Lois smiled delightfully as he came up.
“How nice of you! I was just wanting someone to carry the basket.”
He took it.
“You like being waited on-don’t you?”
“Very much.”
“Jimmy tells me that you are arranging for quite a lot of it-butler and maids again.”
She snipped off another rose as she said carelessly,
“Yes-won’t it be a relief!”
Instead of dropping the rose into the basket she held it up for him to smell.
“Well? Won’t it?”
“Probably. At the moment Jimmy is considerably upset.”
She gave her rippling laugh.
“That’s because of Minnie. He’ll get over it. I hope you didn’t encourage him.”
“He didn’t need any encouragement. Look here, Lois, we’ve been pretty good friends, and we’ve never gone in for beating about the bush. Why are you outing Minnie? I know you told Jimmy that she wanted to go, but that won’t go down with me.”
“Darling, how fierce!”
“I want to know why you are doing it.”
She was snipping quite idly now, a leaf here, a dead bloom there. She threw him a smiling look.
“Well, you see, I think she’s been here long enough.”
“Why?”
“My dear Antony, she’s the born old lady’s companion, I’m not an old lady, and I don’t want a companion. To be perfectly frank, I don’t want Minnie. I don’t want her at meals, I don’t want to meet her about the house-she gets on my nerves. She can go and be a treasure to old Miss Grey.”
“And be eaten up alive like all the other companions she’s had for the last fifteen years or so!”
She laughed.
“Oh, Minnie won’t mind that. She just asks to be trodden on.”
Antony was silent for a moment. Then he said,
“Do you know, Lois, I wouldn’t push Jimmy too far over this. I’ve known him all my life, and he can be-unexpected. I’ve got an idea that this is one of the things it would be better-” He hesitated for a word, and she took him up.
“Better for whom, darling?”
He said,
“You.”
“Really, Antony!”
“Lois, listen! Jimmy thinks the sun rises and sets by you- you’ve got him eating out of your hand. You think you know him-you think he’s easy, and so he is-up to a point. I’m telling you you’d better not drive him past that point. If you do, he may be-incalculable.”
She gave a scornful laugh.
“All this fuss about Minnie Mercer! As if she mattered twopence!”
His eyes dwelt on her with a curious appraising look.
“Don’t be stupid. You’re not a stupid woman, so don’t pretend you are. Jimmy’s got his loyalties. I’m telling you that you’d better respect them. If you don’t you may find you have smashed something you can’t put together again. If you don’t want Minnie to meals, give her a sitting-room of her own-she’d love it. She wouldn’t want to meddle with your parties-she’d be only too pleased to keep out of the way. And she’d make herself useful. I know she did all the mending for Marcia and the house.”
“Thank you-Gladys Marsh does all the sewing I want. And she amuses me. You should hear her on the village. No, it’s no use, Antony. And you had better not go on, or you’ll make me angry. I don’t want to be angry.” She looked at him sweetly and broke into a laugh. “I’d have been raging if it had been anyone else, but you mustn’t take advantage of my having a soft corner somewhere for you.” She came closer. “I have, you know.”
He said in a hard, even tone,
“Minnie has been here a long time.”
The clear, natural colour brightened in Lois’ cheeks. She kept her voice silky.
“And she’s in love with Jimmy. Why don’t you say it, darling? She’s been in love with him for all that long time you keep harping on. I don’t find it exactly a recommendation, you know.”
Antony was smiling. If Julia had been there she would have known just how angry he was when he smiled like that.
“My dear Lois, are you asking me to believe that you are jealous of Minnie? I really would like you to be serious, if you don’t mind. We in this family have been Minnie’s family for twenty-five years. We are the only family she has got. We rather take her for granted, and we all impose on her a good deal, but we are very fond of her. She loves us all a great deal better than we deserve. She adores Jimmy. It is all on such a simple, humble plane that the most jealous person in the world couldn’t take exception to it. Be generous and leave the poor little thing alone. It’s going to pretty well kill her if you tear her up by the roots. Jimmy has never thought of her except as part of the family. Let her alone there, and he never will.” The smile had gone. The dark face was earnest.
