The Countess of Lowndes Square, and Other Stories

by E. F. Benson

“Capital!” said Philip. “That does the trick.”

There was silence for a minute or two as the novelists ate the fresh asparagus, and then Phœbe said:

“To-morrow, dear, you will have to come and work with me in the drawing-room. The maids must begin their spring cleaning, and indeed it should have been done a month ago. We will have lunch and dinner in the hall while they do this room, and the day after they will do the drawing-room, and I will do my work with you here.”

Philip’s fingers were stealing towards the last stick of asparagus, but at this they were suddenly arrested.

“Ah, spring cleaning!” he said with assumed cheerfulness. “They just dust the books, I suppose, and sweep the floor.”

She laughed. She had Eva’s celebrated laugh, which was like a peal of silver bells.

“Indeed, they do much more than that,” she said. “Every book is taken out and dusted; they move all the furniture, and clean it all, back and front and top and bottom. But you won’t know a thing about it, except that our dear Elizabethan dining-room will look so spick and span that Elizabeth herself might have dinner in it. Some day we must do an historical novel, you and I. Think what a setting we have here!”

Though the day was so deliciously warm, it felt rather chilly in the evening, or so Philip thought, and a fire was lit in the drawing-room. Phœbe had a slight headache, and thus it was quite natural that she should go to bed early, leaving her husband sitting up. As soon as he had heard the door of her bedroom close, he went softly to the dining-room, and again mounting the library-steps, took down the razor-blade from the cache which this morning had seemed so secure, and went back with it into the drawing-room. It would have been terrible if Jane, the housemaid, who always sang at her work, should to-morrow have suddenly interrupted her warblings with a wild scream, as she dusted the top of the bookcase. Perhaps the razor-blade would have embedded itself in her hand; perhaps, even more tragically, her flapping duster would have flicked it into her smiling and songful face, and have buried it deep in her eye or her open mouth. But now this gruesome domestic tragedy had been averted by Philip’s ingenious perception of the chilliness of the evening, and with a sigh of relief he dropped the fatal blade into the core of the fire.

He went softly up to bed, feeling very tired after this emotional day. Now that his anxiety was allayed he would have liked to tell Phœbe how silly he had been, for never before had he had a secret from her. But then one of Phœbe’s most sacred idols in life was her husband’s stern masculine common sense that (like Algernon’s) was never the prey of foolish fears and unfounded tremors. He hated the idea of smashing up this cherished image of Phœbe’s, and determined to keep his unaccountable failing to himself. Phœbe should never know. Besides, it would vex her very much to be told that her present to him had occasioned him such uneasiness.

He fell asleep at once, and woke in the grey dawn of the morning to the sound, as it were, of clashing cymbals of terror in his brain.... The housemaid would clear up the fireplace in the drawing-room, and there among the ashes, like a snake in the grass, would be the keen tooth of the razor-blade. Perhaps already Philip was too late, and before he could get down a cry of pain would ring through the silent house, betokening that Jane’s life-blood was already spreading over the new Kidderminster carpet, and he sprang from his bed and with bare feet went hurriedly down to the drawing-room.