She did, that very evening, but waited till she saw him out of hearing, walking toward the lake. There was a large boulder there which he liked to sit on, looking out across the calm expanse of the water. Strangely shaped clouds were edged with fire by the aftermath of sunset. He heard the distant voices of boys at play, and, in his mind’s eye, saw a white sheet of paper with the first words of his book written on it. A shiver of something between apprehension and exultation passed over him. In twelve hours he would begin his book.
When he drew near the house it was dusk. Out of the long grass the white narcissi showed like stars. Their faint scent came to him for an instant but was soon drowned in the heavier scent of the lilac. The door of the sisters’ living-room stood open, and Lindley heard the sound of the piano. Mrs. Morton was playing one of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, playing it with feeling and great sentimentality. It was what he had expected, only better. She really had skill.
Lindley had a desire to see the performer—and her audience. The two windows of the room were shaded by a trumpet vine. He moved close to them and peered through the glossy new leaves. It was as though he were in the room with them. The light fell from an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. It was of china and decorated with glass prisms. In its kind light the two women were transformed. He saw that the elder, Miss Dove, had once been beautiful. She must have looked like a Dresden china shepherdess, with her sloping shoulders, delicate hands and exquisite features. She now sat, leaning forward, drinking in the music, her large blue eyes dreamy with delight. Mrs. Morton too was transfigured. She had now begun to play ‘The Hunting Song’ with much spirit. Her full-lipped mouth took on a look of pride and power. Her hands, poised above the keyboard, swooped like amorous birds, and, at last, came to rest.
Lindley went round to his own side of the house and stood for a space in his own doorway, drinking in the deepening dusk in the garden, the almost palpable stillness, for the music had now ceased. He felt deep relief at the thought that he was not to be annoyed by bad piano playing. In truth he rather liked the thought of those two women cherishing their love of music through the years of adversity. He tried to remember all his acquaintance had told him of their past, but, at the time, it had seemed important only in the light of their willingness to let him part of their house. He did, however, recall that Mrs. Morton’s husband had been a handsome young fellow but that her father considered him ‘fast’ and had forbidden the marriage, and the pair had eloped. Later, when she had been forced to return home, a widow, he had made her pay for her disobedience.
There was a gentle rain in the night and the morning was moist and mildly sunny. Growing things were pushing up, unfolding, with urgency, as though there were no time to waste. In tune with the morning Lindley laid out his paper, sat himself down at the uncompromising marble-topped table, and wrote the title of his book at the top of the page. The opening sentences had long been in his mind. Now he wrote them, with almost precise care, and looked at them. They looked somehow different from what he had expected, and he sat staring at them, with a feeling of wonder.
Half an hour passed and he still sat there. He found that he had smoked two cigarettes without realizing it. He got up and paced the room. Outside a woodpecker was tapping on the trunk of the old cedar. He could see its small head, its thin muscular neck in energetic movement. As soon as it stopped that noise he would sit down and get to work.
In the next hour he wrote two pages and had nothing more left in him. He felt exhausted, but a glad exhilaration possessed him. With a kind of tender solicitude, as for a new-born weakling, he laid the manuscript in his writing-case. A manuscript of two and a half pages.
CHAPTER II
HE saw Mrs. Morton in the small garden patch that was given over to vegetables. She was digging with a spade and looked hot and breathless. He stood, hidden by a thick screen of lilacs, watching her. If he did the decent thing he would go to her, take the spade from her hand, and himself prepare the ground. But he could not set about digging, the moment he had finished his own work. And, if he began by helping her, he would have to go on helping her. He saw that the plot was already overgrown by weeds. The place was badly neglected. The dozen fowls that lived in the leaky stable laid their eggs in the manger and perched on the shafts and seat of the old victoria.
Miss Dove appeared from the direction of the house. She wore an ugly woollen jacket over her print dress and a sunbonnet, the like of which Lindley had not seen since he was a child. She walked feebly, leaning on a stick. It was hard to believe she was the woman he had seen through the window last night.
Mrs. Morton went on working harder than ever, apparently unconscious of the fragile figure approaching. The elder sister laid a transparent hand on the handle of the spade. ‘Stop that digging, Elsie,’ she commanded. ‘It’s too hard for you. Why, you might have a stroke, getting overheated like this.’
Mrs. Morton pushed back the thick hair from her forehead with the back of her hand and leant on the spade. ‘We’ve got to have salad,’ she said.
‘Well, hire a man to dig the beds.’
‘I can’t afford it.’
‘We had a man for three days last year.’
‘I can’t afford it this year.’ And she returned to her digging.
The stubborn repetition of words, the dogged lines of the thick-set figure seemed to enrage Miss Dove. ‘You can’t afford! You can’t afford!’ she cried. ‘Who do you think you are? Sole mistress here? Let me tell you, my girl, if I want a man hired, I’ll hire him without help or hindrance from you.’
‘You talk like a crazy woman,’ grunted Mrs. Morton, her breast heaving. ‘Move out of my way, please.’ She tossed a clod of earth dangerously near to Miss Dove’s feet, whose voice now rose to a scream.
‘A crazy woman! A crazy woman, eh? Oh, how dare you say such things, Elsie? And to me, just able to be out of my bed.’
‘We had peace when you were in bed.’
‘Peace! Peace! Yes, we had peace, while I lay abed, and you conducted yourself as though you owned the estate. You have sold most of my father’s furniture——’
Mrs. Morton interrupted furiously. ‘I sold it to buy medicine—to pay doctors’ bills.’
‘You throw up my illness to me! My God, what next!’
They became incoherent, screaming at one another.
It was a frightful quarrel. Lydia leant on her stick as though but for it she would have fallen. Elsie raised her spade in one moment of rage and menaced her sister with it.
Lindley had not the power to remove himself from the scene. He stood rooted, hidden by foliage, till it was over and Miss Dove tottered away and Mrs. Morton again thrust her spade into the earth. He felt shaken. These two ageing women, living so remotely, relics of such a decorous age, to let themselves go like that. This seclusion that he so valued. What was he to do? Go to Mrs. Morton and complain? Or, without explanation, say that it was necessary for him to move to another place? He strode through the long grass, past the old fruit trees that had dropped their bloom into the grass, to the peace of the lake. He sat himself on his boulder and considered what he should do. He lighted his pipe, consciously drawing serenity from it.
Lindley had come from a peaceable family of Scottish origin. He could not remember ever having heard a row in his own home—not even bickering. Such a scene as he had witnessed was completely outside his experience. He shunned the thought of another, yet in a strange way his creative impulses were stirred by it. He put it from his mind, and his thoughts, with avidity, turned to his novel.
An hour passed. He sat with the empty bowl of his pipe cradled in his hand, his imagination moving among his own creations. When at last he returned to the house he had made up his mind that he would remain there. No matter where he went he would probably meet with some disadvantages. He need overhear no further quarrels