So the neighbour, whose name was Mr. Thorpe, arrived on Jocelyn’s wedding night about nine o’clock in the restrained sitting-room of Almond Tree Cottage, determined to make his purpose clear. That he should be refused didn’t enter his head, for he had much to offer. He was far the richest man in the parish, his two daughters were married and out of the way, his house and cars were bigger than anybody’s, and he grew pineapples. He couldn’t help thinking, he couldn’t help knowing, that for a woman of over forty he was a catch, and he went into the room, past the reverent-eyed small maid who held the door open, expanding his chest. A poverty-stricken little room, he always considered, with nothing in it of the least account, except the lady.
Yes; except the lady. But what a lady. Not a grey hair in her head, which he had carefully examined when she wasn’t looking, nor, he would wager, any tooth that wasn’t exclusively her own. And a trim ankle; and a pretty wrist. Ruffles, too. He liked ruffles at a woman’s wrist. And able to talk about any mortal thing. Annie, poor creature, had made him look like a fool when he had his friends to dinner. This one would be the finest of the feathers in a cap which, he too gratefully acknowledged, was stuck full of them.
‘All alone, eh?’ he said cheerily. ‘That’s bad.’
‘I’m used to it,’ said Mrs. Luke, smilingly holding out her slender hand, on which a single ruby—or was it a garnet? probably a garnet—caught the light. She had on a wine-coloured, soft woollen dress that Jocelyn liked, and the ring and the dress went very well together.
A pretty picture; a perfect lady. Mr. Thorpe, determined to waste no time in making his purpose clear, bent his head and kissed the hand.
‘Being used to a bad thing doesn’t make it better, but worse,’ he said, drawing up the only other really comfortable chair—Jocelyn’s—and sitting down close to her.
And he was about to embark then and there on his proposal, for he hated waste of anything, including time, and Mrs. Luke was already drawing up her shoulders to her ears in an instinctive movement of defence, for she would have liked to have had longer to turn the thing over in her mind, and discover really whether his splendid illiteracy—it was so immense as to appear magnificent—would be a source of pleasure to her or suffering, whether the pleasure of filling up his mind’s emptiness would be greater than the pains of such an exertion, whether, in short, she hadn’t better refuse him, when the little maid came in with the silver salver she had been trained to present letters on, and held it out before her mistress.
‘Letters, eh?’ said Mr. Thorpe, nettled by this interruption. ‘I should give orders they’re to be left in the—well, you can’t call it a hall, can you, so let’s say passage.’
The little maid, alarmed, sidled out of the room.
‘I would indeed, if it weren’t that I can’t bear to wait a minute when it’s a letter from Jocelyn,’ said Mrs. Luke, holding the letter tight, for she saw it was from him. ‘You wouldn’t be able to wait either, would you,’ she went on, smiling more brightly even than usual, for the mere touch of the letter made her more bright, ‘for anything you loved.’