An Autumn Sowing

by E. F. Benson

‘Well, I hope you’ll not say or do anything to put him off,’ she said, the practical side of the question claiming her. ‘I’m sure it’s high time Alice was married, and never yet has she taken to a young man as she’s taken to Mr Silverdale.’

Poor Keeling’s head whirled: a moment ago his wife had said that the two were great friends only on the spiritual plane, now she was saying precisely what she had begun by contradicting. He was satisfied, however, that he had her true opinion at last. It did not appear to him to be worth anything, but there it was. He got up.

‘If I thought Silverdale had the slightest intention of marrying Alice,’ he said, ‘I shouldn’t mind how much he pawed her. But I don’t believe he has. I’ve a good mind to ask him.’

‘Indeed, I hope you will do nothing so indelicate,’ said she.

A humorous twinkle came into his eye.

‘I wish you would flirt with him yourself, Emmeline,’ he said, ‘and take him away from Alice. Perhaps you do: some of these clergy flirt with every decent-looking woman within reach, and you’re twice as handsome as Alice.’

This also was dreadfully indelicate, but it is not to be wondered at that Mrs Keeling cast a glance into the looking glass, where her reflection looked out like a Naiad amid the water-lilies, even while she reproved her husband for the broadness of his suggestion.

‘I never heard of such talk,’ said she. ‘Pray don’t let us have any more of it. For shame!’

But she went up to her bed in a far better temper than she would otherwise have done, and quite abandoned any idea of lying awake to punish him for his previous brutality.

He went back to his library when his wife left him, where an intangible something of Norah’s presence lingered. There was the chair she had sat in, there was her note to him about her brother on the table, and the blotting paper on which she had blotted the entries she had made on the catalogue cards. He took up the top sheet and held it to the light, so as to be able to read the titles of the books. There were the authors’ names in big firm capitals, the book-titles in smaller writing but legible. She had done a lot to-night, for he remembered having put clean blotting paper for her, and the sheet was covered with impressions. Here she had been sitting at work, while he talked and listened to those people in the drawing-room who meant nothing to him....