 
 
 
 
36 VERA 
 
 he figure in the conversations of the kitchen) could see 
 to laugh at in the cook’s way of getting her own back, 
 the parlourmaid, whose flesh had crept when she first 
 heard the story, couldn’t understand; but presently 
 she feared he wasn’t laughing at all but was being, in 
 some very robust way, ill. Dread seized her, deaths 
 being on her mind, lest perhaps here in the chair, so 
 convulsively struggling behind a table-napkin, were 
 the beginnings of yet another corpse. Having flown to 
 shut the window she now flew to open it, and ran out 
 panic-stricken into the garden to fetch the ladies. 
 
 This cured Wemyss. He got up quickly, leaving his 
 half-smoked cigar and half-drunk whisky, and followed 
 her out just in time to meet Lucy and her aunt hurrying 
 across the lawn towards the dining-room window. 
 
 “I choked,” he said, wiping his eyes which indeed 
 were very wet. 
 
 “Choked?” repeated Miss Entwhistle anxiously. 
 “We heard a most strange noise——” 
 
 “That was me choking,’ said Wemyss. “It’s all 
 
 right—it’s nothing at all,’ he added to Lucy, who was 
 looking at him with a face of extreme concern. 
 
 But he felt now that he had had about as much of 
 the death and funeral atmosphere as he could stand. 
 Reaction had set in, and his reactions were strong. He 
 wanted to get away from woe, to be with normal, 
 cheerful people again, to have done with conditions in 
 which a laugh was the most improper of sounds. Here 
 
 he was, being held down by the head, he felt, in a black 
 
VERA 37 
 
 swamp,—first that ghastly business of Vera’s and now 
 this woebegone family. 
 
 Sudden and violent was Wemyss’s reaction, let loose 
 by the parlourmaid’s story. Miss Entwhistle’s swollen 
 eyes annoyed him, Even Lucy’s pathetic face made 
 him impatient. It was against nature, all this. It 
 shouldn’t be allowed to go on, it oughtn’t to be en- 
 couraged. Heaven alone knew how much he had 
 suffered, how much more he had suffered than the 
 Entwhistles with their perfectly normal sorrow, and if 
 he could feel it was high time now to think of other 
 things surely the Entwhistles could. He was tired of 
 funerals. He had carried this one through really 
 brilliantly from start to finish, but now it was over and 
 done with, and he wished to get back to naturalness. 
 Death seemed to him highly unnatural. The mere fact 
 that it only happened once to everybody showed how 
 exceptional it was, thought Wemyss, thoroughly dis- 
 gusted with it. Why couldn’t he and the Entwhistles 
 go off somewhere to-morrow, away from this place 
 altogether, go abroad for a bit, to somewhere cheerful, 
 where nobody knew them and nobody would expect 
 them to go about with long faces all day? Ostend, for 
 instance? His mood of sympathy and gentleness had 
 for the moment quite gone. He was indignant that 
 there should be circumstances under which a man felt 
 as guilty over a laugh as over acrime. A natural per- 
 son like himself looked at things wholesomely. It was 
 healthy and proper to forget horrors, to dismiss them 
 from one’s mind. If convention, that offspring of 
 
38 VERA 
 
 cruelty and hypocrisy, insisted that one’s misfortunes 
 should be well rubbed in, that one should be forced to 
 smart under them, and that the more one was seen to 
 wince the more one was regarded as behaving creditably, 
 —if convention insisted on this, and it did insist, as 
 Wemyss had been experiencing himself since Vera’s 
 accident, why then it ought to be defied. He had 
 found he couldn’t defy it by himself, and came away 
 solitary and wretched in accordance with what it 
 expected, but he felt quite different now that he had 
 Lucy and her aunt as trusting friends who looked up to 
 him, who had no doubts of him and no criticisms. 
 Health of mind had come back to him,—his own nat- 
 ural wholesomeness, which had never deserted him in 
 his life till this shocking business of Vera’s. 
 
 “Id like to have some sensible talk with you,” he 
 said, looking down at the two small black figures and 
 solemn tired faces that were growing dim and wraith- 
 like in the failing light of the garden. 
 
 “With me or with Lucy?” asked Miss Entwhistle. 
 
 By this time they both hung on his possible wishes, 
 and watched him with the devout attentiveness of a 
 pair of dogs. 
 
 “With you and with Lucy,” said Wemyss, smiling 
 at the upturned faces. He felt very conscious of being 
 the male, of being in command, 
 
 It was the first time he had called her Lucy. To Miss 
 Entwhistle it seemed a matter of course, but Lucy 
 herself flushed with pleasure, and again had the feeling 
 of being taken care of and safe. Sad as she was at the 
 
VERA 39 
 
 end of that sad day, she still was able to notice how nice 
 her very ordinary name sounded in his kind man’s voice. 
 She wondered what his own name was, and hoped it 
 was something worthy of him,—not Albert, for in- 
 stance. 
 
 “Shall we go into the drawing-room?” asked Miss 
 Entwhistle. 
 
 “Why not to the mulberry tree?” said Wemyss, who 
 naturally wished to hold Lucy’s little hand if possible, 
 and could only do that in the dark. 
 
 So they sat there as they had sat other nights, 
 Wemyss in the middle, and Lucy’s hand, when it got 
 dark enough, held close and comfortingly in his. 
 
 “This little girl,” he began, ‘‘must get the roses back 
 into her cheeks.” 
 
 “Indeed, indeed she must,” agreed Miss Entwhistle, 
 a catch in her voice at the mere reminder of the absence 
 of Lucy’s roses, and consequently of what had driven 
 them away. 
 
 “How do you propose to set about it?” asked 
 Wemyss. 
 
 “Time,” gulped Miss Entwhistle. 
 
 “Time?” 
 
 “And patience. We must wait—we must both wait 
 p-patiently till time has s-softened 6 
 
 She hastily pulled out her handkerchief. 
 
 ‘No, no,’ said Wemyss, “I don’t at all agree. It 
 isn’t natural, it isn’t reasonable to prolong sorrow. 
 You'll forgive plain words, Miss Entwhistle, but I don’t 
 know any others, and I say it isn’t right to wallow— 
 
 
 
40 VERA 
 
 yes, wallow—in sorrow. Far from being patient one 
 should be impatient. One shouldn’t wait resignedly for 
 time to help one, one should up and take time by the 
 forelock. In cases of this kind, and believe me I know 
 what I’m talking about”’—it wa’s here that his hand, the 
 one on the further side from Miss Entwhistle, descended 
 gently on Lucy’s, and she made a little movement closer 
 up to him—“‘it is due to oneself to refuse to be knocked 
 out. Courage, spirit, is what one must aim at,—setting 
 an example.” 
 
 Ah, how wonderful he was, thought Lucy; so big, 
 so brave, so simple, and so tragically recently himself 
 the victim of the most awful of catastrophes. There 
 was something burly about his very talk. Her darling 
 father and his friends had talked quite differently. 
 Their talk used to seem as if it ran about the room like 
 liquid fire, it was so quick and shining; often it was 
 quite beyond her till her father afterwards, when she 
 asked him, explained it, put it more simply for her, 
 eager as he always was that she should share and under- 
 stand. She could understand every word of Wemyss’s. 
 When he spoke she hadn’t to strain, to listen with all 
 her might; she hardly had to think at all. She found 
 this immensely reposeful in her present state. 
 
 “Yes,’? murmured Miss Entwhistle into her handker- 
 chief, “‘yes—you’re quite right, Mr. Wemyss—one 
 ought—it would be more—more heroic. But then if 
 one—if one has loved some one very tenderly—as I did 
 my dear brother—and Lucy her most precious 
 father 4 
 
 
 
VERA 41 
 
 She broke off and wiped her eyes. 
 
 “Perhaps,” she finished, “‘you haven’t ever loved 
 anybody very—very particularly and lost them.” 
 
 “Oh,” breathed Lucy at that, and moved still closer 
 to him. 
 
 Wemyss was deeply injured. Why should Miss 
 Entwhistle suppose he had never particularly loved 
 anybody? He seemed, on looking back, to have loved 
 a great deal. Certainly he had loved Vera with the 
 utmost devotion till she herself wore it down. He in- 
 dignantly asked himself what this maiden lady could 
 know of love. 
 
 But there was Lucy’s little hand, so clinging, so 
 understanding, nestling in his. It soothed him. 
 
 There was a pause. Then he said, very gravely, 
 “My wife died only a fortnight ago.” 
 
 Miss Entwhistle was crushed. “Ah,” she cried, “but 
 you must forgive me——” 
 
V 
 
 EVERTHELESS he was not able to persuade 
 N her to join him, with Lucy, in a trip abroad. 
 She was tirelessly concerned to do and say 
 everything she could that showed her deep sympathy 
 with him in his loss—he had told her nothing beyond 
 the bare fact, and she was not one to read about 
 inquests—and her deep sense of obligation to him that 
 he, labouring under so great a burden of sorrow of 
 his own, should have helped them with such devotion and 
 unselfishness in theirs; but she wouldn’t go abroad. 
 She was going, she said, to her little house in London 
 with Lucy. 
 
 “What, in August?” exclaimed Wemyss. 
 
 Yes, they would be quiet there, and indeed they were 
 both worn out and only wished for solitude. 
 
 “Then why not stay here?” asked Wemyss, who 
 now considered Lucy’s aunt selfish. ‘This is solitary 
 enough, in all conscience.” 
 
 No, they neither of them felt they could bear to 
 stay in that house. Lucy must go to the place least 
 connected in her mind with her father. Indeed, indeed 
 it was best. She did so understand and appreciate 
 Mr. Wemyss’s wonderful and unselfish motives m 
 suggesting the continent, but she and Lucy were in that 
 
 49 : 
 
VERA 43 
 
 state when the idea of a hotel and waiters and a band 
 was simply impossible to them, and all they wished was 
 to creep into the quiet and privacy of their own nest,— 
 “Like wounded birds,” said poor Miss Entwhistle, 
 looking up at him with much the piteous expression of 
 a dog lifting an injured paw. 
 
 “It’s very bad for Lucy to be encouraged to think 
 she’s a wounded bird,” said Wemyss, controlling his 
 disappointment as best he could. 
 
 “You must come and see us in London and help us 
 to feel heroic,” said Miss Entwhistle, with a watery 
 smile. | 
 
 “But I can come and see you much better and easier 
 if you’re here,’ persisted Wemyss. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle, however, though watery, was deter- 
 mined. She refused to stay where she so conveniently 
 was, and Wemyss now considered Lucy’s aunt obstinate 
 as well as selfish. Also he thought her very ungrateful. 
 She had made use of him, and now was going to leave 
 him, without apparently giving him a thought, in the 
 lurch. 
 
 He was having a good deal of Miss Entwhistle, 
 because during the two days that came after the funeral 
 Lucy was practically invisible, engaged in collecting 
 and packing her father’s belongings. Wemyss hung 
 about the garden, not knowing when these activities 
 mightn’t suddenly cease and not wishing to miss her if 
 she did come out, and Miss Entwhistle, who couldn’t 
 help Lucy in this—no one could help her in the heart- 
 breaking work—naturally joined him. 
 
AA VERA 
 
 He found these two days long. Miss Entwhistle felt 
 there was a great bond between herself and him, and 
 Wemyss felt there wasn’t. When she said there was 
 he had difficulty in not contradicting her. Not only, 
 Miss Entwhistle felt, and also explained, was there the 
 bond of their dear Jim, whom both she and Mr. Wemyss 
 had so much loved, but there was this communion of 
 sorrow,—the loss of his wife, the loss of her brother, 
 within the same fortnight. 
 
 Wemyss shut his mouth tight at this and said 
 nothing. | 
 
 How natural for her, feeling so sorry for him, feeling 
 so grateful to him, when from a window during those 
 two days she beheld him sitting solitary beneath the 
 mulberry tree, to go down and sit there with him; how 
 natural that, when he got up, made restless, she sup- 
 posed, by his memories, and began to pace the lawn, 
 she should get up and sympathetically pace it too. She 
 could not let this kind, tender-hearted man—he must 
 be that, or Jim wouldn’t have been fond of him, besides 
 she had seen it for herself in the way he had helped her 
 and Lucy—she could not let him be alone with his sad 
 thoughts. And he had a double burden of sad thoughts, 
 a double loss to bear, for he had lost her dear brother 
 as well as his poor wife. 
 
 All Entwhistles were compassionate, and as she and 
 Wemyss sat together or together paced, she kept up a 
 flow of gentle loving-kindness. Wemyss smoked his 
 _ pipe in practically unbroken silence. This was his way 
 when he was holding on to himself. Miss Entwhistle 
 
VERA 45 
 
 of course didn’t know he was holding on to himself, and 
 taking his silence for the inarticulateness of deep un- 
 happiness was so much touched that she would have 
 done anything for him, anything that might bring this 
 poor, kind, suffering fellow-creature comfort—except 
 go to Ostend. From that dreadful suggestion she 
 continued to shudder away; nor, though he tried 
 again, even after all arrangements for leaving Cornwall 
 had been made, would she be persuaded to stay where 
 she was. 
 
 Therefore Wemyss was forced to conclude that she 
 was obstinate as well as selfish; and if it hadn’t been 
 for the brief moments at meals when Lucy appeared, 
 and through her unhappiness—what she was doing was 
 obviously depressing her very much—smiled faintly at 
 him and always went and sat as near him as she could, 
 he would have found these two days intolerable. 
 
 How atrocious, he thought, while he smoked in silence 
 and held on to himself, that Lucy should be taken away 
 from him by a mere maiden lady, an aunt, an unmarried 
 aunt,—weakest and most negligible, surely of all 
 relatives. How atrocious that such a person should 
 have any right to come between him and Lucy, to say 
 she wouldn’t do this, that, or the other that Wemyss 
 proposed, and thus possess the power to make him 
 unhappy. Miss Entwhistle was so little that he could 
 have brushed her aside with the back of one hand; yet 
 here again the strong monster public opinion stepped 
 in and forced him to acquiesce in any plan she chose to 
 make for Lucy, however desolate it left him, merely 
 
46 VERA 
 
 because she stood to her in the anemic relationship of 
 aunt. | 
 
 During two mortal days, as he waited about in that 
 garden so grievously infested by Miss Entwhistle, 
 sounds of boxes being moved and drawers being opened 
 and shut came through the windows, but except at 
 meals there was no Lucy. He could have borne it if 
 he hadn’t known they were the very last days he would 
 be with her, but as things were it seemed cruel that he 
 should be left like that to be miserable. Why should 
 he be left like that to be miserable, just because of a lot 
 of clothes and papers? he asked himself; and he felt 
 he was getting thoroughly tired of Jim. 
 
 “Haven't you done yet?” he said at tea on the 
 second afternoon of this sorting out and packing, when 
 Lucy got up to go indoors again, leaving him with Miss 
 Entwhistle, even before he had finished his second cup 
 of tea. 
 
 “You’ve no idea what a lot there is,”’ she said, her 
 voice sounding worn out; and she lingered a moment, 
 her hand on the back of her aunt’s chair. “Father 
 brought all his notes with him, and heaps and heaps of 
 letters from people he was consulting, and I’m trying 
 to get them straight—get them as he would have 
 wished. y 
 
 Miss Entwhistle put up her hand and stroked Lucy’s 
 arm. 
 
 “Tf you weren’t in this hurry to go away you’d have 
 had more time and done it comfortably,” said Wemyss. 
 
 “Oh, but I don’t want more time,” said Lucy quickly. 
 
 
 
VERA AT 
 
 “Lucy means she couldn’t bear it drawn out,” said 
 Miss Entwhistle, leaning her thin cheek against Lucy’s 
 sleeve. ‘‘These things—they tear one’s heart. And 
 nobody can help her. She has to go through with it 
 alone.” And she drew Lucy’s face down to hers and 
 held it there a moment, gently stroking it, the tears 
 brimming up again in the eyes of both. 
 
 Always tears, thought Wemyss. Yes, and there 
 always would be tears as long as that aunt had hold of 
 Lucy. She was the arch-wallower, he told himself, 
 filling his pipe in silence after Lucy had gone in. 
 
 He got up and went out at the gate and crossed the 
 road and stood staring at the evening sea. Should he 
 hear steps coming after him and Miss Entwhistle were 
 to follow him even beyond the garden, he would proceed 
 without looking round down to the cove and to the inn, 
 where she must needs leave him alone. He had had 
 enough. That Miss Entwhistle should explain to him 
 what Lucy meant, he considered to be the last straw 
 of her behaviour. Barging in, he said indignantly to 
 himself ; barging in when nobody had asked her opinion 
 or explanation of anything. And she had stroked 
 Lucy’s face as though Lucy and her face and every- 
 thing about her belonged to her, merely because she 
 happened to be her aunt. Fancy explaining to him 
 what Lucy really meant, taking upon herself the 
 functions of interpreter, of go-between, when for a 
 whole day and a half before she appeared on the scene 
 —and she had only appeared on it at all thanks to his 
 
48 VERA 
 
 telegram—Lucy and he had been in the closest fellow- 
 ship, the closest communion. .. . 
 
 Well, things couldn’t go on like this. He was not the 
 man to be dominated by a relative. If he had lived 
 in those sensible ancient days when people behaved 
 wholesomely, he would have flung Lucy over his shoulder 
 and walked off with her to Ostend or Paris and laughed 
 at such insects as aunts. He couldn’t do that unfor- 
 tunately, though where the harm would be in two 
 mourners like himself and Lucy going together in search 
 of relief he must say he was unable to see. Why should 
 they be condemned to search for relief separately? 
 Their sorrows, surely, would be their chaperone, es- 
 pecially his sorrow. Nobody would object to Lucy’s 
 nursing him, supposing he were dangerously ill; why 
 should she not be equally beyond the reach of tongues if 
 she nursed the bitter wounds of his spirit? 
 
 He heard steps coming down the garden path to the 
 gate. There, he thought, was the aunt again, searching 
 for him, and he stood squarely and firmly with his back 
 to the road, smoking his pipe and staring at the sea. If 
 he heard the gate open and she dared to come through 
 it he would instantly walk away. In the garden he 
 had to endure being joined by her, because there he was 
 in the position of guest; but let hex try to join him on 
 the King’s highway! 
 
 Nobody opened the gate, however, and, as he heard 
 no retreating footsteps either, after a minute he began 
 to want to look around. He struggled against this wish, 
 because the moment Miss Entwhistle caught his eye 
 
VERA 49 
 
 she would come out to him, he felt sure. But Wemyss 
 was not much good at struggling against his wishes,— 
 he usually met with defeat; and after briefly doing so 
 on this occasion he did look around. And what a good 
 thing he did, for it was Lucy. 
 
 There she was, leaning on the gate just as she had 
 been the first morning, but this time her eyes instead of 
 being wide and blank were watching him with a deep 
 and touching interest. 
 
 He got across the road in one stride. “Lucy!’? he 
 exclaimed. “You? Why didn’t you call me? We’ve 
 wasted half an hour < 
 
 
 
 “About two minutes,” she said, smiling up at him as 
 he, on the other side of the gate, folded both her hands 
 in his just as he had done that first morning; and the 
 relief it was to Wemyss to see her again alone, to see 
 that smile of trust and—surely—content in getting 
 back to him! 
 
 Then her face went grave again. “I’ve finished 
 father’s things now,” she said, “‘and so I came to look 
 for you.” 
 
 “Lucy, how can you leave me,” was Wemyss’s answer 
 to that, his voice vibrating, “how can you go away from 
 me to-morrow and hand me over again to the torments 
 —yes, torments, I was in before?” 
 
 “But I have to go,” she said, distressed. “And you 
 mustn’t say that. You mustn’t let yourself be like that 
 again. You won’t be, I know—~you’re so brave and 
 strong.” 
 
 “Not without you. I’m nothing without you,’ 
 
 > said 
 
50 VERA 
 
 Wemyss; and his eyes, as he searched hers, were full 
 of tears. ( 
 
 At this Lucy flushed, and then, staring at him, her 
 face went slowly white. These words of his, the way 
 he said them, reminded her—oh no, it wasn’t possible; 
 he and she stood in a relationship to each other like 
 none, she was sure, that had ever yet been. It was 
 an intimacy arrived at at a bound, with no preliminary 
 steps. It was a holy thing, based on mutual grief, 
 protected from everything ordinary by the great wings 
 of Death. He was her wonderful friend, big in his 
 simplicity, all care for her and goodness, a very rock 
 of refuge and shelter in the wilderness she had been 
 flung into when he found her. And that he, bleeding 
 as he was himself from the lacerations of the violent 
 rending asunder from his wife to whom he had been, 
 as he had told her, devoted, that he should—oh no, 
 it wasn’t possible; and she hung her head, shocked at 
 her thoughts. For the way he had said those words, 
 and the words themselves, had reminded her—no, she 
 could hardly bear to think it, but they had reminded 
 her of the last time’ she had been proposed to. The 
 man—he was a young man; she had never been 
 proposed to by any one even approximately Wemyss’s 
 age—had said almost exactly that: Without you I am 
 nothing. And just in that same deep, vibrating voice. 
 
 How dreadful thoughts could be, Lucy said to her- 
 self, overcome that such a one at such a moment 
 should thrust itself into her mind. Hateful of her, 
 hateful, ... 
 
VERA 51 
 
 She hung her head in shame; and Wemyss, looking 
 down at the little bobbed head with its bright, thick 
 young hair bent over their folded hands as though it 
 were saying its prayers,—Wemyss, not having his pipe 
 in his mouth to protect him and help him to hold on 
 to himself, for he had hastily stuffed it in his pocket, 
 all alight as it was, when he saw her at the gate, and 
 there at that moment it was burning holes,—Wemyss, 
 after a brief struggle with his wishes, in which as usual 
 he was defeated, stooped and began to kiss Lucy’s hair. - 
 And having begun, he continued. 
 
 She was horrified. At the first kiss she started as if 
 she had been hit, and then, clinging to the gate, she 
 stood without moving, without being able to think or 
 lift her head, in the same attitude bowed over his and 
 her own hands, while this astonishing thing was being 
 done to her hair. Death all around them, death per- 
 vading every corner of their lives, death in its blackest 
 shapé brooding over him, and—kisses! Her mind, if 
 anything so gentle could be said to be in anything that 
 sounds so loud, was in an uproar. She had had the 
 complete, guileless trust in him of a child for a tender 
 and sympathetic friend,—a friend, not a father, though 
 he was old enough to be her father, because in a father, 
 however much hidden by sweet comradeship as it had 
 been in hers, there always at the back of everything 
 was, after all, authority, And it had been even more 
 than the trust of a child in its friend: it had been the 
 trust of a child in a fellow-child hit by’ the same pun- 
 
 Uy. OF ILL Lib. 
 
52 VERA 
 
 ishment,—a simple fellowship, a wordless under- 
 standing. | 
 
 She hung on to the gate while her thoughts flew 
 about in confusion within her. These kisses—and his 
 wife just dead—and dead so terribly—how long would 
 she have to stand there with this going on—she couldn’t — 
 lift up her head, for then she felt it would only get 
 worse—she couldn’t turn and run into the house, be- 
 cause he was holding her hands. He oughtn’t to have 
 —oh, he oughtn’t to have—it wasn’t fair. . . 
 
 Then—what was he saying? She heard him say, 
 in an absolutely broken voice, laying his head on hers, 
 ‘“We two poor things—we two poor things’”—and then 
 he said and did nothing more, but kept his head like 
 that, and presently, thick though her hair was, through 
 it came wetness. 
 
 At that Lucy’s thoughts suddenly stopped flying 
 about and were quite still. Her heart went to wax 
 within her, melted again into pity, into a great flood 
 of pitiful understanding. The dreadfulness of lonely 
 grief. . . . Was there anything in the world so blackly 
 desolate as to be left alone in grief? This poor broken 
 fellow-creature—and she herself, so lost, so lost in 
 loneliness—they were two half-drowned things, clinging 
 together in a shipwreck—how could she let him go, 
 leave him to himself—how could she be let go, left to 
 herself? ... 
 
 “Lucy,” he said, “‘look at me——” 
 
 She lifted her head. He loosed her hands, and put 
 his arms round her shoulders. 
 
VERA 53 
 
 “Took at me,” he said; for though she had lifted her 
 head she hadn’t lifted her eyes. 
 
 She looked at him. Tears were on his face. When 
 she saw them her mouth began to quiver and twitch. 
 She couldn’t bear that. 
 
 “Lucy ” he said again. 
 
 She shut her eyes. ‘“Yes’—she breathed, “yes.” 
 And with one hand she felt along up his coat till she 
 reached his face, and shakingly tried to brush away 
 its tears. 
 
 
 
VI 
 
 FTER that, for the moment anyhow, it was all 
 A over with Lucy. She was engulfed. Wemyss 
 “ kissed her shut eyes, he kissed her parted lips, 
 he kissed her dear, delightful bobbed hair. His tears 
 dried up; or rather, wiped away by her little blind, 
 shaking hand, there were no more of them. Death for 
 Wemyss was indeed at that moment swallowed up in 
 victory. Instantly he passed from one mood to the 
 other, and when she finally did open her eyes at his 
 orders and look at him, she saw bending over her a face 
 she hardly recognised, for she had not yet seen him 
 happy. Happy! How could he be happy, as happy 
 as that all in a moment? She stared at him, and even 
 through her confusion, her bewilderment, was frankly 
 amazed, | 
 Then the thought crept into her mind that it was 
 she who had done this, it was she who had transformed 
 him, and her stare softened into a gaze almost of awe, 
 with something of the look in it of a young mother 
 when she first sees her new-born baby. ‘So that is 
 what it is like,” the young mother whispers to herself 
 in a sort of holy surprise, “and I have made it, and it 
 is mine”; and so, gazing at this new, effulgent Wemyss, 
 did Lucy say to herself with the same feeling of wonder, 
 54 
 
VERA 55 
 
 of awe at her own handiwork, “So that is what he 
 is like.” 
 
 Wemyss’s face was indeed one great beam. He 
 simply at that moment couldn’t remember that he had 
 ever been miserable. He seemed to have his arms 
 round Love itself; for never did any one look more 
 like the very embodiment of his idea of love than Lucy 
 then as she gazed up at him, so tender, so resistless. 
 But there were even more wonderful moments after 
 dinner in the darkening garden, while Miss Entwhistle 
 was upstairs packing ready to start by the early train 
 next morning, and they hadn’t got the gate between 
 them, and Lucy of her own accord laid her cheek 
 against his coat, nestling her head into it as though 
 there indeed she knew that she was safe. 
 
 “My baby—my baby,” Wemyss murmured, in an 
 ecstasy of passionate protectiveness, in his turn flooded 
 by maternal feeling. ‘You shall never cry again— 
 never, never.”’ 
 
 It irked him that their engagement—Lucy demurred 
 at first to the word engagement, but Wemyss, holding 
 her tight in his arms, said he would very much like to 
 know, then, by what words she would describe her 
 position at that moment—it irked him that it had to 
 be a secret. He wanted instantly to shout out to the 
 whole world his glory and his pride. But this under 
 the tragic circumstances of their mourning was even to 
 Wemyss clearly impossible. Generally he brushed aside 
 the word impossible if it tried to come between him 
 and the smallest of his wishes, but that inquest was 
 
56 VERA 
 
 still too vividly in his mind, and the faces of his so- 
 called friends. What the faces of his so-called friends 
 would look like if he, before Vera had been dead a 
 fortnight, should approach them with the news of his 
 engagement even Wemyss, a person not greatly 
 imaginative, could picture. And Lucy, quite over- 
 whelmed, first by his tears and then by his joy, no 
 longer could judge anything. She no longer knew 
 whether it were very awful to be love-making in the 
 middle of death, or whether it were, as Wemyss said, 
 the natural glorious self-assertiveness of life. She 
 knew nothing any more except that he and she, ship- 
 wrecked, had saved each other, and that for the moment 
 nothing was required of her, no exertion, nothing at all, 
 except to sit passive with her head on his breast, while 
 he called her his baby and softly, wonderfully, kissed 
 her closed eyes. She couldn’t think; she needn’t think; 
 oh, she was tired—and this was rest. 
 
 But after he had gone that night, and all the next 
 day in the train without him, and for the first few days 
 in London, misgivings laid hold of her. 
 
 That she should be being made love to, be engaged 
 as Wemyss insisted, within a week of her father’s death, 
 could not, she thought, be called anything worse than 
 possibly and at the outside an irrelevance. It did no 
 harm to her father’s dear memory; it in no way 
 encroached on her adoration of him. He would have 
 been the first to be pleased that she should have found 
 comfort. But what worried her was that Everard— 
 Wemyss’s Christian name was Everard—should be able 
 
VERA 57 
 
 to think of such things as love and more marriage when 
 his wife had just died so awfully, and he on the very 
 spot, and he the first to rush out and see... . 
 
 She found that the moment she was away from him 
 she couldn’t get over this. It went round and round 
 in her head as a thing she was unable, by herself, to 
 understand. While she was with him he overpowered 
 her into a torpor, into a shutting of her eyes and her 
 thoughts, into just giving herself up, after the shocks 
 and agonies of the week, to the blessedness of a soothed 
 and caressed semi-consciousness; and it was only when 
 his first letters began to come, such simple, adoring 
 letters, taking the situation just as it was, just as life 
 and death between them had offered it, untroubled by 
 questioning, undimmed by doubt, with no looking back- 
 ward but with a touching, thankful acceptance of the 
 present, that she gradually settled down into that 
 placidity which was at once the relief and the astonish- 
 ment of her aunt. And his letters were so easy to 
 understand. They were so restfully empty of the 
 difficult thoughts and subtle, half-said things her father 
 used to write and all his friends. His very handwriting 
 was the round, slow handwriting of a boy. Lucy had 
 loved him before; but now she fell in love with hin, 
 and it was because of his letters. 
 
VII 
 
 ISS ENTWHISTLE lived in a slim little 
 M house in Eaton Terrace. It was one of 
 those little London houses where you go in 
 and there’s a dining-room, and you go up and there’s 
 a drawing-room, and you go up again and there’s a 
 bedroom and a dressing-room, and you go up yet more 
 and there’s a maid’s room and a bathroom, and then 
 that’s all. For one person it was just enough; for two 
 it was difficult. It was so difficult that Miss Entwhistle 
 had never had any one stay with her before, and the 
 dressing-room had to be cleared out of all her clothes 
 and toques, which then had nowhere to go to and became 
 objects that you met at night hanging over banisters 
 or perched with an odd air of dashingness on the ends 
 of the bath, before Lucy could go in. 
 
 But no Entwhistle ever minded things like that. No 
 trouble seemed to any of them too great to take for a 
 friend; while as for one’s own dear niece, if only she 
 could have been induced to take the real bedroom and 
 let her aunt, who knew the dressing-room’s ways, sleep 
 there instead, that aunt—on such liberal principles was 
 this family constructed—would have been perfectly 
 happy. 
 
 Lucy, of course, only smiled at that suggestion, and 
 
 58 
 
VERA 59 
 
 inserted herself neatly into the dressing-room, and the 
 first weeks of their mourning, which Miss Entwhistle 
 had dreaded for them both, proceeded to flow by with 
 a calm, an unruffledness, that could best be described 
 by the word placid. 
 
 In that small house, unless the inhabitants were ac- 
 commodating and adaptable, daily life would be a trial. 
 Miss Entwhistle well knew Lucy would give no trouble 
 that she could help, but their both being in such trouble 
 themselves would, at such close quarters, she had been 
 afraid, inevitably keep their sorrow raw by sheer 
 rubbing against each other. 
 
 To her surprise and great relief nothing of the sort 
 happened. There seemed to be no rawness to rub. 
 Not only Lucy didn’t fret—her white face and heavy 
 eyes of the days in Cornwall had gone—but she was 
 almost from the first placid. Just on leaving Cornwall, 
 and for a day or two after, she was a little bouleversée, 
 and had a curious kind of timidity in her manner to 
 her aunt, and crept rather than walked about the house, 
 but this gradually disappeared; and if Miss Entwhistle 
 hadn’t known her, hadn’t known of her terrible loss, 
 she would have said that here was some one who was 
 quietly happy. It was subdued, but there it was, as 
 if she had some private source of confidence and 
 warmth. Had she by any chance got religion? won- 
 dered her aunt, who herself had never had it, and neither 
 had Jim, and neither had any Entwhistles she had ever 
 heard of. She dismissed that. It was too unlikely 
 for one of their breed. But even the frequent necessary 
 
60 VERA 
 
 visits to the house in Bloomsbury she and her father 
 had lived in so long didn’t quite blot out the odd effect 
 Lucy produced of being somehow inwardly secure. 
 Presently, when these sad settlings up were done with, 
 and the books and furniture stored, and the house 
 handed over to the landlord, and she no longer had to 
 go to it and be among its memories, her face became 
 what it used to be,—delicately coloured, softly rounded, 
 ready to light up at a word, at a look. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle was puzzled. This serenity of the 
 one who was, after all, chief mourner, made her feel it 
 would be ridiculous if she outdid Lucy in grief. If 
 Lucy could pull herself together so marvellously—and 
 she supposed it must be that, it must be that she was 
 heroically pulling herself together—she for her part 
 wouldn’t be behindhand. Her darling Jim’s memory 
 should be honoured, then, like this: she would bless 
 God for him, bless God that she had had him, and 
 in a high thankfulness continue cheerfully on her way. 
 
 Such were some of Miss Entwhistle’s reflections and 
 conclusions as she considered Lucy. She seemed to 
 have no thought of the future,—again to her aunt’s 
 surprise and relief, who had been afraid she would very 
 soon begin to worry about what she was to do next. 
 She never talked of it; she never apparently thought 
 of it. She seemed to be—yes, that was the word, 
 decided Miss Entwhistle observing her—resting. But 
 resting on what? <A second time Miss Entwhistle 
 dismissed the idea of religion. Impossible, she thought, 
 that Jim’s girl,—yet it did look very like religion. 
 
VERA 61 
 
 There was, it appeared, enough money left scraped 
 together by Jim for Lucy in case of his death to pro- 
 duce about two hundred pounds a year. This wasn’t 
 much; but Lucy apparently didn’t give it a thought. 
 Probably she didn’t realise what it meant, thought her 
 aunt, because of her life with her father having been 
 so easy, surrounded by all those necessities for an 
 invalid which were, in fact, to ordinary people luxuries. 
 
 No one had been appointed her guardian. There was 
 no mention of Mr. Wemyss in the will. It was a very 
 short will, leaving everything to Lucy. This, as far as 
 it went, was admirable, thought Miss Entwhistle, but 
 unfortunately there was hardly anything to leave. 
 Except books; thousands of books, and the old charm- 
 ing furniture of the Bloomsbury house. Well, Lucy 
 should live with her for as long as she could endure 
 the dressing-room, and perhaps they might take a house 
 together a little less tiny, though Miss Entwhistle had 
 lived in the one she was in for so long that it wouldn’t 
 be very easy for her to leave it. 
 
 Meanwhile the first weeks of mourning slid by in an 
 increasing serenity, with London empty and no one 
 to intrude on what became presently distinctly recog- 
 nisable as happiness. She and Lucy agreed so perfectly. 
 And they weren’t altogether alone either, for Mr. 
 Wemyss came regularly twice a week, coming on the 
 same days, and appearing so punctually on the stroke 
 of five that at last she began to set her clocks by him. 
 
 He, too, poor man, seemed to be pulling himself 
 together. He had none of the air of the recently 
 
62 VERA 
 
 bereaved, either in his features or his clothes. Not that 
 he wore coloured: ties or anything like that, but he 
 certainly didn’t produce an effect of blackness. His 
 trousers, she observed, were grey; and not a particu- 
 larly dark grey either. Well, perhaps it was no longer 
 the fashion, thought Miss Entwhistle, eyeing these 
 trousers with some doubt, to be very unhappy. But 
 she couldn’t help thinking there ought to be a band on 
 his left arm to counteract the impression of lightheart- 
 edness in his legs; a crape band, no matter how narrow, 
 or a band of black anything, not necessarily crape, such 
 as she was sure it was usual in these circumstances 
 to wear. 
 
 However, whatever she felt about his legs she wel- 
 comed him with the utmost cordiality, mindful of his 
 kindness to them down in Cornwall, and of how she 
 had clung to him there as her rock; and she soon got 
 to remember the way he liked his tea, and had the 
 biggest chair placed comfortably ready for him—the 
 ehairs were neither very big nor numerous in her spare 
 little drawing-room—and did all she could in the way 
 of hospitality and pleasant conversation. But the 
 more she saw of him, and the more she heard of his 
 talk, the more she wondered at Jim. 
 
 Mr. Wemyss was most good-natured and she was 
 sure, and as she knew from experience, was most kind 
 and thoughtful; but the things he said were so very 
 unlike the things Jim said, and his way of looking at 
 things was so very unlike Jim’s way. Not that there 
 wasn’t room in the world for everybody, Miss Ent- 
 
VERA 63 
 
 whistle reminded herself, sitting at her tea-table observ- 
 ing Wemyss, who looked particularly big and prosper- 
 ous in her small frugal room, and no doubt one star 
 differed from another in glory; still, she did wonder at 
 Jim. And if Mr. Wemyss could bear the loss of his wife 
 to the extent of grey trousers, how was it he couldn’t 
 bear Jim’s name so much as mentioned? Whenever 
 the talk got on to Jim—it couldn’t be kept off him in 
 a circle composed of his daughter and his sister and his 
 friend—she noticed that Mr. Wemyss went silent. She 
 would have taken this for excess of sensibility and the 
 sign of a deep capacity for faithful devotion if it 
 _hadn’t been for those trousers. Faced by them, it 
 perplexed her. 
 
 While Miss Entwhistle was thinking like this and 
 observing Wemyss, who never observed her at all after 
 a first moment of surprise that she should look and 
 behave so differently from the liquid lady of the cottage 
 in Cornwall, that she should sit so straight and move 
 so briskly, he and Lucy were, though present in the 
 body, absent in love. Round them was drawn that 
 magic circle through which nobody and nothing can 
 penetrate, and within it they sat hand in hand and 
 safe. Lucy’s whole heart was his. He had only to 
 come into the room for her to feel content. There was 
 a naturalness, a bigness about his way of looking at 
 things that made intricate, tormenting feelings shrink 
 away in his presence ashamed. Quite apart from her 
 love for him, her gratitude, her longing that he should 
 go on now being happy and forget his awful tragedy, 
 
64 VERA 
 
 he was so very comfortable. She had never met any 
 one so comfortable to lean on mentally. Bodily, on 
 the few occasions on which her aunt was out of the 
 room, he was comfortable too; he reminded her of the 
 very nicest of sofas,—expensive ones, all cushions. 
 But mentally he was more than comfortable, he was 
 positively luxurious. Such perfect rest, listening to his 
 talk. No thinking needed. Things according to him 
 were either so, or so. With her father things had never 
 been either so, or so; and one had had to frown, and 
 concentrate, and make efforts to follow and understand 
 his distinctions, his infinitely numerous, delicate, 
 difficult distinctions. Everard’s plain division of every- 
 thing into two categories only, snow-white and jet 
 black, was as reposeful as the Roman church. She 
 hadn’t got to strain or worry, she had only to surren- 
 der. And to what love, to what safety! At night she 
 couldn’t go to bed for thinking of how happy she was. 
 She would sit quite still in the little dressing-room, her 
 hands in her lap, and a proverb she had read some- 
 where running in her head: 
 
 When God shuts the door He opens the window. 
 
 Not for a moment, hardly, had she been left alone to 
 suffer. Instantly, almost, Everard had come into her 
 life and saved her. Lucy had indeed, as her aunt had 
 twice suspected, got religion, but her religion was 
 Wemyss. Ah, how she loved him! And every night 
 she slept with his last letter under her pillow on the 
 side of her heart. 
 
VERA 65 
 
 As for Wemyss, if Lucy couldn’t get over having 
 got him he couldn’t get over having got Lucy. He 
 hadn’t had such happiness as this, of this quality of 
 tenderness, of goodness, in his life before. What he 
 had felt for Vera had not at any time, he was sure, even 
 at the beginning, been like this, While for the last few 
 years—oh, well. Wemyss, when he found himself 
 thinking of Vera, pulled up short. He declined to think 
 of her now. She had filled his thoughts enough lately, 
 and how terribly. His little angel Lucy had healed 
 that wound, and there was no use in thinking of an old 
 wound; nobody healthy ever did that. He had ex- 
 plained to Lucy, who at first had been a little morbid, 
 how wrong it is, how really wicked, besides being in- 
 tensely stupid, not to get over things. Life, he had 
 said, is for the living; let the dead have death. The 
 present.is the only real possession a man has, whatever 
 clever people may say; and the wise man, who is also 
 the natural man of simple healthy instincts and a 
 proper natural shrinking from death and disease, does 
 not allow the past, which after all anyhow is done for, 
 to intrude upon, much less spoil, the present. That 
 is what, he explained, the past will always do if it can. 
 The only safe way to deal with it is to forget it. 
 
 “But I don’t want to forget mine,” Lucy had said 
 at that, opening her eyes which as usual had been 
 shut, because the commas of Wemyss’s talk with her 
 when they chanced to be alone were his soothing, 
 soporific kisses dropped gently on her closed eyelids. 
 “Father if 
 
 
 
66 VERA 
 
 “Oh, you may remember yours,” he had answered, 
 smiling tenderly down at the head lying on his breast. 
 “It’s such a little one. But you'll see when you’re 
 older if your Everard wasn’t right.” 
 
 To Wemyss in his new happiness it seemed that Vera 
 had belonged to another life altogether, an elderly, stale 
 life from which, being healthy-minded, he had managed 
 to unstick himself and to emerge born again all new and 
 fresh and fitted for the present. She was forty when 
 she died. She had started life five years younger than 
 he was, but had quickly caught him up and passed him, 
 and had ended, he felt, by being considerably his senior, 
 And here was Lucy, only twenty-two anyhow, and 
 looking like twelve. The contrast never ceased to 
 delight him, to fill him with pride. And how pretty 
 she was, now that she had left off crying. He adored 
 her bobbed hair that gave her the appearance of a child 
 or a very young boy, and he adored the little delicate 
 lines of her nose and nostrils, and her rather big, kind 
 mouth that so easily smiled, and her sweet eyes, the 
 colour of Love-in-a-Mist. Not that he set any store 
 by prettiness, he told himself; all he asked in a woman 
 was devotion. But her being pretty would make it 
 only the more exciting when the moment came to show 
 her to his friends, to show his little girl to those friends 
 who had dared slink away from him after Vera’s death, 
 and say, “Look here—look at this perfect little thing— 
 she believes in me all right!” 
 
