I
“That linoleum does look nice, Mrs. Jones. What a hand you have with lino. The teapot’s on the kitchen table, so go and help yourself. I’ll be there as soon as I’ve taken up Mr. Abernethie’s elevenses.”
Miss Gilchrist trotted up the staircase, carrying a daintily set out tray. She tapped on Timothy’s door, interpreted a growl from within as an invitation to enter, and tripped briskly in.
“Morning coffee and biscuits, Mr. Abernethie. I do hope you’re feeling brighter today. Such a lovely day.”
Timothy grunted and said suspiciously:
“Is there skim on that milk?”
“Oh no, Mr. Abernethie. I took it off very carefully, and anyway I’ve brought up the little strainer in case it should form again. Some people like it, you know, they say it’s the cream—and so it is really.”
“Idiots!” said Timothy. “What kind of biscuits are those?”
“They’re those nice digestive biscuits.”
“Digestive tripe. Ginger-nuts are the only biscuits worth eating.”
“I’m afraid the grocer hadn’t got any this week. But these are really very nice. You try them and see.”
“I know what they’re like, thank you. Leave those curtains alone, can’t you?”
“I thought you might like a little sunshine. It’s such a nice sunny day.”
“I want the room kept dark. My head’s terrible. It’s this paint. I’ve always been sensitive to paint. It’s poisoning me.”
Miss Gilchrist sniffed experimentally and said brightly:
“One really can’t smell it much in here. The workmen are over on the other side.”
“You’re not sensitive like I am. Must I have all the books I’m reading taken out of my reach?”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Abernethie, I didn’t know you were reading all of them.”
“Where’s my wife? I haven’t seen her for over an hour.”
“Mrs. Abernethie is resting on the sofa.”
“Tell her to come and rest up here.”
“I’ll tell her, Mr. Abernethie. But she may have dropped off to sleep. Shall we say in about a quarter of an hour?”
“No, tell her I want her now. Don’t monkey about with that rug. It’s arranged the way I like it.”
“I’m so sorry. I thought it was slipping off the far side.”
“I like it slipping off. Go and get Maude. I want her.”
Miss Gilchrist departed downstairs and tiptoed into the drawing room where Maude Abernethie was sitting with her leg up reading a novel.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Abernethie,” she said apologetically. “Mr. Abernethie is asking for you.”
Maude thrust aside her novel with a guilty expression.
“Oh dear,” she said. “I’ll go at once.”
She reached for her stick.
Timothy burst out as soon as his wife entered the room:
“So there you are at last!”
“I’m so sorry dear, I didn’t know you wanted me.”
“That woman you’ve got into the house will drive me mad. Twittering and fluttering round like a demented hen. Real typical old maid, that’s what she is.”
“I’m sorry she annoys you. She tries to be kind, that’s all.”
“I don’t want anybody kind. I don’t want a blasted old maid always chirruping over me. She’s so damned arch, too—”
“Just a little, perhaps.”
“Treats me as thought I was a confounded kid! It’s maddening.”
“I’m sure it must be. But please, please, Timothy, do try not to be rude to her. I’m really very helpless still—and you yourself say she cooks well.”
“Her cooking’s all right,” Mr. Abernethie admitted grudgingly. “Yes, she’s a decent enough cook. But keep her in the kitchen, that’s all I ask. Don’t let her come fussing round me.”
“No, dear, of course not. How are you feeling?”
“Not at all well. I think you’d better send for Barton to come and have a look at me. This paint affects my heart. Feel my pulse—the irregular way it’s beating.”
Maude felt it without comment.
“Timothy, shall we go to an hotel until the house painting is finished?”
“It would be a great waste of money.”
“Does that matter so much—now?”
“You’re just like all women—hopelessly extravagant! Just because we’ve come into a ridiculously small part of my brother’s estate, you think we can go and live indefinitely at the Ritz.”
“I didn’t quite say that, dear.”
“I can tell you that the difference Richard’s money will make will be hardly appreciable. This bloodsucking Government will see to that. You mark my words, the whole lot will go in taxation.”
Mrs. Abernethie shook her head sadly.
“This coffee’s cold,” said the invalid, looking with distaste at the cup which he had not as yet tasted. “Why can’t I ever get a cup of really hot coffee?”
“I’ll take it down and warm it up.”
In the kitchen Miss Gilchrist was drinking tea and conversing affably, though with slight condescension, with Mrs. Jones.
