Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (13 page)

On the landing she met a desperate Hattie sitting outside Dennis’s bedroom door.

“They have locked it up. Oh, Emma, they have locked his door, and every day I go in there and look after his things. There is Dennis’s grass he planted in a little bowl; he used to cut it with scissors and I’ve been looking after it for him. Do get the key. I can’t bear his things all locked away for ever.”

Emma felt guilty. How could she have felt happy so soon after her brother’s death? Why, she had almost been flirting. She ran to Hattie and put her arm round her.

“Dear Hattie, of course we will have the door unlocked, and you shall have all his things and look after them for ever and ever, if that is what you want.”

And together they went to their grandmother to plead for the key, which to their surprise was handed over without much comment.

“I can’t think why you plague me with these things when I have so much to worry me. Here’s the wretched key. Now go away, please!”

So they went to their dead brother’s room. Already it smelt damp and unused, and the small black iron bed looked flat and lonely all stripped of its clothes. Seeing his bed like that seemed to make it more definite that Dennis would never come back any more, and the sisters sat on the window-sill and cried together.

Upstairs their father walked up and down the worn, turkey-patterned carpet which covered his attic floor. The carpet had been worn away by his bored pacings to and fro for frustrated years; but now he almost danced as he walked. He looked at the dreary room with new eyes and amusedly flicked the pom-pomed drapes on the mantelpiece as he passed. “Dear old room,” he thought. “People like Doctor Hatt can laugh at it, but it’s been my only refuge from that old tyrant downstairs for years. I shall lock it up when I go; I don’t want her prying about up here. There is very little I shall want to take with me—just a few books perhaps, and the typewriter. No, I shall buy a new one, the very latest thing, with gadgets all over it that I’ll never be able to use.” He wandered across the room to the old machine and read a half typed letter.

He picked up the letter from
The Daily Courier,
which was lying open on the table. He reread it although he knew every word by heart and then replaced it, still open, on the table. Oh, wonderful letter, to set him free after all these years! The old libel case which had lost him his position and which had ruined his half-hearted efforts to find other journalistic work was now forgotten. His ten years of exile were over, and he was free to return to the work he had enjoyed so much. He wondered if it would appeal to him quite as much now he was ten years older and if he would be able to concentrate on his work and keep it lively and amusing. But of course he would. It was the kind of thing he could have done on his head in the old days: just a gossip column twice a week, and the odd book review. But it would lead to other things. He would soon be back where he had been when disaster had almost drowned him. What a fool he had been to let it overwhelm him so completely! Then he remembered how his wife had turned from him, and the mystery of Hattie’s birth. That, on the top of the other, was enough to shatter any man. And then there was his mother, that arch-viper. “My God, I shall be glad to be free of her!” he thought. Then he almost panicked. Suppose she became ill or had a stroke, could he leave her then? He made up his mind that even if his mother was dying he wouldn’t delay his departure by one day. Emma could stay at home and look after her if necessary; but whatever happened he was going to escape at last. “As soon as the contract is signed I’ll tell her and leave before she can stage something frightful, as no doubt she will,” he decided as he picked up the letter from the
Courier
to read again.

E
MMA EYED her rusty black dress with distaste. “What a thing to wear on the river!” she thought with disgust. Perhaps it would rain and he wouldn’t be walking by the river after all. She looked up at the sky, which was grey but very high, and decided it was unlikely to rain that afternoon; and she was not sure if she was pleased or sorry. As she walked towards the river she hoped that Hattie would not guess her intention and ask to come too. Then she saw Hattie had taken away Dennis’s boats from the little harbour they had made in the roots of a willow tree, and wondered if she was crying over them in her room. As she stood on the stone steps that led to the water she saw her sister sitting under a pear tree eating fruit and cleaning the boats with scouring powder. She seemed comparatively happy; so Emma returned to the river, selected the brightest cushions from the boathouse, flung them into the canoe and swiftly paddled away. She never felt really safe from her grandmother until she had passed the long garden belonging to Willoweed House. Sometimes a fierce, nasal voice had called from behind an elm tree and she had been forced to return; but today she was fortunate because her grandmother was sitting in the morning room waiting for Lawyer Williams’s visit.

She paddled past the pleasure gardens, lonely and deserted as they had been all the summer. Since the bread madness few day-trippers had dared to come. The motionless swings and silent iron tables with their peeling paint passed from her view; and the banks became higher, sharply outlined against the sky and sometimes decorated by gently swaying willow-herb, or dry, dead sorrel.

The young doctor was standing in a little bay watching a shoal of minnows in the shallow water. His panama hat was rolled up in his hand like a scroll, and he waved it when he saw Emma appearing round a bend in the river. She smiled nervously as she turned the boat into the shallow little bay, and she silently prayed “Please God, let him like me and don’t let me be disappointed!”

They spent the afternoon under some willow trees, and when they left their kind protection they were so much in love they paddled the boat for about a mile down the river before they noticed they were moving in the wrong direction. When they parted on the banks of the Big Meadow, it had been arranged that Philip would call at Willoweed House the following morning before he left for London.

“You’re so young, Emma, I must ask your father’s permission before we can become engaged.”

“But surely it’s Grandmother’s permission you should ask?” Emma could not imagine anyone asking her father’s consent even in a small matter, and to ask permission to marry seemed fantastic.

“We all belong to Grandmother. Everything belongs to her.”