VIII 
 
 ONDON being empty, Wemyss had it all his 
 own way. No one else was there to cut him 
 out, as his expression was. Lucy had many 
 
 letters with offers of every kind of help from her 
 
 father’s friends, but naturally she needed no help and 
 had no wish to see anybody in her present condition of 
 secret contentment, and she replied to them with 
 thanks and vague expressions of hope that later on 
 they might all meet. One young man—he was the 
 one who often proposed to her—wasn’t to be put off 
 like that, and journeyed all the way from Scotland, 
 so great was his devotion, and found out from the 
 caretaker of the Bloomsbury house that she was living 
 with her aunt, and called at Eaton Terrace. But that 
 afternoon Lucy and Miss Entwhistle were taking the 
 air in a car Wemyss had hired, and at the very moment 
 the young man was being turned away from the Eaton 
 
 Terrace door Lucy was being rowed about the river at 
 
 Hampton Court—very slowly, because of how soon 
 
 Wemyss got hot—and her aunt, leaning on the stone 
 
 parapet at the end of the Palace gardens, was observing 
 
 her. It was a good thing the young man wasn’t observ- 
 ing her too, for it wouldn’t have made him happy. 
 “What is Mr. Wemyss?” asked Miss Entwhistle 
 67 
 
68 VERA 
 
 unexpectedly that evening, just as they were going to 
 bed. 
 
 Lucy was taken’aback. Her aunt hadn’t asked a 
 question or said a thing about him up to then, except 
 general comments on his kindness and good-nature. 
 
 “What is Mr. Wemyss?” she repeated stupidly; for 
 she was not only taken aback, but also, she discovered, 
 she had no idea. It had never occurred to her even to 
 wonder what he was, much less to ask. She had been, 
 as it were, asleep the whole time in a perfect content- 
 ment on his breast. | 
 
 ‘Yes. What is he besides being a widower?” said 
 Miss Entwhistle. ‘We know he’s that, but it is hardly 
 a profession.” 
 
 “Y—don’t think I know,” said Lucy, looking and 
 feeling very stupid. 
 
 “Oh well, perhaps he isn’t anything,” said her aunt 
 kissing her good-night. “Except punctual,’’ she added, 
 smiling, pausing a moment at her bedroom door. 
 
 And two or three days later, when Wemyss had again 
 hired a car to take them for an outing to Windsor, 
 while she and Lucy were tidying themselves for tea in 
 the ladies’ room of the hotel she turned from the look- 
 ing-glass in the act of pinning back some hair loosened 
 by motoring, and in spite of having a hairpin in her 
 mouth said, again suddenly, ““What did Mrs. Wemyss 
 die of ?” 
 
 This unnerved Lucy. If she had stared stupidly at 
 her aunt at the other question she stared aghast at her 
 at this one. 
 
 9 
 
VERA 69 
 “What did she die of?” she repeated, flushing. 
 
 “Yes. What illness was it?” asked her aunt, con- 
 tinuing to pin. 
 
 “Jt—wasn’t an illness,” said Lucy helplessly. 
 
 “Not an illness?” 
 
 ““I—believe it was an accident.” 
 
 “An accident?” said Miss Entwhistle, taking the 
 hairpin out of her mouth and in her turn staring. 
 “What sort of an accident?” 
 
 “T think a rather serious one,” said Lucy, completely 
 unnerved. 
 
 How could she bear to tell that dreadful story, the 
 knowledge of which seemed somehow so intimately to 
 bind her and Everard together with a sacred, terrible 
 tie? 
 
 At that her aunt remarked that an accident resulting 
 in death would usually be described as serious, and 
 asked what its nature, apart from its seriousness, had 
 been; and Lucy, driven into a corner, feeling instinc- 
 tively that her aunt, who had already once or twice 
 expressed what she said was her surprised admiration 
 for Mr. Wemyss’s heroic way of bearing his bereave- 
 ment, might be too admiringly surprised altogether if 
 she knew how tragically much he really had to bear, 
 and might begin to inquire into the reasons of this 
 heroism, took refuge in saying what she now saw she 
 ought to have begun by saying, even though it wasn’t 
 true, that she didn’t know. 
 
 “Ah,” said her aunt. ‘‘Well—poor man. It’s 
 wonderful how he bears things.” And again in her 
 
70 VERA 
 
 mind’s eye, and with an increased doubt, she saw the 
 grey trousers. | 
 
 That day at tea Wemyss with the simple naturalness 
 Lucy found so restful, the almost bald way he had of 
 talking frankly about things more sophisticated people 
 wouldn’t have mentioned, began telling them of the last 
 time he had been at Windsor. 
 
 It was the summer before, he said, and he and his 
 wife—at this Miss Entwhistle became attentive—had 
 motored down one Sunday to lunch in that very room, 
 and it had been so much crowded, and the crowding 
 had been so monstrously mismanaged, that positively 
 they had had to go away without having had lunch 
 at all. 
 
 “Positively without having had any lunch at all,’ 
 repeated Wemyss, looking at them with a face full of 
 astonished aggrievement at the mere recollection. 
 
 “Ah,” said Miss Entwhistle, leaning across to him, 
 “don’t let us revive sad memories.” 
 
 Wemyss stared at her. Good heavens, he thought, 
 did she think he was talking about Vera? Any one 
 with a grain of sense would know he was only talking 
 about the lunch he hadn’t had. 
 
 He turned impatiently to Lucy, and addressed his 
 next remark to her. But in another moment there was 
 her aunt again. 
 
 “Mr. Wemyss,” she said, “I’ve been dying to ask 
 you 39 
 
 Again he was forced to attend. The pure air and 
 rapid motion of the motoring intended to revive and 
 
 
 
VERA pg 
 
 brace his little love were apparently reviving and 
 bracing his little love’s aunt as well, for lately he had 
 been unable to avoid noticing a tendency on her part 
 to assert herself. During his first eight visits to Eaton 
 Terrace—that made four weeks since his coming back 
 to London and six since the funeral in Cornwall—he 
 had hardly known she was in the room; except, of 
 course, that she was in the room, completely hindering 
 his courting. During those eight visits his first impres- 
 sion of her remained undisturbed in his mind: she was 
 a wailing creature who had hung round him in Cornwall 
 in a constant state of tears. Down there she had 
 behaved exactly like the traditional foolish woman when 
 there is a death about,—no common sense, no grit, cry- 
 ing if you looked at her, and keeping up a continual 
 dismal recital of the virtues of the departed. Also she 
 had been obstinate; and she had, besides, shown unmis- 
 takable signs of selfishness. When he paid his first 
 call in Eaton Terrace he did notice that she had con- 
 siderably, indeed completely, dried up, and was there- 
 fore to that extent improved, but she still remained for 
 him just Lucy’s aunt,—somebody who poured out the 
 tea, and who unfortunately hardly ever went out of the 
 room; a necessary, though luckily a transitory, evil. 
 But now it was gradually being borne in on him that she 
 really existed, on her own account, independently. 
 She asserted herself. Even when she wasn’t saying 
 anything—and often she said hardly a word during an 
 entire outing—she still somehow asserted herself. 
 And here she was asserting herself very much indeed, 
 
G2 VERA 
 
 and positively asking him across a tea-table which was 
 undoubtedly for the moment his, asking him straight 
 out what, if anything, he did in the way of a trade, 
 profession or occupation. 
 
 She was his guest, and he regarded it as less than 
 seemly for a guest to ask a host. what he did. Not that 
 he wouldn’t gladly have told her if it had come from 
 him of his own accord. Surely a man has a right, he 
 thought, to his own accord. At all times Wemyss 
 disliked being asked questions. Even the most innocent, 
 ordinary questions appeared to him to be an encroach- 
 ment on the right he surely had to be let alone. 
 
 Lucy’s aunt between sips of tea—his tea—pretended, 
 pleasantly it is true, and clothing what could be nothing 
 but idle curiosity in words that were not disagreeable, 
 that she was dying to know what he was. She could 
 see for herself, she said, smiling down at the leg nearest 
 her, that he wasn’t a bishop, she was sure he wasn’t 
 either a painter, musician or writer, but she wouldn’t 
 be in the least surprised if he were to tell her he was an 
 admiral. 
 
 Wemyss thought this intelligent of the aunt. He 
 had no objection to being taken for an admiral; they 
 were an honest, breezy lot. 
 
 Placated, he informed her that he was on the Stock 
 Exchange. 
 
 “Ah, nodded Miss Entwhistle, looking wise because 
 on this subject she so completely wasn’t, the Stock 
 Exchange being an institution whose nature and opera- 
 tions were alien to anything the Entwhistles were 
 
VERA 73 
 
 familiar with, “ah yes. Quite. Bulls and bears. Now 
 I come to look at it, you have the Stock Exchange eye.” 
 
 “Foolish woman,” thought Wemyss, who for some 
 reason didn’t like being told before Lucy that he had 
 the Stock Exchange eye; and he dismissed her im- 
 patiently from his mind and concentrated on his little 
 love, asking himself while he did so how short he could, 
 with any sort of propriety, cut this unpleasant time of 
 restricted courting, of never being able to go anywhere 
 with her unless her tiresome aunt came too. 
 
 Nearly two months now since both those deaths; 
 surely Lucy’s aunt might soon be told now of the 
 engagement. It was after this outing that he began 
 in his letters, and in the few moments he and she were 
 alone, to urge Lucy to tell her aunt. Nobody else need 
 know, he wrote; it could go on being kept secret from 
 the world; but the convenience of her aunt’s knowing 
 was so obvious,—think of how she would then keep out 
 of the way, think of how she would leave them to 
 themselves, anyhow indoors, anyhow in the house in 
 Eaton Terrace. 
 
 Lucy, however, was reluctant. She demurred. She 
 wrote begging him to be patient. She said that every 
 week that passed would make their engagement less a 
 thing that need surprise. She said that at present it 
 would take too much explaining, and she wasn’t sure 
 that even at the end of the explanation her aunt would 
 understand. _ 
 
 Wemyss wrote back brushing this aside. He said 
 her aunt would have to understand, and if she didn’t 
 
74 VERA 
 
 what did it matter so long as she knew? The great 
 thing was that she should know. Then, he said, she 
 would leave them alone together, instead of for ever 
 sticking; and his little love must see how splendid it 
 would be for him to come and spend happy hours with 
 her quite alone. What was an aunt after all? he asked. 
 What could she possibly be, compared to Lucy’s own 
 Everard? Besides, he disliked secrecy, he said. No 
 honest man could stand an atmosphere of concealment. 
 His little girl must make up her mind to tell her aunt, 
 and believe that her Everard knew best; or, if she 
 preferred it, he would tell her himself. 
 
 Lucy didn’t prefer it, and was beginning to feel 
 worried, because as the days went on Wemyss grew 
 more and more persistent the more he became bored by 
 Miss Entwhistle’s development of an independent and 
 inquiring mind, and she hated having to refuse or even 
 to defer doing anything he asked, when her aunt one 
 morning at breakfast, in the very middle of apparent 
 complete serene absorption in her bacon, looked up 
 suddenly over the coffee-pot and, said, “How long had 
 your father known Mr. Wemyss?” 
 
 This settled things. Lucy felt she could bear no 
 more of these shocks. A clean breast was the only 
 thing left for her, 
 
 “Aunt Dot,” she stammered—Miss Entwhistle’s 
 
 Christian name was Dorothy,—“I’d like—I’ve got—I 
 39 
 
 
 
 want to tell you 
 “After breakfast,” said Miss Entwhistle briskly. 
 
VERA 75 
 
 “We shall need lots of time, and to be undisturbed. 
 We'll go up into the drawing-room.” 
 
 And immediately she began talking about other 
 things. 
 
 Was it possible, thought Lucy, her eyes carefully on 
 her toast and butter, that Aunt Dot suspected? 
 
IX 
 
 had suspected, only she hadn’t suspected anything 
 like all that was presently imparted to her, and 
 she found great difficulty in assimilating it. And two 
 hours later Lucy, standing in the middle of the draw- 
 ing-room, was still passionately saying to her, and 
 
 I: was not only possible, but the fact. Aunt Dot 
 
 saying it for perhaps the tenth time, “But don’t you 
 see? It’s just because what happened to him was so 
 awful. It’s nature asserting itself. If he couldn’t be 
 engaged now, he couldn’t reach up out of such a pit 
 of blackness and get into touch with living things 
 again and somebody who sympathises and—is fond of 
 him, he would die, die or go mad; and oh, what’s the 
 use to the world of somebody good and fine being left 
 to die or go mad? Aunt Dot, what’s the use?” 
 
 And her aunt, sitting in her customary chair by the 
 fireplace, continued to assimilate with difficulty. Also 
 her face was puckered into folds of distress. She was 
 seriously upset. 
 
 Lucy, looking at her, felt a kind of despair that she 
 wasn’t being able to make her aunt, whom she loved, 
 see what she saw, understand what she understood, and 
 so be, as she was, filled with confidence and happiness. 
 Not that she was happy at that moment; she, too, 
 
 76 
 
VERA Cif 
 
 was seriously upset, her face flushed, her eyes bright 
 with effort to get Wemyss as she knew him, as he so 
 simply was, through into her aunt’s consciousness, 
 She had made her clean breast with a completeness 
 that had included the confession that she did know 
 what Mrs. Wemyss’s accident had been, and she had 
 described it. Her aunt was painfully shocked. Any- 
 thing so horrible as that hadn’t entered her mind. To 
 fall past the very window her husband was sitting at 
 . it seemed to her dreadful that Lucy should be 
 mixed up in it, and mixed up so instantly on the death 
 of her natural protector,—of her two natural protec- 
 tors, for hadn’t Mrs. Wemyss as long as she existed also 
 been one? She was bewildered, and couldn’t under- 
 stand the violent reactions that Lucy appeared to look 
 upon as so natural in Wemyss. She would have con- 
 cluded that she didn’t understand because she was too 
 old, because she was out of touch with the elasticities 
 of the younger generation, but Wemyss must be very 
 nearly as old as herself. Certainly he was of the same 
 generation; and yet behold him, within a fortnight of 
 his wife’s most shocking death, able to forget her, able 
 to fall in love 
 “But that’s why—that’s why,” Lucy cried when Miss 
 Entwhistle said this. ‘He had to forget, or die himself. 
 It was beyond what anybody could bear and stay 
 
 
 
 sane——”’ 
 “I’m sure I’m very glad he should stay sane,’ 
 Miss Entwhistle, more and more puckered, “but I can’t 
 
 > said 
 
78 VERA 
 
 help wishing it hadn’t been you, Lucy, who are assisting 
 him to stay it.” ° 
 
 And then she repeated what at intervals she had 
 kept on repeating with a kind of stubborn helplessness, 
 that her quarrel with Mr. Wemyss was that he had got 
 happy so very quickly. 
 
 “Those grey trousers,’ she murmured. 
 
 No; Miss Entwhistle couldn’t get over it. She 
 couldn’t understand it. And Lucy, expounding and 
 defending Wemyss in the middle of the room with all 
 the blaze and emotion of what was only too evidently 
 genuine love, was to her aunt an astonishing sight. 
 That little thing, defending that enormous man. Jim’s 
 daughter; Jim’s cherished little daughter... . 
 
 Miss Entwhistle, sitting in her chair, struggled 
 among other struggles to be fair, and reminded herself 
 that Mr. Wemyss had proved himself to be most kind 
 and eager to help down in Cornwall,—though even on 
 this there was shed a new and disturbing light, and 
 that now that she knew everything, and the doubts that 
 had made her perhaps be a little unjust were out of the 
 way and she could begin to consider him impartially, 
 
 5 
 
 she would probably very soon become sincerely attached 
 to him. She hoped so with all her heart. She was used 
 to being attached to people. It was normal to her to 
 like and be liked. And there must be something more 
 in him than his fine appearance for Lucy to be so very 
 fond of him. 
 
 She gave herself a shake. She told herself she was 
 taking this thing badly; that she ought not, just be 
 
VERA %9 
 
 cause it was an unusual situation, be so ready to 
 condemn it. Was she really only a_ conventional 
 spinster, shrinking back shocked at a touch of naked 
 naturalness? Wasn’t there much in what that short- 
 haired child was so passionately saying about the 
 rightness, the saneness, of reaction from horror? 
 Wasn’t it nature’s own protection against too much 
 death? After all, what was the good of doubling 
 horror, of being so much horrified at the horrible that 
 you stayed rooted there and couldn’t move, and became, 
 with your starting eyes and bristling hair, a horror 
 yourself? 
 
 Better, of course, to pass on, as Lucy was explaining, 
 to get on with one’s business, which wasn’t death but 
 life. Still—there were the decencies. However desolate 
 one would be in retirement, however much one would 
 suffer, there was. a period, Miss Entwhistle felt, during 
 which the bereaved withdrew. Instinctively. The really 
 bereaved would want to withdraw 
 
 
 
 “Ah, but don’t you see,” Lucy once more tried 
 despairingly to explain, “this wasn’t just being be- 
 reaved—this was something simply too awful. Of 
 course Everard would have behaved in the ordinary 
 way if it had been an ordinary death.” 
 
 “So that the more terrible one’s sorrow the more 
 cheerfully one goes out to tea,” said Miss Entwhistle, 
 the remembrance of the light trousers at one end of 
 Wemyss and the unmistakably satisfied face at the 
 other being for a moment too much for her. 
 
80 VERA 
 
 “Oh,” almost moaned Lucy at that, and her head 
 drooped in a sudden fatigue. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle got up quickly and put her arms 
 round her, “Forgive me,” she said. ‘That was just 
 stupid and cruel, I think I’m hide-bound. I think 
 I’ve probably got into a rut. Help me out of it, Lucy. 
 
 99 
 
 
 
 You shall teach me to take heroic views 
 
 And she kissed her hot face tenderly, holding it close 
 to her own. 
 
 “But if I could only make you see,” said Lucy, 
 clinging to her, tears in her voice. 
 
 “But I do see that you love him very much,” said 
 Miss Entwhistle gently, again very tenderly kissing her. 
 
 That afternoon when Wemyss appeared at five 
 o’clock, it being his bi-weekly day for calling, he found 
 Lucy alone. 
 
 “Why, where——-? How 
 round the drawing-room as though Miss Entwhistle 
 must be lurking behind a chair. 
 
 “T’ve told,” said Lucy, who looked tired. 
 
 Then he clasped her with a great hug to his heart. 
 “Everard’s own little love,” he said, kissing and kissing 
 her. ‘Everard’s own good little love.’ 
 
 “Yes, but 
 ever, so much muffled and engulfed that her voice didn’t 
 
 
 
 ?? he asked, peeping 
 
 
 
 ”? began Lucy faintly. She was, how- 
 
 get through. 
 
 “Now wasn’t I right?” he said triumphantly, holding 
 her tight. “Isn’t this as it should be? Just you and 
 me, and nobody to watch or interfere?” 
 
 “Yes, but ” began Lucy again. 
 
 
 
VERA 81 
 
 “What do you say? ‘Yes, but??” laughed Wemyss, 
 bending his ear. ‘Yes without any but, you precious 
 little thing. Buts don’t exist for us—only yeses.” 
 
 And on these lines the interview continued for quite 
 a long time before Lucy succeeded in telling him that 
 her aunt had been much upset. 
 
 Wemyss minded that so little that he didn’t even ask 
 why. He was completely incurious about anything her 
 aunt might think. ‘‘Who cares?” he said, drawing 
 her to his heart again. ‘‘Who cares? We’ve got each 
 other. What does anything else matter? If you had 
 fifty aunts, all being upset, what would it matter? 
 What can it matter to us?” 
 
 And Lucy, who was exhausted by her morning, felt 
 too as she nestled close to him that nothing did matter 
 so long as he was there. But the difficulty was that he 
 wasn’t there most of the time, and her aunt was, and she 
 loved her aunt and did very much hate that she should 
 be upset. 
 
 She tried to convey this to Wemyss, but he didn’t 
 understand. When it came to Miss Entwhistle he 
 was as unable to understand Lucy as Miss Entwhistle 
 was unable to understand her when it came to Wemyss. 
 Only Wemyss didn’t in the least mind not understand- 
 ing. Aunts. What were they? Insects. He laughed, 
 and said his little love couldn’t have it both ways; she 
 couldn’t eat her cake, which was her Everard, and have 
 it too, which was her aunt; and he kissed her hair and 
 asked who was a complicated little baby, and rocked 
 
 her gently to and fro in his arms, and Lucy was amused 
 
82 VERA 
 
 at that and laughed too, and forgot her aunt, and 
 forgot everything except how much she loved him. 
 
 Meanwhile Miss Entwhistle was spending a diligent 
 afternoon in the newspaper room of the British Mu- 
 seum. She was reading the Times report of the 
 Wemyss accident and inquest; and if she had been 
 upset by what Lucy told her in the morning she was 
 even more upset by what she read in the afternoon. 
 Lucy hadn’t mentioned that suggestion of suicide. 
 Perhaps he hadn’t told her. Suicide. Well, there had 
 been no evidence. There was an open verdict. It had 
 been a suggestion made by a servant, perhaps a 
 servant with a grudge. And even if it had been true, 
 probably the poor creature had discovered she had some 
 incurable disease, or she may have had some loss that 
 broke her down temporarily, and—oh, there were many 
 explanations; respectable, ordinary explanations, 
 
 Miss Entwhistle walked home slowly, loitering at 
 shop windows, staring at hats and blouses that she 
 never saw, spinning out her walk to its utmost, trying 
 to think. Suicide. How desolate it sounded on that 
 beautiful afternoon. Such a giving up. Such a defeat. 
 Why should she have given up? Why should she have 
 been defeated? But it wasn’t true. The coroner had 
 said there was no evidence to show how she came by 
 her death. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle walked slower and slower. The 
 nearer she got to Eaton Terrace the more unwillingly 
 did she advance. When she reached Belgrave Square 
 she went right round it twice, lingering at the garden 
 
VERA 83 
 
 railings studying the habits of birds. She had been out 
 all the afternoon, and, as those who have walked it 
 know, it is a long way from the British Museum to 
 Eaton Terrace. Also it was a hot day and her feet 
 ached, and she very much would have liked to be in her 
 own chair in her cool drawing-room having her tea. 
 But there in that drawing-room would probably still 
 be Mr. Wemyss, no longer now to be Mr. Wemyss for 
 her—would she really have to call him Everard?—or 
 she might meet him on the stairs—narrow stairs; or 
 in the hall—also narrow, which he would fill up; or on 
 her doorstep she might meet him, filling up her door- 
 step; or, when she turned the corner into her street, 
 there, coming towards her, might be the triumphant 
 trousers. 
 
 No, she felt she couldn’t stand seeing him that day. 
 So she lingered forlornly watching the sparrows inside 
 the garden railings of Belgrave Square, balancing first’ 
 on one and then on the other of those feet that ached. 
 
 This was only the beginning, she thought; this was 
 only the first of many days for her of wandering home- 
 lessly round. Her house was too small to hold both 
 herself and love-making. If it had been the slender 
 love-making of the young man who was so doggedly 
 devoted to Lucy, she felt it wouldn’t have been too 
 small. He would have made love youthfully, shyly. 
 She could have sat quite happily in the dining-room 
 while the suitably paired young people dallied delicately 
 together overhead. But she couldn’t bear the thought 
 of being cramped up so near Mr. Wemyss’s—no, 
 
84 VERA 
 
 Everard’s; she had better get used to that at once— 
 lovemaking. His way of courting wouldn’t be,—she 
 searched about in her uneasy mind for a word, and 
 found vegetarian. Yes; that word sufficiently indicated 
 what she meant: it wouldn’t be vegetarian. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle drifted away from the railings, and 
 turning her back on her own direction wandered to- 
 wards Sloane Street. There she saw an omnibus 
 stopping to let some one out. Wanting very much to 
 sit down she made an effort and caught it, and squeez- 
 ing herself into its vacant seat gave herself up to where- 
 ever it should take her. 
 
 It took her to the City; first to the City, and then 
 to strange places beyond. She let it take her. Her 
 clothes became steadily more fashionable the farther the 
 omnibus went. She ended by being conspicuous and 
 stared at. But she was determined to give the widest 
 margin to the love-making and go the whole day, and 
 she did. 
 
 For an hour and a half the omnibus went on and on. 
 She had no idea omnibuses did such things. When 
 it finally stopped she sat still; and the conductor, who 
 had gradually come to share the growing surprise of 
 the relays of increasingly poor passengers, asked her 
 what address she wanted. 
 
 She said she wanted Sloane Street. 
 
 He was unable to believe it, and tried to reason with 
 her, but she sat firm in her place and persisted. 
 
 At nine o’clock he put her down where he had taken 
 her up. She disappeared into the darkness with the 
 
VERA 85 
 
 movements of one who is stiff, and he winked at the 
 passenger nearest the door and touched his forehead. 
 
 But as she climbed wearily and hungrily up her steps 
 and let herself in with her latchkey, she felt it had been 
 well worth it; for that one day at least she had escaped 
 Mr. We—— no, Everard. 
 
xX 
 
 ISS ENTWHISTLE, however, made up her 
 M mind very firmly that after this one after- 
 
 noon of giving herself up to her feelings she 
 was going to behave in the only way that is wise when 
 faced by an inevitable marriage, the way of sympathy 
 and friendliness, 
 
 Too often had she seen the first indignation of dis- 
 appointed parents at the marriage of their children 
 harden into a matter of pride, a matter of doggedness 
 and principle, and finally become an attitude unable to 
 be altered, long after years had made it ridiculous. If 
 the marriages turned out happy, how absurd to persist 
 in an antiquated disapproval; if they turned out 
 wretched, then how urgent the special need for love. 
 
 Thus Miss Entwhistle reasoned that first sleepless 
 night in bed, and on these lines she proceeded during 
 the next few months. They were trying months. She 
 used up all she had of gallantry in sticking to her deter- 
 mination. lLucy’s instinct. had been sound, that wish 
 to keep her engagement secret from her aunt for as 
 long as possible. Miss Entwhistle, always thin, grew 
 still more thin in her constant daily and hourly struggle 
 to be pleased, to enter into Lucy’s happiness, to make 
 things easy for her, to protect her from the notice and 
 
 86 
 
VERA 87 
 
 inquiry of their friends, to look hopefully and with as 
 much of Lucy’s eyes as she could at Everard and at 
 the future. 
 
 “She isn’t simple enough,” Wemyss would say to 
 Lucy if ever she said anything about her aunt’s increas- 
 ing appearance of strain and overwork. “She should 
 take things more naturally. Look at us.”’ For it was 
 the one fly in Lucy’s otherwise perfect ointment, this 
 intermittent consciousness that her aunt wasn’t alto- 
 gether happy. 
 
 And then he would ask her, laying his head on hers 
 as he stood with his arms about her, who had taught 
 his little girl to be simple; and they would laugh, and 
 kiss, and talk of other things. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle was unable to be simple in Wemyss’s 
 sense. She tried to; for when she saw his fresh, un- 
 lined face, his forehead without a wrinkle on it, and 
 compared it in the glass with her own which was only 
 three years older, she thought there must be a good 
 deal to be said for single-mindedness. It was Lucy 
 who told her Everard was so single-minded. He took 
 one thing at a time, concentrating quietly, she said. 
 When he had completely finished it off, then, and not 
 till then, he went on to the next. He knew his own 
 mind. Didn’t Aunt Dot think it was a great thing to 
 know one’s own mind? Instead of wobbling about, 
 wasting one’s thoughts and energies on side-shows? 
 
 This was the very language of Wemyss; and Miss 
 Entwhistle, after having been listening to him in the 
 afternoon—for every time he came she put in a brief 
 
88 VERA 
 
 appearance, just for the look of the thing, and on the 
 Saturday and Sunday outings she was invariably 
 present the whole time—felt it a little hard that when 
 at last she had reached the end of the day and the 
 harbour of her empty drawing-room she should, through 
 the mouth of Lucy, have to listen to him all the evening 
 as well, 
 
 But she always agreed, and said Yes, he was a great 
 dear; for when an only and much-loved niece is cer- 
 tainly going to marry, the least a wise aunt can call her 
 future nephew is a great dear. She will make this 
 warmer and more varied if she can, but at least she 
 will say that much. Miss Entwhistle tried to think of 
 variations, afraid Lucy might notice a certain same- 
 ness, and once with an effort she faltered out that he 
 seemed to be a—a real darling; but it had a hollow 
 sound, and she didn’t repeat it. Besides, Lucy was 
 quite satisfied with the other. 
 
 She used, sittmg at her aunt’s feet in the evenings— 
 Wemyss never came in the evenings because he dis- 
 trusted the probable dinner—sometimes to make her 
 aunt say it again, by asking a little anxiously, “But 
 you do think him a great dear, don’t you, Aunt Dot?” 
 Whereupon Miss Entwhistle, afraid her last expression 
 of that opinion may have been absent-minded, would 
 hastily exclaim with almost excess of emphasis, “Oh, 
 a great dear.” 
 
 Perhaps he was a dear. She didn’t know. What 
 had she against him? She didn’t know. He was too 
 old, that was one thing; but the next minute, after 
 
VERA 89 
 
 hearing something he had said or laughed at, she 
 thought he wasn’t old enough. Of course what she 
 really had against him was that he had got over his 
 wife’s shocking death so quickly. Yet she admitted 
 there was much in Lucy’s explanation of this as a sheer 
 instinctive gesture of self-defence. Besides, she couldn’t 
 keep it up as a grudge against him for ever; with every 
 day it mattered less. And sometimes Miss Entwhistle 
 even doubted whether it was this that mattered to her 
 at all,—whether it was not rather some quite small 
 things that she really objected to: a want of fastidious- 
 ness, for instance, a forgetfulness of the minor cour- 
 tesies,—the objections, in a word, she told herself, 
 smiling, of an old maid. Lucy seemed not to mind his 
 blunders in these directions in the least. She seemed 
 positively, thought her aunt, to take a kind of pride in 
 them, delighting in everything he said or did with the 
 adoring tenderness of a young mother watching the 
 pranks of her first-born. She laughed gaily; she let 
 him caress her openly. She too, thought Miss Ent- 
 whistle, had become what she no doubt would say was 
 single-minded. Well, perhaps all this was a spinster’s 
 way of feeling about a type not previously met with, 
 and she had got—again she reproached herself—into 
 an elderly groove. Jim’s friends,—well, they had been 
 different, but not necessarily better. Mr. Wemyss 
 would call them, she was sure, a finnicking lot. 
 
 When in October London began to fill again, and 
 Jim’s friends came to look her and Lucy up and showed 
 a tendency, many of them, to keep on doing it, a new 
 
90 VERA 
 
 struggle was added to her others, the struggle to pre- 
 vent their meeting Wemyss. He wouldn’t, she was 
 convinced, be able to hide his proprietorship in Lucy, 
 and Lucy wouldn’t ever get that look of tenderness out 
 of her eyes when they rested on him. Questions as to 
 who he was would naturally be asked, and one or other 
 of Jim’s friends would be sure to remember the affair 
 of Mrs. Wemyss’s death; indeed, that day she went 
 to the British Museum and read the report of it she had 
 been amazed that she hadn’t seen it at the time. It 
 took up so much of the paper that she was bound to 
 have seen it if she had seen a paper at all. She could 
 only suppose that as she was visiting friends just then, 
 she chanced that day to have been in the act of leaving 
 or arriving, and that if she bought a paper on the 
 journey she had looked, as was sometimes her way in 
 trains, not at it but out of the window. 
 
 She felt she hadn’t the strength to support being 
 questioned, and in her turn have to embark on the 
 explanation and defence of Wemyss. ‘There was too 
 much of him, she felt, to be explained. He ought to be 
 separated into sections, and taken gradually and bit 
 by bit,—but far best not to produce him, to keep him 
 from meeting her friends. She therefore arranged a 
 day in the week when she would be at home, and dis- 
 couraged every one from the waste of time of trying to 
 call on her on other days. Then presently the after- 
 noon became an evening once a week, when whoever 
 liked could come in after dinner and talk and drink 
 coffee, because the evening was safer; made safe by 
 
VERA Po OT 
 
 Wemyss’s conviction—he hadn’t concealed it—that the 
 dinners of maiden ladies were notoriously both scanty 
 and bad. 
 
 Lucy would have preferred never to see a soul except 
 Wemyss, who was all she wanted, all she asked for in 
 life; but she did see her aunt’s point, that only by 
 pinning their friends to a day and an hour could the 
 risk of their overflowing into precious moments be 
 avoided. This is how Miss Entwhistle put it to her, 
 wondering as she said it at her own growing ability in 
 artfulness. 
 
 She had an old friend living in Chesham Street, a 
 widow full of that ripe wisdom that sometimes comes 
 at the end to those who have survived marriage; and 
 to her, when the autumn brought her back to London, 
 Miss Entwhistle went occasionally in search of comfort. 
 
 “What in the whole world puts such a gulf between 
 two affections and comprehensions as a new love?” 
 she asked one day, freshly struck, because of something 
 Lucy had said, by the distance she had travelled. Lucy 
 was quite a tiny figure now, so far away from her had 
 she moved; she couldn’t even get her voice to carry 
 to her, much less still hold on to her with her hands. 
 
 And the friend, made brief of speech by wisdom, 
 said: “Nothing.” 
 
 About Wemyss’s financial position Miss Entwhistle 
 could only judge from appearances, for it wouldn’t 
 have occurred to him that it might perhaps be her 
 concern to know, and she preferred to wait till later, 
 when the engagement could be talked about, to ask 
 
92 VERA 
 
 some old friend of Jim’s to make the proper inquiries ; 
 but from the way he lived it seemed to be an easy one. 
 He went freely in taxis, he hired cars with reasonable 
 frequency, he inhabited one of the substantial houses 
 of Lancaster Gate, and also, of course, he had The 
 Willows, the house on the river near Strorley where 
 his wife had died. After all, what could be better than 
 two houses, Miss Entwhistle thought, congratulating 
 herself, as it were, on Lucy’s behalf that this side of 
 Wemyss was so satisfactory. ‘Two houses, and no 
 children; how much better than the other way about. 
 And one day, feeling almost hopeful about Lucy’s pros- 
 pects, on the advantages of which she had insisted that 
 her mind should dwell, she went round again to the 
 widow in Chesham Street and said suddenly to her, who 
 was accustomed to these completely irrelevant ex- 
 clamatory inquiries from her friend, and who being 
 wise was also incurious, ‘‘What can be better than two 
 houses ?” 
 
 To which the widow, whose wisdom was more ripe 
 than comforting, replied disappointingly: “One.” 
 
 Later, when the marriage loomed very near, Miss 
 Entwhistle, who found that she was more than ever in 
 need of reassurance instead of being, as she had hoped 
 to become, more reconciled, went again, in a kind of 
 desperation this time, to the widow, seeking some word 
 from her who was so wise that would restore her to 
 tranquillity, that would dispel her absurd persistent 
 doubts. ‘“‘After all,” she said almost entreatingly, 
 “what can be better than a devoted husband?” 
 
 Ae RO ead, 
 
VERA 93 
 
 And the widow, who had had three and knew what 
 she was talking about, replied with the large calm of 
 
 those who have finished and can in leisure weigh and 
 reckon up: “None.” 
 
XI 
 
 HE Wemyss-Entwhistle engagement proceeded 
 on its way of development through the ordi- 
 nary stages of all engagements: secrecy 
 complete, secrecy partial, semi-publicity, and imme- 
 diately after that entire publicity, with its inevitable 
 accompanying uproar. The uproar, always more or 
 less audible to the protagonists, of either approval or 
 disapproval, was in this case one of unanimous dis- 
 approval. Lucy’s father’s friends protested to a man. 
 The atmosphere at Eaton Terrace was convulsed; and 
 Lucy, running as she always did to hide from every- 
 thing upsetting into Wemyss’s arms, was only made 
 more certain than ever that there alone was peace. 
 This left Miss Entwhistle to face the protests by 
 herself. There was nothing for it but to face them. 
 Jim had had so many intimate, devoted friends, and 
 each of them apparently regarded his daughter as his 
 special care and concern. One or two of the younger 
 ones, who had been disciples rather than friends, were 
 in love with her themselves, and these were specially 
 indignant and vocal in their indignation. Miss Ent- 
 whistle found herself in the position she had tried so 
 hard to avoid, that of defending and explaining 
 Wemyss to a highly sceptical, antagonistic audience. 
 94 
 
VERA 95 
 
 It was as if, forced to fight for him, she was doing so 
 with her back to her drawing-room wall. 
 
 Lucy couldn’t help her, because though she was dis- 
 tressed that her aunt should be being worried because 
 of her affairs, yet she did feel that Everard was right 
 when he said that her affairs concerned nobody in the 
 world but herself and him. She, too, was indignant, 
 but her indignation was because her father’s friends, 
 who had been ever since she could remember always 
 good and kind, besides perfectly intelligent and reason- 
 able, should with one accord, and without knowing 
 anything about Everard except that story of the 
 accident, be hostile to her marrying him. The ready 
 unfairness, the willingness immediately to believe the 
 worst instead of the best, astonished and shocked her. 
 And then the way they all talked! Everlasting argu- 
 ments and reasoning and hairsplitting; so clever, so 
 impossible to stand up against, and yet so surely, she 
 was certain, if only she had been clever too and able to 
 prove things, wrong. All their multitudinous points of 
 view,—why, there was only one point of view about a 
 thing, Everard said, and that was the right one. Ah, 
 but what a woman wanted wasn’t this; she didn’t want 
 this endless thinking and examining and dissecting and 
 considering. A woman—her very thoughts were now 
 dressed in Wemyss’s words—only wanted her man. 
 «Hers not to reason why,’ ’’ Wemyss had quoted one 
 day, and both of them had laughed at his parody, 
 “ ‘hers but to love and—not die, but live.’ ” 
 
 The most that could be said for her father’s friends 
 
96 VERA 
 
 was that they meant well; but oh, what trouble the 
 well-meaning could bring into an otherwise simple 
 situation! From them she hid—it was inevitable—in 
 Wemyss’s arms. Here were no arguments; here were 
 no misgivings and paralysing hesitations. Here was 
 just simple love, and the feeling—delicious to her whose 
 mother had died in the very middle of all the sweet 
 early petting, and whose whole life since had been spent 
 entirely in the dry and bracing company of unusually 
 inquisitive-minded, clever men—of being a baby again 
 in somebody’s big, comfortable, uncritical lap. 
 
 The engagement hadn’t leaked out so much as 
 flooded out. It would have continued secret for quite 
 a long time, known only to the three and to the maids 
 —who being young women themselves, and well ac- 
 quainted with the symptoms of the condition, were 
 sure of it before Miss Entwhistle had even begun to 
 suspect,—if Wemyss hadn’t taken to dropping in, 
 contrary to expectations, on the Thursday evenings. 
 Lucy’s descriptions of these evenings and of the people 
 who came, and of how very kind they were to her aunt 
 and herself, and how anxious they were to help her, 
 they of course supposing that she was, actually, the 
 lonely thing she would have been if she hadn’t had 
 Everard as the dear hidden background to her life—at 
 this point they embraced,—at first amused him, then 
 made him curious, and finally caused him to come and 
 see for himself. | 
 
 He didn’t tell Lucy he was coming, he just came. 
 It had taken him five Thursday evenings of playing 
 
VERA 97 
 
 bridge as usual at his club, playing it with one hand, 
 as he said to her afterwards, and thinking of her with 
 the other—“you know what I mean,” he said, and they 
 laughed and embraced—before it slowly oozed into and 
 pervaded his mind that there was his little girl, sur- 
 rounded by people fussing over her and making love to 
 her (because, said Wemyss, everybody would naturally 
 want to make love to her), and there was he, the only 
 person who had a right to do this, somewhere else. 
 
 So he walked in; and when he walked in, the group 
 standing round Lucy with their backs to the door saw 
 her face, which had been gently attentive, suddenly flash 
 into colour and light; and turning with one accord to 
 see what it was she was looking at behind them with 
 parted lips and eyes of startled joy, beheld once more 
 the unknown chief mourner of the funeral in Cornwall. 
 
 Down there they had taken for granted that he was 
 a relation of Jim’s, the kind of relative who in a man’s 
 life appears only three times, the last of which is his 
 funeral; here in Eaton Terrace they were immediately 
 sure he was not, anyhow, that, because for relatives 
 who only appear those three times a girl’s face doesn’t 
 change in a flash from gentle politeness to tremulous, 
 shining life. They all stared at him astonished. He 
 was so different from the sorts of people they had met 
 at Jim’s. For one thing he was so well dressed,—in 
 the mating season, thought Miss Entwhistle, even birds 
 dress well—and in his impressive evening clothes, with 
 what seemed a bigger and more spotless shirt-front 
 than any shirt-front they could have imagined, he made 
 
98 VERA 
 
 them look and feel what they actually were, a dingy, 
 shabby lot. 
 
 Wemyss was good-looking. He might be middle- 
 aged, but he was good-looking enough frequently to 
 eclipse the young. He might have a little too much of 
 what tailors call a fine presence, but his height carried 
 this off. His features were regular, his face care-free 
 and healthy, his brown hair sleek with no grey in it, 
 he was clean-shaven, and his mouth was the kind of 
 mouth sometimes described by journalists as mobile, 
 sometimes as determined, but always as well cut. One 
 could visualise him in a fur-lined coat, thought a young 
 man near Lucy, considering him; and one couldn’t 
 visualise a single one of the others, including himself, 
 in the room that evening in a fur-lined coat. Also, 
 thought this same young man, one could see railway 
 porters and taxi-drivers and waiters hurrying to be of 
 service to him; and one not only couldn’t imagine them 
 taking any notice that wasn’t languid and reluctant of 
 the others, including himself, but one knew from per- 
 sonal distressing experience that they didn’t. 
 