Lois put up the rose she held and flicked him lightly on the cheek.
“You ought to have been called to the Bar, darling. I feel exactly like a jury. And now I’ve got to consider my verdict.”
“Reconsider it, Lois.”
She said,
“We’ll see. Come and help me do the flowers.”
CHAPTER 10
It was about a fortnight after this that Miss Maud Silver received a visitor. As he did not come by appointment, she was not expecting him. Her mind was, in fact, pleasantly occupied with family affairs. Her niece Ethel, whose husband was a bank manager in the Midlands, had written her a most gratifying account of the way her son Johnny was settling down at school. Very pleasant-very pleasant indeed. One did not like to think of a child being homesick. But Johnny was so sensible-a good steady lad and likely to do well.
Altogether, she felt deep cause for gratitude. Not only had she herself been preserved without injury throughout the war, but her flat in Montague Mansions had suffered no damage, for one really could not count a few broken windows. The curtains had suffered, it is true, but they had done long and honourable service, and she had now been able to replace them in just the right shade of blue to go with her carpet-that rather bright shade which she still called “peacock,” but which now went by the name of “petrol.” A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but a colour by such an ugly name as petrol lost half its charm, to the ear at any rate. Miss Silver continued to speak of her curtains as peacock blue.
The worn edge of the carpet was now very well hidden by the book-case, and the carpet itself would do for another two or three years, but she was contemplating new coverings for the waisted Victorian chairs with their wide laps, their bow legs, and their bright, carved walnut edges. She would have had them this summer if it had not been for Johnny going to school, but it had been a real pleasure to help Ethel with his outfit.
She sat very upright in one of the chairs that was going to be re-covered, precise and old-fashioned from the hair with its tightly curled fringe in front and its neat coils behind, to the small feet placed primly side by side. The hair was rigidly controlled by a net, and the feet enclosed in black thread stockings-in winter they would have been wool-and black beaded slippers. Where she procured the latter was a mystery as deep as any she had been called upon to solve in her professional career. Detective Sergeant Abbott of Scotland Yard, who was her devoted slave, declared it to be insoluble. For the rest, she wore a dress of artificial silk in a hard shade of brown with dreadful little orange and green dots and dashes disposed in aimless groups upon its surface. It had been new two years ago, and it was not wearing very well.
Frank Abbott hoped for its early decease. It was fastened at the neck by a bog-oak brooch in the form of a rose with a pearl at the centre. She also wore a thin gold chain supporting a pince-nez. As she only used glasses for fine print, the chain was looped to the left side of her bodice and fastened there with a gold bar brooch. Except for the fact that her skirt cleared the floor by several inches, she might have stepped directly out of a photograph-album of the late nineteenth century. That this was still her spiritual home was made abundantly clear by furniture of the middle fifties, and by the pictures which hung upon her patterned walls, these being reproductions of some of the most famous paintings of the Victorian age. From time to time she shifted them round, exchanging them with those which decorated her bedroom. At the moment “Bubbles” hung above the fireplace, with “The Black Brunswicker” and “The Monarch of the Glen” on either side, whilst “Hope.” “The Soul’s Awakening,” and “The Huguenot” decorated the other walls. The mantelshelf, the top of the book-case, and various occasional tables, were thronged with photographs in plush and silver frames. Sometimes the two were combined-silver filigree on plush. But the photographs were of the young-for the most part the very young. There were babies of all ages-the babies who might never have been born if Miss Silver had not intervened to bring some hidden cause of evil to light and deliver the innocent. The fathers and mothers of the babies were there too-strong young men and pretty girls, allowing some debt of gratitude to the little dowdy spinster with the neat features and the mouse-coloured hair. It was her portrait gallery and the record of her cases, and it grew fuller every year.