But, once Helen had seen to the housekeeping, the flowers, and accomplished a certain amount of typing, her hours were her own, and proved both empty and solitary. As she walked out with the dog, or drove “Fat Tom,” the bay pony, she noticed that the neighbourhood was well populated. Within half a mile were two large places, whose gates delivered and received motors. There were also various country houses, where she caught sight of green lawns, and gatherings of active white-clad figures, playing tennis. Helen Serle loved tennis, and was quite a notable performer.
Strange that not a soul had come to look them up. And yet they had been at Beckwell a whole month. The villagers, too, seemed funny people. Their manners were surly, their answers brief to rudeness. And how they stared! (Perhaps her rather daring French hats and very smart high-heeled shoes lent some colour to her husband’s lie.) Mrs. Serle was not unaccustomed to being looked at, nor did she disdain a certain amount of respectful admiration, but in the expression of these people’s eyes lay curiosity, aversion, and contempt. The servants of the cottage—two well-trained maids and a gardener-groom—had, at first, been civil and satisfactory. Now they were off-hand and almost insolent; and yet she treated them well, and gave little trouble. Indeed, she dusted the drawing-room and did the lamps herself, partly to fill up her time. Nevertheless, the cook scowled, Annie flounced and slammed doors, and once she had been overpowered by a suspicion that the groom-gardener had winked at her! She turned and confronted him with a flaming face—and he had never repeated this enormity.
Latterly Annie had been openly impertinent, and one day when her mistress asked her what she meant by saying, “Good enough for you!” with arms akimbo, she replied, “Oh, you know what I mean well enough, and only for Miss Mills and me bein’ with her so long, and my promisin’ I’d do my best, I’d have been out of this the very day you come in. Up to now I’ve always lived with respectable people, and I’ve got my own character to think of. And Jim—that’s my young man—says he don’t half like it!”
“What do you mean?” cried Helen, white with anger. “I insist on knowing!”
But Annie merely turned her back, and began to arrange the ornaments on the chimney-piece.
“Answer me, Annie.”
“What’s the good of telling you what you know?” said Annie over her shoulder.
“You cannot remain here!” said her mistress breathlessly. “You must leave at once. Go now and pack your things.”
“Only too glad to be out of it,” was Annie’s retort, as with a toss of her head she tramped from the room.
Julian Serle was deep in meditation over the particular neat insertion of a “purple patch,” when his wife burst in upon him in a condition of extraordinary excitement.