 “My splendid lover!” Lucy’s heart cried out within 
 her when the door opened and there he stood. She 
 had not seen him before in the evening, and the contrast 
 between him and the rest of the people there was really 
 striking. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle had been right: there was no hiding 
 the look in Lucy’s eyes or Wemyss’s proprietary man- 
 ner. He hadn’t meant to take any but the barest notice 
 of his little girl, he had meant to be quite an ordinary 
 
VERA 99 
 
 guest—just shake hands and say, “Hasn’t it been wet 
 to-day?”—that sort of thing; but his pride and love 
 were too much for him, he couldn’t hide them. He 
 thought he did, and was sure he was behaving beautiful- 
 ly and with the easiest unconcern, but the mere way he 
 looked at her and stood over her was enough. Also there 
 was the way she looked at him. The intelligences in 
 that room were used to drawing more complicated in- 
 ferences than this. They were outraged by its obvious- 
 ness. Who was this middle-aged, prosperous outsider 
 who had got hold of Jim’s daughter? What had her 
 aunt been about? Where had he dropped from? Had 
 Jim known? 
 
 Miss Entwhistle introduced him. “Mr. Wemyss,” 
 she said to them generally, with a vague wave of her 
 hand; and a red spot appeared and stayed on each of 
 her cheekbones. 
 
 Wemyss held forth. He stood on the hearthrug 
 filling his pipe—he was used to smoking in that room 
 when he came to tea with Lucy, and forgot to ask Miss 
 Entwhistle if it mattered—and told everybody what 
 he thought. They were talking about Ireland when he 
 came in, and after the disturbance of his arrival had 
 subsided he asked them not to mind him but to go on. 
 He then proceeded to go on himself, telling them what 
 he thought; and what he thought was what the Times 
 had thought that morning. Wemyss spoke with the 
 practised fluency of a leading article. He liked politics 
 and constantly talked them at his club, and it created 
 vacancies in the chairs near him. But Lucy, who 
 
100 VERA 
 
 hadn’t heard him on politics before and found that she 
 could understand every word, listened to him with 
 parted lips. Before he came in they had been saying 
 things beyond her quickness in following, eagerly 
 discussing Sinn Fein, Lloyd George, the outrageous 
 cost of living—it was the autumn of 1920—turning 
 everything inside out, upside down, being witty, being 
 surprising, being tremendously eager and earnest. It 
 had been a kind of restless flashing round and catching 
 fire from each other,—a kind of kick, and flick, and 
 sparks, and a burst of laughter, and then on to some- 
 thing else just as she was laboriously getting under way 
 to follow the last sentence but six. She had been 
 missing her father, who took her by the hand on these 
 occasions when he saw her lagging behind, and stopped 
 a moment to explain to her, and held up the others 
 while she got her breath. 
 
 But now came Everard, and in a minute everything 
 was plain. He had the effect on her of a window being 
 thrown open and fresh air and sunlight being let in. 
 He was so sensible, she felt, compared to these others; 
 so healthy and natural. The Government, he said, 
 only had to do this and that, and Ireland and the cost 
 of living would immediately, regarded as problems, be 
 solved. He explained the line to be taken. It was a 
 very simple line. One only needed goodwill and a 
 little common sense. Why, thought Lucy, uncon- 
 sciously nodding proud agreement, didn’t people have 
 goodwill and a little common sense? 
 
 At first there was a disposition to interrupt, to 
 
VERA 101 
 
 heckle, but it grew fainter and soon gave way to 
 complete silence. The other guests might have been 
 stunned, Miss Entwhistle thought, so motionless did 
 they presently sit. And when they went away, which 
 they seemed to do earlier than usual and in a body, 
 Wemyss was still standing on the hearthrug explaining 
 the points of view of the ordinary, sensible business 
 man. 
 
 “Mind you,” he said, pointing at them with his pipe, 
 “I don’t pretend to be a great thinker. [T’m just a 
 plain business man, and as a plain business man I know 
 there’s only one way of doing a thing, and that’s the 
 right way. Find out what that way is, and go and do 
 it. There’s too much arguing altogether and asking 
 other people what they think. We don’t want talk, 
 we want action. I agree with Napoleon, who said 
 concerning the French Revolution, ‘Jl aurait fallu 
 mitrailler cette canaille. We’re not simple enough.” 
 
 This was the last the others heard as they trooped 
 in silence down the stairs. Outside they lingered for a 
 while in little knots on the pavement talking, and then 
 they drifted away to their various homes, where most 
 of them spent the rest of the evening writing to Miss 
 Entwhistle. 
 
 The following Thursday evening, her letters in reply 
 having been vague and evasive, they came again, each 
 hoping to get Lucy’s aunt to himself, and on the ground 
 of being Jim’s most devoted friend ask her straight 
 questions such as who and what was Wemyss. Also- 
 more particularly, why. Who and what he was was of 
 
102 VERA 
 
 no sort of consequence if he would only be and do it 
 somewhere else; but they arrived determined to get 
 an answer to the third question: Why Wemyss? And 
 when they got there, there he was again; there before 
 them this time, standing on the hearthrug as if he had 
 never moved off it since the week before and had gone 
 on talking ever since. 
 
 This was the end of the Thursday evenings. The 
 next one was unattended, except by Wemyss; but Miss 
 Entwhistle had been forced to admit the engagement, 
 and from then on right up to the marriage her life was 
 a curse to her and a confusion. Just because Jim had 
 appointed no guardian in his will for Lucy, every 
 single one of his friends felt bound to fill the vacancy. 
 They were indignant when they discovered that almost 
 before they had begun Lucy was being carried off, but 
 they were horrified when they discovered what Wemyss 
 it was who was carrying her off. Most of them quite 
 well remembered the affair of Mrs. Wemyss’s death a 
 few weeks before, and those who did not went, as Miss 
 Entwhistle had gone, to the British Museum and read 
 it up. They also, though they themselves were chiefly 
 unworldly persons who lost money rather than made it, 
 instituted the most searching private inquiries into 
 Wemyss’s business affairs, hoping that he might be 
 caught out as such a rascal or so penniless, or, prefer- 
 ably, both, that no woman could possibly have anything 
 to do with him. But Wemyss’s business record, the 
 solicitor they employed informed them, was quite 
 creditable. Everything about it was neat and in order. 
 
VERA 103 
 
 He was not what the City would call a wealthy man, 
 but if you went out say to Ealing, said the solicitor, 
 he would be called wealthy. He was solid, and he was | 
 certainly more than able to support a wife and family. 
 He could have been quite wealthy if he had not adopted 
 a principle to which he had adhered for years of 
 knocking off work early and _ leaving his office at an 
 hour when other men did not,—the friends were obliged 
 to admit that this, at least, seemed sensible. There 
 had been, though, a very sad occurrence recently in his 
 private life-—‘‘Oh, thank you,” interrupted the friends, 
 “‘we have heard about that.” 
 
 But however good Wemyss’s business record might 
 be, it couldn’t alter their violent objection to Jim’s 
 daughter marrying him. Apart from the stuff he 
 talked, there was the inquest. They were aware that in 
 this they were unreasonable, but they were all too much 
 attached to Jim’s memory to be able to be reasonable 
 about a man they felt so certain he wouldn’t have hked. 
 Singly and in groups they came at safe times such 
 as after breakfast to Eaton Terrace to reason with 
 Lucy, too much worried to remember that you cannot 
 reason with a person in love. Less wise than Miss 
 Entwhistle, they tried to dissuade her from marrying 
 this man, and the more they tried the tighter she clung 
 to him. To the passion of love was added, by their 
 attitudes, the passion of protectiveness, of flinging her 
 body between him and them. And all the while, right 
 inside her innermost soul, in spite of her amazement 
 at them and her indignation, she was smiling to herself ; 
 
104 VERA 
 
 for it was really very funny, the superficial judgments 
 of these clever people when set side by side with what 
 she alone knew,—the tenderness, the simple goodness 
 of her heart’s beloved. 
 
 Lucy laughed to herself in her happy sureness. She 
 had miraculously found not only a lover she could adore 
 and a guide she could follow and a teacher she could 
 look up to and a sufferer who without her wouldn’t 
 have been healed, but a mother, a nurse, and a play- 
 mate. In spite of his being so much older and so 
 extraordinarily wise, he was yet her contemporary,— 
 sometimes hardly even that, so boyish was he in his 
 talk and jokes, Lucy had never had a playmate. She 
 had spent her life sitting, as it were, bolt upright 
 mentally behaving, and she hadn’t known till Wemyss 
 came on the scene how delicious it was to relax. 
 Nonsense had delighted her father, it is true, but it 
 had to be of a certain kind; never the kind to which 
 the adjective “sheer” would apply. With Wemyss she 
 could say whatever nonsense came into her head, sheer 
 or otherwise. He laughed consumedly at her when she 
 talked it. She loved to make him laugh. They laughed 
 together. He understood her language. He was her 
 playmate. Those people outside, old and young, who 
 didn’t know what playing was and were trying to get 
 her away from him, might beat at the door behind 
 which he and she sat listening amused as long as they 
 liked. 
 
 “How they all try to separate us,” she said to him 
 
VERA 105 
 
 one day, sitting as usual safe in the circle of his arm, 
 her head on his breast. 
 
 “You can’t separate unity,’ remarked Wemyss 
 comfortably. 
 
 She wanted to tell them that answer, confront them 
 with it next time they came after breakfast, as a dis- 
 couragement to useless further effort, but she had 
 learned that they somehow always knew when what she 
 said was Everard’s and not hers, and then, of course, 
 prejudiced as they were, they wouldn’t listen. 
 
 “Now, Lucy, that’s pure Wemyss,” they would say. 
 “For heaven’s sake say something of your own.” 
 
 At Christmas Wemyss had an encounter with Miss 
 Entwhistle, who ever since she had been told of the 
 engagement had been so quiet and inoffensive that he 
 quite liked her. She had seemed to recognise her 
 position as a side-show, and had accepted it without 
 a word. She no longer asked him questions, and she 
 made no difficulties. She left him alone with Lucy in 
 Eaton Terrace, and though she had to go with them on 
 the outings she asserted herself so little that he forgot 
 she was there. But when towards the middle of 
 December he remarked one afternoon that he always 
 spent Christmas at The Willows, and what day would 
 she and Lucy come down, Christmas Eve or the day 
 before, to his astonishment she looked astonished, and 
 after a silence said it was most kind of him, but they 
 were going to spend Christmas where they were. 
 
 “T had hoped you would join us,” she said. “Must 
 you really go away?” 
 
106 VERA 
 
 “But 
 his ears. 
 
 It was, however, the fact that Miss Entwhistle 
 wouldn’t go to The Willows; and of course if she 
 wouldn’t Lucy couldn’t either. Nothing that he said 
 could shake her determination. Here was a repetition, 
 only how much worse—fancy spoiling his Christmas— 
 of her conduct in Cornwall when she insisted on going 
 away from that nice little house where they were all 
 so comfortably established, and taking Lucy up to 
 London. He had forgotten, so acquiescent had she 
 been for weeks, that down there he had discovered she 
 was obstinate. It was a shock to him to realise that 
 her obstinacy, the most obstinate obstinacy he had 
 ever met, might be going to upset his plans. He 
 couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe he wasn’t going 
 to be able to have what he wished, and only because an 
 old maid said “No.” Was the story of Balaam to be 
 reversed, and the angel be held up by the donkey? He 
 refused to believe such a thing possible. 
 
 Wemyss, who made his plans first and talked about 
 them afterwards, hadn’t mentioned Christmas even to 
 Lucy. It was his habit to settle what he wished to do, 
 arrange all the details, and then when everything was 
 ready inform those who were to take part. It hadn’t 
 occurred to him that over the Christmas question there 
 would be trouble. He had naturally taken it for 
 granted that he would spend Christmas with his little 
 girl, and of course as he always spent it at The Willows 
 she would spend it there too. All his arrangements 
 
 
 
 *» began Wemyss, incredulous, doubting 
 
VERA 107 
 
 were made, and the servants, who looked surprised, had 
 been told to get the spare-rooms ready for two ladies. 
 He had begun to feel seasonable as early as the first 
 week in December, and had bespoken two big turkeys 
 instead of one, because this was to be his first real 
 Christmas at The Willows—Vera had been without the 
 Christmas spirit—and he felt it couldn’t be celebrated 
 lavishly enough. ‘Two where there had in previous 
 years been one,—that was the turkeys; four where 
 there had been two,—that was the plum puddings. He 
 doubled everything. Doubling seemed the proper, even 
 the symbolic expression of his feelings, for wasn’t he 
 soon going to be doubled himself? And how sweetly. 
 
 Then suddenly, having finished his preparations and 
 proceeding, the time being ripe, to the question of the 
 day of arrival, he found himself up against opposition. 
 Miss Entwhistle wouldn’t go to The Willows—in- 
 credible, impossible, and insufferable,—while Lucy, 
 instead of instantly insisting and joining with him in 
 a compelling majority, sat as quiet as a mouse. 
 
 “But Lucy ”? Wemyss having stared speechless 
 at her aunt, turned to her. ‘“‘But of course we must 
 spend Christmas together.” 
 
 “Oh yes,” said Lucy, leaning forward, “of 
 
 
 
 39 
 
 
 
 course 
 
 “But of course you must come down. Why, any 
 other arrangement is unthinkable. My house is in the 
 country, which is the proper place for Christmas, and 
 it’s your Everard’s house, and you haven’t seen it yet 
 
108 VERA 
 
 —why, I would have taken you down long ago, but I’ve . 
 been saving up for this.” 
 
 “We hoped,” said Miss Entwhistle, ““you would join 
 us here.” 
 
 “Here! But there isn’t room to swing a turkey 
 here. I’ve ordered two, and each of them is twice too 
 big to get through your front door.” 
 
 “Oh, Everard—have you actually ordered tur- 
 keys?” said Lucy. 
 
 She wanted to laugh, but she also wanted to cry. 
 His simplicity was too wonderful. In her eyes it set 
 him apart from criticism and made him sacred, like the 
 nimbus about the head of a saint. 
 
 That he should have been secretly busy making 
 preparations, buying turkeys, planning a surprise, 
 when all this time she had been supposing that why he 
 never mentioned The Willows was because he shrank 
 both for himself and for her from the house of his 
 tragedy! There had never been any talk of showing 
 it to her, as there had about the house in Lancaster 
 Gate, and she had imagined he would never go near it 
 again and was probably quietly getting rid of it. He 
 would want to get rid of it, of course,—that house of 
 unbearable memories. ‘To the other one, the house in 
 Lancaster Gate, he had insisted on taking them to tea, 
 and in spite of a great desire not to go plainly visible 
 on her aunt’s face and felt too by herself, it had seemed 
 after all a natural and more or less inevitable thing, 
 and they had gone. At least that poor Vera had 
 only lived there, and not died there. It was a gloomy 
 
VERA 109 
 
 house, and Lucy had wanted him to give it up and start 
 life with her in a place without associations, but he 
 had been so much astonished at the idea—‘Why,” he 
 had cried, “it was my father’s house and I was born in 
 it!’—that she couldn’t help laughing at his dismay, 
 and was ashamed of herself for having thought of 
 uprooting him. Besides, she hadn’t known he had been 
 born in it. 
 
 The Willows, however, was different. Of that he 
 never spoke, and Lucy had been sure of the pitiful, 
 the delicate reason. Now it appeared that all this 
 time he had just been saving it up as a Christmas 
 treat. 
 
 “Oh, Everard she said, with a gasp. She 
 hadn’t reckoned with The Willows. That The Willows 
 should still be in Everard’s life, and actively so, not 
 just lingering on while house agents were disposing of 
 
 199 
 
 
 
 it, but visited and evidently prized, came upon her as 
 an immense shock. 
 “T think we can achieve a happy little Christmas for 
 
 > said her aunt, smiling the smile she smiled 
 
 you here,’ 
 when she found difficulty in smiling. ‘“‘Of course you 
 and Lucy would want to be together. I ought to have 
 told you earlier that we were counting on you, but 
 somehow Christmas comes on one so unexpectedly.” 
 “Perhaps you'll tell me why you won’t come to The 
 Willows,” said Wemyss, holding on to himself as she 
 used to make him hold on to himself in Cornwall. 
 “You realise, of course, that if you persist you spoil 
 
 both Lucy’s and my Christmas.” 
 
110 VERA 
 
 “Ah, but you mustn’t put it that way,” said Miss 
 Entwhistle, gentle but determined. “I promise you 
 that you and Lucy shall be very happy here.” 
 
 “You haven’t answered my question,” said Wemyss, 
 slowly filling his pipe. 
 
 “T don’t think I’m going to,” said Miss Entwhistle, 
 suddenly flaring up. She hadn’t flared up since she 
 was ten, and was instantly ashamed of herself, but 
 there was something about Mr. Wemyss 
 
 “T think,” she said, getting up and speaking very 
 gently, “‘you’ll like to be alone together now.” And she 
 crossed to the door. 
 
 There she wavered, and turning round said more 
 gently still, even penitentially, “If Lucy wishes to go 
 to The Willows PI—Tll accept your kind invitation 
 and take her. I leave it to her.” 
 
 Then she went out. 
 
 “That’s all right then,” said Wemyss with a great 
 sigh of relief, smiling broadly at Lucy. “Come here, 
 little love.—come to your Everard, and we'll fix it all 
 up. Lord, what a kill-joy that woman is!” 
 
 And he put out his arms and drew her to him. 
 
 
 
XII 
 
 UT Christmas was spent after all at Eaton 
 Terrace, and they lived on Wemyss’s turkeys 
 
 and plum pudding for a fortnight. 
 
 It was not a very successful Christmas because 
 Wemyss was so profoundly disappointed, and Miss 
 Entwhistle had the apologeticness of those who try to 
 make up for having got their own way, and Lucy, who 
 had shrunk from The Willows far more than her aunt, 
 wished many times before it was over that they had 
 after all gone there. It would have been much simpler 
 in the long run, and much less painful than having to 
 look on at Everard being disappointed ; but at the time, 
 and taken by surprise, she had felt that she couldn’t 
 thave borne festivities, and still less could she have borne 
 seeing Everard bearing festivities in that house. 
 
 “This is morbid,” he said, when in answer to his 
 questioning she at last told him it was poor Vera’s 
 dreadful death there that made her feel she couldn’t 
 go; and he explained, holding her in his arms, how 
 foolish it was to be morbid and how his little girl, who 
 was marrying a healthy, sensible man who, God knew, 
 had had to fight hard enough to keep so—she pressed 
 closer—and yet had succeeded, must be healthily 
 sensible too. Otherwise, if she couldn’t do this and 
 
 111 
 
112 VERA 
 
 couldn’t do that because it reminded her of something 
 sad, and couldn’t go here and couldn’t go there because 
 of somebody’s having died, he was afraid she would 
 make both herself and him very unhappy. 
 
 “Oh, Everard ” said Lucy at that, holding him 
 tight, the thought of making him unhappy, him, her 
 own beloved who had been through such terrible un- 
 happiness already, giving her heart a stab. 
 
 His little girl must know, he continued, speaking 
 with the grave voice that was natural to him when he 
 was serious, the voice not of the playmate but of the 
 man she adored, the man she was in love with, in whose 
 hands she could safely leave her earthly concerns,— 
 his little girl must know that somebody had died every- 
 where. There wasn’t a spot, there wasn’t a house, 
 
 
 
 
 
 except quite new ones 
 “Oh yes, I know—but ” Lucy tried to interrupt. 
 And The Willows was his home, the home he had 
 looked forward to and worked for and had at last been 
 able to afford to rent on a long lease, a lease so long 
 
 
 
 that it made it practically his very own, and he had 
 spent the last ten years developing and improving it, 
 and there wasn’t a brick or a tree in it in which he 
 didn’t take an interest, really an almost personal in- 
 terest, and his one thought all these months had been 
 the day when he would show it to her, to its dear future 
 mistress. 
 
 
 
 “Oh, Everard—yes—you shall—I want to sf 
 said Lucy incoherently, her cheek against his, “only 
 
VERA 113 
 
 not yet—not festivities—please—I won’t be so morbid 
 —I promise not to be morbid—but—please——” 
 
 And just when she was wavering, just when she was 
 going to give in, not because of his reasoning, for her 
 instincts were stronger than his reasoning, but because 
 she couldn’t bear his disappointment, Miss Entwhistle, 
 sure now of Lucy’s dread of Christmas at The Willows, 
 suddenly turned firm again and announced that they 
 would spend it in Eaton Terrace. 
 
 So Wemyss was forced to submit. The sensation 
 was so new to him that he couldn’t get over it. Once 
 it was certain that his Christmas was, as he insisted, 
 spoilt, he left off talking about it and went to the other 
 extreme and was very quiet. That his little love should 
 be so much under the influence of her aunt saddened 
 him, he told her. Lucy tried to bring gaiety into this 
 attitude by pointing out the proof she was giving him 
 of how very submissive she was to the person she 
 happened to live with,—‘‘And presently all my sub- 
 missiveness will be concentrated on you,” she said gaily. 
 
 But he wouldn’t be gay. He shook his head in 
 silence and filled his pipe. He was too deeply dis- 
 appointed to be able to cheer up. And the expression 
 ‘“Shappen to live with,” jarred a little. There was an 
 airy carelessness about the phrase. One didn’t happen 
 to live with one’s husband; yet that had been the 
 implication. 
 
 Every year in April Wemyss had a birthday; that 
 is, unlike most people of his age, he regularly celebrated 
 it. Christmas and his birthday were the festivals of 
 
114 VERA 
 
 the year for him, and were always spent at The Wil- 
 lows. He regarded his birthday, which was on the 4th 
 of April, as the first day of spring, defying the cal- 
 endar, and was accustomed to find certain yellow 
 flowers in blossom down by the river on that date sup- 
 porting his contention. If these flowers came out before 
 his birthday he took no notice of them, treating them 
 as non-existent, nor did he ever notice them afterwards, 
 for he did not easily notice flowers; but his gardener 
 had standing orders to have a bunch of them on the 
 table that one morning in the year to welcome him with 
 their bright shiny faces when he came down to his 
 birthday breakfast, and coming in and seeing them he 
 said, “My birthday and Spring’s’’; whereupon his wife 
 —up to now it had been Vera, but from now it would 
 be Lucy—kissed him and wished him many happy 
 returns. This was the ritual; and when one year of 
 abnormal cold the yellow flowers weren’t there at 
 breakfast, because neither by the river’s edge nor in 
 the most sheltered of the swamps had the increasingly 
 frantic gardener been able to find them, the entire birth- 
 day was dislocated. He couldn’t say on entering the 
 room and beholding them, ‘“‘My birthday and Spring’s,” 
 because he didn’t behold them; and his wife—that year 
 Vera—couldn’t kiss him and wish him many happy re- 
 turns because she hadn’t the cue. She was so much 
 used to the cue that not having it made her forget her 
 part,—forget, indeed, his birthday altogether; and 
 consequently it was a day of the extremest spiritual 
 chill and dinginess, matching the weather without. 
 
VERA 115 
 
 Wemyss had been terribly hurt. He hoped never to 
 spend another birthday like it. Nor did he, for Vera 
 remembered it after that. 
 
 Birthdays being so important to him, he naturally 
 reflected after Miss Entwhistle had spoilt his Christmas 
 that she would spoil his birthday too if he let her. Well, 
 he wasn’t going to let her. Not twice would he be 
 caught like that; not twice would he be caught in a 
 position of helpfulness on his side and power on hers. 
 The way to avoid it was very simple: he would marry 
 Lucy in time for his birthday. Why should they wait 
 any longer? Why stick to that absurd convention of 
 the widower’s year? No sensible man minded what 
 people thought. And who were the people? Surely 
 one didn’t mind the opinions of those shabby weeds he 
 had met on the two Thursday evenings at Lucy’s aunt’s. 
 The little they had said had been so thoroughly un- 
 sound and muddled and yet dangerous, that if they 
 one and all emigrated to-morrow England would only 
 be the better. After meeting them he had said to Lucy, 
 who had listened in some wonder at this new light 
 thrown on her father’s friends, that they were the very 
 stuff of which successful segregation was made. In an 
 island by themselves, he told her, they would be quite 
 happy undermining each other’s backbones, and the 
 backbone of England, which consisted of plain unspoilt 
 patriots, would be let alone. They, certainly, didn’t 
 matter; while as for his own friends, those friends who 
 had behaved badly to him on Vera’s death, not only 
 didn’t he care twopence for their criticisms but he could 
 
116 VERA 
 
 hardly wait for the moment when he would confound 
 them by producing for their inspection this sweetest 
 of little girls, so young, so devoted to him, Lucy his 
 wife. 
 
 He accordingly proceeded to make all the necessary 
 arrangements for being married in March, for going 
 for a trip to Paris, and for returning to The Willows 
 for the final few days of his honeymoon on the very 
 day of his birthday. What a celebration that would 
 be! Wemyss, thinking of it, shut his eyes so as to 
 dwell upon it undisturbed. Never would he have had 
 a birthday like this next one. He might really quite 
 fairly call it his First, for he would be beginning life 
 all over again, and entering on years that would indeed 
 be truthfully described as tender. 
 
 So much was it his habit to make plans privately 
 and not mention them till they were complete, that he 
 found it difficult to tell Lucy of this one in spite of the 
 important part she was to play in it. But, after all, 
 some preparing would, he admitted to himself, be 
 necessary even for the secret marriage he had decided 
 on at a registrar’s office. She would have to pack a 
 bag; she would have to leave her belongings in order. 
 Also he might perhaps have to use persuasion. He 
 knew his little girl well enough to be sure she would 
 relinquish church and white satin without a murmur at 
 his request, but she might want to tell her aunt of the 
 marriage’s imminence, and then the aunt would, to a 
 dead certainty, obstruct, and either induce her to wait 
 till the year was out, or, if Lucy refused to do this, 
 
VERA 117 
 
 make her miserable with doubts as to whether she had 
 been right to follow her lover’s wishes. Fancy making 
 a girl miserable because she followed her lover’s wishes! 
 What a woman, thought Wemyss, filling his pipe. In 
 his eyes Miss Entwhistle had swollen since her conduct 
 at Christmas to the bulk of-a monster. 
 
 Having completed his preparations, and fixed his 
 wedding day for the first Saturday in March, Wemyss 
 thought it time he told Lucy; so he did, though not 
 without a slight fear at the end that she might make 
 difficulties. 
 
 “My little love isn’t going to do anything that spoils 
 her Everard’s plans after all the trouble he has taken?” 
 he said, seeing that with her mouth slightly open she 
 gazed at him in an obvious astonishment and didn’t 
 say a word. 
 
 He then proceeded to shut the eyes that were gazing 
 up into his, and the surprised parted lips, with kisses, 
 for he had discovered that gentle, lingering kisses 
 hushed Lucy quiet when she was inclined to say, 
 “But ” and brought her back quicker than any- 
 thing to the mood of tender, half-asleep acquiescence 
 in which, as she lay in his arms, he most loved her; then 
 indeed she was his baby, the object of the passionate 
 protectiveness he felt he was naturally filled with, but 
 for the exercise of which circumstances up to now had 
 given him no scope. You couldn’t passionately protect 
 Vera. She was always in another room. 
 
 Lucy, however, did say, “But 4 
 covered from her first surprise, and did presently— 
 
 
 
 when she re- 
 
 
 
118 VERA 
 
 directly, that is, he left off kissing her and she could 
 speak—make difficulties. Her aunt; the secrecy; why 
 secrecy; why not wait; it was so necessary under the 
 circumstances to wait. 
 
 And then he explained about his birthday. 
 
 At that she gazed at him again with a look of wonder 
 in her eyes, and after a moment began to laugh. She 
 laughed a great deal, and with her ann tight round his 
 neck, but her eyes were wet. “Oh Everard,” she said, 
 her cheek against his, “do you think we’re really old 
 enough to marry?”’ 
 
 This time, however, he got his way. Lucy found 
 she couldn’t bring herself to spoil his plans a second 
 time; the spectacle of his prolonged silent disappoint- 
 ment at Christmas was still too vividly before her. 
 Nor did she feel she could tell her aunt. She hadn’t 
 the courage to face her aunt’s expostulations and final 
 distressed giving in, Her aunt, who loomed so enor- 
 mous in Wemyss’s eyes, seemed to Lucy to be only half 
 the size she used to be. She seemed to have been worried 
 small by her position, like a bone among contending 
 dogs, in the middle of different indignations. What 
 would be the effect on her of this final blow? ‘The 
 thought of it haunted Lucy and spoilt all the last days 
 before her marriage, days which she otherwise would 
 have loved, because she very quickly became infected 
 by the boyish delight and excitement over their secret 
 that made Wemyss hardly able to keep still in his chair. 
 He didn’t keep still in it. Once at least he got up and 
 did some slow steps about the room, moving with an 
 
VERA 119 
 
 apparent solemnity because of not being used to such 
 steps, which he informed her presently were a dance. 
 Till he told her this she watched him too much surprised 
 to say anything. So did penguins dance in pictures. 
 She couldn’t think what was the matter with him. 
 When he had done, and told her, breathing a little hard, 
 that it was a dance symbolic of married happiness, she 
 laughed and laughed, and flew to hug him. 
 
 “Baby, oh, baby!” she said, rubbing her cheek up 
 and down his coat. 
 
 “Who’s another baby?” he asked, breathless but 
 beaming. 
 
 Such was their conversation. 
 
 But poor Aunt Dot.... 
 
 Lucy couldn’t bear to think of poor little kind Aunt 
 Dot. She had been so wonderful, so patient, and she 
 would be deeply horrified by a runaway marriage. 
 Never, never would she understand the reason for it. 
 She didn’t a bit understand Everard, didn’t begin to 
 understand him, and that his birthday should be a 
 reason for breaking what she would regard as the com- 
 mon decencies would of course only seem to her too 
 childish to be even discussed. Lucy was afraid Aunt 
 Dot was going to be very much upset,—poor darling 
 little Aunt Dot. Conscience-stricken, she couldn’t do 
 enough for Aunt Dot now that the secret date was 
 fixed. She watched for every possible want during their 
 times alone, flew to fetch things, darted at dropped 
 handkerchiefs, kissed her not only at bedtime and in 
 the morning but whenever there was the least excuse and 
 
120 tute O1.' 
 
 with the utmost tenderness; and every kiss and every 
 look seemed to say, ‘Forgive me.” 
 
 “Are they going to run away?” wondered Miss 
 Entwhistle presently. 
 
 Lucy would have been immensely taken aback, and 
 perhaps, such is one’s perversity, even hurt, if she 
 could have seen the ray of hope which at this thought 
 lit her Aunt Dot’s exhausted mind; for Miss Entwhis- 
 tle’s life, which had been a particularly ordered and 
 calm one up to the day when Wemyss first called at 
 Eaton Terrace, had since then been nothing but just 
 confused clamour, Everybody was displeased with her, 
 and each for directly opposite reasons. She had fallen 
 on evil days, and they had by February been going on 
 so long that she felt worn out. Wemyss, she was quite 
 aware, disliked her heartily; her Jim was dead; Lucy, 
 her one living relation, so tenderly loved, was every day 
 disappearing further before her very eyes into 
 Wemyss’s personality, into what she sometimes was 
 betrayed by fatigue and impatience into calling to 
 herself the Wemyss maw; and her little house, which 
 had always been so tranquil, had become, she wearily 
 felt, the cockpit of London. She used to crawl back 
 to it with footsteps that lagged more and more the 
 nearer she got, after her enforced prolonged daily 
 outings—enforced and prolonged because the house 
 couldn’t possibly hold both herself and Wemyss except 
 for the briefest moments,—and drearily wonder what 
 letters she would find from Jim’s friends scolding her, 
 and what fresh arrangements in the way of tiring motor 
 
VERA 121 
 
 excursions, or invitations to tea at that dreadful house 
 in Lancaster Gate, would be sprung upon her. Did all 
 engagements pursue such a turbulent course? she asked 
 herself,—she had given up asking the oracle of Chesham 
 Street anything because of her disconcerting answers. 
 How glad she was she had never been engaged; how 
 glad she was she had refused the offers she had had 
 when she was a girl. Quite recently she had met one 
 of those would-be husbands in an omnibus, and how 
 glad she was when she looked at him that she had re- 
 fused him. People don’t keep well, mused Miss Ent- 
 whistle. If Lucy would only refuse Wemyss now, how 
 glad she would be that she had when she met him in ten 
 years’ time in an omnibus, 
 
 But these, of course, were merely the reflections of 
 a tired-out spinster, and she still had enough spirit to 
 laugh at them to herself. After all, whatever she might 
 feel about Wemyss Lucy adored him, and when anybody 
 adores anybody as much as that, Miss Entwhistle 
 thought, the only thing to do is to marry and have 
 done withit. No; that was cynical, She meant, marry 
 and not have done with it. Ah, if only the child were 
 marrying that nice young Teddy Trevor, her own age 
 and so devoted, and with every window-sill throughout 
 his house in Chelsea the proper height. ... 
 
 Miss Entwhistle was very unhappy all this time, 
 besides having feet that continually ached. Though 
 she dreaded the marriage, yet she couldn’t help feeling 
 that it would be delicious to be able once more to sit 
 down. How enchanting to sit quietly in her own empty 
 
122 VERA 
 
 drawing-room, and not to have to walk about London 
 any more. How enchanting not to make any further 
 attempts to persuade herself that she enjoyed Bat- 
 tersea Park, and liked the Embankment, and was 
 entertained by Westminster Abbey. What she wanted 
 with an increasing longing that amounted at last to 
 desperation as the winter dragged on, was her own 
 chair by the fire and an occasional middle-aged crony 
 to tea. She had reached the time of life when one likes 
 sitting down. Also she had definitely got to the period 
 of cronies. One’s contemporaries—people who had 
 worn the same kinds of clothes as oneself in girlhood, 
 who remembered bishop’s sleeves and could laugh with 
 one about bustles—how very much one longed for one’s 
 contemporaries. 
 
 When, then, Lucy’s behaviour suddenly became so 
 markedly attentive and so very tender, when she caught 
 her looking at her with wistful affection and flushing on 
 being caught, when her good-nights and good-mornings 
 were many kisses instead of one, and she kept on jump- 
 ing up and bringing her teaspoons she hadn’t asked for 
 and sugar she didn’t want, Miss Entwhistle began to 
 revive, 
 
 “Is it possible they’re going to run away?” she 
 wondered; and so much reduced was she that she very 
 nearly hoped so. 
 
XII 
 
 UCY had meant to do exactly as Wemyss said 
 and keep her marriage secret, creeping out of 
 the house quietly, going off with him abroad 
 
 after the registrar had bound them together, and tele- 
 graphing or writing to her aunt from some safe dis- 
 tant place en route like Boulogne; but on saying good- 
 night the evening before the wedding day, to her very 
 great consternation her aunt, whom she was in the act 
 of kissing, suddenly pushed her gently a little away, 
 looked at her a moment, and then holding her by both 
 arms said with conviction, “It’s to-morrow.” 
 
 Lucy could only stare. She stared idiotically, open- 
 mouthed, her face scarlet. She looked and felt both 
 foolish and frightened. Aunt Dot was uncanny. If 
 she had discovered, how had she discovered? And 
 what was she going to do? But had she discovered, 
 or was it just something she chanced to remember, 
 some engagement Lucy had naturally forgotten, or 
 perhaps only somebody coming to tea? 
 
 She clutched at this straw. ‘What is to-morrow?” 
 she stammered, scarlet with fright and guilt. 
 
 And her aunt made herself perfectly clear by reply- 
 ing, “Your wedding.” 
 
 Then Lucy fell on her neck and cried and told her 
 
 123 
 
124 | VERA 
 
 everything, and her wonderful, unexpected, uncanny, 
 adorable little aunt, instead of being upset and making 
 her feel too wicked and ungrateful to live, was full of 
 sympathy and understanding. They sobbed together, 
 sitting on the sofa locked in each other’s arms, but it 
 was a sweet sobbing, for they both felt at this moment 
 how much they loved each other. Miss Entwhistle 
 wished she had never had a single critical impatient 
 thought of the man this darling little child so deeply 
 loved, and Lucy wished she had never had a single 
 secret from this darling little aunt Everard so blindly 
 didn’t love. Dear, dear little Aunt Dot. Lucy’s heart 
 was big with gratitude and tenderness and pity,—pity 
 because she herself was so gloriously happy and sur- 
 rounded by love, and Aunt Dot’s life seemed, compared 
 to hers, so empty, so solitary, and going to be like that 
 till the end of her days; and Miss Entwhistle’s heart 
 was big with yearning over this lamb of Jim’s who was 
 giving herself with such fearlessness, all lit up by radi- 
 ant love, into the hands of a strange husband. Pres- 
 ently, of course, he wouldn’t be a strange husband, he 
 would be a familiar husband; but would he be any 
 the better for that? she wondered. ‘They sobbed, and 
 kissed, and sobbed again, each keeping half her 
 thoughts to herself. 
 
 This is how it was that Miss Entwhistle walked into 
 the registrar’s office with Lucy next morning and was 
 one of the witnesses of the marriage. 
 
 Wemyss had a very bad moment when he saw her 
 come in. His heart gave a great thump, such as it had 
 
VERA 125 
 
 never done in his life before, for he thought there was 
 to be a hitch and that at the very last minute he was 
 somehow not going to get his Lucy. Then he looked at 
 Lucy and was reassured. Her face was like the morning 
 of a perfect day in its cloudlessness, her Love-in-a-Mist 
 eyes were dewy with tenderness as they rested on him, 
 and her mouth was twisted up by happiness into the 
 sweetest, funniest little crooked smile. If only she 
 would take off her hat, thought Wemyss, bursting with 
 pride, so that the registrar could see how young she 
 looked with her short hair,—why, perhaps the old boy 
 might think she was too young to be married and start 
 asking searching questions! What fun that would be. 
 
 He himself produced the effect on Miss Entwhistle, 
 as he stood next to Lucy being married, of an enormous 
 schoolboy who had just won some silver cup or other 
 for his House after immense exertions. He had exactly 
 that glowing face of suppressed triumph and pride; he 
 was red with delighted achievement. 
 
 “Put the ring on your wife’s finger,’ ordered the 
 registrar when, having got through the first part of 
 the ceremony, Wemyss, busy beaming down at Lucy,, 
 forgot there was anything more to do. And Lucy 
 stuck up her hand with all the fingers spread out andi 
 stiff, and her face beamed too with happiness at the 
 words, “Your wife.” 
 
 “““Nothing is here for tears,’” quoted Miss Ent-- 
 whistle to herself, watching the blissful absorption with 
 which they were both engaged in getting the ring 
 successfully over the knuckle of the proper’ finger.. 
 
126 VERA 
 
 ““He really ts a—a dear. Yes. Of course. But how 
 queer life is. I wonder what he was doing this day 
 last year, he and that poor wife of his.” 
 
 When it was over and they were outside on the 
 steps, with the taxi Wemyss had come in waiting to 
 take them to the station, Miss Entwhistle realised that 
 here was the place and moment of good-bye, and that 
 not only could she go no further with Lucy but that 
 from now on she could do nothing more for her. Except 
 love her. Except listen to her. Ah, she would always 
 be there to love and listen to her; but happiest of all 
 it would be for the little thing if she never, from her, 
 were to need either of those services. 
 
 At the last moment she put her hand impulsively 
 on Wemyss’s breast and looked up into his triumphant, 
 flushed face and said, “Be kind to her.” 
 
 “Oh, Aunt Dot!” laughed Lucy, turning to hug her 
 once more. 
 
 “Oh, Aunt Dot!” laughed Wemyss, vigorously shak- 
 ing her hand. 
 
 They went down the steps, leaving her standing alone 
 on the top, and she watched the departing taxi with the 
 two heads bobbing up and down at the window and the 
 four hands waving good-byes. That taxi window could 
 never have framed in so much triumph, so much radi- 
 ance before. Well, well, thought Aunt Dot, going down 
 in her turn when the last glimpse of them had dis- 
 appeared, and walking slowly homeward; and she added, 
 after a space of further reflection, “He really is a 
 —a dear.” 
 
XIV 
 
 ARRIAGE, Lucy found, was different from 
 M what she had supposed; Everard was differ- 
 ent. For one thing she was always sleepy. 
 
 For another she was never alone. She hadn’t realised 
 how completely she would never be alone, or, if alone, 
 not sure for one minute to the other of going on being 
 alone. Always in her life there had been intervals 
 during which she recuperated in solitude from any 
 strain; now there were none. Always there had been 
 places she could go to and rest in quietly, safe from 
 interruption; now there were none. The very sight 
 of their room at the hotels they stayed at, with 
 Wemyss’s suit-cases and clothes piled on the chairs, 
 and the table covered with his brushes and shaving 
 things,—for he wouldn’t have a dressing-room, being 
 too natural and wholesome, he explained, to want any- 
 thing separate from his own woman—the very sight 
 of this room fatigued her. After a day of churches, 
 pictures and restaurants—he was a most conscientious 
 sightseer, besides being greatly interested in his meals 
 —to come back to this room wasn’t rest but further 
 fatigue. Wemyss, who was never tired and slept won- 
 derfully—it was the soundness of his sleep that kept 
 her awake, because she wasn’t used to hearing sound 
 
 27 
 
128 ; VERA 
 
 sleep so close—would fling himself into the one easy- 
 chair and pull her on to his knee, and having kissed 
 her a great many times he would ruffle her hair, and 
 then when it was all on ends like a boy’s coming out 
 of a bath look at her with the pride of possession and 
 say, “There’s a wife for a respectable British business 
 man to have! Mrs. Wemyss, aren’t you ashamed of 
 yourself?” And then there would be more kissing,— 
 jovial, gluttonous kisses, that made her skin rough 
 and chapped. | 
 
 “Baby,” she would say, feebly struggling, and smil- 
 ing a little wearily. 
 
