She did not hate Deb. She did not love her either—at least, not in any tender lullaby ways. If she exulted in Deb’s happiness, promoted it wherever possible, defended her against aggressive comment, nevertheless she was curiously aware all the time that the relations between herself and Deb had not reached completion; were hovering on the verge of something fundamental and savage of either love or hatred—she did not know. Meanwhile Deb, in her lordly childishness, was heartily fond of Aunt Stel; and people remarked how nice it was that Miss Marcus and her niece were almost like sisters together!
It was Stella who arranged that they should temporarily move into a boarding-house till Mr Marcus was able to ascertain more exactly what his very reduced income was likely to be. Some of his money was invested abroad, and nobody knew how long the war would last.... It was best not to enter upon a definite mode of living just now; and she did not care about house-keeping in apartments; their own house, or nothing.
Montagu Hall in South Kensington would do very well; she and Deb were each to have a small single room; Ferdinand shared a double bedroom with his father, who required a certain amount of attention and nursing. Richard was going to spend Christmas with the Dunnes, and therefore need not be considered till the Easter holidays; and perhaps by then....
Stella Marcus, for all her caustic, jesting shrewdness, was not aware that those who once acquire the boarding-house habit will continue to say from season to season, from anniversary to anniversary, from year to year: “Perhaps by then ...;” will never own that they have settled down to unsettlement.
They drew up with all their baggage at about five o’clock on the second of January. As the front door was opened to them, a voice from the hall rasped out into the foggy air:
“—I like a dog to be a dog, not—Shut that door, can’t you?... Oh, I see——”
Three men were standing about in the hall, smoking. The owner of the rasp also possessed a long domed head, crude pink where the hair had worn away on top, and a face of the same nursery pink, ploughed by implacable lines of opinion and ill-humour. He stopped his complaint, and stared with curiosity at the newcomers passing through the hall.