But on the fourth day he heard them speaking in quiet tones together. He had just come into the kitchen to put away some groceries he had bought in the village. He stood, as though stricken immovable, and listened. The cat, perched on the window-sill, ceased washing its face and appeared to listen also. Mrs. Morton was saying:
‘You know, Lyddy, I have been thinking that we might get a little Home boy. He could do the rough work. Then we could teach him to wash the dishes and lay the table, and he would be company for you when I have to go into the village. What do you say?’
She spoke deferentially, laying the matter before her elder.
There was astonishment in Lydia’s voice when she spoke. ‘What an idea, Elsie!’
‘I think it is a good one. It would cost nothing but his food, and we could make that up by growing more vegetables and keeping more poultry.’ The deference in her voice increased to humility. ‘I do hope you’ll consent to it, Lyddy. I’m sure it’s a good idea.’
Lydia answered thoughtfully: ‘If we could get a nice, obedient little boy . . .’
‘Oh, I’d insist on that. I’d tell them we are just two women alone.’
A note of eagerness made Lydia’s voice young. ‘A boy like that would be company for me when you had tea with one of your friends. You don’t get out nearly often enough, Elsie.’
She moved nearer the door, close to which Lindley had stood listening. He busied himself putting his groceries in the cupboard. His ears tingled with shame. He had been deliberately listening to the private conversation of these two women. He could not have believed such a thing possible to him. But this was a matter so vital to his privacy. A young boy in the house. It might mean noise and racketing about. Well, he wouldn’t stand that. He’d promptly complain. If they consulted him he would warn them of the dangers of a boy about the place. He might be a pernicious little rascal—lazy, impudent and noisy.
But they did not consult him. He saw nothing of them till the afternoon of the next day, when he came face to face with Miss Dove in what the sisters called the pleasure grounds. She was dragging a quite large dead branch that had fallen from an elm tree, through the long grass. She was breathless and her delicate face was flushed a deep pink. Lindley rushed to help her.
‘Miss Dove—’ he took the branch from her hands—‘you shouldn’t do this. It’s too heavy for you.’
She gave a gay little laugh. ‘Oh, I’m getting so strong all of a sudden, Mr. Lindley. And I thought I’d tidy up the pleasure grounds while my sister is in the city. She went off early this morning, you know.’
‘She did?’ He looked into her face, trying to keep his own face innocent.
‘Yes. You’ll never believe it when I tell you. She went to get a little boy—a little Home boy—to help with the work.’
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘I think that’s a very good idea.’ He walked beside her, dragging the branch toward the house. ‘Provided, of course, that the boy is the right sort.’
‘Oh, my sister will see to that. She will accept no other. If a nice little boy is on hand she will bring him back with her tonight.’
‘Tonight? But, Miss Dove, those things take some time to arrange.’
She smiled complacently. ‘Not with us. We are acquainted with the Head of the Home. We were people of importance once, Mr. Lindley, though, of course, we’re nobodies now.’ She led the way to the back of the house and pointed with an almost regal gesture to the wood-pile. ‘Will you just lay the branch beside the pile, Mr. Lindley? When the little boy arrives he can break it up for kindling.’
The sun shone full on her face framed in the sunbonnet. Lindley noticed the delicate fineness of her skin, the long white lids above the clear blue eyes. Her hands had been exquisite. As though conscious of admiration in his eyes Miss Dove said, almost abruptly:
‘Come into the house a moment, Mr. Lindley. I should like to show you photographs of Elsie and myself when we were girls.’
He followed her, half-unwilling, yet fascinated by the change in her. Now that Mrs. Morton was out of the way, Miss Dove moved with a renewed vitality. It was as though Mrs. Morton took the strength from her, made her uncertain and querulous.
From a cabinet she took a massive old photograph album. It had heavy gilt clasps and, inset on its fine leather cover, an oval porcelain medallion of a sentimentally draped female head with upturned eyes. With an almost girlish gesture Miss Dove pulled off her sunbonnet and threw it on a chair. She sat down on the sofa and made Lindley sit beside her.
‘Look,’ she said impressively, ‘there is my father, Mr. Dove. You can see what a fine-looking man he was. And such a gentleman, though he had a violent temper at times.’ She seemed to quail at the recollection of it, after all the years.
Lindley looked and saw a masculine Mrs. Morton, with side-whiskers and smooth-shaven pugnacious lips.
‘And this is my mother. I am supposed to resemble her, though I never was so beautiful. And here I am, in my twenties. You can judge for yourself.’
Lindley found mother and daughter equally lovely and elegant. ‘You can see by our dresses, Mr. Lindley, how different everything was with us then.’ She showed him a picture of Mrs. Morton as a young woman. ‘Elsie had the loveliest naturally curly hair and such eyelashes! But she was always so dreadfully jealous of me, poor Elsie.’ Lindley was shown photos of the sisters at various stages of childhood: Lydia always exquisite, ethereal; Elsie, stocky, curly-headed, pugnacious. He was told anecdotes to illustrate the aristocratic connections of the Dove family. The grandfather clock struck the hour. Miss Dove rose in consternation.
‘Five o’clock! Good gracious, Elsie will be here with the little boy before I know it.’
Lindley stood up, glad to be allowed to go. Already the habit of aloneness was growing on him. He wanted to go back to his own part of the house, to the dark companionship of the cedar tree, to the cool stretch of the marble-topped table at which he wrote.
‘I must be laying the table.’ Miss Dove removed the red cloth from it with a nervous hand. ‘It will be the first time I have laid it since my illness and I’m just wondering where I ought to put the little boy to eat. The proper place, of course, is the kitchen, but——’
Lindley spoke from the open doorway. ‘Supposing he doesn’t come, Miss Dove?’
‘Oh, he’ll come. I have every confidence in Elsie. She’ll choose just the right boy and bring him with her. Do you know what I have a mind to do? I’ve a mind to put him at this little table in the corner. I could keep my eye on him there and it wouldn’t be quite so lonely for him as in the kitchen. A little strange boy might feel very lonely at the first, and, after all, he’s to be a sort of companion.’
‘A very nice idea,’ agreed Lindley smiling.
He escaped.
CHAPTER III
IN his own writing-room he went straight to the drawer where he kept his manuscript, drew open the drawer and looked down at the slender accumulation of pages, as though to assure himself that nothing had happened to them. He sat down in the twilight coolness of the room and lighted his pipe. His visit with Lydia Dove occupied his mind unreasonably. He could not forget her or the old photograph album or the small table to be set in the corner for the boy. He should not have given these trifles more than a passing thought, but their images filled the silent room, almost with an air of foreboding.
He heard the town bus bumping over the grass-grown drive to the door. He heard voices, the