“No, Emma, it’s your father I must ask, and I’m glad it is so. I should very much dislike an interview with your grandmother!”

They both laughed and Emma said:

“Do you think she is looking at us from her bedroom window with her binoculars? You know, she often does!”

And she laughed again.

“Oh, I’m so happy, it makes me keep laughing! I didn’t know being in love made you laugh. I thought it would make me feel rather solemn and kind of holy; but perhaps that will come after.”

Then they parted, and Philip stood on the bank watching Emma moor the canoe. She stood on the landing-stage for a moment looking across the water, and then she walked away under a dark ivy arch towards the house.

The next day Ebin Willoweed’s contract from the
Courier
arrived. The family, with the exception of his mother, were in the midst of breakfast when Constance brought in the letters. For the last week, to everyone’s surprise, Ebin had appeared at breakfast each morning, shaved and neatly dressed and stiffly collared. He opened the contract with shaking hands and there it was, all signed and official. He jumped up from the table. He hoped one of the girls would cry, “What is it, father?” and he would say, “Pack your bags; we are leaving for London tomorrow!” But Emma looked out of the French windows with a dreamy expression on her face and Hattie was engaged in floating her egg in a sea of bacon fat. “How dreadful to be so lonely! There is no one to share one’s happiness with when it does come,” he thought, as he rushed from the room.

“Poor father, it doesn’t suit him getting up early,” said Hattie as she cut into her congealed egg.

Ebin stood in the hall gnawing his nails, and his round eyes were blurred with tears. He rocked gently as he stood in the dark mustiness, and the brown velvet curtains smelt as if dogs had lifted their legs—but there were no dogs. A toasted-looking straw hat lying on a twisted black chair caught his eye, and in a moment it was on his head and he had left the house and was among the fir trees and ferns and dark stones in the front garden. The village street was in a flood of light, shimmering with morning radiance in contrast to the darkness he had left. “I’ll go and see old Hatt,” he thought. “He’ll be interested, and really pleased that things are going my way at last.” He tripped into the sun and the village women as they beat their mats exchanged remarks about him as he passed.

The young doctor was just finishing his breakfast when the elderly housekeeper showed Ebin Willoweed into the dining-room. Surprised, he put down his cup of coffee and felt slightly unwell. It’s one thing to ask a man for the hand of his daughter with a carefully prepared speech; but to have him arriving in a storming rage in the middle of breakfast is rather shattering. Why on earth had Emma told him already? But Emma was so timid he must have found out in some other way—from his awful mother perhaps.

Ebin was disappointed not to see his friend in the room, and grunted:

“Morning, where’s Doctor Hatt?”

“Oh, er, as a matter of fact he has just left on a case. Won’t you have some coffee—er—now you are here?”

“Coffee? No thanks. I may as well go if Hatt isn’t here.”

“Oh, please don’t go,” Philip said as he stood up. “I know this must be a shock to you; but can’t we discuss it in a friendly way? After all, it’s nothing to do with Doctor Hatt, although I must admit I did tell him about it last night and he seemed to think it was quite a good thing, although Emma is such a child for her age. I’m quite ready to wait a year or even more if you think it necessary.” He suddenly noticed Ebin’s amazed expression.

“I say, you do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

“Can’t say I do really.” Ebin wrinkled his brow. “You don’t mean you want to marry Emma? You hardly know the girl, do you?”

Then Philip poured out his hopes and feelings for Emma until the room seemed to be filled with beautiful thoughts, promises and love.

When he had finished Ebin said, “Well, if that’s the way you feel about her, you had better get married; but I had been hoping she would stay at Willoweed House and look after her grandmother. I’m shortly leaving for London, returning to my old paper, you know, and I thought I’d take Hattie with me for company and she would have more chance there. Plenty of schools and friends and that sort of thing. Still, if you don’t mind waiting for Emma for a bit, she could stay with her grandmother for the time being.”

“I think it would be a terrible thing to leave Emma alone with her grandmother. Poor child, she needs some life and gaiety. She has missed so much and knows so little. I was going to suggest that she lived with my mother for about a year before we married.”

“But would your mother want her?”

Ebin was amazed that anyone could want Emma, whom he had always regarded as painfully shy and humourless, although good-looking in a melancholy way. He had often called her “a damn depressing girl.”

“Oh yes, my mother would be delighted to have her. You see she is a widow and rather lonely since I left home to live in the hospital. My elder brother is a soldier and abroad most of the time.”

“Oh, well, you seem to have settled it between yourselves; but you will have to tell my mother—I can’t do it. There will be hell to pay when she knows I’m leaving and taking Hattie. You had better come back with me now as you are leaving today. I only wish you could have waited a day or two until I’d gone.”

As they walked down the village street they were stopped by the vicar, who was pushing his bicycle and looking very Chinese indeed.

“Oh, Mr. Willoweed, you are just the man I want to see. I’ve a puncture.”

“Good God, you don’t think I’m going to mend it, do you?” Ebin exclaimed crossly.

“Oh, no, it was nothing like that. We are having a thanksgiving service next Sunday. The last of the sufferers from the bread poisoning will be out of hospital by then, and I feel we should thank God that this dreadful infliction has been lifted from the village.”

The little yellow man looked so pathetic Ebin stifled the words that came to his lips: “What have I to be thankful for now my only son is dead?” and substituted “I’m so sorry I shan’t be here”; but he couldn’t help adding, “You had better ask my mother, I’m sure she would love to come.”