Chapter II
After the note announcing her safe arrival a week of silence passed, andthen a letter came; there were various suggestions for my welfare, andthe rest was the usual rambling information and description Francesloved, generously italicized.
" ...and we are quite alone," she went on in her enormous handwritingthat seemed such a waste of space and labor, "though some others arecoming presently, I believe. You could work here to your heart'scontent. Mabel quite understands, and says she would love to have youwhen you feel free to come. She has changed a bit--back to her oldnatural self: she never mentions him. The place has changed too incertain ways: it has more cheerfulness, I think. She has put it in, thischeerfulness, spaded it in, if you know what I mean; but it lies aboutuneasily and is not natural--quite. The organ is a beauty. She must bevery rich now, but she's as gentle and sweet as ever. Do you know, Bill,I think he must have frightened her into marrying him. I get theimpression she was afraid of him." This last sentence was inked out, Ibut I read it through the scratching; the letters being too big to hide."He had an inflexible will beneath all that oily kindness which passedfor spiritual. He was a real personality, I mean. I'm sure he'd havesent you and me cheerfully to the stake in another century--for our owngood. Isn't it odd she never speaks of him, even to me?" This, again,was stroked through, though without the intention to obliterate--merelybecause it was repetition, probably. "The only reminder of him in thehouse now is a big copy of the presentation portrait that stands on thestairs of the Multitechnic Institute at Peckham--you know--thatlife-size one with his fat hand sprinkled with rings resting on a thickBible and the other slipped between the buttons of a tight frock-coat.It hangs in the dining room and rather dominates our meals. I wish Mabelwould take it down. I think she'd like to, if she dared. There's not asingle photograph of him anywhere, even in her own room. Mrs. Marsh ishere--you remember her, his housekeeper, the wife of the man who gotpenal servitude for killing a baby or something--you said she robbed himand justified her stealing because the story of the unjust steward wasin the Bible! How we laughed over that! She's just the same too, glidingabout all over the house and turning up when least expected."
Other reminiscences filled the next two sides of the letter, and ran,without a trace of punctuation, into instructions about a Salamanderstove for heating my work-room in the flat; these were followed bythings I was to tell the cook, and by requests for several articles shehad forgotten and would like sent after her, two of them blouses, withdescriptions so lengthy and contradictory that I sighed as I read them--"unless you come down soon, in which case perhaps you wouldn't mindbringing them; not the mauve one I wear in the evening sometimes, butthe pale blue one with lace round the collar and the crinkly front.They're in the cupboard--or the drawer, I'm not sure which--of mybedroom. Ask Annie if you're in doubt. Thanks most awfully. Send atelegram, remember, and we'll meet you in the motor any time. I don'tquite know if I shall stay the whole month--alone. It all depends...."And she closed the letter, the italicized words increasing recklesslytowards the end, with a repetition that Mabel would love to have me "formyself," as also to have a "man in the house," and that I only had totelegraph the day and the train.... This letter, coming by the secondpost, interrupted me in a moment of absorbing work, and, having read itthrough to make sure there was nothing requiring instant attention, Ithrew it aside and went on with my notes and reading. Within fiveminutes, however, it was back at me again. That restless thing called"between the lines" fluttered about my mind. My interest in the BalkanStates--political article that had been "ordered"--faded. Somewhere,somehow I felt disquieted, disturbed. At first I persisted in my work,forcing myself to concentrate, but soon found that a layer of newimpressions floated between the article and my attention. It was like ashadow, though a shadow that dissolved upon inspection. Once or twice Iglanced up, expecting to find some one in the room, that the door hadopened unobserved and Annie was waiting for instructions. I heard thebuses thundering across the bridge. I was aware of Oakley Street.
Montenegro and the blue Adriatic melted into the October haze along thatdepressing Embankment that aped a riverbank, and sentences from theletter flashed before my eyes and stung me. Picking it up and reading itthrough more carefully, I rang the bell and told Annie to find theblouses and pack them for the post, showing her finally the writtendescription, and resenting the superior smile with which she at onceinterrupted. "I know them, sir," and disappeared.
But it was not the blouses: it was that exasperating thing "between thelines" that put an end to my work with its elusive teasing nuisance. Thefirst sharp impression is alone of value in such a case, for onceanalysis begins the imagination constructs all kinds of falseinterpretation. The more I thought, the more I grew fuddled. The letter,it seemed to me, wanted to say another thing; instead the eight sheetsconveyed it merely. It came to the edge of disclosure, then halted.
There was something on the writer's mind, and I felt uneasy. Studyingthe sentences brought, however, no revelation, but increased confusiononly; for while the uneasiness remained, the first clear hint hadvanished. In the end I closed my books and went out to look up anothermatter at the British Museum library. Perhaps I should discover it thatway--by turning the mind in a totally new direction. I lunched at theExpress Dairy in Oxford Street close by, and telephoned to Annie that Iwould be home to tea at five.
And at tea, tired physically and mentally after breathing the exhaustedair of the Rotunda for five hours, my mind suddenly delivered up itsoriginal impression, vivid and clear-cut; no proof accompanied therevelation; it was mere presentiment, but convincing. Frances wasdisturbed in her mind, her orderly, sensible, housekeeping mind; she wasuneasy, even perhaps afraid; something in the house distressed her, andshe had need of me. Unless I went down, her time of rest and change, herquite necessary holiday, in fact, would be spoilt. She was too unselfishto say this, but it ran everywhere between the lines. I saw it clearlynow. Mrs. Franklyn, moreover--and that meant Frances too--would like a"man in the house." It was a disagreeable phrase, a suggestive way ofhinting something she dared not state definitely. The two women in thatgreat, lonely barrack of a house were afraid.
My sense of duty, affection, unselfishness, whatever the compositeemotion may be termed, was stirred; also my vanity. I acted quickly,lest reflection should warp clear, decent judgment.
"Annie," I said, when she answered the bell, "you need not send thoseblouses by the post. I'll take them down tomorrow when I go. I shall beaway a week or two, possibly longer." And, having looked up a train, Ihastened out to telegraph before I could change my fickle mind.
But no desire came that night to change my mind. I was doing the right,the necessary thing. I was even in something of a hurry to get down toThe Towers as soon as possible. I chose an early afternoon train.