Phoebe was unusually buoyant at lunch time today, but for once her cheerfulness failed in shedding sunshine on Philip.
“My dear, I have got over such a difficult point,” she said. “Do you remember how Moses Isaacson got Algernon to sign the paper which acknowledged that he was not Lord St. Austell’s legitimate son?”
“Yes, yes,” said Philip feverishly, trying to recall the exact happening of those miserable events.
“Well, all that was written in invisible ink, and all he thought he signed was the lease of Eagles Castle. There! And look, here is the first dish of asparagus.”
“And how about the lease?” asked Philip.
“It was written in water-colour ink, and, of course, Moses Isaacson washed it off afterwards.”
“Capital!” said Philip. “That does the trick.”
There was silence for a minute or two as the novelists ate the fresh asparagus, and then Phoebe said:
“Tomorrow, dear, you will have to come and work with me in the drawing-room. The maids must begin their spring cleaning, and indeed it should have been done a month ago. We will have lunch and dinner in the hall while they do this room, and the day after they will do the drawing-room, and I will do my work with you here.”
Philip’s fingers were stealing towards the last stick of asparagus, but at this they were suddenly arrested.
“Ah, spring cleaning!” he said with assumed cheerfulness. “They just dust the books, I suppose, and sweep the floor.”
She laughed. She had Eva’s celebrated laugh, which was like a peal of silver bells.
“Indeed, they do much more than that,” she said. “Every book is taken out and dusted; they move all the furniture, and clean it all, back and front and top and bottom. But you won’t know a thing about it, except that our dear Elizabethan dining-room will look so spick and span that Elizabeth herself might have dinner in it. Some day we must do an historical novel, you and I. Think what a setting we have here!”
Though the day was so deliciously warm, it felt rather chilly in the evening, or so Philip thought, and a fire was lit in the drawing-room. Phoebe had a slight headache, and thus it was quite natural that she should go to bed early, leaving her husband sitting up. As soon as he had heard the door of her bedroom close, he went softly to the diningroom, and again mounting the library-steps, took down the razor-blade from the cache which this morning had seemed so secure, and went back with it into the drawing-room. It would have been terrible if Jane, the housemaid, who always sang at her work, should tomorrow have suddenly interrupted her warblings with a wild scream, as she dusted the top of the bookcase. Perhaps the razor-blade would have embedded itself in her hand; perhaps, even more tragically, her flapping duster would have flicked it into her smiling and songful face, and have buried it deep in her eye or her open mouth. But now this gruesome domestic tragedy had been averted by Philip’s ingenious perception of the chilliness of the evening, and with a sigh of relief he dropped the fatal blade into the core of the fire.
He went softly up to bed, feeling very tired after this emotional day. Now that his anxiety was allayed he would have liked to tell Phoebe how silly he had been, for never before had he had a secret from her. But then one of Phoebe’s most sacred idols in life was her husband’s stern masculine common sense that (like Algernon’s) was never the prey of foolish fears and unfounded tremors. He hated the idea of smashing up this cherished image of Phoebe’s, and determined to keep his unaccountable failing to himself. Phoebe should never know. Besides, it would vex her very much to be told that her present to him had occasioned him such uneasiness.
He fell asleep at once, and woke in the grey dawn of the morning to the sound, as it were, of clashing cymbals of terror in his brain.… The housemaid would clear up the fireplace in the drawing-room, and there among the ashes, like a snake in the grass, would be the keen tooth of the razor-blade. Perhaps already Philip was too late, and before he could get down a cry of pain would ring through the silent house, betokening that Jane’s life-blood was already spreading over the new Kidderminster carpet, and he sprang from his bed and with bare feet went hurriedly down to the drawing-room.
Thank God he was in time, and a minute afterwards he was on his way up to bed again with the razor-blade still dusty with ashes, but as sharp as ever, in an envelope taken from Phoebe’s table. Temporarily, he put it between his mattresses, and, since it was still only half-past four, climbed back into bed, and vainly attempted to compose himself to sleep,
Already he was behindhand with work that should have been done yesterday morning, and when today, with the envelope containing the blade in his breast-pocket, he tried to make up for lost time, he only succeeded in losing more of it. There were other distractions as well, for owing to the spring cleaning in progress in the dining-room, he sat with Phoebe in the drawing-room, and she, quite recovered from her headache, and quite undisturbed by his presence, was reeling off sheet after sheet in her big, firm handwriting of the further trials that awaited Algernon. Sometimes she looked up at him with a bright, glad smile, born of the joy of creation; but for the most part her head was bent over her work, and but a short peal of silver-bell laughter from time to time denoted the ecstasy of invention. And falling more and more behind her, Philip lumbered in her wake, with threequarters of his mind entirely absorbed in the awful problem regarding the contents of the envelope in his breast-pocket.
Suddenly, brighter than the noonday outside, an idea illuminated him, and he got up.
“I shall take ten minutes’ stroll, my dear,” he said. “Solvitur ambulando, you know, and you have given me a difficult chapter to write!”
She recalled herself with an effort to the real world.
“I think I won’t come with you, darling,” she said. “I am afraid of breaking the golden thread, as you once called it. Let me see…” and she grabbed the golden thread again.
At the bottom of the garden ran a swift chalkstream that had often figured in their joint works, and towards this Philip joyfully hurried. He picked up half a dozen pebbles from the gravel path, put them into the envelope which contained the instrument of death, tucked the flap in, and threw it into the stream. There was a slight splash, and he saw the white envelope shiningly sink through the water until it came to rest at the bottom. He returned to Phoebe with the sense that he had awoke from some strangling nightmare.
For a couple of days after that Philip enjoyed the ecstasy which succeeds the removal of some haunting terror. Basking in the sunshine of security, he could look down on the dark clouds through which he had passed, and feel with thankfulness how completely (though narrowly) he had escaped the misty fringe of some trouble of the brain, the claws and teeth and pincers of a fixed idea. The simple expedient of throwing the razor-blade into the stream had entirely dispersed those clouds, and till then he had never known the sweetness and sanity of the sun. Then, with tropical rapidity, the tempest closed in upon him again.
He and Phoebe had driven out in their motor-car one afternoon, and had dismissed it two miles from home in order to have the pleasure of walking back through the flowery lanes. Philip was something of a botanist, and since he was now engaged on the chronicling of the reunion of Eva and Algernon, which unexpectedly took place in a ruined temple near Rome, he wanted to refresh his memory by the sight of the glories of the early English summer, in order to deck the flowery fields in which the ruined temple lay with the utmost possible lavishness of floral tapestry.
“The ruin stands for the trial they have passed through, my dear,” he explained to Phoebe, “and