Miss Petheram’s account of the house, its actual dimensions, accommodation, and characteristics, has always been very vague, and since she refused information as to its number in the street, verification of these details has remained impossible. Perhaps it was a reasonably capacious, although doubtless not extensive, dwelling; perhaps, again, it was a confined and well-nigh stifling den. She remembered two things—first, its all-pervading dirt; secondly, the remarkable quality which (as she alleged) distinguished its atmosphere. She thought there were seven “enclosures,” this term being arrived at (after discussion) as a compromise between “rooms” and “pens”; and she knew that the windows of each of these enclosures were commanded by the windows of several other apparently similar and very neighbouring enclosures. Beyond this she could give no account of her first half-hour in the house; her exact recollection began when she was left alone in the enclosure on the first floor, which Harold asserted to be the drawing-room, Harold himself having gone downstairs to seek the old woman and elicit from her some information as to what were and what were not tenant’s fixtures in the said enclosure. “You can look about you,” he remarked cheerfully, as he left her, “and make up your mind where you’re going to have your favourite seat. Then you shall tell me, and I shall have the picture of you sitting there in my mind.” He pointed to a wooden chair, the only one then in the room. “Experiment with that chair,” he added, laughing. “I won’t be long, darling.”
Mechanically, without considering things which she obviously ought to have considered, Winifred sank into the designated seat, laid her parasol on a small table, and leant her elbows on the same piece of furniture as she held her face between her gloved hands. The atmosphere again asserted its peculiar quality; she rose for a moment and opened the window; fresh air was gained at the expense of spoilt gloves, and was weighted with the drawbacks of a baby’s cries and an inquisitive woman’s stare from over the way. Shutting the window again, she returned to her chair—the symbol of what was to be her favourite seat in days to come, her chosen corner in the house which had been the subject of so many talks and so many dreams. There were a great many flies in the room; the noise of adjacent humanity in street and houses was miscellaneous and penetrating; the air was very close. And this house was rather more expensive than their calculations had allowed. They had immensely enjoyed making those calculations down there in the country, under the old yew hedge and in sight of the flower beds beneath the library window. She remembered the day they did it. There was a cricket match in the meadow. Mildred and her husband brought the drag over, and Sir Barton came in his tandem. It was almost too hot in the sun, but simply delightful in the shade. She and Harold had had great fun over mapping out their four hundred a year and proving how much might be done with it—at least compared with anything they could want when once they had the great thing that they wanted.
The vision vanished; she was back in the dirty little room again; she caught up her parasol; a streak across the dust marked where it had lain on the table; she sprang up and twisted her frock round, craning her neck back; ah, that she had reconnoitred that chair! She looked at her gloves; then with a cry of horror she dived for her handkerchief, put it to her lips, and scrubbed her cheeks; the handkerchief came away soiled, dingy, almost black. This last outrage overcame her; the parasol dropped on the floor, she rested her arms on the table and laid her face on them, and she burst into sobs, just as she used to in childhood when her brothers crumpled a clean frock or somebody spoke to her roughly. And between her sobs she cried, almost loudly, very bitterly: “Oh, it’s too mean and dirty and horrid!”
Harold had stolen softly upstairs, meaning to surprise the girl he loved, perhaps to let a snatched kiss be her first knowledge of his return. He flushed red, and his lips set sternly; he walked across the room to her with a heavy tread. She looked up, saw him, and knew that her exclamation had been overheard.
“What in the world is the matter?” he asked in a tone of cold surprise.
It was very absurd—she couldn’t stop crying; and from amid her weeping nothing more reasonable, nothing more adequate, nothing less trivial would come than confused murmurs of “My frock, Harold!” “My parasol!” “Oh, my face, my gloves!” He smiled contemptuously. “Don’t you see?” she exclaimed, exhibiting the gloves and parasol.
“See what? Are you crying because the room’s dirty?” He paused and then added, “I’m sorry you think it mean and horrid. Very sorry, Winifred.”
Offence was deep and bitter in his voice; he looked at her with a sort of disgust; she stopped sobbing and regarded him with a gaze in which fright and expectation seemed mingled, as though there were a great peril, and just one thing that might narrowly avert it. But his eyes were very hard. She dried her tears, and then forlornly scrubbed her cheeks again. He watched her with hostile curiosity, appearing to think her a very strange spectacle. Presently he spoke. “I thought you loved me. Oh, I daresay you thought so too till I came into competition with your new frock. I beg pardon—I must add your gloves and your parasol. As for the house, it’s no doubt mean and horrid; we were going to be poor, you see.” He laughed scornfully, as he added, “You might even have had to do a little dusting yourself now and then! Horrible!”
“I just sat there and looked at him.” That was Winifred’s own account of her behaviour. It is not very explicit and leaves room for much conjecture as to what her look said or tried to say. But whatever the message was he did not read it. He was engrossed in his own indignation, readier to hurt than to understand, full of his own wrong, of the mistake he had made, of her extraordinary want of love, of courage, of the high soul. Very likely all this was a natural enough state of mind for him to be in. Justice admits his provocation; the triviality of her spoken excuses gave his anger only too fine an opportunity. He easily persuaded himself that here was a revelation of the real woman, a flash of light that showed her true nature, showing, too, the folly of his delusion about her. Against all this her look and what it asked for had very little chance, and she could find no words that did not aggravate her offence.
“This is really rather a ludicrous scene,” he went on. “Is there any use in prolonging it?” He waited for her to speak, but she was still tongue-tied. “The caretaker needn’t be distressed by seeing the awful effects of her omission to dust the room; but, if you’re composed enough, we might as well go.” He looked round the room. “You’ll be glad to be out of this,” he ended.