Chapter 19

The wind made more noise than ever at the top of the house, and when Wemyss tried to open the door to Vera’s sitting-room it blew back on him.

‘Well I’m damned,’ he said, giving it a great shove.

‘Why?’ asked Lucy nervously.

‘Come in, come in,’ he said impatiently, pressing the door open and pulling her through.

There was a great flapping of blinds and rattling of blind cords, a whirl of sheets of notepaper, an extra wild shriek of the wind, and then Wemyss, hanging on to the door, shut it and the room quieted down.

‘That slattern Lizzie!’ he exclaimed, striding across to the fireplace and putting his finger on the bell-button and keeping it there.

‘What has she done?’ asked Lucy, standing where he had left her just inside the door.

‘Done? Can’t you see?’

‘You mean’—she could hardly get herself to mention the fatal thing—’you mean—the window?’

‘On a day like this!’

He continued to press the bell. It was a very loud bell, for it rang upstairs as well as down in order to be sure of catching Lizzie’s ear in whatever part of the house she might be endeavouring to evade it, and Lucy, as she listened to its strident, persistent summons of a Lizzie who didn’t appear, felt more and more on edge, felt at last that to listen and wait any longer was unbearable.

‘Won’t you wear it out?’ she asked, after some moments of nothing happening and Wemyss still ringing.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t look at her. His finger remained steadily on the button. His face was extraordinarily like the old man’s in the enlarged photograph downstairs. Lucy wished for only two things at that moment, one was that Lizzie shouldn’t come, and the other was that if she did she herself might be allowed to go and be somewhere else.

‘Hadn’t—hadn’t the window better be shut?’ she suggested timidly presently, while he still went on ringing and saying nothing—’else when Lizzie opens the door won’t all the things blow about again?’

He didn’t answer, and went on ringing.

Of all the objects in the world that she could think of, Lucy most dreaded and shrank from that window; nevertheless she began to feel that as Everard was engaged with the bell and apparently wouldn’t leave it, it behoved her to put into practice her resolution not to be a fool but to be direct and wholesome, and go and shut it herself. There it was, the fatal window, huge as the one in the bedroom below and the one in the library below that, yawning wide open above its murderous low sill, with the rain flying in on every fresh gust of wind and wetting the floor and the cushions of the sofa and even, as she could see, those sheets of notepaper off the writing-table that had flown in her face when she came in and were now lying scattered at her feet. Surely the right thing to do was to shut the window before Lizzie opened the door and caused a second convulsion? Everard couldn’t, because he was ringing the bell. She could and she would; yes, she would do the right thing, and at the same time be both simple and courageous.