Chapter 24

There appeared to be no tea-table. Chesterton, her arms stretched taut holding the heavy tray, looked round. Evidently tea up there wasn’t usual.

‘Put it in the window,’ said Wemyss, jerking his head towards the writing-table.

‘Oh——’ began Lucy quickly; and stopped.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Wemyss.

‘Won’t it—be draughty?’

‘Nonsense. Draughty. Do you suppose I’d tolerate windows in my house that let in draughts?’

Chesterton, resting a corner of the tray on the table, was sweeping a clear space for it with her hand. Not that much sweeping was needed, for the table was big and all that was on it was the notepaper which earlier in the afternoon had been scattered on the floor, a rusty pen or two, some pencils whose ends had been gnawed as the pencils of a child at its lessons are gnawed, a neglected-looking inkpot, and a grey book with Household Accounts in dark lettering on its cover.

Wemyss watched her while she arranged the tea-things.

‘Take care, now—take care,’ he said, when a cup rattled in its saucer.

Chesterton, who had been taking care, took more of it; and le trop being l’ennemi du bien she was so unfortunate as to catch her cuff in the edge of the plate of bread and butter.

The plate tilted up; the bread and butter slid off; and only by a practised quick movement did she stop the plate from following the bread and butter and smashing itself on the floor.

‘There now,’ said Wemyss. ‘See what you’ve done. Didn’t I tell you to be careful? It isn’t,’ he said, turning to Lucy, ‘as if I hadn’t told her to be careful.’

Chesterton, on her knees, was picking up the bread and butter which lay—a habit she had observed in bread and butter under circumstances of this kind—butter downwards.

‘You will fetch a cloth,’ said Wemyss.

‘Yes sir.’

‘And you will cut more bread and butter.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘That makes two plates of bread and butter wasted to-day entirely owing to your carelessness. They shall be stopped out of your——Lucy, where are you going?’

‘To fetch a handkerchief. I must have a handkerchief, Everard. I can’t for ever use yours.’

‘You’ll do nothing of the kind. Lizzie will bring you one. Come back at once. I won’t have you running in and out of the room the whole time. I never knew any one so restless. Ring the bell and tell Lizzie to get you one. What is she for, I should like to know?’

He then resumed and concluded his observations to Chesterton. ‘They shall be stopped out of your wages. That,’ he said, ‘will teach you.’

And Chesterton, who was used to this, and had long ago arranged with the cook that such stoppages should be added on to the butcher’s book, said, ‘Yes sir.’

When she had gone—or rather withdrawn, for a plain word like gone doesn’t justly describe the noiseless decorum with which Chesterton managed the doors of her entrances and exits—and when Lizzie, too, had gone after bringing a handkerchief, Lucy supposed they would now have tea; she supposed the moment had at last arrived for her to go and sit in that window.

The table was at right angles to it, so that sitting at it you had nothing between one side of you and the great pane of glass that reached nearly to the floor. You could look sheer down on to the flags below. She thought it horrible, gruesome to have tea there, and the very first day, before she had had a moment’s time to get used to things. Such detachment on the part of Everard was either just stark wonderful—she had already found noble explanations for it—or it was so callous that she had no explanation for it at all; none, that is, that she dared think of. Once more she decided that his way was really the best and simplest way to meet the situation. You took the bull by the horns. You seized the nettle. You cleared the air. And though her images, she felt, were not what they might be, neither was anything else that day what it might be. Everything appeared to reflect the confusion produced by Wemyss’s excessive lucidity of speech.