“I didn’t really mean” Frances began.
“Don’t give me that. “Course you mean it. No respec’. No respec” at all. Ninnies like you need a lesson to teach “em respec’. Sh’ll I tell you when you’re going to die, and how? Or when your Edward’s going to die?”
“No, no, please!” said Frances.
“Ha! Don’t believe me but you’re afraid to hear,” observed the Seora.
“I’m sorry, really I am. I was upset. Please let me” Frances began, but the Seora was not to be easily mollified.
“Farce! Cheat!” she muttered again. “Ninny!” she added forcibly, and then fell silent.
The silence lengthened, but the grip on Frances” wrist did not relax. Presently, curiosity drove her to a swift upward glance. She had a glimpse of a quite different expression on the Seora’s face more alarming in some indefinite way, than her former anger. She appeared to have had some kind of inspiration. Her hand clutched Frances” wrists more tightly.
“Show you, that’s what,” she said, decisively. “Sick of ninnies. Jus” show you Look in the crysh... crystal!”
Frances kept her eyes down. The hand on her wrist twisted painfully.
“Look in the crystal!” commanded the Seora.
Unwillingly Frances lifted her head a little, and looked at it. It was a quite uninteresting lump of glass, showing a number of complicated and distorted reflections.
“This is silly,” she said. “I can’t see anything there. You’ve no right to”
“Be quiet! Jus” look!” snapped the Seora.
Frances went on looking, wondering at the same time how she was going to get herself out of this. Even if she were able to pull herself free, it was impossible in the small room for her to reach the door without coming within reach of the Seora’s grasp again and there’d be delay in getting the door open, too. If Then her thoughts broke off as she noticed that the crystal was no longer clear. It seemed to have become fogged, rather as if it had been breathed upon. But the foggy look grew thicker as she watched until it was like smoke wreathing inside it. Queer! Some trick of the old woman’s, of course… Some kind of hypnotic effect which made it seem to grow bigger and bigger… It appeared to widen out and out as she watched it until there was nothing at all anywhere but convolving whorls of fog…
Then, like a flash, it was gone, and she was sitting in her chair, looking at the clear crystal.
The grip on her arm was gone, too; and so, when she looked up, was the Seora…
Frances snatched up her bag, and made for the door. No sound came from the inner room as she tiptoed across. She opened the door carefully, closed it quietly behind her, and skipped swiftly away down the stairs.
A very unpleasant experience, Frances told herself, walking briskly away. In fact, being held there like that against her will was the sort of thing one ought to tell a policeman about; probably it ranked as assault, or something quite serious, really… Still not quite certain whether she was wanting to see a policeman or not, she emerged from her thoughts, and looked about her.
In the very first glance she made a discovery which drove such frivolous subjects as policemen right out of her mind. It was that everyone else in sight who had decided that the time for cotton had arrived was clad in a frock very much shorter and very much narrower than her own. She stared at them, bewildered. She must have had an inconceivable preoccupation with her own affairs not to have realised that there had been such a radical change of line. She paused for a moment in front of a shop window to observe the reflection of the blue and white striped cotton frock that she had thought good for another summer. It looked terrible; just as if she had been upholstered. Another glance from it to the other frocks made her go hot with embarrassment: they must all be thinking she had come out wrapped in a bedspread Clearly, there was one thing to be done about that, and done at once She started to walk hurriedly in the direction of Weilberg’s Modes Frances reemerged into the street half an hour later, feeling considerably soothed. The congenial occupation of shopping, and the complete clearing of mental decks required for concentration on the choice of a creation in an amusing pattern of palm-trees and pineapples, had helped to put Sefiora Rosa into proper perspective. Considered calmly, over an icecream-soda, the affair dwindled quite a lot and her own part in it came to seem curiously spineless. Her intention of informing the police faded. If there were a charge, and she had to give evidence, she would scarcely be able to help exhibiting herself first as a fool for having gone into the place at all, and then as a nitwit for staying when she did not want to. Moreover, it would very likely be reported in the papers, and she would hate that so would Edward Which brought one back to thinking of Edward… And to wondering whether one had perhaps behaved like a silly little fool there, too. After all, he had known Mildred for years and years and just two or three dances… People said one ought to be careful about not feeling too possessive… All the same, just a few days after he had become engaged… No, it didn’t do to look cheap, or easygoing, either… And yet… Really, life could be very difficult.
Though Frances decided that she would walk home, she did not consciously choose her route. That is to say, she did not tell herself: “I’ll go by St. James’s Avenue, past that house that we decided would just suit us.” It simply was that her feet happened to carry her that way.
Coming nearer to the house, she walked more slowly. There was a moment when she almost decided to turn back and go round by another way. But she squashed that. One could not go about for ever avoiding every reminder: a person had to get used to things, sooner or later. She walked resolutely on. Presently she was able to see the upper floor of the house above the hedge. A comfortable, sensible looking, friendly house: not new, but modern, and without being moderne. It gave her a little knot high in her chest to see it again now. Then, as more of it came into view, the knot gave way to a feeling of dismay. There were curtains in the windows that had been blank, the hedges had been trimmed, the board which had announced “For Sale” was gone.
She paused at the front gate. An astonishing amount had been done to the place in the few days since she had last seen it. It looked altogether fresher. The flowerbeds in the front garden were bright with tulips, the fig-tree against the side wall had been cut and tied back, the windows shone. The doors of the garage were open, and a comfortable-looking car stood on the concrete apron in front. The lawn had been closely mown. On it, a little girl of four or so, dressed in a blue frock, was conducting a tea-party with earnest admonitions to the guests who consisted of three sizes of teddybear and a golliwog.
Frances was filled with a sharp indignation. The house had been almost hers: she had quite decided that it was the one that her father was going to give them for a wedding present and now it had been snatched away without a word of warning. It might not have been so bad if it had not somehow contrived already to look so aggressively settled… Not that it actually mattered, of course, now that she had finished with Edward… All the same, there was a feeling of having been cheated in some way that one did not quite understand The little girl on the lawn became aware of someone at the gate. She broke off scolding the golliwog to look up. She dropped the miniature cup and saucer that she was holding, and started to run towards Frances.
“Mummy!” she called.
Frances looked around and behind her. There was no one there. Then she bent down instinctively as the small figure hurtled itself toward her. The little girl flung her arms round her neck.