They walked about the town. They lunched and shopped. They sat in the
Park. They kept on looking at the clock-tower.
At the bookseller's in the Market-place she bought a second-hand copy of
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass….
A black-grey drive between bushes of smutty laurel and arbutus. A black-grey house of big cut stones that stuck out. Gables and bow windows with sharp freestone facings that stuck out. You waited in a drawing-room stuffed with fragile mahogany and sea-green plush. Immense sea-green acanthus leaves, shaded in myrtle green, curled out from the walls. A suggestion of pictures heaved up from their places by this vigorous, thrusting growth.
Curtains, cream-coloured net, sea-green plush, veiled the black-grey walks and smutty lawns of the garden.
While she contemplated these things the long hand of the white marble tombstone clock moved from the hour to the quarter.
She was reading the inscription, in black letters, on the golden plinth:
"Presented to Thomas Smythe-Caulfield, Esqr., M.P., by the Council and
Teachers of St. Paul's Schools, Durlingham"—"Presented"—when Mrs.
Smythe-Caulfield came in.
A foolish, overblown, conceited face. Grey hair arranged with art and science, curl on curl. Three-cornered eyelids, hutches for small, malevolently watching eyes. A sharp, insolent nose. Fish's mouth peering out above the backward slope of cascading chins.
Mrs. Smythe-Caulfield shook hands at a sidelong arm's-length, not looking at you, holding Miss Kendal in her sharp pointed stare. They were Kate and Eleanor: Eleanor and Kate.
"You're going to the lecture?"
"If it had been at three instead of eight—"