 Yes, he was a baby, a dear, high-spirited baby, but 
 a baby now at very close quarters and one that went 
 on all the time. You couldn’t put him in a cot and 
 give him a bottle and say, “There now,” and then sit 
 down quietly to a little sewing; you didn’t have Sun- 
 days out; you were never, day or night, an instant off 
 duty. Lucy couldn’t count the number of times a day 
 she had to answer the question, ‘“‘Who’s my own little 
 wife?” At first she answered it with laughing ecstasy, 
 running into his outstretched arms, but very soon that 
 fatal sleepiness set in and remained with her for the 
 whole of her honeymoon, and she really felt too tired 
 sometimes to get the ecstasy she quickly got to know 
 was expected of her into her voice. She loved him, she 
 was indeed his own little wife, but constantly to an- 
 swer this and questions like it satisfactorily was a 
 great exertion. Yetif there was a shadow of hesitation 
 before she answered, a hair’s-breadth of delay owing to 
 
VERA 129 
 
 her thoughts having momentarily wandered, Wemyss 
 was upset, and she had to spend quite a long time 
 reassuring him with the fondest whispers and caresses. 
 Her thoughts mustn’t wander, she had discovered ; her 
 thoughts were to be his as well as all the rest of her. 
 Was ever a girl so much loved? she asked herself, 
 astonished and proud; but, on the other hand, she 
 was dreadfully sleepy. 
 
 Any thinking she did had to be done at night, when 
 she lay awake because of the immense emphasis with 
 which Wemyss slept, and she hadn’t been married a 
 week before she was reflecting what a bad arrangement 
 it was, the way ecstasy seemed to have no staying 
 power. Also it oughn’t to begin, she considered, at its 
 topmost height and accordingly not be able to move 
 except downwards. If one could only start modestly 
 in marriage with very little of it and work steadily 
 upwards, taking one’s time, knowing there was more 
 and more to come, it would be much better, she thought. 
 No doubt it would go on longer if one slept better and 
 hadn’t, consequently, got headaches. Everard’s ecstasy 
 went on. Perhaps by ecstasy she really meant high 
 spirits, and Everard was beside himself with high 
 spirits. 
 
 Wemyss was indeed the typical bridegroom of the 
 Psalms, issuing forth rejoicing from his chamber. Lucy 
 wished she could issue forth from it rejoicing too. She 
 was vexed with herself for being so stupidly sleepy, for 
 not being able to get used to the noise beside her at 
 night and go to sleep as naturally as she did in Eaton 
 
130 VERA 
 
 Terrace, in spite of the horns of taxis. It wasn’t fair 
 to Everard, she felt, not to find a wife in the morning 
 matching him in spirits. Perhaps, however, this was a 
 condition peculiar to honeymoons, and marriage, once 
 the honeymoon was over, would be a more tranquil state. 
 Things would settle down when they were back in 
 England, to a different, more separated life in which 
 there would be time to rest, time to think; time to 
 remember, while he was away at his office, how deeply 
 she loved him. And surely she would learn to sleep; 
 and once she slept properly she would be able to answer 
 his loving questions throughout the day with more 
 real élan. 
 
 But,—there in England waiting for her, inevitable: 
 no longer to be put off or avoided, was The Willows. 
 Whenever her thoughts reached that house they gave 
 a little jump and tried to slink away. She was ashamed 
 of herself, it was ridiculous, and Everard’s attitude was 
 plainly the sensible one, and if he could adopt it surely 
 she, who hadn’t gone through that terrible afternoon 
 last July, could; yet she failed to see herself in The 
 Willows, she failed altogether to imagine it. How, for 
 instance, was she going to sit on that terrace,—‘We 
 always have tea in fine weather on the terrace,” Wemyss 
 had casually remarked, apparently quite untouched by 
 the least memory—how was she going to have tea on 
 the very flags perhaps where. . . . Her thoughts slunk 
 away; but not before one of them had sent a curdling 
 whisper through her mind, “The tea would taste of 
 blood.” 
 
VERA 131 
 
 Well, this was sleeplessness. She never in her life 
 had had that sort of absurd thought. It was just that 
 she didn’t sleep, and so her brain was relaxed and let 
 the reins of her thinking go slack. The day her father 
 died, it’s true, when it began to be evening and she was 
 afraid of the night alone with him in his mysterious 
 indifference, she had begun thinking absurdly, but 
 Everard had come and saved her. He could save her 
 from this too if she could tell him; only she couldn’t 
 tell him. How could she spoil his joy in his home? 
 It was the thing he loved next best to her. 
 
 As the honeymoon went on and Wemyss’s ecstasies 
 a little subsided, as he began to tire of so many trains— 
 after Paris they did the chateaux country—and hotels 
 and waiters and taxis and restaurants, and the cooking 
 which he had at first enjoyed now only increased his 
 longing at every meal for a plain English steak and 
 boiled potatoes, he talked more and more of The Wil- 
 lows. With almost the same eagerness as that which 
 had so much enchanted and moved her before their 
 marriage when he talked of their wedding day, he now 
 talked of The Willows and the day when he would show 
 it to her. He counted the days now to that day. 
 The 4th of April; his birthday; on that happy day 
 he would lead his little wife into the home he loved. 
 How could she, when he talked like that, do anything 
 but pretend enthusiasm and looking forward? He had 
 apparently entirely forgotten what she had told him 
 about her reluctance to go there at Christmas. She 
 was astonished that, when the first bliss of being mar- 
 
132 VERA 
 
 ried to her had worn off and his thoughts were free 
 for this other thing he so much loved, his home, he 
 ‘didn’t approach it with more care for what he must 
 ‘know was her feeling about it. She was still more 
 astonished when she realised that he had entirely for- 
 gotten her feeling about it. It would be, she felt, 
 impossible to shadow his happiness at the prospect of 
 showing her his home by any reminder of her re- 
 luctance. Besides, she was certainly going to have 
 to live at The Willows, so what was the use of talking? 
 
 “I suppose,” she did say hesitatingly one day when 
 he was describing it to her for the hundredth time, for 
 it was his habit to describe the same thing often, 
 “you’ve changed your room fe 
 
 They were sitting at the moment, resting after the 
 climb up, on one of the terraces of the Chateau of 
 Amboise, with a view across the Loire of an immense 
 horizon, and Wemyss had been comparing it, to its 
 disadvantage, when he recovered his breath, with the 
 view from his bedroom window at The Willows. It 
 wasn’t very nice weather, and they both were cold and 
 tired, and it was still only eleven o’clock in the morn- 
 ing. 
 
 “Change my room? What room?” he asked. 
 
 *“Your—the room you and—the room you slept in.” 
 
 “My bedroom? I should think not. It’s the best 
 room in the house. Why do you think I’ve changed 
 it??? And he looked at her with a surprised face. 
 
 “Oh, I don’t know,” said Lucy, taking refuge in 
 stroking his hand. “I only thought *” 
 
 
 
 
 
VERA 133 
 
 An inkling of what was in her mind penetrated into 
 his, and his voice went grave. 
 
 “You mustn’t think,” he said. “You mustn’t be 
 morbid. Now Lucy, I can’t have that. It will spoil 
 everything if you let yourself be morbid. And you 
 promised me before our marriage you wouldn’t be. 
 Have you forgotten?” 
 
 He turned to her and took her face in both his hands 
 and searched her eyes with his own very solemn ones, 
 while the woman who was conducting them over the 
 castle went to the low parapet, and stood with her back 
 to them studying the view and yawning. 
 
 “Oh, Everard—of course I haven’t forgotten. Ive 
 not forgotten anything I promised you, and never will. 
 But—have I got to go into that bedroom too?”’ 
 
 He was really astonished. “Have you got to go into 
 that bedroom too?” he repeated, staring at the face 
 enclosed in his two big hands. It looked extraordi- 
 narily pretty like that, very like a small flower in its 
 delicate whiteness next to his discoloured, middle-aged 
 hands, and her mouth since her marriage seemed to 
 have become an even more vivid red than it used to 
 be, and her eyes were young enough to be made more 
 beautiful instead of less by the languor of want of 
 sleep. “Well, I should think so. Aren’t you my wife?” 
 
 “Yes,” said Lucy. “But aa 
 
 “Now, Lucy, Ill have no buts,” he said, with his 
 most serious air, kissing her on the cheek,—she had 
 discovered that just that kind of kiss was a rebuke. 
 “Those buts of yours butt in a 
 
 
 
 
 
134 VERA 
 
 He stopped, struck by what he had said. 
 
 “T think that was rather amusing—don’t you?” he 
 asked, suddenly smiling. 
 
 “Oh yes—very,” said Lucy eagerly, smiling too, 
 delighted that he should switch off from solemnity. 
 
 He kissed her again,—this time a real kiss, on her 
 funny, charming mouth. 
 
 “I suppose you'll admit,” he said, laughing and 
 squeezing up her face into a quaint crumpled shape, 
 
 “that either you’re my wife or not my wife, and that 
 oF 
 
 
 
 if you’re my wife 
 
 “Oh, ’m that all right,” laughed Lucy. 
 
 ‘Then you share my room. None of these damned 
 new-fangled notions for me, young woman.” 
 
 “Oh, but I didn’t mean a 
 
 “What? Another but?” he exclaimed, pouncing 
 down on to her mouth and stopping it with an 
 enormous kiss. 
 
 “Monsieur et Madame se refroidiront,’’ said the 
 woman, turning round and drawing her shawl closer 
 over her chest as a gust of chilly wind swept over the 
 terrace. 
 
 They were honeymooners, poor creatures, and there- 
 fore one had patience; but even honeymooners oughtn’t 
 to wish to embrace in a cold wind on an exposed terrace 
 of a chateau round which they were being conducted by 
 a woman who was in a hurry to return to the prepara- 
 tion of her Sunday dinner. For such purposes hotels 
 were provided, and the shelter of a comfortable warm 
 room. She had supposed them to be pére et fille when 
 
 
 
VERA 135 
 
 first she admitted them, but was soon aware of their 
 real relationship: “Jl doit étre bien riche,” had been 
 her conclusion. 
 
 “Come along, come along,” said Wemyss, getting up 
 quickly, for he too felt the gust of cold wind. ‘“Let’s 
 finish the chateau or we'll be late for lunch. I wish 
 they hadn’t preserved so many of these places—one 
 would have been quite enough to show us the sort of 
 thing.” 
 
 “But we needn’t go and look at them all,” said Lucy. 
 
 “Oh yes we must. We’ve arranged to.” 
 
 “But Everard ” began Lucy, following after him 
 as he followed after the conductress, who had a way of 
 darting out of sight round corners. 
 
 “This woman’s like a lizard,” panted Wemyss, ar- 
 riving round a corner only to see her disappear through 
 an arch. ‘“Won’t we be happy when it’s time to go 
 back to England and not have to see any more sights?” 
 
 “But why don’t we go back now, if you feel like it?” 
 asked Lucy, trotting after him as he on his big legs 
 pursued the retreating conductress, and anxious to 
 
 
 
 show him, by eagerness to go sooner to The Willows 
 than was arranged, that she wasn’t being morbid. 
 
 “Why, you know we can’t leave before the 3rd of 
 April,” said Wemyss, over his shoulder. “It’s all 
 settled.” 
 
 “But can’t it be unsettled?” 
 
 “What, and upset all the plans, and arrive home 
 before my birthday?” He'stopped and turned round 
 to stare at her. “Really, my dear ”? he said. 
 
 
 
136 VERA 
 
 She had discovered that my dear was a term of 
 rebuke. 
 
 “Oh yes—of course,” she said hastily, “I forgot 
 about your birthday.” 
 
 At that Wemyss stared at her harder than ever; 
 incredulously, in fact. Forgot about his birthday? 
 Lucy had forgotten? If it had been Vera, now—but 
 Lucy? He was deeply hurt. He was so much hurt 
 that he stood quite still, and the conductress was 
 obliged, on discovering that she was no longer being 
 followed, to wait once more for the honeymooners ; 
 which she did, clutching her shawl round her abundant 
 French chest and shivering. 
 
 What had she said, Lucy hurriedly asked herself, 
 running over her last words in her mind, for she had 
 learned by now what he looked like when he was hurt. 
 Oh yes,—the birthday. How stupid of her. But it 
 was because birthdays in her family were so unim- 
 portant, and nobody had minded whether they were 
 remembered or not. 
 
 “I didn’t mean that,” she said earnestly, laying her — 
 hand on his breast. “Of course I hadn’t forgotten 
 anything so precious. It only had—well, you know 
 what even the most wonderful things do sometimes— 
 it—it had escaped my memory.” 
 
 “Lucy! Escaped your memory? The day to which 
 you owe your husband?” 
 
 Wemyss said this with such an exaggerated sol- 
 emnity, such an immense pomposity, that she thought 
 he was in fun and hadn’t really minded about the 
 
VERA 137 
 
 birthday at all; and, eager to meet every mood of his, 
 she laughed. Relieved, she was so unfortunate as to 
 laugh merrily. 
 
 To her consternation, after a moment’s further stare 
 he turned his back on her without a word and walked on. 
 
 Then she realised what she had done, that she had 
 laughed—oh, how dreadful!—in the wrong place, and 
 she ran after him and put her arm through his, and 
 tried to lay her cheek against his sleeve, which was 
 difficult because of the way their paces didn’t match 
 and also because he took no notice of her, and said, 
 “Baby—baby—were his dear feelings hurt then?” and 
 coaxed him, 
 
 But he wouldn’t be coaxed. She had wounded him 
 too deeply,—laughing, he said to himself, at what was 
 to him the most sacred thing in life, the fact that he 
 was her husband, that she was his wife. 
 
 “Oh, Everard,” she murmured at last, withdrawing 
 her arm, giving up, “‘don’t spoil our day.” 
 
 Spoil their day? He? That finished it. 
 
 He didn’t speak to her again till night. Then, in 
 bed, after she had cried bitterly for a long while, be- 
 cause she couldn’t make out what really had happened, 
 and she loved him so much, and wouldn’t hurt him for 
 the world, and was heartbroken because she had, and 
 anyhow was tired out, he at last turned to her and took” 
 her to his arms again and forgave her. 
 
 “T can’t live,” sobbed Lucy, “I can’t live—if you 
 don’t go on loving me—if we don’t understand < 
 
 “My little Love,” said Wemyss, melted by the way 
 
 
 
138 VERA 
 
 her small body was shaking in his arms, and rather 
 frightened, too, at the excess of her woe. “My little 
 Love—don’t. You mustn’t. Your Everard loves you, 
 and you mustn’t give way like this. You'll be ill. 
 Think how miserable you’d make him then.” 
 
 And in the dark he kissed away her tears, and held 
 her close till her sobbing quieted down; and presently, 
 held close like that, his kisses shutting her smarting 
 eyes, she now the baby comforted and reassured, and 
 he the soothing nurse, she fell asleep, and for the first 
 time since her marriage slept all night. 
 
 hy ei 
 
 —. 
 
XV 
 
 pounded his theory to Lucy that there should 
 
 be the most perfect frankness between lovers, 
 while as for husband and wife there oughtn’t to be a 
 corner anywhere about either of them, mind, body, or 
 soul, which couldn’t be revealed to the other one. 
 
 “You can talk about everything to your Everard,” 
 he assured her. ‘Tell him your innermost thoughts, 
 whatever they may be. You need no more be ashamed 
 of telling him than of thinking them by yourself. He 
 is you. You and he are one in mind and soul now, 
 and when he is your husband you and he will become 
 perfect and complete by being one in body as well. 
 Everard—Lucy. Lucy—Everard. We shan’t know 
 where one ends and the other begins. That, little Love, 
 is real marriage. What do you think of it?” 
 
 Lucy thought so highly of it that she had no words 
 with which to express her admiration, and fell to kissing 
 him instead. What ideal happiness, to be for ever 
 removed from the fear of loneliness by the simple ex- 
 pedient of being doubled; and who so happy as herself 
 to have found the exactly right person for this doubling, 
 one she could so perfectly agree with and understand? 
 She felt quite sorry she had nothing in her mind in the 
 
 139 
 
 oud in their engagement Wemyss had ex- 
 
140 VERA 
 
 way of thoughts she was ashamed of to tell him then 
 and there, but there wasn’t a doubt, there wasn’t a 
 shred of anything a little wrong, not even an unworthy 
 suspicion. Her mind was a chalice filled only with love, 
 and so clear and bright was the love that even at the 
 bottom, when she stirred it up to look, there wasn’t a 
 trace of sediment. 
 
 But marriage—or was it sleeplessness?—completely 
 changed this, and there were perfect crowds of thoughts 
 in her mind that she was thoroughly ashamed of. Re- 
 membering his words, and whole-heartedly agreeing that 
 to be able to tell each other everything, to have no 
 concealments, was real marriage, the day after her 
 wedding she first of all reminded him of what he had 
 said, then plunged bravely into the announcement that 
 she’d got a thought she was ashamed of. 
 
 Wemyss pricked up his ears, thinking it was some- 
 thing interesting to do with sex, and waited with an 
 amused, inquisitive smile. But Lucy in such matters 
 was content to follow him, aware of her want of ex- 
 perience and of the abundance of his, and the thought 
 that was worrying her only had to do with a waiter. 
 A waiter, if you please. 
 
 Wemyss’s smile died away. He had had occasion 
 to reprimand this waiter at lunch for gross negligence, 
 and here was Lucy alleging he had done so without 
 any reason that she could see, and anyhow roughly. 
 Would he remove the feeling of discomfort she had at 
 being forced to think her own heart’s beloved, the kind- 
 
VERA 141 
 
 est and gentlest of men, hadn’t been kind and gentle 
 but unjust, by explaining? 
 
 Well, that was at the very beginning. She soon 
 learned that a doubt in her mind was better kept there. 
 If she brought it out to air it and dispel it by talking 
 it over with him, all that happened was that he was 
 hurt, and when he was hurt she instantly became 
 perfectly miserable. Seeing, then, that this happened 
 about small things, how impossible it was to talk with 
 him of big things; of, especially, her immense doubt in 
 regard to The Willows. For a long while she was sure 
 he was bearing her feeling in mind, since it couldn’t 
 have changed since Christmas, and that when she 
 arrived there she would find that he had had everything 
 altered and all traces of Vera’s life there removed. 
 Then, when he began to talk about The Willows, she 
 found that such an idea as alterations hadn’t entered 
 his head. She was to sleep in the very room that had 
 been his and Vera’s, in the very bed. And positively, 
 so far was it from true that she could tell him every 
 thought and talk everything over with him, when 
 she discovered this she wasn’t able to say more than 
 that hesitating remark on the chateau terrace at Am- 
 boise about supposing he was going to change his bed- 
 room. 
 
 Yet The Willows haunted her, and what a comfort 
 it would have been to tell him all she felt and let 
 him help her to get rid of her growing obsession by 
 laughing at her. What a comfort if, even if he had 
 thought her too silly and morbid to be laughed at, 
 
142 VERA 
 
 he had indulged her and consented to alter those 
 rooms. But one learns a lot on a honeymoon, Lucy 
 reflected, and one of the things she had learned was 
 that Wemyss’s mind was always made up. ‘There 
 seemed to be no moment when it was in a condition of 
 becoming, and she might have slipped in a suggestion 
 or laid a wish before him; his plans were sprung upon 
 her full fledged, and they were unalterable. Some- 
 times he said, “Would you like——?” and if she didn’t 
 like, and answered truthfully, as she answered at first 
 before she learned not to, there was trouble. Silent 
 trouble. <A retirmg of Wemyss into a hurt aloofness, 
 for his question was only decorative, and his little love 
 should instinctively, he considered, like what he liked; 
 and there outside this aloofness, after efforts to get 
 at him with fond and anxious questions, she sat like a 
 beggar in patient distress, waiting for him to emerge 
 and be kind to her, 
 
 Of course as far as the minor wishes and preferences 
 of every day went it was all quite easy, once she had 
 grasped the right answer to the question, ‘“‘Would you 
 like?” She instantly did like. “Oh yes—very much!” 
 she hastened to assure him; and then his face continued 
 content and happy instead of clouding with aggrieve- 
 ment. But about the big things it wasn’t easy, because 
 of the difficulty of getting the right flavour of en- 
 thusiasm into her voice, and if she didn’t get it in he 
 would put his finger under her chin and turn her to the 
 light and repeat the question in a solemn voice,— 
 
VERA 143 
 
 precursor, she had learned, of the beginning of the cloud 
 on his face. 
 
 How difficult it was sometimes. When he said to 
 her, “You'll like the view from your sitting-room at 
 The Willows,” she naturally wanted to cry out that 
 she wouldn’t, and ask him how he could suppose she 
 would like what was to her a view for ever associated 
 with death? Why shouldn’t she be able to cry out 
 naturally if she wanted to, to talk to him frankly, to 
 get his help to cure herself of what was so ridiculous 
 by laughing at it with him? She couldn’t laugh all 
 alone, though she was always trying to; with him she 
 could have, and so have become quite sensible. For 
 he was so much bigger than she was, so wonderful in 
 the way he had triumphed over diseased thinking, and 
 his wholesomeness would spread over her too, a purging, 
 disinfecting influence, if only he would let her talk, if 
 only he would help her to laugh. Instead, she found 
 herself hurriedly saying in a small, anxious voice, “Oh 
 yes—very much!’ 
 
 “Is it possible,” she thought, “that I am abject?” 
 
 Yes, she was extremely abject, she reflected, lying 
 awake at night considering her behaviour during the 
 day. Love had made her so. Love did make one 
 abject, for it was full of fear of hurting the beloved. 
 The assertion of the Scriptures that perfect love casteth 
 out fear only showed, seeing that her love for Everard 
 was certainly perfect, how little the Scriptures really 
 knew what they were talking about. 
 
 Well, if she couldn’t tell him the things she was 
 
144 VERA 
 
 feeling, why couldn’t she get rid of the sorts of feelings 
 she couldn’t tell him, and just be wholesome? Why 
 couldn’t she be at least as wholesome about going to 
 that house as Everard? If anybody was justified in 
 shrinking from The Willows it was Everard, not her- 
 self. Sometimes Lucy would be sure that deep in his 
 character there was a wonderful store of simple cour- 
 age. He didn’t speak of Vera’s death, naturally he 
 didn’t wish to speak of that awful afternoon, but how 
 often he must think of it, hiding his thoughts even from 
 her, bearing them altogether alone. Sometimes she was 
 sure of this, and sometimes she was equally sure of the 
 very opposite. From the way he looked, the way he 
 spoke, from those tiny indications that one somehow has 
 noticed without knowing that one has noticed and that 
 are so far more revealing and conclusive than any 
 words, she sometimes was sure he really had forgotten. 
 But this was too incredible. She couldn’t believe it. 
 What had perhaps happened, she thought, was that in 
 self-defence, for the preservation of his peace, he had 
 made up his mind never to think of Vera. Only by 
 banishing her altogether from his mind would he be 
 safe. Yet that couldn’t be true either, for several 
 times on the honeymoon he had begun talking of her, 
 of things she had said, of things she had liked, and 
 it was she, Lucy, who stopped him. She shrank from 
 hearing anything about Vera. She especially shrank 
 from hearing her mentioned casually. She was ready 
 to brace herself to talk about her if it was to be a 
 serious talk, because she wanted to help and comfort 
 
VERA 145 
 
 him whenever the remembrance of her death arose to 
 torment him, but she couldn’t bear to hear her men- 
 tioned casually. In a way she admired this casualness, 
 because it was a proof of the supreme wholesomeness 
 Everard had attained to by sheer courageous deter- 
 mination, but even so she couldn’t help thinking that 
 she would have preferred a little less of just this kind 
 of wholesomeness in her beloved. She might be too 
 morbid, but wasn’t it possible to be too wholesome? 
 Anyhow she shrank from the intrusion of Vera into her 
 honeymoon. That, at least, ought to be kept free from 
 her. Later on at The Willows. ... 
 
 Lucy fought and fought against it, but always at 
 the back of her mind was the thought, not looked at, 
 slunk away from, but nevertheless fixed, that there at 
 The Willows, waiting for her, was Vera. 
 
XVI 
 
 HOSE who go to Strorley, and cross the bridge 
 to the other side of the river, have only to 
 follow the towpath for a little to come to The 
 Willows. It can also be reached by road, through a 
 white gate down a lane that grows more and more 
 willowy as it gets nearer the river and the house, but 
 is quite passable for carts and even for cars, except 
 when there are floods. When there are floods this lane 
 disappears, and when the floods have subsided it is 
 black and oozing for a long time afterwards, with 
 clouds of tiny flies dancing about in it if the weather 
 is at all warm, and the shoes of those who walk stick 
 in it and come off, and those who drive, especially if 
 they drive a car, have trouble. But all is well once 
 a second white gate is reached, on the other side of 
 which is a gravel sweep, a variety of handsome shrubs, 
 nicely kept lawns, and The Willows. There are no 
 big trees in the garden of The Willows, because it 
 was built in the middle of meadows where there weren’t 
 any, but all round the iron railings of the square garden 
 —the house being the centre of the square—and con- 
 cealing the wire netting which keeps the pasturing 
 cows from thrusting their heads through and eating 
 the shrubs, is a fringe of willows. Hence its name. 
 146 
 
VERA 147 
 
 “A house,’ said Wemyss, explaining its name to 
 Lucy on the morning of their arrival, “should always 
 be named after whatever most insistently catches the 
 eye.” 
 
 “Then oughtn’t it to have been called The Cows?” 
 asked Lucy ; for the meadows round were strewn thickly 
 as far as she could see with recumbent cows, and they 
 caught her eye much more than the tossing bare willow 
 branches. 
 
 “No,” said Wemyss, annoyed. “It ought not have 
 been called The Cows.” 
 
 *“No—of course I didn’t mean that,” she said hastily. 
 
 Lucy was nervous, and said what first came into 
 her head, and had been saying things of this nature 
 the whole journey down. She didn’t want to, she 
 knew he didn’t like it, but she couldn’t stop. 
 
 They had just arrived, and were standing on the 
 front steps while the servants unloaded the fly that 
 had brought them from the station, and Wemyss was 
 pointing out what he wished her to look at and admire 
 from that raised-up place before taking her indoors. 
 Lucy was glad of any excuse that delayed going in- 
 doors, that kept her on the west side of the house, 
 furthest away from the terrace and the library win- 
 dow. Indoors would be the rooms, the unaltered rooms, 
 the library past whose window .. . The sitting-room 
 at the top of the house out of whose window .. . the 
 bedroom she was going to sleep in with the very bed. 
 . . ,» It was too miserably absurd, too unbalanced of 
 her for anything but shame and self-contempt, how 
 
148 VERA 
 
 she couldn’t get away from the feeling that indoors 
 waiting for her would be Vera. 
 
 It was a grey, windy morning, with low clouds 
 scurrying across the meadows. The house was raised 
 well above the flood level, and standing on the top step 
 she could see how far the meadows stretched beyond 
 the swaying willow hedge. Grey sky, grey water, green 
 fields,—it was all grey and green except the house, 
 which was red brick with handsome stone facings, and 
 made, in its exposed position unhidden by any trees, 
 a great splotch of vivid red in the landscape. 
 
 “Like blood,” said Lucy to herself; and was im- 
 mediately ashamed. 
 
 “Oh, how bracing!” she cried, spreading out her 
 arms and letting the wind blow her serge wrap out 
 behind her like a flag. It whipped her skirt round 
 her body, showing its slender pretty lines, and the 
 parlourmaid, going in and out with the luggage, looked 
 curiously at this small juvenile new mistress. ‘Oh, I 
 love this wind—don’t take me indoors yet x4 
 
 Wemyss was pleased that she should like the wind, 
 
 
 
 for was it not by the time it reached his house part, too, 
 of his property?. His face, which had clouded a little 
 because of The Cows, cleared again. 
 
 But she didn’t really like the wind at all, she never 
 had liked anything that blustered and was cold, and if 
 she hadn’t been nervous the last thing she would have 
 done was to stand there letting it blow her to pieces. 
 
 “And what a lot of laurels!” she exclaimed, holding 
 
VERA 149 
 
 on her hat with one hand and with the other pointing 
 to a corner filled with these shrubs. 
 
 “Yes. Ill take you round the garden after lunch,” 
 said Wemyss. “We'll go in now.” 
 
 “And—and laurustinus. I love laurustinus 
 
 “Yes. Vera planted that. It has done very well. 
 Come in now ‘ 
 
 *“And—look, what are those bare things without any 
 leaves yet?” 
 
 “Tl show you everything after lunch, Lucy. Come 
 in ” And he put his arm about her shoulders, and 
 urged her through the door the maid was holding open 
 with difficulty because of the wind. 
 
 There she was, then, actually inside The Willows. 
 The door was shut behind her. She looked about her 
 shrinkingly. 
 
 They were in a roomy place with a staircase in it. 
 
 “The hall,” said Wemyss, standing still, his arm 
 round her. 
 
 *“Yes,”’ said Lucy. 
 
 “Oak,” said Wemyss. 
 
 “Yes,” said Lucy. 
 
 He gazed round him with a sigh of satisfaction at 
 having got back to it. 
 
 “All oak,” he said. ‘‘You’ll find nothing gimcrack 
 about my house, little Love. Where are those flowers?” 
 he added, turning sharply to the parlourmaid. “I 
 don’t see my yellow flowers.” 
 
 “They’re in the dining-room, sir,’ 
 maid. 
 
 >be; 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 b) 
 
 said the parlour- 
 
150 VERA 
 
 “Why aren’t they where I could see them the first 
 thing ?”’ 
 
 “I understood the orders were they were always to 
 be on the breakfast-table, sir.” 
 
 “Breakfast-table! When there isn’t any breakfast?” 
 
 “IT understood rz 
 
 “I’m not interested in what you understood.” 
 
 
 
 Lucy here nervously interrupted, for Everard 
 sounded suddenly very angry, by exclaiming, ‘“‘Antlers !” 
 and waving her unpinned-down arm in the direction 
 of the walls. 
 
 “Yes,”? said Wemyss, his attention called off the 
 parlourmaid, gazing up at his walls with pride. 
 
 “What a lot,” said Lucy. 
 
 ‘‘Aren’t there. I always said I’d have a hall with 
 antlers in it, and I’ve got it.” He hugged her close 
 to his side. “And I’ve got you too,” he said. “I always 
 get what I’m determined to get.” . 
 
 “Did you shoot them all yourself?” asked Lucy, 
 thinking the parlourmaid would take the opportunity 
 to disappear, and a little surprised that she continued 
 to stand there. 
 
 “What? The beasts they belonged to? Not I. 
 If you want antlers the simple way is to go and buy 
 them. Then you get them all at once, and not grad- 
 ually. The hall was ready for them all at once, not 
 gradually. I got these at Whiteley’s. Kiss me.” 
 
 This sudden end to his remarks startled Lucy, and 
 she repeated in her surprise—for there still stood the 
 parlourmaid—“‘Kiss you?” 
 
VERA 151 
 
 “IT haven’t had my birthday kiss yet.” 
 “Why, the very first thing when you woke up 
 “Not my real birthday kiss in my own home.” 
 
 She looked at the parlourmaid who was quite frankly 
 looking at her. Well, if the parlourmaid didn’t mind, 
 and Everard didn’t mind, why should she mind? 
 
 She lifted her face and kissed him; but she didn’t 
 like kissing him or being kissed in public. What was 
 
 39 
 
 
 
 the point of it? Kissing Everard was a great delight 
 to her. A mixture of all sorts of wonderful sensations, 
 and she loved to do it in different way,—tenderly, 
 passionately, lingeringly, dreamily, amusingly, sol- 
 emnly; each kind in turn, or in varied combinations. 
 But among her varied combinations there was nothing 
 that included a parlourmaid. Consequently her kiss 
 was of the sort that was to be expected, perfunctory 
 and brief, whereupon Wemyss said, ‘Lucy ”? in his 
 hurt voice. 
 
 She started. 
 
 “Oh Everard—what is it?” she asked nervously. 
 
 That particular one of his voices always by now 
 made her start, for it always took her by surprise. 
 Pick her way as carefully as she might among his 
 feelings there were always some, apparently, that she 
 hadn’t dreamed were there and that she accordingly 
 knocked against. How dreadful if she had hurt him 
 the very first thing on getting into The Willows! And 
 on his birthday too. From the moment he woke 
 that morning, all the way down in the train, all the 
 way in the fly from the station, she had been unremit- 
 
 
 
152 VERA 
 
 tingly engaged in avoiding hurting him; an activity 
 made extra difficult by the unfortunate way her nervous- 
 ness about the house at the journey’s end impelled 
 her to say the kinds of things she least wanted to. Ir- 
 reverent things; such as the silly remark on his house’s 
 name. She had got on much better the evening before 
 at the house in Lancaster Gate where they had slept, 
 because gloomy as it was it anyhow wasn’t The Wil- 
 lows. Also there was no trace in it that she could see 
 of such a thing as a woman ever having lived in it. 
 It was a man’s house; the house of a man who has no 
 time for pictures, or interesting books and furniture. 
 It was like a club and an office mixed up together, with 
 capacious leather chairs and solid tables and Turkey 
 carpets and reference books. She found it quite im- 
 possible to imagine Vera, or any other woman, in that 
 house. Either Vera had spent most of her time at 
 The Willows, or every trace of her had been very care- 
 fully removed. Therefore Lucy, helped besides by 
 extreme fatigue, for she had been sea-sick all the way 
 from Dieppe to Newhaven, Wemyss having crossed that 
 way because he was fond of the sea, had positively 
 been unable to think of Vera in those surroundings 
 and had dropped off to sleep directly she got there 
 and had slept all night; and of course being asleep she 
 naturally hadn’t said anything she oughtn’t to have 
 said, so that her first appearance in Lancaster Gate 
 was a success; and when she woke next morning, and 
 saw Wemyss’s face in such unclouded tranquillity next 
 to hers as he still slept, she lay gazing at it with her 
 
VERA 153 
 
 heart brimming with tender love and vowed that his 
 birthday should be as unclouded throughout as his dear 
 face was at that moment. She adored him. He was 
 her very life. She wanted nothing in the world ex- 
 cept for him to be happy. She would watch every 
 word. She really must see to it that on this day of 
 all days no word should escape her before it had been 
 turned round in her head at least three times, and con- 
 sidered with the utmost care. Such were her resolu- 
 tions in the morning; and here she was not only saying 
 the wrong things but doing them. It was because she 
 hadn’t expected to be told to kiss him in the presence 
 of a parlourmaid. She was always being tripped up 
 by the unexpected. She ought by now to have learned 
 better. How unfortunate. 
 
 “Oh Everard—what is it? she asked nervously; 
 but she knew before he could answer, and throwing her 
 objections to public caresses to the winds, for anything 
 was better than that he should be hurt at just that 
 moment, she put up her free arm and drew his head 
 down and kissed him again,—lingeringly this time, a 
 kiss of tender, appealing love. What must it be like, 
 she thought while she kissed him and her heart yearned 
 over him, to be so fearfully sensitive. It made things 
 difficult for her, but how much, much more difficult 
 for him. And how wonderful the way his sensitiveness 
 had developed since marriage. There had been no sign 
 of it before. 
 
 Implicit in her kiss was an appeal not to let any- 
 thing she said or did spoil his birthday, to forgive her, 
 
154 VERA 
 
 to understand. And at the back of her mind, quite 
 uncontrollable, quite unauthorised ran beneath these 
 other thoughts this thought: “I am certainly abject.” 
 
 This time he was quickly placated because of his 
 excitement at getting home. “Nobody can hurt me 
 as you can,” was all he said. 
 
 “Oh but as though I ever, ever mean to,’ she 
 breathed, her arm round his neck. 
 
 Meanwhile the parlourmaid looked on. 
 
 *“Why doesn’t she go?” whispered Lucy, making the 
 most of having got his ear. 
 
 “Certainly not,” said Wemyss out loud, raising his 
 head. “I might want her. Do you like the hall, 
 little Love?” , 
 
 “Very much,” she said, loosing him. 
 
 ‘Don’t you think it’s a very fine staircase?” 
 
 “Very fine,” she said. 
 
 He gazed about him with pride, standing in the 
 middle of the Turkey carpet holding her close to his 
 side, 
 
 “Now look at the window,” he said, turning her 
 round when she had had time to absorb the staircase. 
 *“Look—isn’t it a jolly window? No nonsense about. 
 that window. You can really see out of it, and it really 
 lets in light. Vera’—she winced—“‘tried to stuff it 
 all up with curtains. She said she wanted colour, or 
 something. Having got a beautiful garden to look out 
 at, what does she try to do but shut most of it out again 
 by putting up curtains.” 
 
 The attempt had evidently not succeeded, for the 
 
VERA 155 
 
 window, which was as big as a window in the wait- 
 ing-room of a London terminus, had nothing to inter- 
 fere with it but the hanging cord of a drawn-up brown 
 holland blind. Through it Lucy could see the whole 
 half of the garden on the right side of the front door 
 with the tossing willow hedge, the meadows, and the 
 cows. The leafless branches of some creeper beat 
 against it and made a loud irregular tapping in the 
 pauses of Wemyss’s observations. 
 
 “Plate glass,” he said. 
 
 “Yes,” said Lucy; and something in his voice made 
 her add in a tone of admiration, “Fancy.” 
 
 Looking at the window they had their backs to the 
 stairs. Suddenly she heard footsteps coming down 
 them from the landing above. 
 
 *“Who’s that?” she said quickly, with a little gasp, 
 before she could think, before she could stop, not 
 turning her head, her eyes staring at the window. 
 
 “Who’s what?” asked Wemyss. “You do think it’s 
 a jolly window, don’t you, little Love?”’ 
 
 The footsteps on the stairs stopped, and a gong she 
 had noticed at the angle of the turn was sounded. Her 
 body, which had shrunk together, relaxed. What a 
 fool she was. 
 
 “Lunch,” said Wemyss. ‘Come along—but isn’t it 
 a jolly window, little Love?” 
 
 “Very jolly.” 
 
 He turned her round to march her off to the dining- 
 room, while the housemaid, who had come down from 
 
156 VERA 
 
 the landing, continued to beat the gong, though there 
 they were obeying it under her very nose. 
 
 “Don’t you think that’s a good place to have a 
 gong?” he asked, raising his voice because the gong, 
 which had begun quietly, was getting rapidly louder. 
 ‘Then when you’re upstairs in your sitting-room you'll 
 hear it just as distinctly as if you were downstairs. 
 Vera i! 
 
 But what he was going to say about Vera was 
 drowned this time in the increasing fury of the gong. 
 
 ‘“Why doesn’t she leave off ?”? Lucy tried to call out 
 to him, straining her voice to its utmost, for the maid 
 was very good at the gong and was now extracting 
 the dreadfullest din out of it. 
 
 “Eh?” shouted Wemyss. 
 
 In the dining-room, whither they were preceded by 
 the parlourmaid who at last had left off standing still 
 and had opened the door for them, as Lucy could hear 
 the gong continuing to be beaten though muffled now 
 by doors and distance, she again said, ““Why doesn’t she 
 leave off ?”’ 
 
 Wemyss took out his watch. 
 
 “She will in another fifty seconds,” he said. 
 
 Lucy’s mouth and eyebrows became all inquiry. 
 
 “It is beaten for exactly two and a half minutes 
 before every meal,” he explained. 
 
 “Oh?” said Lucy. “Even when we’re visibly col- 
 lected ?” 
 
 “She doesn’t know that.” 
 
 “But she saw us.” 
 
 
 
VERA 157 
 
 “But she doesn’t know it officially.” 
 
 “Oh,” said Lucy. 
 
 “T had to make that rule,” said Wemyss, arranging 
 his knives and forks more accurately beside his plate, 
 “because they would leave off beating it almost as soon 
 as they’d begun, and then Vera was late and her excuse 
 was that she hadn’t heard. For a time after that I 
 used to have it beaten all up the stairs right to the 
 door of her sitting-room. Isn’t it a fine gong? Lis- 
 ten ” And he raised his hand. 
 
 “Very fine,” said Lucy, who was thoroughly con- 
 vinced there wasn’t a finer, more robust gong in ex- 
 
 
 
 istence. 
 “There. Time’s up,” he said, as three great strokes 
 were followed by a blessed silence. 
 
 He pulled out his watch again. “Let’s see. Yes—to 
 the tick. You wouldn’t believe the trouble I had to 
 get them to keep time.” 
 
 “It’s wonderful,” said Lucy. 
 
 The dining-room was a narrow room full of a table. 
 It had a window facing west and a window facing north, 
 and in spite of the uninterrupted expanses of plate 
 glass was a bleak, dark room. But then the weather 
 was bleak and dark, and one saw such a lot of it out 
 of the two big windows as one sat at the long table and 
 watched the rolling clouds blowing straight towards 
 one from the north-west; for Lucy’s place was facing 
 the north window, on Wemyss’s left hand. Wemyss 
 sat at the end of the table facing the west window. 
 The table was so long that if Lucy had sat in the 
 
158 VERA 
 
 usual seat of wives, opposite her husband, communica- 
 tion would have been difficult,—indeed, as she remarked, 
 she would have disappeared below the dip of the 
 horizon. 
 
 “T like a long table,” said Wemyss to this. “It looks 
 so hospitable.” 
 
 “Yes,” said Lucy a little doubtfully, but willing to 
 admit that its length at least showed a readiness for 
 hospitality. “I suppose it does. Or it would if there 
 were people all round it.” 
 
 “People? You don’t mean to say you want people 
 already?” 
 
 “Good heavens no,” said Lucy hastily. ‘Of course 
 I don’t. Why, of course, Everard, I didn’t mean that,” 
 she added, laying her hand on his and smiling at him 
 so as to dispel the gathering cloud on his face, and once 
 more she flung all thoughts of the parlourmaid to the 
 winds. ‘You know I don’t want a soul in the world 
 but you.” 
 
 “Well, that’s what I thought,” said Wemyss, molli- 
 fied. “I know all I want is you.” 
 
 (Was this same parlourmaid here in Vera’s time? 
 Lucy asked herself very privately and unconsciously 
 and beneath the concerned attentiveness she was con- 
 centrating on Wemyss. ) 
 
 “What lovely kingcups!” she said aloud. 
 
 “Oh yes, there they are—I hadn’t noticed them. 
 Yes, aren’t they? They’re my birthday flowers.” And 
 he repeated his formula: “It’s my birthday and 
 Spring’s.” 
 
