Part 78 (1/2)

His eye could not blaze like hers, but all his self-respect depended on his valour now, and with desperation he affronted her. She opened the door wider, and he stepped in, and at once began to wipe his boots on the mat with nervous particularity.

”Frightful morning!” he grinned.

”Yes,” she said. ”Is that your cab outside?”

He admitted that it was.

”Perhaps if we go upstairs,” she suggested.

Thanking her, he followed her upwards into the gloom at the head of the narrow stairs, and then along a narrow pa.s.sage. The house appeared quite as unfavourably by day as by night. It was shabby. All its tints had merged by use and by time into one tint, nondescript and unpleasant, in which yellow prospered. The drawing-room was larger than the dining-room by the poor width of the hall. It was a heaped, confused ma.s.s of chairs, sofas, small tables, draperies, embroideries, and valueless knick-knacks. There was no peace in it for the eye, neither on the walls nor on the floor. The gaze was driven from one ugliness to another without rest.

The fireplace was draped; the door was draped; the back of the piano was draped; and none of the dark suspicious stuffs showed a clear pattern.

The faded chairs were hidden by faded antimaca.s.sars; the little futile tables concealed their rickets under vague needlework, on which were displayed in straw or tinsel frames pale portraits of dowdy people who had stood like sheep before fifteenth-rate photographers. The mantelpiece and the top of the piano were thickly strewn with fragments of coloured earthenware. At the windows hung heavy dark curtains from great rings that gleamed gilt near the ceiling; and lest the light which they admitted should be too powerful it was further screened by greyish white curtains within them. The carpet was covered in most places by small rugs or bits of other carpets, and in the deep shadows beneath sofas and chairs and behind the piano it seemed to slip altogether out of existence into black nothingness. The room lacked ventilation, but had the appearance of having been recently dusted.

THREE.

Hilda closed the draped door with a mysterious, bitter, cynical smile.

”Sit down,” she said coldly.

”Last night,” Edwin began, without sitting down, ”when you mentioned the broker's man, were you joking, or did you mean it?”

She was taken aback.

”Did I say 'broker's man'?”

”Well,” said Edwin, ”you've not forgotten, I suppose.”

She sat down, with some precision of pose, on the princ.i.p.al sofa.

”Yes,” she said at length. ”As you're so curious. The landlords are in possession.”

”The bailiffs still here?”

”Yes.”

”But what are you going to do?”

”I'm expecting them to take the furniture away to-morrow, or Tuesday at the latest,” she replied.

”And then what?”

”I don't know.”

”But haven't you got any money?”

She took a purse from her pocket, and opened it with a show of impartial curiosity. ”Two-and-seven,” she said.

”Any servant in the house?”