'Good-bye,' he said shortly, stooping and giving the top of her head a brief, disgusted kiss. The way the consequences of folly fell always on somebody else and punished him.... Wemyss could hardly give his Times the proper attention in the train for thinking of it.
That day Miss Entwhistle, aware of the return from the honeymoon on the Friday, and of the week-end to be spent at The Willows, and of the coming up to Lancaster Gate early on the Monday morning for the inside of the week, waited till twelve o'clock, so as to allow plenty of time for Wemyss no longer to be in the house, and then telephoned. Lucy and she were to lunch together. Lucy had written to say so, and Miss Entwhistle wanted to know if she wouldn't soon be round. She longed extraordinarily to fold that darling little child in her arms again. It seemed an eternity since she saw her radiantly disappearing in the taxi; and the letters she had hoped to get during the honeymoon hadn't been letters at all, but picture postcards.
A man's voice answered her,—not Wemyss's. It was, she recognised, the voice of the pale servant, who with his wife attended to the Lancaster Gate house. They inhabited the basement, and emerged from it up into the light only if they were obliged. Bells obliged them to emerge, and Wemyss's bath and breakfast, and after his departure to his office the making of his bed; but then the shades gathered round them again till next morning, because for a long while now once he had left the house he hadn't come back till after they were in bed. His re-marriage was going to disturb them, they were afraid, and the pale wife had forebodings about meals to be cooked; but at the worst the disturbance would only be for the three inside days of the week, and anything could be borne when one had from Friday to Monday to oneself; and as the morning went on, and no one arrived from Strorley, they began to take heart, and had almost quite taken it when the telephone bell rang.
It didn't do it very often, for Wemyss had his other addresses, at the office, at the club, so that Twite, wanting in practice, was not very good at dealing with it. Also the shrill bell vibrating through the empty house, so insistent, so living, never failed to agitate both Twites. It seemed to them uncanny; and Mrs. Twite, watching Twite being drawn up by it out of his shadows, like some quiet fish sucked irresistibly up to gasp on the surface, was each time thankful that she hadn't been born a man.
She always went and listened at the bottom of the kitchen stairs, not knowing what mightn't happen to Twite up there alone with that voice, and on this occasion she heard the following:
'No, ma'am, not yet, ma'am.'
'I couldn't say, ma'am.'
'No, no news, ma'am.'
'Oh yes, ma'am, on Friday night.'
'Yes, ma'am, first thing Saturday.'