VERA 159 
 
 But Lucy, of course, didn’t know the proper ritual, 
 it being her first experience of one of Wemyss’s birth- 
 days, besides having wished him his many happy returns 
 hours ago when he first opened his eyes and found hers 
 gazing at him with love; so all she did was to make 
 the natural but unfortunate remark that surely Spring 
 began on the 21st of March,—or was it the 25th? 
 No, that was Christmas Day—no, she didn’t mean 
 that 
 
 “You’re always saying things and then saying you 
 didn’t mean them,” interrupted Wemyss, vexed, for he 
 thought that Lucy of all people should have recognised 
 the allegorical nature of his formula. If it had been 
 Vera, now,—but even Vera had managed to understand 
 that much. “I wish you would begin with what you 
 do mean, it would be so much simpler. What, pray, 
 do you mean now?” 
 
 “T can’t think,” said Lucy timidly, for she had 
 offended him again, and this time she couldn’t even 
 remotely imagine how. 
 
 
 
XVIT 
 
 E got over it, however. There was a par- 
 H ticularly well-made soufflé and this helped. 
 Also Lucy kept on looking at him very ten- 
 derly, and it was the first time she had sat at his 
 table in his beloved home, realising the dreams of 
 months that she should sit just there with hin, his 
 little bobbed-haired Love, and gradually therefore he 
 recovered and smiled at her again. 
 
 But what power she had to hurt him, thought 
 Wemyss; it was so great because his love for her was 
 so great.’ She should be very careful how she wielded 
 it. Her Everard was made very sensitive by his love. 
 
 He gazed at her solemnly, thinking this, while the 
 plates were being changed. 
 
 “What is it, Everard?” Lucy asked anxiously. 
 
 “Y’m only thinking that I love you,’ he said, laying 
 his hand on hers. 
 
 She flushed with pleasure, and her face grew in- 
 stantly happy. “My Everard,” she murmured, gazing 
 back at him, forgetful in her pleasure of the parlour- 
 maid. How dear he was. How silly she was to be so 
 much distressed when he was offended. At the core 
 he was so sound and simple. At the core he was 
 utterly her own dear lover. The rest was mere inci- 
 dent, merest indifferent detail. 
 
 160 
 
VERA 161 
 
 “We'll have coffee in the library,” he said to the 
 parlourmaid, getting up when he had finished his lunch 
 and walking to the door. “Come along, little Love,” 
 he called over his shoulder. 
 
 The library. ... 
 
 “Can’t we—don’t we—have coffee in the hall?” 
 asked Lucy, getting up slowly. 
 
 “No,” said Wemyss, who had paused before an en- 
 larged photograph that hung on the wall between the 
 two windows, enlarged to life size. 
 
 He examined it a moment, and then drew his finger 
 obliquely across the glass from top to bottom. It then 
 became evident that the picture needed dusting. 
 
 “Look,” he said to the parlourmaid, pointing. 
 
 The parlourmaid looked. 
 
 “T notice you don’t say anything,” he said to her 
 after a silence in which she continued to look, and Lucy, 
 taking aback again, stood uncertain by the chair she 
 had got up from. “I don’t wonder. There’s nothing 
 you can possibly say to excuse such carelessness.” 
 
 “Lizzie 
 
 
 
 ” began the parlourmaid. 
 
 “Don’t put it on to Lizzie.” 
 
 The parlourmaid ceased putting it on to Lizzie and 
 was dumb. 
 
 “Come along, little Love,” said Wemyss, turning to 
 Lucy and holding out his hand. “It makes one pretty 
 sick, doesn’t it, to see that not even one’s own father 
 gets dusted.” 
 
 “Ts that your father?” asked Lucy, hurrying to his 
 side and offering no opinion about dusting. 
 
162 VERA 
 
 It could have been no one else’s. It was Wemyss 
 grown very enormous, Wemyss grown very old, Wemyss 
 displeased. The photograph had been so arranged that 
 wherever you moved to in the room Wemyss’s father 
 watched you doing it. He had been watching Lucy 
 from between those two windows all through her first 
 lunch, and must, flashed through Lucy’s brain, have 
 watched Vera like that all through her last one. 
 
 “How long has he been there?” she asked, looking 
 up into Wemyss’s father’s displeased eyes which looked 
 straight back into hers. 
 
 “Been there?” repeated Wemyss, drawing her away 
 for he wanted his coffee. “How can I remember? Ever 
 since I’ve lived here, I should think. He died five 
 years ago. He was a wonderful old man, nearly ninety. 
 He used to stay here a lot.” | 
 
 Opposite this picture hung another, next to the door 
 that led into the hall,—also a photograph enlarged to 
 life-size. Lucy had noticed neither of these pictures 
 when she came in, because the light from the windows 
 was in her eyes. Now, turning to go out through the 
 door led by Wemyss, she was faced by this one. 
 
 It was Vera. She knew at once; and if she hadn’t 
 she would have known the next minute, because he 
 told her. 
 
 “Vera,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, as it were 
 introducing them. 
 
 “Vera,” repeated Lucy under her breath; and she 
 and Vera—for this photograph too followed one about 
 with its eyes—stared at each other. 
 
VERA 163 
 
 It must have been taken about twelve years earlier, 
 judging from the clothes. She was standing, and in a 
 day dress that yet had a train to it trailing on the car- 
 pet, and loose, floppy sleeves and a high collar. She 
 looked very tall, and had long thin fingers. Her dark 
 hair was drawn up from her ears and piled on the top 
 of her head. Her face was thin and seemed to be 
 chiefly eyes,—very big dark eyes that stared out of 
 the absurd picture in a kind of astonishment, and her 
 mouth had a little twist in it as though she were trying 
 not to laugh. 
 
 Lucy looked at her without moving. So this was 
 Vera. Of course. She had known, though she had 
 never constructed any image of her in her mind, had 
 carefully avoided doing it, that she would be like 
 that. Only older; the sort of Vera she must have been 
 at forty when she died,—not attractive like that, not a 
 young woman. To Lucy at twenty-two, forty seemed 
 very old; at least, if you were a woman. In regard to 
 men, since she had fallen in love with some one of forty- 
 five who was certainly the youngest thing she had ever 
 come across, she had rearranged her ideas of age, but 
 she still thought forty very old for a woman. Vera had 
 been thin and tall and dark in her idea of her, just as 
 this Vera was thin and tall and dark; but thin bonily, 
 tall stoopingly, and her dark hair was turning grey. 
 In her idea of her, too, she was absent-minded and 
 not very intelligent; indeed, she was rather trouble- 
 somely unintelligent, doing obstinate, foolish things, 
 and at last doing that fatal, obstinate, foolish thing 
 
164 VERA 
 
 which so dreadfully ended her. This Vera was certainly 
 intelligent. You couldn’t have eyes like that and be a 
 fool. And the expression of her mouth,—what had 
 she been trying not to laugh at that day? Did she 
 know she was going to be enlarged and hang for years 
 in the bleak dining-room facing her father-in-law, each 
 of them eyeing the other from their walls, while three 
 times a day the originals sat down beneath their own 
 pictures at the long table and ate? Perhaps she 
 laughed, thought Lucy, because else she might have 
 cried ; only that would have been silly, and she couldn’t 
 have been silly,—not with those eyes, not with those 
 straight, fine eyebrows. But would she, herself, pres- 
 ently be photographed too and enlarged and hung 
 there? There was room next to Vera, room for just 
 one more before the sideboard began. How very odd 
 it would be if she were hung up next to Vera, and every 
 day three times as she went out of the room was faced 
 by Everard’s wives. And how quaint to watch one’s 
 clothes as the years went by leaving off being pretty 
 and growing more absurd. Really for such purposes 
 one ought to be just wrapped round in a shroud. 
 Fashion didn’t touch shrouds; they always stayed the 
 same. Besides, how suitable, thought Lucy, gazing 
 into her dead predecessor’s eyes; one would only be 
 taking time by the forelock.... 
 
 “Come along,” said Wemyss, drawing her away, “I 
 want my coffee. Don’t you think it’s a good idea,” he 
 went on, as he led her down the hall to the library door, 
 
VERA 165 
 
 *“*to have life-sized photographs instead of those idiotic 
 portraits that are never the least like people?” 
 
 “Oh, a very good idea,” said Lucy mechanically, 
 bracing herself for the hbrary. There was only one 
 room in the house she dreaded going into more than 
 the library, and that was the sitting-room on the top 
 floor,—her sitting-room and Vera’s. 
 
 “Next week we'll go to a photographer’s in London 
 and have my little girl done,” said Wemyss, pushing 
 open the library door, ‘‘and then I’ll have her exactly 
 as God made her, without some artist idiot or other 
 coming butting-in with his idea of her. God’s idea of 
 her is good enough for me. They won’t have to enlarge 
 much,” he laughed, “to get yow life-size, you midge. 
 Vera was five foot ten. Now isn’t this a fine room? 
 Look—there’s the river. Isn’t it jolly being so close to 
 it? Come round here—don’t knock against my writing- 
 table, now. Look—there’s only the towpath between 
 the river and the garden. Lord, what a beastly day. 
 It might just as easily have been a beautiful spring 
 day and us having our coffee out on the terrace. Don’t 
 you think this is a beautiful look-out,—so typically 
 English with the beautiful green lawn and the bit of 
 lush grass along the towpath, and the river. There’s 
 no river like it in the world, is there, little Love? Say 
 you think it’s the most beautiful river in the world”— 
 he hugged her close—“say you think it’s a hundred 
 times better than that beastly French one we got so 
 sick of with all those chateaux.” 
 
 “Oh, a hundred times better,” said Lucy. 
 
166 VERA 
 
 They were standing at the window with his arm 
 round her shoulder. There was just room for them 
 between it and the writing-table. Outside was the 
 flagged terrace, and then a very green lawn with worms 
 and blackbirds on it and a flagged path down the middle 
 leading to a little iron gate. There was no willow 
 hedge along the river end of the square garden, so as 
 not to interrupt the view,—only the iron railings and 
 wire-netting. Terra cotta vases, which later on would 
 be a blaze of geraniums, Wemyss explained, stood at 
 intervals on each side of the path. The river, swollen 
 and brown, slid past Wemyss’s frontage very quickly 
 that day, for there had been much rain. The clouds 
 scudding across the sky before the wind were not in 
 such a hurry but that every now and then they let loose 
 a violent gust of rain, soaking the flags of the terrace 
 again just as the wind had begun to dry them up. How 
 could he stand there, she thought, holding her tight so 
 that she couldn’t get away, making her look out at the 
 very place on those flags not two yards off... . 
 
 But the next minute she thought how right he really 
 was, how absolutely the only way this was to do the 
 thing. Perfect simplicity was the one way to meet this 
 situation successfully; and she herself was so far from 
 simplicity that here she was shrinking, not able to 
 bear to look, wanting only to hide her face,—oh, 
 he was wonderful, and she was the most ridiculous of 
 fools. 
 
 She pressed very close to him, and put up her face 
 
VERA 167 
 
 to his, shutting her eyes, for so she shut out the desolat- 
 ing garden with its foreground of murderous flags. 
 
 “What is it, little Love?” asked Wemyss. 
 
 “Kiss me,”? she said; and he laughed and kissed her, 
 but hastily, because he wanted her to go on admiring 
 the view. | 
 
 She still, however, held up her face. ‘Kiss my eyes,” 
 she whispered, keeping them shut. ‘’They’re tired i 
 
 He laughed again, but with a slight impatience, and 
 kissed her eyes; and then, suddenly struck by her little 
 blind face so close to his, the strong light from the big 
 window showing all its delicate curves and delicious 
 softnesses, his Lucy’s face, his own little wife’s, he 
 kissed her really, as she loved him to kiss her, becoming 
 absorbed only in his love. 
 
 “Oh, I love you, love you ” murmured Lucy, 
 clinging to him, making secret vows of sensibleness, of 
 wholesomeness, of a determined, unfailing future 
 
 
 
 
 
 simplicity. 
 
 *““Aren’t we happy,” he said, pausing in his kisses to 
 gaze down at what was now his face, for was it not 
 much more his than hers? Of course it was his. She 
 never saw it, except when she specially went to look, 
 but he saw it all the time; she only had duties in regard 
 to it, but he was on the higher plane of only having 
 joys. She washed it, but he kissed it. And he kissed 
 it when he liked and as much as ever he liked. “‘Isn’t 
 it wonderful being married,” he said, gazing down at 
 this delightful thing that was his very own for ever. 
 
168 VERA 
 
 “OQh—wonderful!” murmured Lucy, opening her eyes 
 and gazing into his. 
 
 Her face broke into a charming smile. ‘You have 
 the dearest eyes,” she said, putting up her finger and 
 gently tracing his eyebrows with it. 
 
 Wemyss’s eyes, full at that moment of love and 
 pride, were certainly dear eyes, but a noise at the other 
 end of the room made Lucy jump so in his arms, gave 
 her apparently such a fright, that when he turned his 
 head to see who it was daring to interrupt them, daring 
 to startle his little girl like that, and beheld the parlour- 
 maid, his eyes weren’t dear at all but very angry. 
 
 The parlourmaid had come in with the coffee; and 
 seeing the two interlaced figures against the light of the 
 big window had pulled up short, uncertain what to do. 
 This pulling up had jerked a spoon off its saucer on to 
 the floor with a loud rattle because of the floor not 
 having a carpet on it and being of polished oak, and it 
 was this noise that made Lucy jump so excessively that 
 her jump actually made Wemyss jump too. 
 
 In the parlourmaid’s untrained phraseology there 
 had been a good deal of billing and cooing during 
 luncheon, and even in the hall before luncheon there 
 were examples of it, but what she found going on in the 
 library was enough to make anybody stop dead and 
 upset things,—it was such, she said afterwards in the 
 kitchen, that if she didn’t know for a fact that they 
 were really married she wouldn’t have believed it. 
 Married people in the parlourmaid’s experience didn’t 
 behave like that. What affection there was was ex- 
 
VERA 169 
 
 hibited before, and not after, marriage. And she went 
 on to describe the way in which Wemyss—thus briefly 
 and irreverently did they talk of their master in the 
 kitchen—had flown at her for having come into the 
 library. “After telling me to,” she said. ‘After say- 
 ing, ‘We'll ’ave coffee in the library.’” And they all 
 agreed, as they had often before agreed, that if it 
 weren’t that he was in London half the time they 
 wouldn’t stay in the place five minutes, 
 
 Meanwhile Wemyss and Lucy were sitting side by 
 side in two enormous chairs facing the unlit library fire 
 drinking their coffee. The fire was lit only in the 
 evenings, explained Wemyss, after the Ist of April; 
 the weather ought to be warm enough by then to do 
 without fires in the daytime, and if it wasn’t it was its 
 own lookout. 
 
 “Why did you jump so?” he asked. “You gave me 
 such a start. I couldn’t think what was the matter.” 
 
 “TI don’t know,” said Lucy, faintly flushing. “Per- 
 haps”—she smiled at him over the arm of the enormous 
 chair in which she almost totally disappeared—‘be- 
 cause the maid caught us.’’ 
 
 “Caught us?” 
 
 “Being so particularly affectionate.” 
 
 “T like that,” said Wemyss. “Fancy feeling guilty 
 because you’re being affectionate to your own hus- 
 band.” 
 
 “Oh, well,” laughed Lucy, “don’t forget I haven’t 
 had him long.” 
 
 “You’re such a complicated little thing. I shall 
 
170 VERA 
 
 have to take you seriously in hand and teach you to be 
 natural. I can’t have you having all sorts of finicking 
 ideas about not doing this and not doing the other 
 before servants, Servants don’t matter. I never con- 
 sider them.” 
 
 “TY wish you had considered the poor parlourmaid,” 
 said Lucy, seeing that he was in an unoffended frame of 
 mind. “Why did you give her such a dreadful 
 scolding?” 
 
 “Why? Because she made you jump so. You 
 couldn’t have jumped more if you had thought it was 
 a ghost. I won’t have your flesh being made to creep.” 
 
 “But it crept much worse when I heard the things you 
 said to her.”’ 
 
 ‘“‘Nonsense. ‘These people have to be kept in order. 
 What did the woman mean by coming in like that?” 
 
 “Why, you told her to bring us coffee.” 
 
 “But I didn’t tell her to make an infernal noise by 
 dropping spoons all over the place.” 
 
 “That was because she got just as great a fright 
 when she saw us as I did when I heard her.” 
 
 “I don’t care what she got. Her business is not 
 to drop things. That’s what I pay her for. But look 
 here—don’t you go thinking such a lot of tangled-up 
 things and arguing. Do, for goodness’ sake, try and be 
 simple.” 
 
 “T feel very simple,” said Lucy, smiling and putting 
 out her hand to him, for his face was clouding. “Do 
 you know, Everard, I believe what’s the matter with 
 me is that I’m too simple.” 
 
 SS a ee eee ee ee ee 
 
 fi 
 9° age ATR ee 
 
VERA 171 
 
 Wemyss roared, and forgot how near he was getting 
 to being hurt. “You simple! You’re the most com- 
 plicated og 
 
 “No Tm not. TPve got the untutored mind and 
 uncontrolled emotions of a savage. ‘That’s really why 
 I jumped.” : 
 
 “Lord,” laughed Wemyss, “listen to her how she 
 talks. Anybody might think she was clever, saying 
 
 
 
 such big long words, if they didn’t know she was just 
 her Everard’s own little wife. Come here, my little 
 savage—come and sit on your husband’s knee and tell 
 him all about it.” 
 
 He held out his arms, and Lucy got up and went 
 
 into them and he rocked her and said, “There, there— 
 33 
 
 
 
 was it a little untutored savage then 
 
 But she didn’t tell him all about it, first because by 
 now she knew that to tell him all about anything was 
 asking for trouble, and second because he didn’t really 
 want to know. Everard, she was beginning to realise 
 with much surprise, preferred not to know. He was 
 - not merely incurious as to other people’s ideas and opin- 
 ions, he definitely preferred to be unconscious of them. 
 
 This was a great contrast to the restless curiosity 
 and interest of her father and his friends, to their in- 
 satiable hunger for discussion, for argument; and it 
 much surprised Lucy. Discussion was the very salt 
 of life for them,—a tireless exploration of each other’s 
 ideas, a clashing of them together, and out of that 
 clashing the creation of fresh ones. To Everard, Lucy 
 was beginning to perceive, discussion merely meant 
 
172 VERA 
 
 contradiction, and he disliked contradiction, he dis- 
 liked even difference of opinion. ‘“There’s only one way 
 of looking at a thing, and that’s the right way,” as he 
 said, “so what’s the good of such a lot of talk?” 
 
 The right way was his way; and though he seemed 
 by his direct, unswerving methods to succeed in living 
 mentally in a great calm, and though after the fevers 
 of her father’s set this was to her immensely restful, 
 was it really a good thing? Didn’t it cut one off from 
 growth? Didn’t it shut one in an isolation? Wasn’t 
 it, frankly, rather like death? Besides, she had doubts 
 as to whether it were true that there was only one way 
 of looking at a thing, and couldn’t quite believe that 
 his way was invariably the right way. But what did it 
 matter after all, thought Lucy, snuggled up on his knee 
 with one arm round his neck, compared to the great, 
 glorious fact of their love? That at least was indis- 
 putable and splendid. As to the rest, truth would go 
 on being truth whether Everard saw it or not; and if 
 she were not going to be able to talk over things with 
 him she could anyhow kiss him, and how sweet that was, 
 thought Lucy. They understood each other perfectly 
 when they kissed. What, indeed, when such sweet 
 means of communion existed, was the good of a lot 
 of talk? 
 
 “T believe you’re asleep,” said Wemyss, looking down 
 at the face on his breast. 
 
 “Sound,” said Lucy, smiling, her eyes shut. 
 
 “My baby.” 
 
 “My Everard.” 
 
XVIII 
 
 When that was finished he put her off his knee, 
 and said he was now ready to gratify her im- 
 patience and show her everything; they would go over 
 the house first, and then the garden and outbuildings. 
 
 No woman was ever less impatient than Lucy. 
 However, she pulled her hat straight and tried to seem 
 all readiness and expectancy. She wished the wind 
 wouldn’t howl so. What an extraordinary dreary place 
 the library was. Well, any place would be dreary at 
 half-past two o’clock on such an afternoon, without a 
 fire and with the rain beating against the window, and 
 that dreadful terrace just outside. 
 
 Wemyss stooped to knock out the ashes of his pipe 
 on the bars of the empty grate, and Lucy carefully 
 kept her head turned away from the window and the 
 terrace towards the other end of the room. The other 
 end was filled with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, 
 and the books, in neat rows and uniform editions, were 
 packed so tightly in the shelves that no one but an 
 unusually determined reader would have the energy to 
 wrench one out. Reading was evidently not encouraged, 
 for not only were the books shut in behind glass doors, 
 but the doors were kept locked and the key hung on 
 
 173 
 
 Br this only lasted as long as his pipe lasted. 
 
174 VERA 
 
 Wemyss’s watch chain. Lucy discovered this when 
 Wemyss, putting his pipe in his pocket, took her by 
 the arm and walked her down the room to admire the 
 shelves. One of the volumes caught her eye, and she 
 tried to open the glass door to take it out and look at 
 it. ‘‘Why,” she said surprised, “‘it’s locked.” 
 
 “Of course,” said Wemyss. 
 
 “Why but then nobody can get at them.” 
 
 “Precisely.” 
 
 “But 5 “1 
 
 “People are so untrustworthy about books, I took 
 pains to arrange mine myself, and they’re all in first- 
 class bindings and I don’t want them taken out and 
 left lying anywhere by Tom, Dick, and Harry. If any 
 one wants to read they can come and ask me. Then I 
 know exactly what is taken, and can see that it is put 
 back.” And he held up the key on his watch chain. 
 
 “But doesn’t that rather discourage people?” asked 
 Lucy, who was accustomed to the most careless famili- 
 arity, in intercourse with books, to books loose every- 
 where, books overflowing out of their shelves, books in 
 every room, instantly accessible books, friendly books, 
 books used to being read aloud, with their hospitable 
 pages falling open at a touch. 
 
 “All the better,” said Wemyss. “JZ don’t want 
 anybody to read my books.”’ 
 
 Lucy laughed, though she was dismayed inside. 
 “Oh Everard—” she said, “not even me?” 
 
 “You? You’re different. You’re my own little girl. 
 Whenever you want to, all you’ve got to do is to come 
 
 
 
VERA 175 
 
 and say, ‘Everard, your Lucy wants to read,’ and 
 Tl unlock the bookcase.”’ 
 
 “But—I shall be afraid I may be disturbing you.” 
 
 “People who love each other can’t ever disturb each 
 other.” 
 
 “That’s true,” said Lucy. 
 
 “And they shouldn’t ever be afraid of it.” 
 
 “I suppose they shouldn’t,” said Lucy. 
 
 “So be simple, and when you want a thing just 
 say so.” 
 
 Lucy said she would, and promised with many kisses 
 to be simple, but she couldn’t help privately thinking 
 it a difficult way of getting at a book. 
 
 “Macaulay, Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, British 
 Poets, English Men of Letters, Encyclopedia Britan- 
 ntica—I think there’s about everything,” said Wemyss, 
 going over the gilt names on the backs of the volumes 
 with much satisfaction as he stood holding her in front 
 of them. “Whiteley’s did it for me. I said I had room 
 for so and so many of such and such sizes of the best 
 modern writers in good bindings. I think they did it 
 very well, don’t you little Love?” 
 
 “Very well,” said Lucy, eyeing the shelves doubtfully. 
 
 She was of those who don’t like the feel of prize 
 books in their hands, and all Wemyss’s books might 
 have been presented as prizes to deserving schoolboys. 
 They were handsome; their edges—she couldn’t see 
 them, but she was sure—were marbled. They wouldn’t 
 open easily, and one’s thumbs would have to do a lot 
 of tiring holding while one’s eyes tried to peep at the 
 
176 VERA 
 
 words tucked away towards the central crease. These 
 were books with which one took no liberties. She 
 couldn’t imagine idly turning their pages in some lazy 
 position out on the grass. Besides, their pages wouldn’t 
 be idly turned; they would be, she was sure, obstinate 
 with expensiveness, stiff with the leather and gold of 
 their covers. 
 
 Lucy stared at them, thinking all this so as not to 
 think other things. What she wanted to shut out was 
 the wind sobbing up and down that terrace behind her, 
 and the consciousness of the fierce intermittent squalls 
 of rain beating on its flags, and the certainty that up- 
 stairs. . . . Had Everard no imagination, she thought, 
 with a sudden flare of rebellion, that he should expect 
 her to use and to like using the very sitting-room where 
 
 
 
 Vera 
 
 With a quick shiver she grabbed at her thoughts 
 and caught them just in time. 
 
 “Do you like Macaulay?” she asked, lingering in 
 front of the bookcase, for he was beginning to move her 
 off towards the door. 
 
 “T haven’t read him,” said Wemyss, still moving her. 
 
 “Which of all these do you like best?” she asked, 
 holding back, 
 
 “Oh, I don’t know,” said Wemyss, pausing a mo- 
 ment, pleased by her evident interest in his books. “I 
 haven’t much time for reading, you must remember. 
 I’m a busy man. By the time I’ve finished my day’s 
 work, I’m not inclined for much more than the evening 
 paper and a game of bridge.” 
 
VERA 177 
 
 “But what will you do with me, who don’t play 
 bridge?” | 
 
 “Lord, you don’t suppose I shall want to play bridge 
 now that I’ve got you?” he said. ‘‘All I shall want is 
 just to sit and look at you.” 
 
 She turned red with swift pleasure, and laughed, 
 and hugged the arm that was thrust through hers 
 leading her to the door. How much she adored him; 
 when he said dear, absurd, simple things like that, how 
 much she adored him! 
 
 “Come upstairs now and take off your hat,” said 
 Wemyss. “I want to see what my bobbed hair looks 
 like in my home. Besides, aren’t you dying to see our 
 bedroom?” 
 
 “Dying,” said Lucy, going up the oak staircase with 
 a stout, determined heart. 
 
 The bedroom was over the library, and was the 
 same size and with the same kind of window. Where 
 the bookcase stood in the room below, stood the bed: 
 a double, or even a treble, bed, so very big was it, facing 
 the window past which Vera—it was no use, she couldn’t 
 get away from Vera—having slept her appointed num- 
 ber of nights, fell and was finished. But she wasn’t 
 finished. If only she had slipped away out of memory, 
 out of imagination, thought Lucy . . . but she hadn’t, 
 she hadn’t—and this was her room, and that intelligent- 
 eyed thin thing had slept in it for years and years, and 
 for years and years the looking-glass had reflected her 
 while she had dressed and undressed, dressed and un- 
 dressed before it—regularly, day after day, year after 
 
178 VERA 
 
 year—oh, what a trouble—and her thin long hands had 
 piled up her hair—Lucy could see her sitting there 
 piling it on the top of her small head—sitting at the 
 dressing-table in the window past which she was at last 
 to drop lke a_ stone—horribly—ignominiously—all 
 anyhow—and everything in the room had been hers, 
 every single thing in it had been Vera’s including 
 Ev 
 
 Lucy made a violent lunge after her thoughts and 
 
 
 
 strangled them. 
 
 Meanwhile Wemyss had shut the door and was stand- 
 ing looking at her without moving. 
 
 “Well?” he said. 
 
 She turned to him nervously, her eyes still wide with 
 the ridiculous things she had been thinking. 
 
 “Well?” he said again. 
 
 She supposed he meant her to praise the room, so 
 she hastily began, saying what a good view there must 
 be on a fine day, and how very comfortable it was, 
 such a nice big looking-glass—she loved a big looking- 
 glass—and such a nice sofa—she loved a nice sofa— 
 and what a very big bed—and what a lovely carpet 
 
 “Well?” was all Wemyss said when her words came 
 
 
 
 to an end. 
 ‘“‘What is it, Everard?” 
 “I’m waiting,” he said. 
 “Waiting?” 
 “For my kiss.” 
 She ran to him. 
 “Yes,” he said, when she had kissed him, looking 
 
VERA 179 
 
 down at her solemnly, “JZ don’t forget these things, I 
 don’t forget that this is the first time my own wife 
 and I have stood together in our very own bedroom.” 
 
 “But Everard—I didn’t forget—I only s 
 
 She cast about for something to say, her arms still 
 round his neck, for the last thing she could have told 
 him was what she had been thinking—oh, how he would 
 have scolded her for being morbid, and oh, how right 
 he would have been!—and she ended by saying as 
 
 
 
 lamely and as unfortunately as she had said it in the 
 chateau of Amboise—“I only didn’t remember.” 
 
 Luckily this time his attention had already wandered 
 away from her. “Isn’t it a jolly room?” he said. 
 *‘Who’s got far and away the best bedroom in Strorley? 
 And who’s got a sitting-room all for herself, just as 
 jolly? And who spoils his httle woman?” 
 
 Before she could answer, he loosened her hand from 
 his neck and said, ‘‘Come and look at yourself in the 
 glass. Come and see how small you are compared to 
 the other things in the room.” And with his arms 
 round her shoulders he led her to the dressing-table. 
 
 “The other things?” laughed Lucy; but like a flame 
 the thought was leaping in her brain, “Now what shall 
 I do if when I jook into this I don’t see myself but Vera? 
 It’s accustomed to Vera... .” 
 
 “Why, she’s shutting her eyes. Open them, little 
 Love,’ said Wemyss, standing with her before the glass 
 and seeing in it that though he held her in front of it 
 she wasn’t looking at the picture of wedded love he and 
 she made, but had got her eyes tight shut. 
 
180 VERA 
 
 With his free hand he took off her hat and threw it 
 on to the sofa; then he laid his head on hers and said, 
 **Now look.” 
 
 Lucy obeyed; and when she saw the sweet picture 
 in the glass the face of the girl looking at her broke 
 into its funny, charming smile, for Everard at that 
 moment was at his dearest, Everard boyishly loving her, 
 with his good-looking, unlined face so close to hers 
 and his proud eyes gazing at her. He and she seemed 
 to set each other off; they were becoming to each other. 
 
 Smiling at him in the glass, a smile tremulous with 
 tenderness, she put up her hand and stroked his face. 
 “Do you know who you’ve married?” she asked, ad- 
 dressing the man in the glass. 
 
 “Yes,” said Wemyss, addressing the girl in the glass. 
 
 “No you don’t,” she said. “But Ill tell you. You’ve 
 married the completest of fools.” 
 
 “Now what has the little thing got into its head this 
 time?” he said, kissing her hair, and watching himself 
 doing it. 
 
 “Everard, you must help me,” she murmured, holding 
 his face tenderly against hers. ‘Please, my beloved, 
 help me, teach me——” 
 
 “That, Mrs. Wemyss, is a very proper attitude in a 
 wife,” he said. And the four people laughed at each 
 other, the two Lucys a little quiveringly. 
 
 “Now come and [’ll introduce you.to your sitting- 
 room,” he said, disengaging himself. ‘‘We’ll have tea 
 up there. The view is really magnificent.” 
 
XIX 
 
 HE wind made more noise than ever at the top 
 of the house, and when Wemyss tried to open 
 the door to Vera’s sitting-room it blew back 
 
 on him. 
 
 “Well ’'m damned,” he said, giving it a great shove. 
 
 “Why?” asked Lucy nervously. 
 
 “Come in, come in,” he said impatiently, pressing 
 the door open and pulling her through. 
 
 There was a great flapping of blinds and rattling of 
 blind cords, a whirl of sheets of notepaper, an extra 
 wild shriek of the wind, and then Wemyss, hanging on 
 to the door, shut it and the room quieted down. 
 
 “That slattern Lizzie!’ he exclaimed, striding across 
 to the fireplace and putting his finger on the bell-button 
 and keeping it there. 
 
 “What has she done?” asked Lucy, standing where 
 he had left her just inside the door. 
 
 *Done? Can’t you see?” 
 
 “You mean”—she could hardly get herself to men- 
 tion the fatal thing—“‘you mean—the window?” 
 
 “On a day like this!” 
 
 He continued to press the bell. It was a very loud 
 bell, for it rang upstairs as well as down in order to 
 be sure of catching Lizzie’s ear in whatever part of the 
 
 181 
 
182 VERA 
 
 house she might be endeavouring to evade it, and Lucy, 
 as she listened to its strident, persistent summons of a 
 Lizzie who didn’t appear, felt more and more on edge, 
 felt at last that to listen and wait any longer was 
 unbearable. 
 
 ““Won’t you wear it out?” she asked, after some mo- 
 ments of nothing happening and Wemyss still ringing. 
 
 He didn’t answer. He didn’t look at her. His 
 finger remained steadily on the button. His face was 
 extraordinarily like the old man’s in the enlarged 
 photograph downstairs. Lucy wished for only two 
 things at that moment, one was that Lizzie shouldn’t 
 come, and the other was that if she did she herself 
 might be allowed to go and be somewhere else. 
 
 ““Hadn’t—hadn’t the window better be shut?” she 
 suggested timidly presently, while he still went on ring- 
 ing and saying nothing—“else when Lizzie opens the 
 door won’t all the things blow about again?” 
 
 He didn’t answer, and went on ringing. 
 
 Of all the objects in the world that she could think 
 of, Lucy most dreaded and shrank from that window; 
 nevertheless she began to feel that as Everard was 
 engaged with the bell and apparently wouldn’t leave 
 it, it behoved her to put into practice her resolution not 
 to be a fool but to be direct and wholesome, and go 
 and shut it herself. There it was, the fatal window, 
 huge as the one in the bedroom below and the one in 
 the library below that, yawning wide open above its 
 murderous low sill, with the rain flying in on every fresh 
 gust of wind and wetting the floor and the cushions of 
 
VERA 183 
 
 the sofa and even, as she could see, those sheets of 
 notepaper off the writing-table that had flown in her 
 face when she came in and were now lying scattered at 
 her feet. Surely the right thing to do was to shut the 
 window before Lizzie opened the door and caused a 
 second convulsion? Everard couldn’t because he was 
 ringing the bell. She could and she would; yes, she 
 would do the right thing, and at the same time be both 
 simple and courageous. 
 
 “T’ll shut it,” she said, taking a step forward. 
 
 She was arrested by Wemyss’s voice. ‘‘Confound 
 it!” he cried. ‘‘Can’t you leave it alone?”’ 
 
 She stopped dead. He had never spoken to her 
 like that before. She had never heard that voice before. 
 It seemed to hit her straight on the heart. 
 
 “Don’t interfere,’ he said, very loud. 
 
 She was frozen where she stood. 
 
 ‘‘Tiresome woman,” he said, still ringing. 
 
 She looked at him. He was looking at her. 
 
 “Who?” she breathed. 
 
 Vou.’ 
 
 Her heart seemed to stop beating. She gave a little 
 gasp, and turned her head to right and left like some- 
 thing trapped, something searching for escape. 
 Everard—where was her Everard? Why didn’t he 
 come and take care of her? Come and take her away— 
 out of that room—out of that room 
 
 There were sounds of steps hurrying along the 
 passage, and then there was a great scream of the wind 
 and a great whirl of the notepaper and a great blowing 
 
 
 
184 VERA 
 
 up on end of her forehead of her short hair, and Lizzie 
 was there panting on the threshold. 
 
 “I’m sorry, sir,” she panted, her hand on her chest, 
 399 
 
 
 
 “T was changing my dress 
 
 “Shut the door, can’t you?” cried Wemyss, about 
 whose ears, too, notepaper was flying. ‘Hold on to it 
 —don’t let it go, damn you!” 
 
 ““Oh—oh ” gasped Lucy, stretching out her 
 hands as though to keep something off, “I think I—I 
 think [ll go downstairs :: 
 
 And before Wemyss realised what she was doing, she 
 had turned and slipped through the door Lizzie was 
 struggling with and was gone. 
 
 “Lucy!? he shouted, “Lucy! Come back at once 
 But the wind was too much for Lizzie, and the door 
 dragged itself out of her hands and crashed to. 
 
 As though the devil were after her Lucy ran along 
 the passage. Down the stairs she flew, down past the 
 bedroom landing, down past the gong landing, down 
 into the hall and across it to the front door, and tried 
 to pull it open, and found it was bolted, and tugged 
 and tugged at the bolts, tugged frantically, getting 
 them undone at last, and rushing out on to the steps. 
 
 There an immense gust of rain caught her full in 
 the face. Splash—bang—she was sobered. The rain 
 splashed on her as though a bucket were being emptied 
 at her, and the door had banged behind her shutting 
 her out. Suddenly horrified at herself she turned 
 quickly, as frantic to get in again as she had been to 
 get out. What was she doing? Where was she running 
 
 
 
 
 
 199 
 
VERA 185 
 
 to? She must get in, get in—before Everard could 
 come after her, before he could find her standing there 
 like a drenched dog outside his front door. The wind 
 whipped her wet hair across her eyes. Where was the 
 handle? She couldn’t find it. Her hair wouldn’t keep 
 out of her eyes; her thin serge skirt blew up like a 
 balloon and got in the way of her trembling fingers 
 searching along the door. She must get in—before he 
 came—what had possessed her? Everard—he couldn’t 
 have meant—he didn’t mean—what would he think— 
 what would he think—oh, where was that handle? 
 
 Then she heard heavy footsteps on the other side of 
 the door, and Wemyss’s voice, still very loud, saying 
 to somebody he had got with him, “Haven’t I given 
 strict orders that this door is to be kept bolted?”— 
 and then the sound of bolts being shot. 
 
 “Everard! Everard!’ Lucy cried, beating on the 
 door with both hands, “I’m here—out here—let me in— 
 Everard! Everard!” 
 
 But he evidently heard nothing, for his footsteps 
 went away again. 
 
 Snatching her hair out of her eyes, she looked about 
 for the bell and reached up to it and pulled it violently. 
 What she had done was terrible. She must get in at 
 once, face the parlourmaid’s astonishment, run to 
 Everard. She couldn’t imagine his thoughts. Where 
 did he suppose she was? He must be searching the 
 house for her. He would be dreadfully upset. Why 
 didn’t the parlourmaid come? Was she changing her 
 dress too? No—she had waited at lunch all ready in 
 
186 VERA 
 her black afternoon clothes. ‘Then why didn’t she 
 
 come? 
 
 Lucy pulled the bell again and again, at last keeping 
 it down, using up its electricity as squanderously as 
 Wemyss had used it upstairs. She was wet to the skin 
 by this time, and you wouldn’t have recognised her 
 pretty hair, all dark now and sticking together in lank 
 strands. 
 
 Everard—why, of course—Everard had only spoken 
 like that out of fear—fear and love. The window— 
 of course he would be terrified lest she too, trying to 
 shut that fatal window, that great heavy fatal window, 
 should slip. . . . Oh, of course, of course—how could 
 she have misunderstood—in moments of danger, of 
 dreadful anxiety for one’s heart’s beloved, one did speak 
 sharply, one did rap out commands. It was because 
 he loved her so much. . . . Oh, how lunatic of her to 
 have misunderstood! 
 
 At last she heard some one coming, and she let go 
 of the bell and braced herself to meet the astonished 
 gaze of the parlourmaid with as much dignity as was 
 possible in one who only too well knew she must be 
 looking like a drowning cat, but the footsteps grew 
 heavy as they got nearer, and it was Wemyss who, after 
 pulling back the bolts, opened the door. 
 
 “Oh Everard!” Lucy exclaimed, running in, pursued 
 to the last by the pelting rain, “I’m so glad it’s you— 
 oh I’m so sorry I——” 
 
 Her voice died away; she had seen his face. 
 He stooped to bolt the lower bolt. 
 
VERA 187 
 
 “Don’t be angry, darling Everard,” she whispered, 
 laying her arm on his stooping shoulder. 
 
 Having finished with the bolt Wemyss straightened 
 himself, and then, putting up his hand to the arm still 
 round his shoulder, he removed it. ‘‘You’ll make my 
 coat wet,” he said; and walked away to the lbrary 
 door and went in and shut it. 
 
 For a moment she stood where he had left her, 
 collecting her scattered senses; then she went after 
 him. Wet or not wet, soaked and dripping as she was, 
 ridiculous scarecrow with her clinging clothes, her lank 
 hair, she must go after him, must instantly get the 
 horror of misunderstanding straight, tell him how she 
 had meant only to help over that window, tell him how 
 she had thought he was saying dreadful things to her 
 when he was really only afraid for her safety, tell him 
 how silly she had been, silly, silly, not to have followed 
 his thoughts quicker, tell him he must forgive her, be 
 patient with her, help her, because she loved him so 
 much and she knew—oh, she knew—how much he loved 
 Hoy Daa 
 
 Across the hall ran Lucy, the whole of her one welter 
 of anxious penitence and longing and love, and when 
 she got to the door and turned the handle it was locked. 
 
 He had locked her out, 
 
XX 
 
 ER hand slid slowly off the knob. She stood 
 H quite still. How could he. ... And she 
 knew now that he had bolted the front door 
 knowing she was out in the rain. How could he? Her 
 body was motionless as she stood staring at the locked 
 door, but her brain was a rushing confusion of ques- 
 tions. Why? Why? This couldn’t be Everard. Who 
 was this man—pitiless, cruel? Not Everard. Not her 
 lover. Where was he, her lover and husband? Why 
 didn’t he come and take care of her, and not let her be 
 frightened by this strange man... . 
 
 She heard a chair being moved inside the room, 
 and then she heard the creak of leather as Wemyss sat 
 down in it, and then there was the rustle of a news- 
 paper being opened. He was actually settling down 
 to read a newspaper while she, his wife, his love— 
 wasn’t he always telling her she was his little LoveP— 
 was breaking her heart outside the locked door. Why, 
 but Everard—she and Everard; they understood each 
 other; they had laughed, played together, talked 
 nonsense, been friends... . 
 