“I’m so anxious to spare Mrs. Abernethie all I can,” she said. “All this running up and down stairs is so painful for her.”
“Waits on him hand and foot, she does,” said Mrs. Jones, stirring the sugar in her cup.
“It’s very sad his being such an invalid.”
“Not such an invalid either,” Mrs. Jones said darkly. “Suits him very well to lie up and ring bells and have trays brought up and down. But he’s well able to get up and go about. Even seen him out in the village, I have, when she’s been away. Walking as hearty as you please. Anything he really needs—like his tobacco or a stamp—he can come and get. And that’s why when she was off to that funeral and got held up on the way back, and he told me I’d got to come in and stay the night again, I refused. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said, ‘but I’ve got my husband to think of. Going out to oblige in the mornings is all very well, but I’ve got to be there to see to him when he comes back from work.’ Nor I wouldn’t budge, I wouldn’t. Do him good, I thought, to get about the house and look after himself for once. Might make him see what a lot he gets done for him. So I stood firm, I did. He didn’t half create.”
Mrs. Jones drew a deep breath and took a long satisfying drink of sweet inky tea. “Ar,” she said.
Though deeply suspicious of Miss Gilchrist, and considering her as a finicky thing and a “regular fussy old maid,” Mrs. Jones approved of the lavish way in which Miss Gilchrist dispensed her employer’s tea and sugar ration.
She set down the cup and said affably:
“I’ll give the kitchen floor a nice scrub down and then I’ll be getting along. The potatoes is all ready peeled, dear, you’ll find them by the sink.”
Though slightly affronted by the “dear,” Miss Gilchrist was appreciative of the goodwill which had divested an enormous quantity of potatoes of their outer coverings.
Before she could say anything the telephone rang and she hurried out in the hall to answer it. The telephone, in the style of fiftyodd years ago, was situated inconveniently in a draughty passage behind the staircase.
Maude Abernethie appeared at the top of the stairs while Miss Gilchrist was still speaking. The latter looked up and said:
“It’s Mrs.—Leo—is it?—Abernethie speaking.”
“Tell her I’m just coming.”
Maude descended the stairs slowly and painfully.
Miss Gilchrist murmured, “I’m so sorry you’ve had to come down again, Mrs. Abernethie. Has Mr. Abernethie finished his elevenses? I’ll just nip up and get the tray.”
She trotted up the stairs as Mrs. Abernethie said into the receiver:
“Helen? This is Maude here.”
The invalid received Miss Gilchrist with a baleful glare. As she picked up the tray he asked fretfully:
“Who’s that on the telephone?”
“Mrs. Leo Abernethie.”
“Oh? Suppose they’ll go on gossiping for about an hour. Women have no sense of time when they get on the phone. Never think of the money they’re wasting.”
Miss Gilchrist said brightly that it would be Mrs. Leo who had to pay, and Timothy grunted.
“Just pull that curtain aside, will you? No, not that one, the other one. I don’t want the light slap in my eyes. That’s better. No reason because I’m an invalid that I should have to sit in the dark all day.”
He went on:
“And you might look in that bookcase over there for a green— What’s the matter now? What are you rushing off for?”
“It’s the front door, Mr. Abernethie.”
“I didn’t hear anything. You’ve got that woman downstairs, haven’t you? Let her go and answer it.”
“Yes, Mr. Abernethie. What was the book you wanted me to find?”
The invalid closed his eyes.
“I can’t remember now. You’ve put it out of my head. You’d better go.”
Miss Gilchrist seized the tray and hurriedly departed. Putting the tray on the pantry table she hurried into the front hall, passing Mrs. Abernethie who was still at the telephone.
She returned in a moment to ask in a muted voice:
“I’m so sorry to interrupt. It’s a nun. Collecting. The Heart of Mary Fund, I think she said. She has a book. Half a crown or five shillings most people seem to have given.”
Maude Abernethie said:
“Just a moment, Helen,” into the telephone, and to Miss Gilchrist, “I don’t subscribe to Roman Catholics. We have our own Church charities.”
Miss Gilchrist hurried away again.
Maude terminated her conversation after a few minutes with the phrase, “I’ll talk to Timothy about it.”
She replaced the receiver and came into the front hall. Miss Gilchrist was standing quite still by the drawing room door. She was frowning in a puzzled way and jumped when Maude Abernethie spoke to her.
“There’s nothing the matter, is there, Miss Gilchrist?”