 For an instant she had an impulse to cry out and 
 beat on the door, not to care who heard, not to care 
 that the whole house should come and gather round her 
 
 188 
 
VERA 189 
 
 naked misery; but she was stopped by a sudden new 
 wisdom. It shuddered down on her heart, a wisdom 
 she had never known or needed before, and held her 
 quiet. At all costs there mustn’t be two of them doing 
 these things, at all costs these things mustn’t be 
 doubled, mustn’t have echoes. If Everard was like this 
 he must be like it alone. She must wait. She must 
 sit quiet till he had finished. Else—but oh, he couldn’t 
 be like it, it couldn’t be true that he didn’t love her. 
 Yet if he did love her, how could he ... how could 
 BOs e's 
 
 She leaned her forehead against the door and began 
 softly to cry. Then, afraid that she might after all 
 burst out into loud, disgraceful sobbing, she turned and 
 went upstairs. 
 
 But where could she go? Where in the whole house 
 was any refuge, any comfort? ‘The only person who 
 could have told her anything, who could have explained, 
 who knew, was Vera. Yes—she would have understood. 
 Yes, yes—Vera. She would go to Vera’s room, get as: 
 close to her mind as she could,—search, find something,, 
 some clue... . 
 
 It seemed now to Lucy, as she hurried upstairs, that 
 the room in the house she had most shrunk from was. 
 the one place where she might hope to find comfort. 
 Oh, she wasn’t frightened any more. Everything was 
 trying to frighten her, but she wasn’t going to be 
 frightened. For some reason or other things were all 
 trying together to-day to see if they could crush her, 
 beat out her spirit. But they weren’t going to... . 
 
190 VERA 
 
 She jerked her wet hair out of her eyes as she 
 climbed the stairs. It kept on getting into them and 
 making her stumble. Vera would help her. Vera never 
 was beaten. Vera had had fifteen years of not being 
 beaten before she—before she had that accident. And 
 there must have been heaps of days just like this one, 
 with the wind screaming and Vera up in her room and 
 Everard down in his—locked in, perhaps—and yet Vera 
 had managed, and her spirit wasn’t beaten out. For 
 years and years, panted Lucy—her very thoughts 
 came in gasps—Vera lived up here winter after winter, 
 years, years, years, and would have been here now 
 if she hadn’t—oh, if only Vera weren’t dead! If only, 
 only Vera weren’t dead! But her mind lived on—her 
 mind was in that room, in every littlest thing in it 
 
 Lucy stumbled up the last few stairs completely out 
 of breath, and opening the sitting-room door stood 
 panting on the threshold much as Lizzie had done, her 
 hand on her chest. 
 
 This time everything was in order. The window was 
 shut, the scattered notepaper collected and tidily on 
 the writing-table, the rain on the floor wiped up, and 
 a fire had been lit and the wet cushions were drying in 
 front of it. Also there was Lizzie, engaged in con- 
 science-stricken activities, and when Lucy came in she > 
 was on her knees poking the fire. She was poking so 
 vigorously that she didn’t hear the door open, espe- 
 cially not with that rattling and banging of the window 
 going on; and on getting up and seeing the figure 
 standing there panting, with strands of lank hair in its 
 
 
 
VERA 191 
 
 eyes and its general air of neglect and weather, she 
 gave a loud exclamation. 
 
 “Lumme!” exclaimed Lizzie, whose origin and bring- 
 ing-up had been obscure. 
 
 She had helped carry in the luggage that morning, 
 so she had seen her mistress before and knew what she 
 was like in her dry state. She never could have 
 believed, having seen her then all nicely fluffed out, 
 that there was so little of her. Lizzie knew what long- 
 haired dogs look like when they are being soaped, and 
 she was also familiar with cats as they appear after 
 drowning; yet they too surprised her, in spite of 
 familiarity, each time she saw them in these circum- 
 stances by their want of real substance, of stuffing. 
 Her mistress looked just like that,—no stuffing at all; 
 and therefore Lizzie, the poker she was holding arrested 
 in mid-air on its way into its corner, exclaimed Lumme. 
 
 Then, realising that this weather-beaten figure must 
 certainly be catching its death of cold, she dropped the 
 poker and hurrying across the room and talking in 
 the stress of the moment like one girl to another, she 
 felt Lucy’s sleeve and said, ‘“‘Why, you’re wet to the 
 bones. Come to the fire and take them sopping clothes 
 off this minute, or you'll be laid up as sure as sure ie 
 and pulled her over to the fire; and having got her 
 there, and she saying nothing at all and not resisting, 
 Lizzie stripped off her clothes and shoes and stockings, 
 repeating at frequent intervals as she did so, “Dear, 
 dear,” and repressing a strong desire to beg her not 
 to take on, lest later, perhaps, her mistress mightn’t 
 
 
 
192 VERA 
 
 like her to have noticed she had been crying. Then 
 she snatched up a woollen coverlet that lay folded on 
 the end of the sofa, rolled her tightly round in it, sat 
 her in a chair right up close to the fender, and still 
 talking like one girl to another said, “Now sit there and 
 don’t move while I fetch dry things—I won’t be above 
 a minute—now you promise, don’t you ” and hurry- 
 ing to the door never remembered her manners at all 
 till she was through it, whereupon she put in her head 
 again and hastily said, ‘“‘Mum,” and disappeared. 
 
 She was away, however, more than a minute. Five 
 minutes, ten minutes passed and Lizzie, feverishly 
 unpacking Lucy’s clothes in the bedroom below, and 
 trying to find a complete set of them, and not knowing 
 what belonged to which, didn’t come back. 
 
 Lucy sat quite still, rolled up in Vera’s coverlet. 
 Obediently she didn’t move, but stared straight into the 
 fire, sitting so close up to it that the rest of the room 
 was shut out. She couldn’t see the window, or the 
 dismal rain streaming down it. She saw nothing but 
 the fire, blazing cheerfully. How kind Lizzie was. 
 How comforting kindness was. It was a thing she 
 understood, a normal, natural thing, and it made her 
 feel normal and natural just to be with it. Lizzie had 
 given her such a vigorous rub down that her skin 
 tingled. Her hair was on ends, for that too had had a 
 vigorous rubbing from Lizzie, who had taken her apron 
 to it feeling that this was an occasion on which one 
 abandoned convention and went in for resource. And 
 as Lucy sat there getting warmer and warmer, and 
 
 
 
VERA 193 
 
 more and more pervaded by the feeling of relief and 
 well-being that even the most wretched feel if they take 
 off all their clothes, her mind gradually calmed down, 
 it left off asking agonised questions, and presently her 
 heart began to do the talking. 
 
 She was so much accustomed to find life kind, that 
 given a moment of quiet like this with somebody being 
 good-natured and back she slipped to her usual state, 
 which was one of affection and confidence. Lizzie hadn’t 
 been gone five minutes before Lucy had passed from 
 sheer bewildered misery to making excuses for Everard; 
 in ten minutes she was seeing good reasons for what he 
 had done; in fifteen she was blaming herself for most 
 of what had happened. She had been amazingly idiotic 
 to run out of the room, and surely quite mad to run 
 out of the house. It was wrong, of course, for him to 
 bolt her out, but he was angry, and people did things 
 when they were angry that horrified them afterwards. 
 Surely people who easily got angry needed all the sym- 
 pathy and understanding one could give them,—not 
 to be met by despair and the loss of faith in them of 
 the person they had hurt. That only turned passing, 
 temporary bad things into a long unhappiness. She 
 hadn’t known he had a temper. She had only, so far, 
 discovered his extraordinary capacity for being of- 
 fended. Well, if he had a temper how could he help it? 
 He was born that way, as certainly as if he had been 
 born lame. Would she not have been filled with tender- 
 ness for his lameness if he had happened to be born 
 
194 VERA 
 
 like that? Would it ever have occurred to her to mind, 
 to feel it as a grievance? 
 
 The warmer Lucy got the more eager she grew to 
 justify Wemyss. In the middle of the reasons she 
 was advancing for his justification, however, it sud- 
 denly struck her that they were a little smug. All that 
 about people with tempers needing sympathy,—who 
 was she, with her impulses and impatiences—with her, 
 as she now saw, devastating impulses and impatiences— 
 to take a line of what was very like pity. Pity! 
 Smug, odious word; smug, odious thing. Wouldn’t she 
 hate it if she thought he pitied her for her failings? 
 Let him be angry with her failings, but not pity her. 
 She and her man, they needed no pity from each other; 
 they had love. It was impossible that anything either 
 of them did or was should really touch that. 
 
 Very warm now in Vera’s blanket, her face flushed 
 by the fire, Lucy asked herself what could really put 
 out that great, glorious, central blaze. All that was 
 needed was patience when he. . . . She gave herself 
 a shake,—there she was again, thinking smugly. She 
 wouldn’t think at all. She would just take things as 
 they came, and love, and love. 
 
 Then the vision of Everard, sitting solitary with his 
 newspaper and by this time, too, probably thinking 
 only of love, and anyhow not happy, caused one of 
 those very impulses to lay hold of her which she had a 
 moment before been telling herself she would never give 
 way to again. She was aware one had gripped her, 
 but this was a good impulse,—this wasn’t a bad one 
 
VERA 195 
 
 like running out into the rain: she would go down and 
 have another try at that door. She was warmed 
 through now and quite reasonable, and she felt she 
 couldn’t another minute endure not being at peace with 
 Everard. How silly they were. It was ridiculous. It 
 was like two children fighting. Lizzie was so long 
 bringing her clothes; she couldn’t wait, she must sit on 
 Everard’s knee again, feel his arms round her, see his 
 eyes looking kind. She would go down in her blanket. 
 It wrapped her up from top to toe. Only her feet were 
 bare; but they were quite warm, and anyhow feet didn’t 
 matter. 
 
 So Lucy padded softly downstairs, making hardly 
 a sound, and certainly none that could be heard above 
 the noise of the wind by Lizzie in the bedroom, fran- 
 tically throwing clothes about. 
 
 She knocked at the library door. 
 
 Wemyss’s voice said, “Come in.” 
 
 So he had unlocked it. So he had hoped she would 
 come. 
 
 He didn’t, however, look round. He was sitting 
 with his back to the door at the writing-table in the 
 window, writing. 
 
 “T want my flowers in here,” he said, without turning 
 his head. 
 
 So he had rung. So he thought it was the parlour- 
 maid. So he hadn’t unlocked the door because he 
 hoped she would come. 
 
 But his flowers,—he wanted his birthday flowers in 
 
196 VERA 
 
 there because they were all that were left to him of his 
 ruined birthday. 
 
 When she heard this order Lucy’s heart rushed out 
 ‘to him. She shut the door softly and with her bare 
 feet making no sound went up behind him. , 
 
 He thought the parlourmaid had shut the door, and 
 gone to carry out his order. Feeling an arm put round 
 his shoulder he thought the parlourmaid hadn’t gone 
 to carry out his order, but had gone mad instead. 
 
 “Good God!” he exclaimed, jumping up. 
 
 At the sight of Lucy in her blanket, with her bare 
 feet and her confused hair, his face changed. He stared 
 at her without speaking. 
 
 “T’ve come to tell you—I’ve come to tell you i 
 
 
 
 she began. 
 
 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— 
 
 33 
 
 
 
 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 Circumstance. 
 
 At the door he turned and said, “Since you thrust 
 
VERA 197 
 
 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 assure you I’m proof against sexual allurements.”’ 
 
 Then he went out. 
 
 Lucy stood looking at the door. Sexual 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 passed the bedroom door 
 
 
 
 just as Lizzie, her arms full of a complete set of cloth- 
 ing, 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. 
 
198 VERA 
 
 “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. 
 **T 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 sexual 
 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 
 
VERA 199 
 
 would understand each other, say the same sort 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 
 
 EANWHILE, Wemyss had gone into the 
 M 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 
 
 200 
 
VERA 201 
 
 red baize cover, even its legs being buttoned round in 
 what looked like Alpine Sport gaiters, and the baize 
 flap that protected the keys had buttons all along it 
 from one end to the other. In order to play, these but- 
 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 button 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 buttoned all its buttons; 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 
 
202 VERA 
 
 touched the piano. Well, at least it was being taken 
 care of. 
 
 From habit he stooped and ran his eye up its gaiters. 
 
 All buttoned. 
 
 Stay—no; one buttonhole gaped. 
 
 He stooped closer and put out his hand to button it, 
 and found the button gone. No button. 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 get- 
 ting under weigh 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 toward 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 que, 
 “No sir,”’ she said. 
 
VERA 203 
 
 “Look at that piano-leg, I say,” said Wemyss, point- 
 ing with his pipe. 
 
 It was, so to speak, the off foreleg 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 noth- 
 ing to justify speech. Therefore she was silent. 
 
 “Don’t you see there’s a button off ?” 
 
 The parlourmaid, on looking closer, did see that, 
 and said so. 
 
 “Isn’t it your business to attend to this room?” 
 
 She admitted that it was. 
 
 “Buttons 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 buttons 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 
 
204 VERA 
 
 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 knowl- 
 edge not for years. Therefore the cover cannot have 
 been unbuttoned legitimately, it cannot have been un- 
 buttoned by any one authorised to unbutton it. There- 
 fore———”’ 
 
 He pointed his finger straight at her and paused. 
 “Do you follow me?” he asked sternly. 
 
 The parlourmaid hastily reassembled her wandering 
 thoughts. “Yes sir,” she said, 
 
 “Therefore some one unauthorised has unbuttoned 
 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 neverthe- 
 less the conclusion can’t be escaped, that some one has 
 actually taken advantage of my absence to play on that 
 
 33 
 
 
 
 piano. Some one in this house has actually dared 
 ‘“There’s the tuner,” said the parlourmaid tenta- 
 tively, 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 
 
VERA 205 
 
 have reminded him sooner? But the tuner having tuned 
 didn’t excuse the parlourmaid’s not having sewn on 
 the button the tuner had pulled off. 
 
 He told her so. 
 
 “Yes sir,” she said. 
 
 “You will have that button on in five minutes,” he 
 said, pulling out his watch. “In five minutes exactly 
 from now that button 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 disap- 
 pointment 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 
 
206 VERA 
 
 appeal. It was not the sort of combination one ex- 
 pected in a wife. Why couldn’t she come down and 
 apologise properly dressed? God, 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 damned 
 Tazzie, ie. se 
 
 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 button?” 
 
 “YT 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 
 button 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 
 
VERA 207 
 
 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 damned blanket— 
 God, how he loved her... . 
 
XXIT 
 
 P AHE 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 com- 
 fortably 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 sleep at night if she did it in 
 the daytime. There she was, sleeping soundly, com- 
 pletely 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 
 
 208 
 
VERA 209 
 
 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 happi- 
 ness. 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 scrape. 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. 
 Passionately. 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 ar- 
 rangements 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- 
 
210 VERA 
 
 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 title, to see what it was Lucy 
 had considered more worth her attention than her 
 conduct that day towards her husband. Wuthering 
 Heights. Ue 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 instinc- 
 tive 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 re- 
 membrance. 
 
 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 
 
VERA 911 
 
 woke up after a deep sleep and saw hin, 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. . 
 
 Only love filled Lucy after the deep, restoring sleep. 
 “Dearest one,” she murmured drowsily, smiling at him, 
 without changing her position. 
 
 He said nothing to that; and presently, having 
 woken up more, she got on to her knees and pulled 
 herself across to him and curled up at his feet, her head 
 against his knee. 
 
 He still said nothing. He waited. He would give 
 her time. Her words had been familiar, but not 
 penitent. They had hardly been the right beginning 
 for an expression of contrition; but he would see what 
 she said next, 
 
 What she said next was, “‘Haven’t. we been silly,”— 
 and, more familiarity, she put one arm round his knees 
 and held them close against her face. 
 
 “Wer? said Wemyss. “Did you say we?” 
 
 “Yes,” said Lucy, her cheek against his knee. 
 ““We’ve been wasting time.”’ 
 
 Wemyss paused before he made his comment on this. 
 “Really,” he then said, “the way you include me shows 
 very little appreciation of your conduct.” 
 
 “Well, I’ve been silly, then,” she said, lifting her head 
 and smiling up at him. 
 
212 VERA 
 
 She simply couldn’t go on with indignations. Per- 
 haps they were just ones, It didn’t matter if they 
 were. Who wanted to be in the right in a dispute with 
 one’s lover? Everybody, oh, everybody who loved 
 would passionately want always to have been in the 
 wrong, never, never to have been right. ‘That one’s 
 beloved should have been unkind,—who wanted that to 
 be true? Who wouldn’t do anything sooner than have 
 not been mistaken about it? Vividly she saw Everard 
 as he was before their marriage; so dear, so boyish, 
 such fun, her playmate. She could say anything to 
 him then. She had been quite fearless. And vividly, 
 too, she saw him as he was when first they met, both 
 crushed by death,—how he had comforted her, how he 
 had been everything that was wonderful and tender. 
 All that had happened since, all that had happened on 
 this particular and most unfortunate day, was only a 
 sort of excess of boyishness: boyishness on its un- 
 controlled side, a wave, a fit of bad temper provoked by 
 her not having held on to her impulses, That locking 
 her out in the rain,—a schoolboy might have done that 
 to another schoolboy. It meant nothing, except that 
 he was angry. That about sexual allure——oh, well. 
 
 “ve been very silly,” she said earnestly. 
 
 He looked down at her in silence. He wanted more 
 than that. That wasn’t nearly enough. He wanted 
 much more of humbleness before he could bring himself 
 to lift her on to his knee, forgiven. And how much he 
 wanted her on his knee. 
 
 “Do you realise what you’ve done?” he asked. 
 
VERA 213 
 
 “Yes,” said Lucy. “And I’m so sorry. Won’t we 
 kiss and be friends?” 
 
 “Not yet, thank you. I must be sure first that you 
 understand how deliberately wicked you’ve been.” 
 
 “Oh, but I haven’t been deliberately wicked!” 
 exclaimed Lucy, opening her eyes wide with astonish- 
 ment. “Everard, how can you say such a thing?’’ 
 
 “Ah, I see. You are still quite impenitent, and I 
 am sorry I came up.” 
 
 He undid her arm from round his knees, put her on 
 one side, and got out of the chair. Rage swept over 
 him again. 
 
 “Here I’ve been sitting watching you like a dog,” he 
 said, towering over her, “like a faithful dog while you 
 slept,—waiting patiently till you woke up and only 
 wanting to forgive you, and you not only callously 
 sleep after having behaved outrageously and allowed 
 yourself to exhibit temper before the whole house on 
 our very first day together in my home—well knowing, 
 mind you, what day it is—but when I ask you for some 
 sign, some word, some assurance that you are ashamed 
 of yourself and will not repeat your conduct, you 
 merely deny that you have done anything needing 
 forgiveness.” 
 
 He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, his face twitch- 
 ing with anger, and wished to God he could knock the 
 opposition out of Lucy as easily. 
 
 She, on the floor, sat looking up at him, her mouth 
 
 open. What could she do with Everard? She didn’t 
 
214 VERA 
 
 know. Love had no effect; saying she was sorry had 
 no effect. 
 
 She pushed her hair nervously behind her ears with 
 both hands. “I’m sick of quarrels,” she said, 
 
 “So am I,” said Wemyss, going towards the door 
 thrusting his pipe into his pocket. ‘‘You’ve only got 
 yourself to thank for them.” 
 
 She didn’t protest. It seemed useless. She said, 
 ‘Forgive me, Everard.” 
 
 “Only if you apologise.” 
 
 6 ag 7? 
 
 “Yes what?”? He paused for her answer. 
 
 “IT do apologise.”’ 
 
 “You admit you’ve been deliberately wicked?” 
 
 “Oh yes.’ 
 
 He continued towards the door. 
 
 She scrambled to her feet and ran after him. ‘Please 
 don’t go,” she begged, catching his arm. “You know I 
 
 99 
 
 
 
 can’t bear it, I can’t bear it if we quarrel 
 
 ‘Then what do you mean by saying ‘Oh yes,’ in that 
 insolent manner?” 
 
 ‘Did it seem insolent? I didn’t mean—oh, I’m so 
 tired of this is 
 
 “I daresay. You'll be tireder still before you’ve 
 done. I don’t get tired, let me tell you. You can go 
 
 
 
 on as long as you choose,—it won’t affect me.” 
 “Oh do, do let’s be friends. I don’t want to go on. 
 I don’t want anything in the world except to be friends. 
 Please kiss me, Everard, and say you forgive me——” 
 He at least stood still and looked at her. 
 
VERA 215 
 
 
 
 ‘And do believe I’m so, so sorry 3 
 
 He relented. He wanted, extraordinarily, to kiss 
 her. “Ill accept it if you assure me it is so,” he said. 
 
 ‘And do, do let’s be happy. It’s your birthday ‘i 
 
 “As though I’ve forgotten that.” 
 
 He looked at her upturned face; her arm was round 
 his neck now. ‘“‘Lucy, I don’t believe you understand 
 
 
 
 my love for you,’ he said solemnly. 
 
 “No,” said Lucy truthfully, “I don’t think I do.” 
 
 “You'll have to learn.” 
 
 “Yes,” said Lucy; and sighed faintly. 
 
 ‘You mustn’t wound such love.” 
 
 “No,” said Lucy. ‘Don’t let us wound each other 
 ever any more, darling Everard.” 
 
 “I’m not talking of each other. I’m talking at this 
 moment of myself in relation to you. One thing at a 
 time, please.” 
 
 “Yes,” said Lucy. “Kiss me, won’t you, Everard? 
 Else I shan’t know we’re really friends.” 
 
 He took her head in his hands, and bestowed a solemn 
 kiss of pardon on her brow. 
 
 She tried to coax him back to cheerfulness. ‘‘Kiss 
 my eyes too,” she said, smiling at him, “‘or they’ll feel 
 neglected.” 
 
 He kissed her eyes, 
 
 ‘‘And now my mouth, please, Everard.” 
 
 He kissed her mouth, and did at last smile. 
 
 “And now won’t we go to the fire and be cosy?” she 
 asked, her arm in his. 
 
216 VERA 
 
 “By the way, who ordered the fire?”’ he inquired in 
 his ordinary voice. 
 
 “T don’t know. It was lit when I came up. Oughtn’t 
 it to have been?” 
 
 “Not without orders. It must have been that Lizzie. 
 Pll ring and find out i 
 
 “Oh, don’t ring!” exclaimed Lucy, catching his hand 
 —she felt she couldn’t bear any more ringing. “If you 
 
 
 
 do she’ll come, and I want us to be alone together.” 
 
 “Well, whose fault is it we haven’t been alone to- 
 gether all this time?” he asked. 
 
 “Ah, but we’re friends now—you mustn’t go back 
 to that any more,’ she said, anxiously smiling and 
 drawing his hand through her arm. 
 
 He allowed her to lead him to the arm-chair, and 
 sitting in it did at last feel justified in taking her on 
 his knee, 
 
 “Tow my own Love spoils things,” he said, shaking 
 his head at her with fond solemnity when they were 
 settled in the chair. 
 
 And Lucy, very cautious now, only said gently, 
 “But I never mean to.” 
 
XXIIT 
 
 HE sat after that without speaking on his knee, 
 S his arms round her, her head on his breast. 
 She was thinking. 
 
 Try as she might to empty herself of everything 
 except acceptance and love, she found that only her 
 body was controllable. That lay quite passive in 
 Wemyss’s arms; but her mind refused to lie passive, 
 it would think. Strange how tightly one’s body could 
 be held, how close to somebody else’s heart, and yet 
 one wasn’t anywhere near the holder. They locked 
 you up in prisons that way, holding your body tight 
 and thinking they had got you, and all the while your 
 mind—you—was as free as the wind and the sunlight. 
 She couldn’t help it, she struggled hard to feel as she 
 had felt when she woke up and saw him sitting near her; 
 but the way he had refused to be friends, the complete 
 absence of any readiness in him to meet her, not half, 
 nor even a quarter, but a little bit of the way, had for 
 the first time made her consciously afraid of him. 
 
 She was afraid of him, and she was afraid of herself 
 in relation to him. He seemed outside anything of 
 which she had experience. He appeared not to be— 
 he anyhow had not been that day—generdus. There 
 seemed no way, at any point, by which one could reach 
 him. What was he really like? How long was it 
 
 217 
 
218 VERA 
 
 going to take her really to know him? Years? And 
 she herself,—she now knew, now that she had made 
 their acquaintance, that she couldn’t at all bear scenes. 
 Any scenes. Either with herself, or in her presence 
 with other people. She couldn’t bear them while they 
 were going on, and she couldn’t bear the exhaustion 
 of the long drawn-out making up at the end. And 
 she not only didn’t see how they were to be avoided— 
 for no care, no caution would for ever be able to watch 
 what she said, or did, or looked, or equally important, 
 what she didn’t. say, or didn’t do, or didn’t look—but 
 she was afraid, afraid with a most dismal foreboding, 
 that some day after one of them, or in the middle of one 
 of them, her nerve would give out and she would col- 
 lapse. Collapse deplorably; into just something that 
 howled and whimpered. 
 
 This, however, was horrible. She mustn’t think 
 like this. Sufficient unto the day, she thought, trying 
 to make herself smile, is the whimpering thereof. 
 Besides, she wouldn’t whimper, she wouldn’t go to 
 pieces, she would discover a way to manage. Where 
 there was so much love there must be a way to manage. 
 
 He had pulled her blouse back, and was kissing her 
 shoulder and asking her whose very own wife she was. 
 But what was the good of love-making if it was imme 
 diately preceded or followed or interrupted by anger? 
 She was afraid of him. She wasn’t in this kissing at 
 all. Perhaps she had been afraid of him unconsciously 
 for a long while. What was that abjectness on the 
 honeymoon, that anxious desire to please, to avoid 
 
VERA 219 
 
 offending, but fear? It was love afraid; afraid of get- 
 ting hurt, of not going to be able to believe whole- 
 heartedly, of not going to be able—this was the worst— 
 to be proud of its beloved. But now, after her experi- 
 ences to-day, she had a fear of him more separate, 
 more definite, distinct from love. Strange to be afraid 
 of him and love him at the same time. Perhaps if she 
 didn’t love him she wouldn’t be afraid of him. No, 
 she didn’t think she would then, because then nothing 
 that he said would reach her heart. Only she couldn’t 
 imagine that. He was her heart. 
 
 “What are you thinking of?” asked Wemyss, who 
 having finished with her shoulder noticed how quiet 
 she was. 
 
 She could tell him truthfully; a moment sooner and 
 she couldn’t have. ‘‘I was thinking,’ she said, “that 
 you are my heart.” 
 
 “Take care of your heart then, won’t you,” said 
 Wemyss. 
 
 “We both will,” said Lucy. 
 
 “Of course,’ said Wemyss, ‘That’s understood. 
 Why state it?” 
 
 She was silent a minute. Then she said, “‘Isn’t it 
 nearly tea-time?”’ 
 
 “By Jove, yes,” he exclaimed, pulling out his watch. 
 “Why, long past. I wonder what that fool—get up, 
 little Love—” he brushed her off his lap—“I’ll ring and 
 find out what she means by it.” 
 
 Lucy was sorry she had said anything about tea. 
 However, he didn’t keep his finger on the bell this time, 
 
220 VERA 
 
 but rang it normally. Then he stood looking at his 
 watch. 
 
 She put her arm through his, She longed to say, 
 “Please don’t scold her.” 
 
 “Take care,” he said, his eyes on his watch. ‘Don’t 
 shake me——’”’ 
 
 She asked what he was doing. 
 
 “Timing her,” he said. ‘“Sh—sh—don’t talk. I 
 can’t keep count if you talk.” 
 
 She became breathlessly quiet and expectant. She 
 listened anxiously for the sound of footsteps. She did 
 hope Lizzie would come in time. Lizzie was so nice,— 
 it would be dreadful if she got a scolding. Why didn’t 
 she come? There—what was that? A door going 
 somewhere. Would she do it? Would she? 
 
 Running steps came along the passage outside. 
 Wemyss put his watch away. ‘Five seconds to spare,” 
 he said. ‘“That’s the way to teach them to answer 
 bells,’’ he added with satisfaction. 
 
 “Did you ring, sir?” inquired Lizzie, opening the 
 door. 
 
 “Why is tea late?”’ 
 
 “It’s in the library, sir.” 
 
 “Kindly attend to my question. I asked why tea 
 was late.” 
 
 “It wasn’t late to begin with, sir,’’ said Lizzie. 
 
 ‘Be so good as to make yourself clear.” 
 
 Lizzie, who had felt quite clear, here became be- 
 fogged. She did her best, however. “It’s got late 
 through waiting to be ’ad, sir,’’ she said. 
 
VERA 221 
 
 “Tm afraid I don’t follow you. Do you?” he asked, 
 turning to Lucy. 
 
 She started. “Yes,” she said. 
 
 “Really. Then you are cleverer than I am,” said 
 Wemyss. 
 
 Lizzie at this—for she didn’t want to make any more 
 trouble for the young lady—made a further effort to 
 explain. “It was punctual in the library, sir, at ’alf- 
 past four if you’d been there to ’ave it. The tea was 
 punctual, sir, but there wasn’t no one to ’ave it.” 
 
 ‘And pray by whose orders was it in the lbrary?” 
 
 “T couldn’t say, sir. Chesterton i 
 
 “Don’t put it on to Chesterton.” 
 
 “T was thinking,” said Lizzie, who was more stout- 
 hearted than the parlourmaid and didn’t take cover 
 quite so frequently in dumbness, “I was thinking 
 p’raps Chesterton knew. I don’t do the tea, sir.” 
 
 “Send Chesterton,” said Wemyss. 
 
 Lizzie disappeared with the quickness of relief. 
 Lucy, with a nervous little movement, stooped and 
 
 
 
 picked up Wuthering Heights, which was still lying face 
 downward on the floor, 
 
 “Yes,” said Wemyss. “I like the way you treat 
 books.” 
 
 She put it back on its shelf. “I went to sleep, and 
 it fell down,” she said. ‘‘Everard,’’ she went on quickly, 
 “T must go and get a handkerchief. Ill join you in 
 the library.” 
 
 “I’m not going into the library. I’m going to have 
 tea here. Why should I have tea in the library?” 
 
 4 
 
222 VERA 
 
 39 
 
 
 
 “T only thought as it was there 
 
 “T suppose I can have tea where I like in my own 
 house?” 
 
 “But of course. Well, then, ll go and get a hand- 
 kerchief and come back here.” 
 
 ‘You can do that some other time. Don’t be so 
 restless.” 
 
 “But I—I want a handkerchief—this minute,” said 
 Lucy. 
 
 “Nonsense; here, have mine,” said Wemyss; and 
 anyhow it was too late to escape, for there in the door 
 stood Chesterton. 
 
 She was the parlourmaid. Her name has not till 
 now been mentioned, It was Chesterton. 
 
 ‘Why is tea in the library?” Wemyss asked. 
 
 “T understood, sir, tea was always to be in the 
 library,” said Chesterton. 
 
 “That was while I was by myself. I suppose it 
 wouldn’t have occurred to you to inquire whether I 
 still wished it there now that I am not by myself.” 
 
 This floored Chesterton. Her ignorance of the right 
 answer was complete. She therefore said nothing, and 
 merely stood. 
 
 But he didn’t let her off. “Would it?” he asked 
 suddenly. 
 
 “No sir,” she said, dimly feeling that “Yes sir” 
 would land her in difficulties. 
 
 “No. Quite so. It wouldn’t. Well, you will now 
 go and fetch that tea and bring it up here. Stop a 
 
VERA 223 
 
 minute, stop a minute—don’t be in such a hurry, please. 
 How long has it been made?” 
 
 “Since half-past four, sir.” 
 
 “Then you will make fresh tea, and you will 
 make fresh toast, and you will cut fresh bread and 
 butter.” 
 
 es) sir.” 
 
 “And another time you will have the goodness to 
 ascertain my wishes before taking upon yourself to put 
 the tea into any room you choose to think fit.” 
 
 Pes-sir.” 
 
 She waited, 
 
 He waved. 
 
 She went. 
 
 “That’ll teach her,” said Wemyss, looking refreshed 
 by the encounter, “If she thinks she’s going to get out 
 of bringing tea up here by putting it ready somewhere 
 else she’ll find she’s mistaken. Aren’t they a set? 
 Arent they a set, little Love?” 
 
 “I—don’t know,” said Lucy nervously. 
 
 “You don’t know!” 
 
 “T mean, I don’t know them yet. How can I know 
 them when I’ve only just come?” 
 
 “You soon will, then. A lazier set of careless, 
 lying ii 
 
 “Do tell me what that picture is, Everard,” she 
 interrupted, quickly crossing the room and standing in 
 front of it. ‘I’ve been wondering and wondering.” 
 
 ‘You can see what it is, It’s a picture.” 
 
 “Yes, But where’s the place?” 
 
 
 
224 VERA 
 
 “T’ve no idea. It’s one of Vera’s. She didn’t 
 condescend to explain it.” 
 
 “You mean she painted it?” 
 
 “J daresay. She was always painting.” 
 
 Wemyss, who had been filling his pipe, lit it and 
 stood smoking in front of the fire, occasionally looking 
 at his watch, while Lucy stared at the picture. Lovely, 
 lovely to run through that door out into the open, into 
 the warmth and sunshine, further and _ further 
 away. ... 
 
 It was the only picture in the room; indeed, the 
 room was oddly bare,—a thin room, with no carpet on 
 its slippery floor, only some infrequent rugs, and no 
 curtains. But there had been curtains, for there were 
 the rods with rings on them, so that somebody must 
 have taken Vera’s curtains away. Lucy had been 
 strangely perturbed when she noticed this. It was 
 Vera’s room. Her curtains oughtn’t to have been 
 touched. 
 
 The long wall opposite the fireplace had nothing at 
 all on its sand-coloured surface from the door to the 
 window except a tall narrow looking-glass in a queerly 
 carved black frame, and the picture. But how that one 
 picture glowed. What glorious weather they were 
 having init! It wasn’t anywhere in England, she was 
 sure. It was a brilliant, sunlit place, with a lot of 
 almond trees in full blossom,—an orchard of them, 
 apparently, standing in grass that was full of little 
 flowers, very gay little flowers of kinds she didn’t 
 know. And through the open door in the wall there 
 
VERA 225 
 
 was an amazing stretch of hot, vivid country. It 
 stretched on and on till it melted into an ever so far 
 away lovely blue. There was an effect of immense 
 spaciousness, of huge freedom. One could feel oneself 
 running out into it with one’s face to the sun, flinging 
 up one’s arms in an ecstasy of release, of escape. .. . 
 
 “It’s somewhere abroad,” she said, after a silence. 
 
 “IT daresay,” said Wemyss. 
 
 “Used you to travel much?” she asked, still examin- 
 ing the picture, fascinated. 
 
 “She refused to.” 
 
 “She refused to?’? echoed Lucy, turning round. 
 
 She looked at him wonderingly. That seemed not 
 only unkind of Vera, but extraordinarily—yes, ener- 
 getic. The exertion required for refusing Everard 
 something he wanted was surely enormous, was surely 
 greater than any but the most robust-minded wife could 
 embark upon. She had had one small experience of 
 what disappointing him meant in that question of 
 Christmas, and she hadn’t been living with him then, 
 and she had had all the nights to recover in; yet the 
 effect of that one experience had been to make her give 
 in at once when next he wanted something, and it was 
 because of last Christmas that she was standing mar- 
 ried in that room instead of being still, as both she 
 and her Aunt Dot had intended, six months off it. 
 
 “Why did she refuse?” she asked, wondering. 
 
 Wemyss didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, 
 “T was going to say you had better ask her, but you 
 can’t very well do that, can you.” 
 
226 VERA 
 
 Lucy stood looking at him. “Yes,” she said, “she 
 
 does seem extraordinarily near, doesn’t she. This 
 bP 
 
 
 
 room is full 
 
 *‘Now Lucy [ll have none of that. Come here.” 
 
 He held out his hand. She crossed over obediently 
 and took it. 
 
 He pulled her close and ruffled her hair. He was 
 in high spirits again. His encounters with the servants 
 had exhilarated him. 
 
 ““Who’s my duddely-umpty little girl??? he asked. 
 “Tell me who’s my duddely-umpty little girl. Quick. 
 Tell me——” And he caught her round the waist and 
 jumped her up and down. 
 
 Chesterton bringing in the tea, arrived in the middle 
 of a jump. 
 
XXIV 
 
 P ANHERE appeared to be no tea-table. Chester- 
 ton, her arms stretched taut holding the 
 heavy tray, looked round. Evidently tea 
 
 up there wasn’t usual. 
 
 “Put it in the window,” said Wemyss, jerking his 
 head towards the writing-table. 
 
 “Oh ” began Lucy quickly; and stopped. 
 
 “What's the matter?” asked Wemyss. 
 
 “Won’t it—be draughty?”’ 
 
 “Nonsense. Draughty. Do you suppose I’d tolerate 
 windows in my house that let in draughts?” 
 
 Chesterton, resting a corner of the tray on the table, 
 was sweeping a clear space for it with her hand. Not 
 that much sweeping was needed, for the table was big 
 and all that was on it was the notepaper which earlier 
 
 in the afternoon had been scattered on the floor, a 
 
 rusty pen or two, some pencils whose ends had been 
 
 gnawed as the pencils of a child at its lessons are 
 gnawed, a neglected-looking inkpot, and a grey book 
 with Household Accounts in dark lettering on its cover. 
 
 Wemyss watched her while she arranged the tea- 
 
 things, . 
 
 “Take care, now—take care,” he said, when a cup 
 rattled in its saucer. 
 
 
 
 227 
 
228 VERA 
 
 Chesterton, who had been taking care, took more 
 of it; and le trop being l’ennemit du bien she was so 
 unfortunate as to catch her cuff in the edge of the plate 
 of bread and butter. 
 
 The plate tilted up; the bread and butter slid off; 
 and only by a practised quick movement did she stop 
 the plate from following the bread and butter and 
 smashing itself on the floor. 
 
 ‘There now,” said Wemyss. ‘‘See what you’ve done. 
 Didn’t I tell you to be careful? It isn’t,’ he said, 
 turning to Lucy, “as if I hadn’t told her to be careful.” 
 
 Chesterton, on her knees, was picking up the bread 
 and butter which lay—a habit she had observed in 
 bread and butter under circumstances of this kind— 
 butter downwards. 
 
 “You will fetch a cloth,” said Wemyss. 
 
 “Yes sir.” 
 
 “And you will cut more bread and butter.” 
 
 SCR BLT se 
 
 ‘That makes two plates of bread and butter wasted 
 to-day entirely owing to your carelessness. They shall 
 
 
 
 be stopped out of your Lucy, where are you 
 going?” 
 
 “To fetch a handkerchief. I must have a handker- 
 chief, Everard. I can’t for ever use yours.” 
 
 “You'll do nothing of the kind. Lizzie will bring 
 you one. Come back at once. I won’t have you 
 running in and out of the room the whole time. I 
 
 never knew any one so restless, Ring the bell and tell 
 
VERA 229 
 
 Lizzie to get you one. What is she for, I should like 
 to know?” 
 
 He then resumed and concluded his observations to 
 Chesterton. “They shall be stopped out of your 
 wages. That,” he said, “will teach you.” 
 
 And Chesterton, who was used to this, and had long 
 ago arranged with the cook that such stoppages should 
 be added on to the butcher’s book, said, “Yes sir.” 
 
 When she had gone—or rather withdrawn, for a 
 plain word like gone doesn’t just describe the noiseless 
 decorum with which Chesterton managed the doors of 
 her entrances and exits—and when Lizzie, too, had gone 
 after bringing a handkerchief, Lucy supposed they 
 would now have tea; she supposed the moment had at 
 last arrived for her to go and sit in that window. 
 
 The table was at right angles to it, so that sitting at 
 it you had nothing between one side of you and the 
 great pane of glass that reached nearly to the floor. 
 You could look sheer down on to the flags below. She 
 thought it horrible, gruesome to have tea there, and the 
 very first day, before she had had a moment’s time to 
 get used to things. Such detachment on the part of 
 Everard was either just stark wonderful—she had 
 already found noble explanations for it—or it was so 
 callous that she had no explanation for it at all; none, 
 that is, that she dared think of. Once more she decided 
 that his way was really the best and simplest way to 
 meet the situation. You took the bull by the horns. 
 You seized the nettle. You cleared the air. And 
 though her images, she felt, were not what they 
 
230 VERA 
 
 might be, neither was anything else that day what it 
 might be. Everything appeared to reflect the confusion 
 produced by Wemyss’s excessive lucidity of speech. 
 
 “Shall I pour out the tea?” she asked presently, 
 preparing, then, to take the bull by the horns; for he 
 remained standing in front of the fire smoking in silence, 
 “Just think,” she went on, making an effort to be gay, 
 “this is the first time I shall pour out tea in my—” 
 
 She was going to say “My own home,” but the-words 
 wouldn’t come off her tongue. Wemyss had repeatedly 
 during the day spoken of his home, but not once had 
 he said “our’’ or “‘your”; and if ever a house didn’t feel 
 as if it in the very least belonged, too, to her, it was 
 this one. 
 
 ““Not yet,” he said briefly. 
 
 She wondered. ‘‘Not yet?” she repeated. 
 
 “Tm waiting for the bread and butter.” 
 
 “But won’t the tea get cold?” 
 
 “No doubt. And it’ll be entirely that fool’s fault.” 
 
 “But °? began Lucy, after a silence. 
 
 “Buts again?” 
 
 “T was only thinking that if we had it now it wouldn’t 
 be cold.” 
 
 ‘She must be taught her lesson.” 
 
 Again she wondered. ‘Won’t it rather be a lesson 
 to us?” she asked. 
 
 “For God’s sake, Lucy, don’t argue. Things have 
 to be done properly in my house. You’ve had no 
 experience of a properly managed household. All that 
 set you were brought up in—why, one only had to 
 
 
 
VERA 231 
 
 look at them to see what a hugger-mugger way they 
 probably lived. It’s entirely the careless fool’s own 
 fault that the tea will be cold. J didn’t ask her to 
 throw the bread and butter on the floor, did I?” 
 
 And as she said nothing, he asked again. ‘Did I?” 
 he asked. 
 
 “No,” said Lucy. 
 
 “Well then,” said Wemyss. 
 
 They waited in silence, 
 
 Chesterton arrived. She put the fresh bread and 
 butter on the table, and then wiped the floor with a 
 cloth she had brought. 
 
 Wemyss watched her closely. When she had done— 
 and Chesterton being good at her work, scrutinise as he 
 might he could see no sign on the floor of overlooked 
 butter—he said, “You will now take the teapot down 
 and bring some hot tea.” 
 
 “Yes sir,’ said Chesterton, removing the teapot. 
 
 A line of a hymn her nurse used to sing came into 
 Lucy’s head when she saw the teapot going. It was: 
 
 What various hindrances we meet— 
 
 and she thought the next line, which she didn’t remem- 
 ber, must have been: 
 
 Before at tea ourselves we seat. 
 
 But though one portion of her mind was repeating 
 this with nervous levity, the other was full of concern 
 for the number of journeys up and down all those 
 stairs the parlourmaid was being obliged to make. It 
 
232 VERA 
 
 was—well, thoughtless of Everard to make her go up 
 and down so often. Probably he didn’t realise—of 
 course he didn’t—how very many stairs there were. 
 When and how could she talk to him about things like 
 this? When would he be in such a mood that she 
 would be able to do so without making them worse? 
 And how, in what words sufficiently tactful, sufficiently 
 gentle, would she be able to avoid his being offended? 
 She must manage somehow. But tact—management 
 —prudence—all these she had not yet in her hfe 
 needed. Had she the smallest natural gift for them? 
 Besides, each of them applied to love seemed to her 
 an insult. She had supposed that love, real love, 
 needed none of these protections. She had thought 
 it was a simple, sturdy growth that could stand any- 
 thing. . . . Why, here was the parlourmaid already, 
 teapot and all. How very quick she had been! 
 
 Chesterton, however, hadn’t so much been quick as 
 tactful, managing, and prudent. She had been practis- 
 ing these qualities on the other side of the door, whither 
 she had taken the teapot and quietly waited with it 
 a few minutes, and whence she now brought it back. 
 She placed it on the table with admirable composure; 
 and when Wemyss, on her politely asking whether 
 there were anything else he required, said, “Yes. You 
 will now take away that toast and bring fresh,” she 
 took the toast also only as far as the other side of 
 the door, and waited with it there a little. 
 
 Lucy now hoped they would have tea. “Shall I 
 pour it out?” she asked after a moment a little 
 
VERA 233 
 
 anxiously, for he still didn’t move and she began to be 
 afraid the toast might be going to be the next 
 hindrance; in which case they would go round and round 
 for the rest of the day, never catching up the tea at 
 all. 
 
 But he did go over and sit down at the table, fol- 
 lowed by her who hardly now noticed its position, so 
 much surprised and absorbed was she by his methods 
 of housekeeping. 
 
 ‘“Isn’t it monstrous,” he said, sitting down heavily, 
 
 “how we’ve been kept waiting for such a simple thing 
 39 
 
 
 
 as tea. I tell you they’re the most slovenly 
 
 There was Chesterton again, bearing the toast-rack 
 balanced on the tip of a respectful finger. 
 
 This time even Lucy realised that it must be the 
 same toast, and her hand, lifted in the act of pouring 
 out tea, trembled, for she feared the explosion that 
 was bound to come. 
 
 How extraordinary! There was no_ explosion. 
 Everard hadn’t—it seemed incredible—noticed. His 
 attention was so much fixed on what she was doing with 
 his cup, he was watching her so carefully lest she should 
 fill it a hair’s-breadth fuller than he liked, that all he 
 said to Chesterton as she put the toast on the table was, 
 ‘Let this be a lesson to you.” But there was no gusto 
 in it; it was quite mechanical. 
 
 “Yes sir,” said Chesterton. 
 
 She waited. 
 
 He waved. 
 
 She went. 
 
234 VERA 
 
 The door hadn’t been shut an instant before Wemyss 
 exclaimed, ‘‘Why, if that slovenly hussy hasn’t for- 
 
 gotten *7 And too much incensed to continue he 
 
 
 
 stared at the tea-tray. 
 “What? What?r” asked Lucy startled, also staring 
 at the tea-tray. 
 *“Why, the sugar.” 
 “Oh, Pll call her back—she’s only just gone——” 
 “Sit down, Lucy.” 
 
 
 
 “But she’s just outside 4 
 “Sit down, I tell you.” 
 Lucy sat. 
 
 Then she remembered that neither she nor Everard 
 ever had sugar in their tea, so naturally there was no 
 point in calling Chesterton back. 
 
 “Oh, of course,” she said, smiling nervously, for 
 what with one thing and another she was feeling 
 shattered, “how stupid of me. We don’t want sugar.” 
 
 Wemyss said nothing. He was studying his watch, 
 timing Chesterton. ‘Then when the number of seconds 
 needed to reach the kitchen had run out, he got up and 
 rang the bell. 
 
 In due course Lizzie appeared. It seemed that the 
 rule was that this particular bell should be answered 
 by Lizzie. 
 
 *“‘Chesterton,” said Wemyss. 
 
 In due course Chesterton appeared. She was less 
 composed than when she brought back the teapot, than 
 when she brought back the toast. She tried to hide it, 
 but she was out of breath. 
 
VERA 235 
 
 “Yes sir?” she said. 
 
 Wemyss took no notice, and went on drinking his 
 tea. 
 
 Chesterton stood. 
 
 After a period of silence Lucy thought that perhaps 
 it was expected of her as mistress of the house to tell 
 her about the sugar; but then as they neither of them 
 wanted any.... 
 
 After a further period of silence, during which she 
 anxiously debated whether it was this that they were 
 all waiting for, she thought that perhaps Everard 
 hadn’t heard the parlourmaid come in; so she said— 
 she was ashamed to hear how timidly it came out— 
 “Chesterton is here, Everard.’’ 
 
 He took no notice, and went on eating bread and 
 butter. 
 
 After a further period of anxious inward debate she 
 concluded that it must after all be expected of her, as 
 mistress of the house, to talk of the sugar; and the 
 sugar was to be talked of not because they needed it 
 but on principle. But what a roundabout way; how 
 fatiguing and difficult. Why didn’t Everard say what 
 he wanted, instead of leaving her to guess? 
 
 “T think *? she stammered, flushing, for she was 
 now very timid indeed, “‘you’ve forgotten the sugar, 
 Chesterton.” 
 
 ‘Will you not interfere!’ exclaimed Wemyss very 
 loud, putting down his cup with a bang. 
 
 The flush on Lucy’s face vanished as if it had been 
 knocked out. She sat quite still. If she moved, or 
 
 
 
236 VERA 
 
 looked anywhere but at her plate, she knew she would 
 begin to cry. The scenes she had dreaded had not 
 included any with herself in the presence of servants. 
 It hadn’t entered her head that these, too, were possible. 
 She must hold on to herself; not move; not look. 
 She sat absorbed in that one necessity, fiercely con- 
 centrated. Chesterton must have gone away and come 
 back again, for presently she was aware that sugar was 
 being put on the tea-tray; and then she was aware that 
 Everard was holding out his cup. 
 
 “Give me some more tea, please,” he said, “and for 
 God’s sake don’t sulk. If the servants forget their 
 duties it’s neither your nor my business to tell them 
 what they’ve forgotten,—they’ve just got to look and 
 see, and if they don’t see they’ve just got to stand there 
 looking till they do. It’s the only way to teach them. 
 But for you to get sulking on the top of 1 ii 
 
 She lifted the teapot with both hands, because one 
 hand by itself too obviously shook. She succeeded in 
 pouring out the tea without spilling it, and in stopping 
 almost at the very moment when he said, “‘take care, 
 take care—you’re filling it too full’ She even suc- 
 ceeded after a minute or two in saying, holding care- 
 fully on to her voice to keep it steady, “I’m—not 
 sulking. D’ve—got a headache.’ 
 
 And she thought desperately, ““The only thing to be 
 done with marriage is to let it wash over one.” 
 
 
 
XXV 
 
 resistingly. She couldn’t think any more. She 
 
 couldn’t feel any more,—not that day. She 
 really had a headache; and when the dusk came, and 
 Wemyss turned on the lights, it was evident even to 
 him that she had, for there was no colour at all in her 
 face and her eyes were puffed and leaden. 
 
 He had one of his sudden changes. ‘Come here,” 
 he said, reaching out and drawing her on to his knee; 
 and he held her face against his breast, and felt full of 
 maternal instincts, and crooned over her. ‘“‘Was it a 
 poor little baby,’’ he crooned. “Did it have a head- 
 ache then ” And he put his great cool hand on her 
 hot forehead and kept it there. 
 
 Lucy gave up trying to understand anything at all 
 any more. These swift changes,—she couldn’t keep up 
 with them; she was tired, tired... . 
 
 They sat like that in the chair before the fire, Wemyss 
 holding his hand on her forehead and feeling full of 
 maternal instincts, and she an unresisting blank, till he 
 suddenly remembered he hadn’t shown her the drawing~ 
 room yet. The afternoon had not proceeded on the 
 lines laid down for it in his plans, but if they were 
 quick there was still time for the drawing-room before 
 dinner. 
 
 \OR the rest of that day she let it wash; un- 
 
 
 
 237 
 
238 VERA 
 
 Accordingly she was abruptly lifted off his knee. 
 “Come along, little Love,” he said briskly. ‘“‘Come 
 along. Wake up. I want to show you something.” 
 
 And the next thing she knew was that she was going 
 downstairs, and presently she found herself standing in 
 a big cold room, blinking in the bright lights he had 
 switched on at the door. 
 
 “This,” he said, holding her by the arm, “is the 
 drawing-room. Isn’t it a fine room.” And he explained 
 the piano, and told her how he had found a button off, 
 and he pointed out the roll of rugs in a distant corner 
 which, unrolled, decorated the parquet floor, and he 
 drew her attention to the curtains,—he had no objec- 
 tions to curtains in a drawing-room, he said, because 
 a drawing-room was anyhow a room of concessions; 
 and he asked her at the end, as he had asked her at 
 the beginning, if she didn’t think it a fine room. 
 
 Lucy said it was a very fine room. 
 
 ‘**You’ll remember to put the cover on properly when 
 you’ve finished playing the piano, won’t you,” he said. 
 
 “Yes I will,’? said Lucy. ‘Only I don’t play,” she 
 added, remembering that she didn’t. 
 
 “That’s all right then,’’ he said, relieved. 
 
 They were still standing admiring the proportions 
 of the room, its marble fireplace and the brilliancy of 
 its lighting—“The test of good lighting,’ said Wemyss, 
 ‘is that there shouldn’t be a corner of a room in which 
 a man of eighty can’t read his newspaper’’—when the 
 gong began. 
 
 “Good Lord,” he said, looking at his watch, “itll 
 
VERA 239 
 
 be dinner in ten minutes. Why, we’ve had nothing at 
 all of the afternoon, and I’d planned to show you so 
 many things. Ah,” he said, turning and shaking his 
 head at her, his voice changing to sorrow, “whose fault 
 has that been?” 
 
 “Mine,” said Lucy. 
 
 He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face, 
 gazing at it and shaking his head slowly. The light, 
 streaming into her swollen eyes, hurt them and made 
 her blink. 
 
 “Ah, my Lucy,” he said fondly, “little waster of 
 happiness—isn’t it better simply to love your Everard 
 than make him unhappy?” 
 
 “Much better,” said Lucy, blinking. 
 
 There was no dressing for dinner at The Willows, for 
 that, explained Wemyss, was the great joy of home, 
 that you needn’t ever do anything you don’t want to 
 in it, and therefore, he said, ten minutes’ warning was 
 ample for just washing one’s hands, They washed 
 their hands together in the big bedroom, because 
 Wemyss disapproved of dressing-rooms at home even 
 more strongly than on honeymoons in hotels. ‘“‘No- 
 body’s going to separate me from my own woman,” he 
 said, drying his hands and eyeing her with proud pos- 
 sessiveness while she dried hers; their basins stood side 
 by side on the brown mottled marble of the washstand. 
 “Are they?” he said, as she dried in silence. 
 
 “No,” said Lucy. 
 
 ‘““How’s the head?” he said. 
 
 “Better,” she said. 
 
240 VERA 
 
 “Who’s got a forgiving husband?” he said. 
 
 ‘*T have,” she said. 
 
 “Smile at me,” he said. 
 
 She smiled at him. 
 
 At dinner it was Vera who smiled, her changeless 
 little strangled smile, with her eyes on Lucy. Lucy’s 
 seat had its back to Vera, but she knew she had only 
 to turn her head to see her eyes fixed on her, smiling. 
 No one else smiled; only Vera. 
 
 Lucy bent her head over her plate, trying to escape 
 the unshaded light that beat down on her eyes, sore 
 with crying, and hurt. In front of her was the bowl of 
 kingcups, the birthday flowers. Just behind Wemyss 
 stood Chesterton, in an attitude of strained attention. 
 Dimly through Lucy’s head floated thoughts: Seeing 
 that Everard invariably spent his birthdays at The 
 Willows, on that day last year at that hour Vera was 
 sitting where she, Lucy, now was, with the kingcups 
 glistening in front of her, and Everard tucking his table 
 napkin into his waistcoat, and Chesterton waiting till 
 he was quite ready to take the cover off the soup; just 
 as Lucy was seeing these things this year Vera saw them 
 last year; Vera still had three months of life ahead of 
 her then,—three more months of dinners, and Chester- 
 ton, and Everard tucking in his napkin. How queer. 
 What a dream it all was. On that last of his birthdays 
 at which Vera would ever be present, did any thought 
 of his next birthday cross her mind? How strange 
 it would have seemed to her if she could have seen 
 ahead, and seen her, Lucy, sitting in her chair. The 
 
VERA 241 
 
 same chair; everything just the same; except the wife. 
 “Souvent femme varie,” floated vaguely across her tired 
 brain. She ate her soup sitting all crooked with fatigue 
 . . . life was exactly like a dream... . 
 
 Wemyss, absorbed in the scrutiny of his food and 
 the behaviour of Chesterton, had no time to notice 
 anything Lucy might be doing. It was the rule that 
 Chesterton, at meals, should not for an instant leave 
 the room. The farthest she was allowed was a door 
 in the dark corner opposite the door into the hall, 
 through which at intervals Lizzie’s arm thrust dishes. 
 It was the rule that Lizzie shouldn’t come into the 
 room, but, stationary on the other side of this door, 
 her function was to thrust dishes through it; and to her 
 from the kitchen, pattering ceaselessly to and fro, came 
 the tweeny bringing the dishes. This had all been 
 thought out and arranged very carefully years ago by 
 | Wemyss, and ought to have worked without a hitch; 
 but sometimes there were hitches, and Lizzie’s arm was 
 a minute late thrusting in a dish. When this happened 
 Chesterton, kept waiting and conscious of Wemyss 
 enormously waiting at the end of the table, would put 
 her head round the door and hiss at Lizzie, who then 
 hurried to the kitchen and hissed at the tweeny, who for 
 ‘her part didn’t dare hiss at the cook. 
 
 To-night, however, nothing happened that was not 
 perfect. From the way Chesterton had behaved about 
 the tea, and the way Lizzie had behaved about the 
 window, Wemyss could see that during his four weeks’ 
 absence his household had been getting out of hand, 
 
242 VERA 
 
 and he was therefore more watchful than ever, deter- 
 mined to pass nothing over. On this occasion he 
 watched in vain. Things went smoothly from start 
 to finish. The tweeny ran, Lizzie thrust, Chesterton 
 deposited, dead on time. Every dish was hot and 
 punctual, or cold and punctual, according to what was 
 expected of it; and Wemyss going out of the dining- 
 room at the end, holding Lucy by the arm, couldn’t 
 but feel he had dined very well. Perhaps, though, his 
 father’s photograph hadn’t been dusted,—it would 
 be just like them to have disregarded his instructions. 
 He went back to look, and Lucy, since he was holding 
 her by the arm, went too. No, they had even done 
 that; and there was nothing further to be said except, 
 with great sternness to Chesterton, eyeing her threat- 
 eningly, “Coffee at once.” 
 
 The evening was spent in the library reading 
 Wemyss’s school reports, and looking at photographs 
 of him in his various stages,—naked and crowing; with 
 ringlets, in a frock; in knickerbockers, holding a hoop; 
 a stout schoolboy; a tall and slender youth; thickening; 
 still thickening; thick,—and they went to bed at ten 
 o’clock. 
 
 Somewhere round midnight Lucy discovered that the 
 distances of the treble bed softened sound; either that, 
 or she was too tired to hear anything, for she dropped 
 out of consciousness with the heaviness of a released 
 stone. | 
 
 Next day it was finer. ‘There were gleams of sun; 
 and though the wind still blew, the rain held off except 
 
VERA 243 
 
 for occasional spatterings. They got up very late— 
 breakfast on Sundays at The Willows was not till 
 eleven—and went and inspected the chickens. By the 
 time they had done that, and walked round the garden, 
 and stood on the edge of the river throwing sticks 
 into it and watching the pace at which they were 
 whirled away on its muddy and disturbed surface, it 
 was luncheon time. After luncheon they walked along 
 the towpath, one behind the other because it was 
 narrow and the grass at the sides was wet. Wemyss 
 walked slowly, and the wind was cold. Lucy kept 
 close to his heels, seeking shelter under, as it were, his 
 lee. ‘Talk wasn’t possible because of the narrow path 
 and the blustering wind, but every now and then 
 Wemyss looked down over his shoulder at her. “Still 
 there?” he asked; and Lucy said she was. 
 
 They had tea punctually at half-past four up in 
 Vera’s sitting-room, but without, this time, a fire— 
 Wemyss had rectified Lizzie’s tendency to be officious— 
 and after tea he took her out again to show her how 
 his electricity was made, while the gardener who saw 
 to the machinery, and the boy who saw to the gardener, 
 stood by in attendance. 
 
 There was a cold sunset,—a narrow strip of gold 
 below heavy clouds, like a sullen, half-open eye. The 
 prudent cows dotted the fields motionlessly, lying on 
 their dry bits of grass. The wind blew straight across 
 from the sunset through Lucy’s coat, wrap herself in it 
 as tightly as she might, while they loitered among out- 
 houses and examined the durability of the railings. Her 
 
244 VERA 
 
 headache, in spite of her good night, hadn’t gone, and 
 by dinner time her throat felt sore. She said nothing 
 to Wemyss, because she was sure she would be well 
 in the morning. Her colds never lasted. Besides she 
 knew, for he had often told her, how much he was 
 bored by the sick. 
 
 At dinner her cheeks were very red and her eyes 
 very bright. 
 
 *“Who’s my pretty little girl?” said Wemyss, struck 
 by her. 
 
 Indeed he was altogether pleased with her. She 
 had been his own Lucy throughout the day, so gentle 
 and sweet, and hadn’t once said But, or tried to go out 
 of rooms. Unquestioningly acquiescent she had been; 
 and now so pretty, with the light full on her, showing 
 up her lovely colouring. | 
 
 ““Who’s my pretty little girl?” he said again, laying 
 his hand on hers, while Chesterton looked down her 
 nose. 
 
 Then he noticed she had a knitted scarf round her 
 shoulders, and he said, ‘““‘Whatever have you got that 
 thing on in here for?” 
 
 “Ym cold,” said Lucy. 
 
 “Cold! Nonsense. You’re as warm as toast. Feel 
 my hand compared to yours.” 
 
 Then she did tell him she thought she had caught 
 cold, and he said, withdrawing his hand and his face 
 falling, “Well, if you have it’s only what you deserve 
 when you recollect what you did yesterday.” 
 
VERA 245 
 
 “T suppose it is,” agreed Lucy; and assured him her 
 colds were all over in twenty-four hours, 
 
 Afterwards in the library when they were alone, she 
 asked if she hadn’t better sleep by herself in case he 
 caught her cold, but Wemyss wouldn’t hear of such a 
 thing. Not only, he said, he never caught colds and 
 didn’t believe any one else who was sensible ever did, but 
 it would take more than a cold to separate him from his 
 wife. Besides, though of course she richly deserved a 
 cold after yesterday—‘Who’s a shameless little bag- 
 gage,” he said, pinching her ear, “coming down with 
 only a blanket on ” somehow, though he had been 
 so angry at the time, the recollection of that pleased 
 him—he could see no signs of her having got one. She 
 
 
 
 didn’t sneeze, she didn’t blow her nose—— 
 
 Lucy agreed, and said she didn’t suppose it was 
 anything really, and she was sure she would be all 
 right in the morning. 
 
 ““Yes—and you know we catch the early train up,” 
 said Wemyss. “Leave here at nine sharp, mind.” 
 
 “Yes,” said Lucy. And presently, for she was feel- 
 ing very uncomfortable and hot and cold in turns, and 
 had a great longing to creep away and be alone for 
 a little while, she said that perhaps, although she knew 
 it was very early, she had better go to bed. 
 
 “All right,” said Wemyss, getting up briskly. “Vl 
 
 come too.” 
 
XXVI 
 
 E found her, however, very trying that night, 
 
 H the way she would keep on turning round, 
 
 and it reached such a pitch of discomfort to 
 
 sleep with her, or rather endeavour to sleep with her, 
 
 for as the night went on she paid less and less atten- 
 
 tion to his requests that she should keep still, that at 
 
 about two o’clock, staggering with sleepiness, he got up 
 
 and went into a spare room, trailing the quilt after 
 
 him and carrying his pillows, and finished the night in 
 peace. 
 
 When he woke at seven he couldn’t make out at 
 first where he was, nor why, on stretching out his arm, 
 he found no wife to be gathered in. Then he remembered, 
 and he felt most injured that he should have been 
 turned out of his own bed. If Lucy imagined she was 
 going to be allowed to develop the same restlessness 
 at night that was characteristic of her by day, she 
 was mistaken; and he got up to go and tell her so. 
 
 He found her asleep in a very untidy position, the 
 clothes all dragged over to her side of the bed and 
 pulled up round her. He pulled them back again, and 
 she woke up, and he got into bed and said, “Come here,” 
 stretching out his arm, and she didn’t come. 
 
 Then he looked at her more closely, and she, looking 
 
 246 
 
VERA 247 
 
 at him with heavy eyes, said something husky. It 
 was evident she had a very tiresome cold. 
 
 “What an untruth you told me,” he exclaimed, 
 “about not having a cold in the morning!” 
 
 She again said something husky. It was evident 
 she had a very tiresome sore throat. 
 
 “It’s getting on for half-past seven,” said Wemyss. 
 “We've got to leave the house at nine sharp, mind.” 
 
 Was it possible that she wouldn’t leave the house 
 at nine sharp? The thought that she wouldn’t was too 
 exasperating to consider. He go up to London alone? 
 On this the first occasion of going up after his mar- 
 riage? He be alone in Lancaster Gate, just as if he 
 hadn’t a wife at all? What was the good of a wife if 
 she didn’t go up to London with one? And all this to 
 come upon him because of her conduct on his birthday. 
 
 “Well,” he said, sitting up in bed and looking down 
 at her, “I hope you’re pleased with the result of your 
 behaviour.” 
 
 But it was no use saying things to somebody who 
 merely made husky noises. 
 
 He got out of bed and jerked up the blinds. “Such 
 a beautiful day, too,” he said indignantly. 
 
 When at a quarter to nine the station cab arrived, 
 he went up to the bedroom hoping that he would find 
 her after all dressed and sensible and ready to go, but 
 there she was just as he had left her when he went to 
 have his breakfast, dozing and inert in the tumbled bed. 
 
 “You'd better follow me by the afternoon train,” 
 he said, after staring down at her in silence. “T’ll 
 
248 VERA 
 
 tell the cab. But in any case,” he said, as she didn’t 
 answer, “in any case, Lucy, I expect you to-morrow.” 
 
 She opened her eyes and looked at him languidly. 
 
 “Do you hear?” he said. 
 
 She made a husky noise. 
 
 “Good-bye,” he said shortly, stooping and giving 
 the top of her head a brief, disgusted kiss. The way 
 the consequences of folly fell always on somebody else 
 and punished him . . . Wemyss could hardly give his 
 Times the proper attention in the train for thinking 
 of it. 
 
 That day Miss Entwhistle, aware of the return from 
 the honeymoon on the Friday, and of the week-end to 
 be spent at The Willows, and of the coming up to 
 Lancaster Gate early on the Monday morning for the 
 inside of the week, waited till twelve o’clock, so as to 
 allow plenty of time for Wemyss no longer to be in the 
 house, and then telephoned. Lucy and she were to 
 lunch together. Lucy had written to say so, and Miss 
 Entwhistle wanted to know if she wouldn’t soon be 
 round. She longed extraordinarily to fold that darling 
 little child in her arms again. It seemed an eternity 
 since she saw her radiantly disappearing in the taxi; 
 and the letters she had hoped to get during the honey- 
 moon hadn’t been letters at all, but picture postcards. 
 
 A man’s voice answered her,—not Wemyss’s. It was, 
 she recognised, the voice of the pale servant, who with . 
 his wife attended to Lancaster Gate house. They 
 inhabited the basement, and emerged from it up into 
 the light only if they were obliged. Bells obliged them 
 
VERA 249 
 
 to emerge, and Wemyss’s bath and breakfast, and after 
 his departure to his office the making of his bed; but 
 then the shades gathered round them again till next 
 morning, because for a long while now once he had left 
 the house he hadn’t come back till after they were in 
 bed. His re-marriage was going to disturb them, they 
 were afraid, and the pale wife had forebodings about 
 meals to be cooked; but at the worst the disturbance — 
 would only be for the three inside days of the week, 
 and anything could be borne when one had from Friday 
 to Monday to oneself; and as the morning went on, 
 and no one arrived from Strorley, they began to take 
 heart, and had almost quite taken it when the telephone 
 bell rang. 
 
 It didn’t do it very often, for Wemyss had his other 
 addresses, at the office, at the club, so that Twite, 
 wanting in practise, was not very good at dealing with 
 it. Also the shrill bell vibrating through the empty 
 house, so insistent, so living, never failed to agitate 
 both Twites. It seemed to them uncanny; and Mrs. 
 Twite, watching Twite being drawn up by it out of his 
 shadows, like some quiet fish sucked irresistibly up to 
 gasp on the surface, was each time thankful that she 
 hadn’t been born a man. 
 
 She always went and listened at the bottom of the 
 kitchen stairs, not knowing what mightn’t happen to 
 Twite up there alone with that voice, and on this 
 occasion she heard the following: 
 
 “No, ma’am, not yet, ma’am.” 
 
 “T couldn’t say, ma’am.” 
 
250 VERA 
 
 “No, no news, ma’am.” 
 
 “Oh yes, ma’am, on Friday night.” 
 
 “Yes, ma’am, first thing Saturday.” 
 
 “Yes, it is, ma’am—very strange, ma’am.” 
 
 And then there was silence. He was writing, she 
 knew, on the pad provided by Wemyss for the purpose. 
 
 This was the most trying part of Twite’s duties. 
 Any message had to be written down and left on the 
 hall table, complete with the time of its delivery, for 
 Wemyss to see when he came in at night. Twite was 
 not a facile writer. Words confused him. He was 
 never sure how they were spelt. Also he found it very 
 difficult to remember what had been said, for there was 
 a hurry and an urgency about a voice on the telephone 
 that excited him and prevented his giving the message 
 his undivided attention. Besides, when was a message 
 not a message? Wemyss’s orders were to write down 
 messages. Suppose they weren’t messages, must he 
 still write? Was this, for instance, a message? 
 
 He thought he had best be on the safe side, and 
 laboriously wrote it down: 
 
 Miss Henwissel rang up sir to know if you was come and 
 if so when you was coming and what orders we ad and said it 
 was very strange 12.15. 
 
 He had only just put this on the table and was 
 about to descend to his quiet shades when off the thing 
 started again. 
 
 This time it was Wemyss. 
 
 “Back to-night late as usual,” he said. 
 
VERA 251 
 
 “Yes sir,” said Twite. ‘“There’s just been a ee 
 
 But he addressed emptiness. 
 
 Meanwhile Miss Entwhistle, after a period of reflec- 
 tion, was ringing up Strorley 19. The voice of Chester- 
 
 
 
 ton, composed and efficient, replied; and the effect of 
 her replies was to make Miss Entwhistle countermand 
 lunch and pack a small bag and go to Paddington. 
 Trains to Strorley at that hour were infrequent and 
 slow, and it wasn’t till nearly five that she drove down 
 the oozy lane in the station cab and, turning in at the 
 white gate, arrived at The Willows. That sooner or 
 later she would have to arrive at The Willows now that 
 she was related to it by marriage was certain, and she 
 had quite made up her mind, during her four weeks’ 
 peace since the wedding, that she was going to dismiss 
 all foolish prejudices against the place from her mind 
 and arrive at it, when she did arrive, with a stout heart 
 and an unclouded countenance. After all, there was 
 much in that mot of her nephew’s: “Somebody has died 
 everywhere.” Yet, as the cab heaved her nearer to the 
 place along the oozy lane, she did wish that it wasn’t 
 in just this house that Lucy lay in bed. Also she had 
 misgivings at being there uninvited. In a case of serious 
 illness naturally such misgivings wouldn’t exist; but 
 the maid’s voice on the telephone had only said Mrs. 
 Wemyss had a cold and was staying in bed, and Mr. 
 Wemyss had gone up to London by the usual train. 
 It couldn’t be much that was wrong, or he wouldn’t 
 have gone. MHadn’t she, she thought uneasily as she 
 found herself uninvited within Wemyss’s gates, perhaps 
 
252 VERA 
 
 been a little impulsive? Yet the idea of that child 
 alone in the sinister house—— 
 
 She peered out of the cab window. Not at all 
 sinister, she said, correcting herself severely; all most 
 neat. Perfect order. Shrubs as they should be. 
 Strong railings. Nice cows. 
 
 The cab stopped. Chesterton came down the steps 
 and opened its door. Nice parlourmaid. Most normal. 
 
 “How is Mrs. Wemyss?”’ asked Miss Entwhistle. 
 
 “About the same I believe, ma’am,” said Chesterton; 
 and inquired if she should pay the man. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle paid the man, and then proceeded 
 up the steps followed by Chesterton carrying her bag. 
 Fine steps. Handsome house. 
 
 “Does she know I’m coming?” 
 
 **I believe the housemaid did mention it, ma’am.” 
 
 Nice roomy hall. With a fire it might be quite 
 warm. Fine windows. Good staircase. 
 
 “Do you wish for tea, ma’am?”’ 
 
 “No thank you. I should like to go up at once, if 
 I may.” 
 
 “If you please, ma’am.” 
 
 At the turn of the stairs, where the gong was, Miss 
 Entwhistle stood aside and let Chesterton precede her. 
 “Perhaps you had better go and tell Mrs. Wemyss I am 
 here,” she said. 
 
 “If you please, ma’am.’ 
 
 Miss Entwhistle waited, gazing at the gong with the 
 same benevolence she had brought to bear on everything 
 else. Fine gong. She also gazed at the antlers on the 
 
VERA 2538 
 
 wall, for the wall continued to bristle with antlers right 
 up to the top of the house. Magnificent collection. 
 
 “If you please, ma’am,” 
 
 said Chesterton, reappear- 
 ing, tiptoeing gingerly to the head of the stairs. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle went up. Chesterton ushered her 
 into the bedroom, closing the door softly behind her. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle knew Lucy was small, but not how 
 small till she saw her in the treble bed. There really did 
 appear to be nothing of her except a little round head. 
 ‘Why, but you’ve shrunk!” was her first exclamation. 
 
 Lucy, who was tucked up to her chin by Lizzie, 
 besides having a wet bandage encased in flannel round 
 her throat, could only move her eyes and smile. She 
 was on the side cf the bed farthest from the door, and 
 Miss Entwhistle had to walk round it to reach her. 
 She was stili hoarse, but not as voiceless as when 
 Wemyss left in the morning, for Lizzie had been dili- 
 gently plying her with things like hot honey, and her 
 face, as her eyes followed Miss Entwhistle’s approach, 
 was one immense smile. It really seemed too wonder- 
 ful to be with Aunt Dot again; and there was a peace 
 about being ill, a relaxation from strain, that had made 
 her quiet day, alone in bed, seem sheer bliss. It was 
 so plain that she couldn’t move, that she couldn’t do 
 anything, couldn’t get up and go in trains, that her 
 conscience was at rest in regard to Everard; and she 
 lay in the blessed silence after he left, not minding 
 how much her limbs ached because of the delicious tran- 
 quillity of her mind. The window was open, and in 
 
 the garden the birds were busy. The wind had dropped. 
 
254 VERA 
 
 Except for the birds there was no sound. Divine quiet. 
 Divine peace. The luxury of it after the week-end, 
 after the birthday, after the honeymoon, was extraordi- 
 nary. Just to be in bed by oneself seemed an amazingly 
 felicitous condition. 
 
 “Lovely of you to come,” she said hoarsely, smiling 
 broadly and looking so unmistakably contented that 
 Miss Entwhistle, as she bent over her and kissed her hot 
 forehead, thought, “It’s a success. He’s making her 
 happy.” 
 
 “You darling little thing,” she said, smoothing back 
 her hair. “Fancy seeing you again like this!” 
 
 “Yes,” said Lucy, heavy-eyed and smiling. “Lovely,” 
 she whispered, “to see you. Tea, Aunt Dot?’ 
 
 It was evidently difficult for her to speak, and her 
 forehead was extremely hot. 
 
 “No, I don’t want tea.” 
 
 “You'll stay?” 
 
 “Yes,” said Miss Entwhistle, sitting down by the 
 pillow and continuing to smooth back her hair. “Of 
 course I'l stay. How did you manage to catch such a 
 cold, I wonder?” 
 
 She was left to wonder, undisturbed by any explana- 
 tions of Lucy’s. Indeed it was as much as Lucy could 
 manage to bring out the most necessary words. She 
 lay contentedly with her eyes shut, having her hair 
 stroked back, and said as little as possible. 
 
 “Everard *? said Miss Entwhistle, stroking 
 gently, “is he coming back to-night?” 
 
 “No,” whispered Lucy contentedly. 
 
 
 
VERA 255 
 
 Aunt Dot stroked in silence. 
 
 “Has your temperature been taken?’ she asked 
 presently. 
 
 **No,” whispered Lucy contentedly. 
 
 “Oughtn’t you”—after another pause—“to see a 
 doctor?” 
 
 “No,” whispered Lucy contentedly. Delicious, simply 
 delicious, to lie like that having one’s hair stroked back 
 by Aunt Dot, the dear, the kind, the comprehensible. 
 
 “So sweet of you to come,” she whispered again. 
 
 Well, thought Miss Entwhistle as she sat there softly 
 stroking and watching Lucy’s face of complete content 
 while she dozed off—even after she was asleep the 
 corners of her mouth still were tucked up in a smile— 
 it was plain that Everard was making the child happy. 
 In that case he certainly must be all that Lucy had 
 assured her he was, and she, Miss Entwhistle, would 
 no doubt very quickly now get fond of him. Of course 
 she would. No doubt whatever. And what a comfort, 
 what a relief, to find the child happy. Backgrounds 
 didn’t matter where there was happiness. Houses, 
 indeed. What did it matter if they weren’t the sort 
 of houses you would, left to yourself, choose so long as 
 in them dwelt happiness? What did it matter what 
 their past had been so long as their present was 
 illuminated by contentment? And as for furniture, 
 why, that only became of interest, of importance, when 
 life had nothing else in it. Loveless lives, empty lives, 
 filled themselves in their despair with beautiful furni- 
 ture. If you were really happy you had antlers. 
 
256 VERA 
 
 In this spirit, while she stroked and Lucy slept, 
 Miss Entwhistle’s eye, full of benevolence, wandered 
 round the room. The objects in it, after her own small 
 bedroom in Eaton Terrace and its necessarily small 
 furniture, all seemed to her gigantic. Especially the 
 bed. She had never seen a bed like it before, though 
 she had heard of such beds in history. Didn’t Og the 
 King of Bashan have one? But what an excellent 
 plan, for then you could get away from each other. 
 Most sensible. Most wholesome. And a certain bleak- 
 ness about the room would soon go when Lucy’s little 
 things got more strewn about,—her books, and photo- 
 graphs, and pretty dressing-table silver. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle’s eye arrived at and dwelt on the 
 dressing-table. On it were two oval wooden-backed 
 brushes without handles. Hairbrushes. Men’s. Also 
 shaving things. And, hanging over one side of the 
 looking-glass, were three neckties. 
 
 She quickly recovered. Most friendly. Most com- 
 panionable. But a feeling of not being in Lucy’s room 
 at all took possession of her, and she fidgeted a little. 
 With no business to be there whatever, she was in a 
 strange man’s bedroom. She averted her eyes from 
 Wemyss’s toilet arrangements,—they were the last 
 things she wanted to see; and, in averting them, they 
 fell on the washstand with its two basins and on an 
 enormous red-brown indiarubber sponge. No such 
 sponge was ever Lucy’s. The conclusion was forced 
 upon her that Lucy and Everard washed side by side. 
 
 From this, too, she presently recovered. After all, 
 
VERA 257 
 
 marriage was marriage, and you did things in marriage 
 that you would never dream of doing single. She 
 averted her eyes from the washstand. The last thing 
 she wanted to do was to become familiar with Wemyss’s 
 sponge. 
 
 Her eyes, growing more and more determined in 
 their benevolence, gazed out of the window. How the 
 days were lengthening. And really a beautiful look- 
 out, with the late afternoon light reflected on the hills 
 across the river. Birds, too, twittering in the garden,— 
 everything most pleasant and complete. And such a 
 nice big window. Lots of air and light. It reached 
 nearly to the floor. Two housemaids at least, and 
 strong ones, would be needed to open or shut it,—ah 
 no, there were cords. A thought struck her: This 
 couldn’t be the room, that couldn’t be the window, 
 where—— 
 
 She averted her eyes from the window, and fixed 
 them on what seemed to be the only satisfactory resting- 
 place for them, the contented face on the pillow. Dear 
 little loved face. And the dear, pretty hair,—how 
 pretty young hair was, so soft and thick. No, of 
 course it wasn’t the window; that tragic room was prob- 
 ably not used at all now. How in the world had the 
 child got such a cold. She could hear by her breathing 
 that her chest was stuffed up, but evidently it wasn’t 
 worrying her, or she wouldn’t in her sleep look so much 
 pleased. Yes; that room was either shut up now and 
 never used, or—she couldn’t help being struck by yet 
 another thought—it was a spare room. If so, Miss 
 
258 VERA 
 
 Entwhistle said to herself, it would no doubt be her 
 fate to sleep in it. Dear me, she thought, taken aback. 
 
 But from this also she presently recovered; and 
 remembering her determination to eject all prejudices 
 merely remarked to herself, ““Well, well.” And, after a 
 pause, was able to add benevolently, ““A house of varied 
 interest.” 
 
XXVIT 
 
 ATER 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 Ent- 
 whistle 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 pres- 
 ence 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 inter- 
 loper. 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 
 
 259 
 
260 VERA 
 
 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 in- 
 tention, her single-mindedness, were, she knew, com- 
 plete. 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 uphol- 
 stered 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 
 
VERA 261 
 
 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 tele- 
 phoned 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 won- 
 dered 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. 
 
262 VERA 
 
 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 un- 
 carpeted 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 deter- 
 mination 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 hur- 
 ried 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.” 
 
VERA 263 
 
 “If you please, ma’am,” said Chesterton. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle didn’t lke 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 give 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. 
 
 “Tf 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 
 
264 VERA 
 
 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 doc- 
 tor 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 un- 
 canny 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.” 
 
VERA 265 
 
 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 fur- 
 ther 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 
 
266 VERA 
 
 in that bleak place she saw a line of firelight beneath a 
 door, which she then knew must be the library. Ac- 
 cordingly 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 de- 
 cided 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 
 
VERA 267 
 
 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.” 
 
 “T will sleep on the sofa,” said Miss Entwhistle. 
 
XXVITT 
 
 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. 
 
 |: London Wemyss went through his usual day, 
 
 It was five before he was able to leave—and even 
 then he hadn’t half finished, but he declined to be sac- 
 rificed further—and proceeded 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 
 
 268 
 
VERA 269 
 
 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, in- 
 cluding 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 in- 
 frequently 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 surround- 
 ings, 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 
 
270 VERA 
 
 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—*Posi- 
 tively 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 
 
 
 
VERA | Q71 
 
 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. ... How- 
 ever, 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 
 
272 VERA 
 
 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. 
 
 “T 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. 
 
 “T can’t hear, sir,” Twite’s distressed voice answered 
 from the hall. 
 
VERA 273 
 
 “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? Ent—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 
 
 39 
 
 
 
 expected. Tve ordered 
 “What? I can’t hear. The doctor? You’re send- 
 ing for the doctor?”’ 
 “I daresay. But then you see I consider it isn’t.” 
 
 “TI daresay, I daresay. No, of course I can’t. How 
 99 
 
 
 
 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 
 39 
 
 
 
 yourself unasked 
 “What? What?” 
 
274 . VERA 
 
 A very rapid clear voice cut in. “Do you want an- 
 other 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 un- 
 pleasant. 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 
 
VERA 275 
 
 mention the window, for which Miss Entwhistle was 
 thankful; but when first she woke up from her fright- 
 ening 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 Ent- 
 whistle 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 
 
276 VERA 
 
 in the early days of Wemyss’s possession of it. Occa- 
 sionally 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 un- 
 conscious 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 possi- 
 bly 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 
 
VERA Q77 
 
 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 edu- 
 cated 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. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle said she didn’t think there was, 
 but that her nephew 
 
 “You mean Mr. Wemyss?” 
 
 She bowed her head. She did mean Mr. Wemyss. 
 Her nephew. Her nephew, that is, by marriage. 
 
 “Quite,” said the doctor. 
 
 Her nephew naturally wanted his wife to go up and 
 join him in London. 
 
 
 
278 VERA 
 
 “Naturally,” said the doctor. 
 
 And she wanted to know when she would be fit to go. 
 
 “Then let us go upstairs and I'll tell you,” said the 
 doctor. 
 
 This was a very pleasant little lady, he thought as 
 he followed her up the well-known stairs, to have be- 
 come related to Wemyss immediately on the top of 
 all that affair. Now he would have said himself that 
 after such a ghastly thing as that most women 
 
 But here they arrived in the bedroom and his sen- 
 tence remained unfinished, because on seeing the small 
 head on the pillow of the treble bed he thought, “Why, 
 he’s married a child, What an extraordinary thing.” 
 