“Oh no, Mrs. Abernethie, I’m afraid I was just woolgathering. So stupid of me when there’s so much to be done.”
Miss Gilchrist resumed her imitation of a busy ant and Maude Abernethie climbed the stairs slowly and painfully to her husband’s room.
“That was Helen on the telephone. It seems that the place is definitely sold—some Institution for Foreign Refugees—”
She paused whilst Timothy expressed himself forcibly on the subject of Foreign Refugees, with side issues as to the house in which he had been born and brought up. “No decent standards left in this country. My old home! I can hardly bear to think of it.”
Maude went on:
“Helen quite appreciates what you—we—will feel about it. She suggests that we might like to come there for a visit before it goes. She was very distressed about your health and the way the painting is affecting it. She thought you might prefer coming to Enderby to going to an hotel. The servants are there still, so you could be looked after comfortably.”
Timothy, whose mouth had been open in outraged protests halfway through this, had closed it again. His eyes had become suddenly shrewd. He now nodded his head approvingly.
“Thoughtful of Helen,” he said. “Very thoughtful. I don’t know, I’m sure, I’ll have to think it over… There’s no doubt that this paint is poisoning me—there’s arsenic in paint, I believe. I seem to have heard something of the kind. On the other hand the exertion of moving might be too much for me. It’s difficult to know what would be the best.”
“Perhaps you’d prefer an hotel, dear,” said Maude. “A good hotel is very expensive, but where your health is concerned—”
Timothy interrupted.
“I wish I could make you understand, Maude, that we are not millionaires. Why go to an hotel when Helen has very kindly suggested that we should go to Enderby? Not that it’s really for her to suggest! The house isn’t hers. I don’t understand legal subtleties, but I presume it belongs to us equally until it’s sold and the proceeds divided. Foreign Refugees! It would have made old Cornelius turn in his grave. Yes,” he sighed, “I should like to see the old place again before I die.”
Maude played her last card adroitly.
“I understand that Mr. Entwhistle has suggested that the members of the family might like to choose certain pieces of furniture or china or something—before the contents are put up for auction.”
Timothy heaved himself briskly upright.
“We must certainly go. There must be a very exact valuation of what is chosen by each person. Those men the girls have married— I wouldn’t trust either of them from what I’ve heard. There might be some sharp practice. Helen is far too amiable. As the head of the family, it is my duty to be present!”
He got up and walked up and down the room with a brisk vigorous tread.
“Yes, it is an excellent plan. Write to Helen and accept. What I am really thinking about is you, my dear. It will be a nice rest and change for you. You have been doing far too much lately. The decorators can get on with the painting while we are away and that Gillespie woman can stay here and look after the house.”
“Gilchrist,” said Maude.
Timothy waved a hand and said that it was all the same.
II
“I can’t do it,” said Miss Gilchrist.
Maude looked at her in surprise.
Miss Gilchrist was trembling. Her eyes looked pleadingly into Maude’s.
“It’s stupid of me, I know… But I simply can’t. Not stay here all alone in the house. If there was anyone who could come and—and sleep here too?”
She looked hopefully at the other woman, but Maude shook her head. Maude Abernethie knew only too well how difficult it was to get anyone in the neighbourhood to “live in.”
Miss Gilchrist went on, a kind of desperation in her voice. “I know you’ll think it nervy and foolish—and I wouldn’t have dreamed once that I’d ever feel like this. I’ve never been a nervous woman—or fanciful. But now it all seems different. I’d be terrified—yes, literally terrified—to be all alone here.”
“Of course,” said Maude. “It’s stupid of me. After what happend at Lytchett St. Mary.”
“I suppose that’s it… It’s not logical, I know. And I didn’t feel it at first. I didn’t mind being alone in the cottage after—after it had happened. The feeling’s grown up gradually. You’ll have no opinion of me at all, Mrs. Abernethie, but ever since I’ve been here I’ve been feeling it—frightened, you know. Not of anything in particular—but just frightened… It’s so silly and I really am ashamed. It’s just as though all the time I was expecting something awful to happen… Even that nun coming to the door startled me. Oh dear, I am in a bad way….”
“I suppose it’s what they call delayed shock,” said Maude vaguely.
“Is it? I don’t know. Oh, dear, I’m so sorry to appear so—so ungrateful, and after all your kindness. What you will think—”
Maude soothed her.
“We must think of some other arrangement,” she said.
Chapter Fifteen