 “How old is she?” he asked Miss Entwhistle, for 
 Lucy was still uneasily sleeping; and when she told 
 him he was surprised. 
 
 “It’s because she’s out of proportion to the bed,” 
 explained Miss Entwhistle in a whisper. ‘“‘She doesn’t 
 usually look so inconspicuous.” | 
 
 The whispering and being looked at woke Lucy, 
 and the doctor sat down beside her and got to business. 
 The result was what Miss Entwhistle expected: she 
 had a very violent feverish cold, which might turn into 
 anything if she were not kept in bed. If she were, 
 and with proper looking after, she would be all right 
 in a few days. He laughed at the idea of London. 
 
 “How did you come to get such a violent chill?” 
 he asked Lucy. 
 
 “T don’t—know,” she answered. 
 
 “Well, don’t talk,” he said, laying her hand down 
 
 
 
VERA 29 
 
 on the quilt—he had been holding it while his sharp 
 eyes watched her—and giving it a brief pat of farewell. 
 “Just lie there and get better. Ill send something for 
 your throat, and I'll look in again to-morrow.” 
 
 Miss Entwhistle went downstairs with him feeling 
 as if she had buckled him on as a shield, and would be 
 able, clad in such armour, to face anything Everard 
 might say. 
 
 “She likes that room?” he asked abruptly, pausing 
 a moment in the hall. 
 
 “JT can’t quite make out,’? said Miss Entwhistle. 
 “We haven’t had any talk at all yet. It was from that 
 
 ied 
 
 
 
 window, wasn’t it, that 
 
 “No. The one above.” 
 
 “The one above? Oh really.” 
 
 “Yes. There’s a sitting-room. But I was thinking 
 whether being in the same bed—well, good-bye. Cheer 
 her up. She'll want it when she’s better. She'll feel 
 weak, I'll be round to-morrow.” 
 
 He went out pulling on his gloves, followed to the 
 steps by Miss Entwhistle. 
 
 On the steps he paused again. ‘How does she like 
 being here?”’ he asked. 
 
 “T don’t know,” said Miss Entwhistle. ‘We haven’t 
 talked at all yet.” 
 
 She looked at him a moment, and then added, “‘She’s 
 very much in love.” 
 
 “Ah. Yes. Really. I see. Well, good-bye.” 
 
 He turned to go. 
 
280 VERA 
 
 “It’s wonderful, wonderful,” he said, pausing once 
 more, 
 
 “What is wonderful?” 
 
 “What love will do.” 
 
 “It is indeed,” agreed Miss Entwhistle, thinking of 
 all it had done to Lucy. 
 
 He seemed as if he were going to say something more, 
 but thought better of it and climbed into his dogcart 
 and was driven away. 
 
X XIX 
 
 [T= days went by undisturbed by the least 
 manifestation from Wemyss. Miss Ent- 
 whistle wrote to him on each of the after- 
 noons, 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 Ent- 
 whistle to herself; and forebore 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 
 
 281 
 
282 VERA 
 
 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. 
 
 “TI 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. 
 
 
 
VERA 283 
 “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. 7 
 
 “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, ‘fare 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 re- 
 peated. “Really? Does he? I mean, ought he? Some- 
 how 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,” 
 
 7 
 
284 VERA 
 
 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 unmistak- 
 able 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 peopie 
 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 her- 
 self 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 
 Th 
 
 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. 
 
VERA 285 
 
 ‘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— 
 
 99 
 
 
 
 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.” 
 
 “Ts 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—execept that 4 
 
 “Except what?” asked Miss Entwhistle. 
 
 “T don’t know. I don’t much want to alter that 
 room. It was Vera’s.” 
 
 “YT 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 a 
 
 “Oh yes, I like having the room,” said Lucy flush- 
 ing. 
 
 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. 
 
 
 
286 VERA 
 
 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, wonder- 
 ing 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 iA 
 
 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 
 
 
 
VERA 287 
 
 there was a room called the library in the house which 
 suggested books, and hadn’t she better choose some- 
 thing 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 
 393 
 
 
 
 
 
 of the room i 
 
 “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 Bronté’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 Laugh- 
 ing-Stocks. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle took it up, read its title in silence, 
 and put it down again. 
 
 The other three were Baedekers. 
 
288 VERA 
 
 “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 surprised 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 reap- 
 peared with more books, 
 
 This time they were miscellaneous, and Mics Ent- 
 whistle 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 mid- 
 dle 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 
 
VERA 289 
 
 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 im the 
 House and Emerald Uthwart—Miss Entwhistle, fa- 
 miliar 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 re- 
 vealing? 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 ts 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 
 
 
 
290 VERA 
 
 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, watch- 
 ing 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 P 
 
 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 
 
 
 
VERA 291 
 
 needed’ equally—supposing that doubt and that ques- 
 tion should ever get into her head—for staying or for 
 going; for staying or for running ... oh, but run- 
 ning, 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 watch- 
 ing her and who couldn’t imagine why Aunt Dot should 
 be so steadfastly gazing at her mouth, naturally asked, 
 “Ts 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. 
 
XXX 
 
 caution, for she was sure Lucy wouldn’t like it, 
 
 that as Everard was coming down next day she 
 thought it better to go back to Eaton Terrace in the 
 morning. 
 
 “You two love-birds won’t want me,” she said gaily, 
 expecting and prepared for opposition; but really, as 
 the child was getting well so quickly, there was no 
 reason why she and Everard should be forced to begin 
 practismg affection for each other here and now. 
 Besides, in the small bag she brought there had only 
 been a nightgown and her washing things, and she 
 couldn’t go on much longer on only that. 
 
 To her surprise Lucy not only agreed but looked 
 relieved, Miss Entwhistle was greatly surprised, and 
 also greatly pleased. “She adores him,” she thought, 
 “and only wants to be alone with him. If Everard 
 makes her as happy as all that, who cares what he is 
 like to me or to anybody else in the world?” 
 
 And all the horrible, ridiculous things she had been 
 thinking half an hour before were blown away like so 
 many cobwebs. 
 
 Just before half-past seven, while she was in her 
 room on the other side of the house tidying herself 
 
 292 
 
 \ LSO she presently told her, approaching it with 
 
VERA 293 
 
 before facing Chesterton and the evening meal—she 
 had reduced it to the merest skeleton of a meal, but 
 Chesterton insisted on waiting, and all the usual cere- 
 monies were observed—she was startled by the sound 
 of wheels on the gravel beneath the window. It could 
 only be Everard. He had come. 
 
 ‘Dear me,”’ said Miss Entwhistle to herself,—and she 
 who had planned to be gone so neatly before his ar- 
 rival! 
 
 It would be idle to pretend that she wasn’t very much 
 perturbed,—she was; and the brush with which she was 
 tidying her pretty grey hair shook in her hand. Dinner 
 alone with Everard,—well, at least let her be thankful 
 that he hadn’t arrived a few minutes later and found 
 her actually sitting in his chair. What would have 
 happened if he had? Miss Entwhistle, for all her 
 dismay, couldn’t help laughing. Also, she encouraged 
 herself for the encounter by remembering the doctor. 
 Behind his authority she was secure. She had de- 
 veloped, since Tuesday, from an uninvited visitor into 
 an indispensable adjunct. Not a nurse; Lucy hadn’t 
 at any moment been positively ill enough for a nurse; 
 but an adjunct. 
 
 She listened, her brush suspended. ‘There was no 
 mistaking it: it was certainly Everard, for she heard 
 his voice. The wheels ofthe cab, after the interval 
 necessary for ejecting him, turned round again on the 
 drive, crunching much less, and went away, and pres- 
 ently there was his well-known deliberate, heavy tread 
 coming up the uncarpeted staircase. Thank God for 
 
294 VERA 
 
 bedrooms, thought Miss Entwhistle, fervently brushing. 
 Where would one be without them and bathrooms,— 
 places of legitimate lockings-in, places even the most 
 indignant host was bound to respect? 
 
 Now this wasn’t the proper spirit in which to go 
 down and begin getting fond of Everard and giving 
 him the opportunity of getting fond of her, as she 
 herself presently saw. Besides, at that very moment 
 Lucy was probably in his arms, all alight with joyful 
 surprise, and if he could make Lucy so happy there 
 must be enough of good in him to enable him to fulfil 
 the very mild requirements of Lucy’s aunt. Just bare 
 pleasantness, bare decency would be enough. She 
 stoutly assured herself of her certainty of being fond 
 of Everard if only he would let her. Sufficiently fond 
 of him, that is; she didn’t suppose any affection she 
 was going to feel for him would ever be likely to get the 
 better of her reason, 
 
 Immediately on Wemyss’s arrival the silent house 
 had burst into feverish life. Doors banged, feet ran; 
 and now Lizzie came hurrying along the passage and 
 knocked at the door and told her breathlessly that 
 dinner would be later—not for at least another half 
 hour, because Mr. Wemyss had come unexpectedly, 
 and cook had to 
 
 She didn’t finish the sentence, she was in such a 
 hurry to be off. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle, her simple preparations being com- 
 plete, had nothing left to do but sit in one of those 
 wickerwork chairs with thin, hard, cretonne-covered 
 
 
 
VERA 295 
 
 upholstery, which are sometimes found in inhospitable 
 spare-rooms, and wait. 
 
 She found this bad for her morale. There wasn’t 
 a book in the room, or she would have distracted her 
 thoughts by reading. She didn’t want dinner. She 
 would have best liked to get into the bed she hadn’t 
 yet slept once in, and stay there till it was time to go 
 home, but her pride blushed scarlet at such a cowardly 
 desire. She arranged herself, therefore, in the chair, 
 and, since she couldn’t read, tried to remember some- 
 thing to say over to herself instead,—some poem, or 
 verse of a poem, to take her attention off the coming 
 dinner; and she was shocked to find, as she sat there 
 with her eyes shut to keep out the light that glared 
 on her from the middle of the ceiling, that she could 
 remember nothing but fragments: loose bits floating 
 derelict round her mind, broken spars that didn’t even 
 belong, she was afraid, to any really magnificent whole. 
 How Jim would have scolded her,—Jim who forgot 
 nothing that was beautiful. 
 
 By nature cool, in pious habits bred, 
 She looked on husbands with a virgins’ dread.... 
 
 Now where did that come from? And why should it 
 come at all? 
 
 Such was the tone and manners of them all 
 No married lady at the house would call. ... 
 
 And that, for instance? She couldn’t remember ever 
 having read any poem that could contain these lines, 
 
296 VERA 
 
 yet she must have; she certainly hadn’t invented them. 
 And this;—an absurd German thing Jim used to 
 quote and laugh at: 
 
 Der Sultan winkt, Zuleika schweigt, 
 Und zeigt sich ganzlich abgeneight... . 
 
 Why should a thing like that rise now to the surface 
 of her mind and float round on it, while all the noble 
 verse she had read and enjoyed, which would have been 
 of such use and support to her at this juncture, was 
 nowhere to be found, not a shred of it, in any corner 
 of her brain? 
 
 What a brain, thought Miss Entwhistle, disgusted, 
 sitting up very straight in the wickerwork chair, her 
 hands folded in her lap, her eyes shut; what a con- 
 temptible anemic brain, deserting her like this, only 
 able to throw up to the surface when stirred, out of 
 all the store of splendid stuff put so assiduously into 
 it during years and years of life, couplets. 
 
 A sound she hadn’t yet heard began to crawl round 
 the house, and, even while she wondered what it was, 
 increased and increased till it seemed to her at last as 
 
 if it must fill the universe and reach to Eaton Terrace. © 
 
 It was that gong. Become active. Heavens, and 
 what activity. She listened amazed. The time it went 
 on! It went on and on, beating in her ears like the 
 crack of doom. 
 
 When the three great final strokes were succeeded 
 by silence, she got up from her chair. The moment had 
 
VERA 297 
 
 come, A last couplet floated through her brain,—her 
 brain seemed to clutch at it: 
 
 Betwixt the stirrup and the ground 
 She mercy sought, she mercy found.... 
 
 Now where did that come from? she asked herself 
 distractedly, nervously passing one hand over her 
 already perfectly tidy hair and opening the door with 
 the other. 
 
 There was Wemyss, opening Lucy’s door at the same 
 moment. 
 
 “Oh how do you do, Everard,” said Miss Entwhistle, 
 advancing with all the precipitate and affectionate 
 politeness of one who is greeting not only a host but a 
 nephew. 
 
 “Quite well thank you,” was Everard’s slightly 
 unexpected reply; but logical, perfectly logical. 
 
 She held out her hand and he shook it, and then 
 proceeded past her to her bedroom door, which she 
 had left open, and switched off the light, which she 
 had left on. 
 
 “Oh I’m sorry,” said Miss Entwhistle. 
 
 “That,” she thought, “is one to Everard.” 
 
 She waited for his return, and then walked, followed 
 by him in silence, down the stairs. 
 
 “How do you find Lucy?” she asked when they had 
 got to the bottom. She didn’t like Everard’s silences ; 
 she remembered several of them during that difference 
 of opinion he and she had had about where Christmas 
 should be spent. They weighed on her; and she had 
 
298 VERA 
 
 the sensation of wriggling beneath them like an earwig 
 beneath a stone, and it humiliated her to wriggle. 
 
 “Just as I expected,” he said. ‘Perfectly well.” 
 
 “Oh no—not perfectly well,’ exclaimed Miss Ent- 
 whistle, a vision of the blue-wrapped little figure sitting 
 weakly up against the pillows that afternoon before 
 her eyes, “She is better to-day, but not nearly well.” 
 
 ‘‘You asked me what I thought, and I’ve told you,” 
 said Wemyss. | 
 
 No, it wouldn’t be an impulsive affection, hers and 
 Everard’s, she felt; it would, when it did come, be the 
 result of slow and careful preparation,—line upon line, 
 here a little and there a little. 
 
 *“Won’t you go in?” he asked; and she perceived he 
 had pushed the dining-room door open and was holding 
 it back with his arm while she, thinking this, lingered. 
 
 “That,” she thought, “is another to Everard,”—her 
 second bungle; first the light left on in her room, now 
 keeping him waiting. 
 
 She hurried through the door, and then, vexed with 
 herself for hurrying, walked to her chair with almost 
 an excess of deliberation. 
 
 “The doctor ” she began, when they were in their 
 places and Chesterton was hovering in readiness to 
 snatch the cover off the soup the instant Wemyss had 
 finished arranging his table-napkin. 
 
 “I wish to hear nothing about the doctor,” he in- 
 terrupted. 
 
 Miss Entwhistle gave herself pains to be undaunted, 
 
 
 
VERA 299 
 
 and said with almost an excess of naturalness, “But 
 I'd like to tell you.” 
 
 “It is no concern of mine,” he said. 
 
 “But you’re her husband, you know,” said Miss 
 Entwhistle, trying to sound pleasant. 
 
 “I gave no orders,” said Wemyss. 
 
 “But he had to be sent for. The child e 
 
 “So you say. So you said on the telephone. And 
 I told you then you were taking a great deal on your- 
 self, unasked.” 
 
 Miss Entwhistle hadn’t supposed that any one ever 
 talked like this before servants. She now knew that 
 she had been mistaken. 
 
 “He’s your doctor,” said Wemyss. 
 
 “My doctor?’’ 
 
 “YT regard him entirely as your doctor.” 
 
 “TY wish, Everard,’ said Miss Entwhistle politely, 
 after a pause, “that I understood.” 
 
 “You sent for him on your own responsibility, un- 
 asked. You must take the consequences.” 
 
 “T don’t know what you mean by the consequences,” 
 said Miss Entwhistle, who was getting further and 
 further away from that beginning of affection for 
 Everard to which she had braced herself. 
 
 “The bill,” said Wemyss. 
 
 “Oh,’? said Miss Entwhistle. 
 
 She was so much surprised that she could only 
 ejaculate just that. Then the idea that she was in the 
 act of being nourished by Wemyss’s soup seemed to her 
 so disagreeable that she put down her spoon. 
 
 
 
300 VERA 
 
 “Certainly if you wish it,” she said. 
 
 “IT do,’ said Wemyss. 
 
 The conversation flagged. 
 
 Presently, sitting up very straight, refusing to take 
 any notice of the variety and speed of the thoughts 
 rushing round inside her and determined to behave as 
 if she weren’t minding anything, she said in a very clear 
 little voice which she strove to make sound pleasant, 
 “Did you have a good journey down?” 
 
 “No,” said Wemyss, waving the soup away. 
 
 This as an answer, though no doubt strictly truthful, 
 was too bald for much to be done with it. Miss Ent- 
 whistle therefore merely echoed, as she herself felt 
 foolishly, “No?” 
 
 And Wemyss confirmed his first reply by once more 
 saying, “No.” 
 
 The conversation flagged. 
 
 “T suppose,” she then said, making another effort, 
 “the train was very full.” 
 
 As this was not a question he was silent, and allowed 
 
 - 
 
 her to suppose. 
 
 The conversation flagged. 
 
 “Why is there no fish?” he asked Chesterton, who 
 was offering him cutlets. 
 
 ‘There was no time to get any, sir,’ said Chesterton. 
 
 “He might have known that,” thought Miss Ent- 
 whistle. 
 
 “You will tell the cook that I consider I have not 
 dined unless there is fish.” 
 
 “Yes sir,’? said Chesterton. 
 
VERA 301 
 
 “Goose,” thought Miss Entwhistle. 
 
 It was easier, and far less nerve-racking, to regard 
 him indulgently as a goose than to let oneself get angry. 
 He was like a great cross schoolboy, she thought, sit- 
 ting there being rude; but unfortunately a schoolboy 
 with power. 
 
 He ate the cutlets in silence. ‘Miss Entwhistle 
 declined them. She had missed her chance, she thought, 
 when the cab was beneath her window and all she had 
 to do was to lean out and say, “Wait a minute.” But 
 then Lucy,—ah yes, Lucy. The minute she thought 
 of Lucy she felt she absolutely must be friends with 
 Everard. Incredible as it seemed to her, and always 
 had seemed from the first, that Lucy should love him, 
 there it was,—she did. It couldn’t be possible to love 
 him without any reason. Of course not. The child 
 knew. The child was wise and tender. Therefore 
 Miss Entwhistle made another attempt at resuscitating 
 conversation. 
 
 Watching her opportunity when Chesterton’s back 
 was receding down the room towards the outstretched 
 arm at the end, for she didn’t mind what Wemyss said 
 quite so acutely if Chesterton wasn’t looking, she said 
 with as natural a voice as she could manage, ‘‘I’m very 
 glad you’ve come, you know. I’m sure Lucy has been 
 missing you very much.” 
 
 “Lucy can speak for herself,’’ he said. 
 
 Then Miss Entwhistle concluded that conversation 
 with Everard was too difficult. Let it flag. She 
 couldn’t, whatever he might feel able to do, say any- 
 
302 VERA 
 
 thing that wasn’t polite in the presence of Chesterton. 
 She doubted whether, even if Chesterton were not there, 
 she would be able to; and yet continued politeness 
 appeared in the face of his answers impossible. She 
 had best be silent, she decided; though to withdraw 
 into silence was of itself a humiliating defeat. 
 
 When she was little Miss Entwhistle used to be rude. 
 Between the ages of five and ten she frequently made 
 faces at people. But not since then. Ten was the 
 latest. After that good manners descended upon her, 
 and had enveloped her ever since. Nor had any oc- 
 casion arisen later in her life in which she had even 
 been tempted to slough them. Urbane herself, she 
 dwelt among urbanities; kindly, she everywhere met 
 kindliness. But she did feel now that it might, if only 
 she could so far forget herself, afford her solace were 
 she able to say, straight at him, “Wemyss.” 
 
 Just that word. No more. For some reason she 
 was dying to call him Wemyss without any Mr. She 
 was sure that if she might only say that one word, 
 straight at him, she would feel better; as much relieved 
 as she did when she was little and made faces. 
 
 Dreadful; dreadful. She cast down her eyes, over- 
 whelmed by the nature of her thoughts, and said No 
 thank you to the pudding. 
 
 “It is clear,’ thought Wemyss, observing her silence 
 and her refusal to eat, “where Lucy gets her sulking 
 from.” 
 
 No more words were spoken till, dinner being over, 
 he gave the order for coffee in the library. 
 
VERA 303 
 
 “T’ll go and say good-night to Lucy,” said Miss 
 Entwhistle as they got up. 
 
 “You'll be so good as to do nothing of the sort,” 
 said Wemyss. 
 
 “T—beg your pardon?” inquired Miss Entwhistle, 
 not quite sure she could have heard right. 
 
 At this point they were both just in front of Vera’s 
 portrait on their way to the door, and she was looking 
 at each of them, impartially strangling her smile. 
 
 “T wish to speak to you in the library,” said Wemyss. 
 
 “But suppose I don’t wish to be spoken to in the 
 library?” leapt to the tip of Miss Entwhistle’s tongue. 
 
 There, however, was Chesterton,—checking, calming. 
 
 So she said, instead, “Do.” ‘| 
 
XXXT 
 
 the dining-room, the hall, the staircase, Lucy’s 
 
 bedroom, the spare-room, the antlers, and the 
 gong’; but she didn’t know the library. She had hoped 
 to go away without knowing it. However, she was not 
 to be permitted to. 
 
 The newly-lit wood fire blazed cheerfully when they 
 went in, but its amiable light was immediately quenched 
 by the electric light Wemyss switched on at the door. 
 From the middle of the ceiling it poured down so 
 strongly that Miss Entwhistle wished she had brought 
 her sunshade. The blinds were drawn, and there in 
 front of the window was the table where Everard had 
 sat writing—she remembered every word of Lucy’s 
 account of it—on that July afternoon of Vera’s death. 
 It was now April; still well over three months to the 
 first anniversary of that dreadful day, and here he was | 
 married again, and to, of all people in the world, her 
 Lucy. There were so many strong, robust-minded 
 young women in the world, so many hardened widows, 
 so many thick-skinned persons of mature years wanting 
 a comfortable home, who wouldn’t mind Everard be- 
 cause they wouldn’t love him and therefore wouldn’t 
 feel,—why should Fate have ordered that it should just 
 
 304 
 
 Si: hadn’t been into the library yet. She knew 
 
VERA 305 
 
 be her Lucy? No, she didn’t like him, she couldn’t like 
 him. He might be, and she hoped he was, all Lucy said, 
 wonderful and wholesome and natural and all the 
 rest of it, but if he didn’t seem so to her what, as far 
 as she was concerned, was the good of it? 
 
 The fact is that by the time Miss Entwhistle got into 
 the library she was very angry. Even the politest 
 worm, she said to herself, the most conciliatory, sensible 
 worm, fully conscious that wisdom points to patience, 
 will nevertheless turn on its niece’s husband if trodden 
 on too heavily. The way Wemyss had ordered her 
 not to go up to Lucy. . . . Particularly enraging to 
 Miss Entwhistle was the knowledge of her weak posi- 
 tion, uninvited in his house. 
 
 Wemyss, standing on the hearthrug in front of the 
 blaze, filled his pipe. How well she knew that attitude 
 and that action. How often she had seen both in 
 her drawing-room in London. And hadn’t she been 
 kind to him? Hadn’t she always, when she was hostess 
 and he was guest, been hospitable and courteous? No, 
 she didn’t like him. 
 
 She sat down in one of the immense chairs, and had 
 the disagreeable sensation that she was sitting down 
 when Wemyss hollowed out. The two little red spots 
 were brightly on her cheek-bones,—had been there, in- 
 deed, ever since the beginning of dinner. 
 
 Wemyss filled his pipe with his customary delibera- 
 tion, saying nothing. “I believe he’s enjoying himself,” 
 flashed into her mind. “Enjoying being in a temper, 
 and having me to bully.” 
 
306 VERA 
 
 “Well?” she asked, suddenly unbearably irritated. 
 
 “Oh it’s no good taking that tone with me,” he said, 
 continuing carefully to fill his pipe. 
 
 “Really, Everard,” she said, ashamed of him, but also 
 ashamed of herself. She oughtn’t to have let go her 
 grip on herself and said, ‘‘Well?’? with such obvious 
 irritation. 
 
 The coffee came. 
 
 “No thank you,” said Miss Entwhistle. 
 
 He helped himself. 
 
 The coffee went. 
 
 “Perhaps,” said Miss Entwhistle in a very polite 
 voice when the door had been shut by Chesterton, 
 “you'll tell me what it is you wish to say.” 
 
 “Certainly. One thing is that I’ve ordered the cab 
 to come round for you to-morrow in time for the early 
 train.” 
 
 “Oh thank you, Everard. That is most thoughtful,” 
 said Miss Entwhistle. “I had already told Lucy, when 
 she said you would be down to-morrow, that I would 
 go home early.” 
 
 “That’s one thing,” said Wemyss, taking no notice 
 of this and going on carefully filling his pipe. ‘The 
 other is, that I don’t wish you to see Lucy again, either 
 to-night or before you go.” 
 
 She looked at him in astonishment. “But why 
 not?” she asked. 
 
 “I’m not going to have her upset.” 
 
 “But my dear Everard, don’t you see it will upset 
 her much more if I don’t say good-bye to her? It 
 
VERA 307 
 
 won't upset her at all if I do, because she knows I’m 
 going to-morrow anyhow. Why, what will the child 
 think P” 
 
 “Oblige me by allowing me to be the best judge of 
 my own affairs.” 
 
 “Do you know I very much doubt if you’re that,” 
 said Miss Entwhistle earnestly, really moved by his 
 inability to perceive consequences. Here he had got 
 everything, everything to make him happy for the rest 
 of his life,—the wife he loved adoring him, believing in 
 him, blotting out by her mere marrying him every 
 doubt as to the exact manner of Vera’s death, and all 
 he had to do was to be kind and ordinarily decent. 
 And poor Everard—it was absurd of her to mind for 
 him, but she did in fact at that moment mind for him, 
 he seemed such a pathetic human being, blindly bent 
 on ruining his own happiness—would spoil it all, in- 
 evitably smash it all sooner or later, if he wasn’t able 
 to see, wasn’t able to understand. .. . 
 
 Wemyss considered her remark so impertinent that 
 he felt he would have been amply justified in requesting 
 her to leave his house then and there, dark or no dark, 
 train or no train. And so he would have done, if he 
 hadn’t. happened to prefer a long rather than a short 
 scene. 
 
 “J didn’t ask you into my library to hear your 
 opinion of my character,” he said, lighting his pipe. 
 
 ‘Well then,”’ said Miss Entwhistle, for there was too 
 much at stake for her to allow herself either to be 
 
308 VERA 
 
 silenced or goaded, “‘let me tell you a few things about 
 Lucy’s.” 
 
 “About Lucy’s?” echoed Wemyss, amazed at such 
 effrontery. ‘About my wife’s?” 
 
 “Yes,” said Miss Entwhistle, very earnestly. ‘It’s 
 the sort of character that takes things to heart, and 
 she’ll be miserable—miserable, Everard, and worry and 
 worry if I just disappear as you wish me to without a 
 word. Of course Ill go, and I promise I'll never come 
 again unless you ask me to. But don’t, because you’re 
 angry, insist on something that will make Lucy extraor- 
 dinarily unhappy. Let me say good-night to her 
 now, and good-bye to-morrow morning. I tell you she’ll 
 be terribly worried if I don’t. She'll think”—Miss 
 Entwhistle tried to smile—“‘that you’ve turned me out. 
 And then, you see, if she thinks that, she won’t be 
 able *? Miss Entwhistle hesitated. “Well, she 
 won’t be able to be proud of you. And that, my dear 
 Everard”—she looked at him with a faint smile of 
 deprecation and apology that she, a spinster, should 
 talk of this—“gives love its deepest wound.” 
 
 
 
 Wemyss stared at her, too much amazed to speak. 
 In his house . . . In his own house! 
 
 “I’m sorry,” she said, still more earnestly, “af this 
 annoys you, but I do want—I really do think it is very 
 important.” 
 
 There was then a silence during which they looked 
 at each other, he at her in amazement, she at him trying 
 to hope,—hope that he would take what she had said 
 in good part. It was so vital that he should under- 
 
VERA 309 
 
 stand, that he should get an idea of the effect on Lucy 
 of just that sort of unkind, even cruel behaviour. His 
 own happiness was involved as well. Tragic, tragic for 
 every one if he couldn’t be got to see... . 
 
 “Are you aware,” he said, “that this is my house?” 
 
 “Oh Everard ” she said at that, with a move- 
 ment of despair. 
 
 “Are you aware,” he continued, “that you are talk- 
 ing to a husband of his wife?” 
 
 Miss Entwhistle said nothing, but leaning her head 
 on her hand looked at the fire. 
 
 “Are you aware that you thrust yourself into my 
 house uninvited directly my back was turned, and have 
 been living in it, and would have gone on indefinitely 
 living in it, without any sanction from me unless I had 
 come down, as I did come down, on purpose to put an 
 end to such an outrageous state of affairs?’ 
 
 “Of course,” she said, “that is one way of describ- 
 ing it.” 
 
 “Tt is the way of every reasonable and decent per- 
 99 
 
 
 
 son,” said Wemyss. 
 
 “Oh no,” said Miss Entwhistle. “That is precisely 
 what it isn’t, But,” she added, getting up from the 
 chair and holding out her hand, “‘it is your way, and 
 so I think, Everard, I’ll say good-night. And good- 
 bye too, for I don’t expect I’ll see you in the morning.” 
 
 “One would suppose,” he said, taking no notice of 
 her proffered hand, for he hadn’t nearly done, “from 
 your tone that this was your house and I was your 
 servant.” 
 
310 VERA 
 
 “Y assure you I could never imagine it to be my 
 house or you my servant.” 
 
 ‘‘You made a great mistake, I can tell you, when you 
 started interfering between husband and wife. You 
 have only yourself to thank if I don’t allow you to 
 continue to see Lucy.” 
 
 She stared at him. 
 
 “Do you mean,” she said, after a silence, “that you 
 intend to prevent my seeing her later on too? In 
 London ?”’ 
 
 “That, exactly, is my intention.” 
 
 Miss Entwhistle stared at him, lost in thought; but 
 he could see he had got her this time, for her face had 
 gone visibly pale. 
 
 “In that case, Everard,” she said, presently, “I think 
 it my duty i 
 
 “Don’t begin about duties. You have no duties in 
 regard to me and my household.” 
 
 *“T think it my duty to tell you that from my knowl- 
 edge of Lucy i 
 
 “Your knowledge of Lucy! What is it compared to 
 mine, I should like to know?” 
 
 “Please listen to me. It’s most important. From 
 my knowledge of her,’ I’m quite sure she hasn’t the 
 staying power of Vera.” 
 
 It was now his turn to stare. She was facing him, 
 very pale, with shining, intrepid eyes. He had got her 
 in her vulnerable spot he could see, or she wouldn’t be 
 so white, but she was going to do her utmost to annoy 
 him up to the last. 
 
 
 
 
 
VERA 311 
 
 
 
 “The staying power of ?? he repeated, 
 “I’m sure of it. And you must be wise, you must 
 
 positively have the wisdom to take care of your own 
 % 
 
 
 
 happiness 
 
 “Oh good God, you preaching woman!” he burst 
 out. “How dare you stand there in my own house 
 talking to me of Vera?” | 
 
 “Hush,” said Miss Entwhistle, her eyes shining 
 brighter and brighter in her white face. “Listen to me. 
 It’s atrocious that I should have to, but nobody ever 
 seems to have told you a single thing in your life. You 
 don’t seem to know anything at all about women, 
 anything at all about human beings. How could you 
 bring a girl like Lucy—any young wife—to this house? 
 But here she is, and it still may be all right because she 
 loves you so, if you take care, if you are tender and 
 kind. I assure you it is nothing to me how angry you 
 are with me, or how completely you separate me from 
 Lucy, if only you are kind to her. Don’t you realise, 
 Everard, that she may soon begin to have a baby, and 
 that then she 
 
 “You indelicate woman! You incredibly indecent, 
 a2 
 
 
 
 
 
 improper 
 “YT don’t in the least mind what you say to me, but 
 I tell you that unless you take care, unless you’re 
 kinder than you’re being at this moment, it won’t be 
 anything like fifteen years this time.” 
 He repeated, staring, “Fifteen years this time?” 
 “Yes. Good-bye.” 
 
312 | VERA 
 And she was gone, and had shut the door behind 
 
 her before her monstrous meaning dawned on him, 
 
 Then, when it did, he strode out of the room after 
 her. 
 
 She was going up the stairs very slowly. 
 
 “Come down,’ he said. 
 
 She went on as if she hadn’t heard him. 
 
 “Come down. If you don’t come down at once I'll 
 fetch you.” 
 
 This, through all her wretchedness, through all her 
 horror, for beating in her ears were two words over and 
 over again, Lucy, Vera—Lucy, Vera—struck her as so 
 absurd, the vision of herself, more naturally nimble, 
 going on up the stairs just out of Wemyss’s reach, with 
 him heavily pursuing her, till among the attics at the 
 top he couldn’t but run her to earth in a cistern, that 
 she had great difficulty in not spilling over into a 
 ridiculous, hysterical laugh. 
 
 “Very well then,”’ she said, stopping and speaking in 
 a low voice so that Lucy shouldn’t be disturbed by 
 unusual sounds, “‘I’ll come down.” And shining, quiv- 
 ering with indomitableness, she did. 
 
 She arrived at the bottom of the stairs where he was 
 standing and faced him. What was he going to do? 
 Take her by the shoulders and turn her out? Not a 
 sign, not the smallest sign of distress or fear should he 
 get out of her. Fear of him in relation to herself was 
 the last thing she would condescend to feel, but fear for 
 Lucy—for Lucy. . .. She could very easily have cried 
 out because of Lucy, entreated to be allowed to see her 
 
VERA 313 
 
 sometimes, humbled herself, if she hadn’t gripped hold 
 of the conviction of his delight if she broke down, of 
 his delight at having broken her down, at refusing. 
 The thought froze her serene. 
 
 “You will now leave my house,’’ said Wemyss through 
 his teeth. 
 
 “Without my hat, Everard?” she inquired mildly. 
 
 He didn’t answer. He would gladly at that moment 
 have killed her, for he thought he saw she was laughing 
 at him. Not openly. Her face was serious and her 
 voice polite; but he thought he saw she was laughing 
 at him, and beyond anything that could happen to him 
 he hated being defied. | 
 
 He walked to the front door, reached up and undid 
 the top bolt, stooped down and undid the bottom bolt, 
 turned the key, took the chain off, pulled the door open, 
 and said, “There now. Go. And let this be a lesson 
 to you.” 
 
 “TI am glad to see,” said Miss Entwhistle, going out 
 on to the steps with dignity, and surveying the stars 
 with detachment, “that it is a fine night.” 
 
 He shut and bolted and locked and chained her out, 
 and as soon as he had done, and she heard his footsteps 
 going away, and her eyes were a little accustomed to 
 the darkness, she went round to the back entrance, 
 rang the bell, and asked the astonished tweeny, who 
 presently appeared, to send Lizzie to her; and when 
 Lizzie came, also astonished, she asked her to be so 
 kind as to go up to her room and put her things in her 
 bag and bring her her hat and cloak and purse. 
 
314 VERA 
 
 “Y’ll wait here in the garden,” said Miss Entwhistle, 
 “and it would be most kind, Lizzie, if you were rather 
 quick.” | 
 
 Then, when she had got her belongings, and Lizzie 
 had put her cloak round her shoulders and tried to 
 express, by smoothings and brushings of it, her under- 
 standing and sympathy, for it was clear to Lizzie and 
 to all the servants that Miss Entwhistle was being 
 turned out,-she went away; she went away past the 
 silent house, through the white gate, up through the 
 darkness of the sunken oozy lane, out on to the road 
 where the stars gave light, across the bridge, into the 
 village, along the road to the station, to wait for what- 
 ever train should come. 
 
 She walked slower and slower. 
 
 She was extraordinarily tired, 
 
XXXIT 
 
 EMYSS went back into the lbrary, and 
 
 \ : seeing his coffee still on the chimney-piece he 
 
 drank it, and then sat down in the chair 
 Miss Entwhistle had just left, and smoked. 
 
 He wouldn’t go up to Lucy yet; not till he was sure 
 the woman wasn’t going to try any tricks of knocking 
 at the front door or ringing bells. He actually, so in- 
 accurate was his perception of Miss Entwhistle’s char- 
 acter and methods, he actually thought she might 
 perhaps throw stones at the windows, and he decided 
 to remain downstairs guarding his premises till this 
 possibility became, with the lapse of time, more remote. 
 
 Meanwhile the fury of his indignation at the things 
 she had said was immensely tempered by the real satis- 
 faction he felt in having turned her out. That was the 
 way to show people who was master, and meant to be 
 master, in his own house. She had supposed she could 
 do as she liked with him, use his house, be waited on by 
 his servants, waste his electric light, interfere between 
 him and his wife, say what she chose, lecture him, stand 
 there and insult him, and he had showed her very 
 quickly and clearly that she couldn’t. As to her final 
 monstrous suggestion, it merely proved how completely 
 he had got her, how accurately he had hit on the pun- 
 
 315 
 
316 VERA 
 
 ishment she felt most, that she should have indulged 
 in such ravings. The ravings of impotence,—that’s 
 what that was. For the rest of his life, he supposed, 
 whenever people couldn’t get their own way with him, 
 were baffled by his steadfastness and consequently be- 
 came vindictive, they would throw that old story up 
 against him. Let them. It wouldn’t make him budge, 
 not a hair’s breadth, in any direction he didn’t choose. 
 Master in his own house,—that’s what he was. 
 
 Curious how women invariably started by thinking 
 they could do as they liked with him, Vera had thought 
 so, and behaved accordingly; and she had been quite 
 surprised, and even injured, when she discovered she 
 couldn’t. No doubt this woman was feeling consider- 
 ably surprised too now; no doubt she never dreamt 
 he would turn her out. Women never believed he would 
 do the simple, obvious thing. And even when he warned 
 them that he would, as he could remember on several 
 occasions having warned Vera—indeed, it was recorded 
 in his diary—they still didn’t believe it. Daunted 
 themselves by convention and the fear of what people 
 might think, they imagined that he would be daunted 
 too. Then, when he wasn’t, and it happened, they were 
 surprised; and they never seemed to see that they had 
 only themselves to thank. 
 
 He sat smoking and thinking a long time, one ear 
 attentive to any sounds which might indicate that Miss 
 Entwhistle was approaching hostilely from outside. 
 Chesterton found him sitting lke that when she came 
 in to remove the coffee cup, and she found him still 
 
VERA 317 
 
 sitting like that when she came in an hour later with 
 his whisky. 
 
 It was nearly eleven before he decided that the danger 
 of attack was probably over; but still, before he went 
 upstairs, he thought it prudent to open the window and 
 step over the sill on to the terrace and just look round. 
 
 All was as quiet as the grave. It was so quiet that 
 he could hear a little ripple where the water was split 
 by a dead branch as the river slid gently along. There 
 were stars, so that it was not quite dark; and although 
 the April air was moist it was dry under foot. A 
 pleasant night for a walk. Well, he would not grudge 
 her that. 
 
 He went along the terrace, and round the clump of 
 laurustinus bushes which cloaked the servants’ entrance, 
 to the front of the house. 
 
 Empty. Nobody still lingering on the steps. 
 
 He then proceeded as far as the white gate, holding 
 her capable of having left it open on purpose,—‘In 
 order to aggravate me,” as he put it to himself. 
 
 It was shut. 
 
 He stood leaning on it a minute listening, in case she 
 should be lurking in the lane. 
 
 Not a sound. 
 
 Satisfied that she had really gone, he returned to the 
 terrace and re-entered the library, fastening the window 
 carefully and pulling down the blind. 
 
 What a relief, what an extraordinary relief, to have 
 got rid of her; and not just for this once, but for good. 
 Also she was Lucy’s only relation, so there were no 
 
318 VERA 
 
 more of them to come and try to interfere between man 
 and wife. He was very glad she had behaved so out- 
 rageously at the end saying that about Vera, for it 
 justified him completely in what he had done. A little 
 less bad behaviour, and she would have had to be allowed 
 to stay the night; still a little less, and she would have 
 had to come to The Willows again, let alone having a 
 free hand in London to influence Lucy when he was at 
 his club playing bridge and unable to look after her. 
 Yes; it was very satisfactory, and well worth coming 
 down a day earlier for. 
 
 He wound up his watch, standing before the last 
 glimmerings of the fire, and felt quite good-humoured 
 again. More than good-humoured,—refreshed and ex- 
 hilarated, as though he had had a cold bath and a 
 thorough rub down. Now for bed and his little Love. 
 What simple things a man wanted,—only his woman 
 and peace, 
 
 Wemyss finished winding his watch, stretched him- 
 self, yawned, and then went slowly upstairs, switching 
 off the lights as he went. 
 
 In the bedroom there was a night-light burning, and 
 Lucy had fallen asleep, tired of waiting for Aunt Dot 
 to come and say good-night, but she woke when he 
 came in. 
 
 “Ys that you, Aunt Dot?” she murmured, even 
 through her sleepiness sure it must be, for Everard 
 would have turned on the light. 
 
 Wemyss, however, didn’t want her to wake up and 
 
VERA 319 
 
 begin asking questions, so he refrained from turning 
 on the light. 
 
 “No, it’s your Everard,” he said, moving about on 
 tip-toe. “Sh-sh, now. Go to sleep again like a good 
 little girl.” 
 
 Through her sleepiness she knew that voice of his, 
 it meant one of his pleased moods. How sweet of him 
 to be taking such care not to disturb her . . . dear 
 Everard . . . he and Aunt Dot must have made friends 
 then . . . how glad she was . . . wonderful little Aunt 
 Dot . . . before dinner he was angry, and she had 
 been so afraid ... afraid... what a relief... 
 how glad. ... 
 
 But Lucy was asleep again, and the next thing she 
 knew was Everard’s arm being slid under her shoulders 
 and she being drawn across the bed and gathered to 
 his breast. 
 
 ““Who’s my very own baby?” she heard him saying; 
 and she woke up just enough sleepily to return his kiss. 
 
 THE END 
 

 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, 
 GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 
 

 
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