So yet another absence in her story of absences began.
She filled it chiefly with work. She rarely got home before ten, and, save on Saturdays and Sundays, had to leave Jimmy entirely to the young woman who had succeeded Céleste. Billy had left town, and had probably gone to stay with Roy in Shropshire. Of Councillor Causton she now saw little. She wished she could save more money. Jimmy was now five and a half years old.
Then, in October, Jim returned from Scotland. Louie half expected that it would be she who would have to leave now, but this did not happen. Not that she saw much of him; he did not come until eleven, and went home again for tea. Sometimes, after he had left, she or Mr. Stonor had to ring him up at his house in Well Walk, Hampstead; for the rest, he remained in high seclusion. She was glad it was so. A half absence such as this had not all absence's pangs, nor was his half presence too much perturbation; she could take a command with calmness, and she had nothing but commands to take. She knew by this time that he had a second child, a little girl, and that seemed definitely to close and bar the door against any wild and lawless hopes she might ever have entertained. And so things went on until early in December.
The thing that entirely changed their course may have seemed an accident to Jim, but a little reflection made it plain enough to Louie. She had not seen Evie Jeffries since that afternoon when they had met at the step of the bus opposite the Adam and Eve; and Evie's whole face and manner gave the lie to the story she told when, at a little after three o'clock one afternoon, Louie came upon her in the counting-house of the Consolidation itself. Near the table with the calculating machines Louie heard a clerk whisper: "Mrs. Jeffries!" Forty pairs of eyes were furtively watching her over desk-rails and glass screens. Some of the clerks even made errands in order to get a better view of her. If she wanted her husband she had only to ask to be taken to his room at once, but she stood, a slender figure in new black furs, by a waiting-room door. Then, seeing Louie, she almost ran to her.
"Oh, how are you?" she cried, in an acquired voice, touching Louie's hand then dropping it again. "Really, this place almost terrifies me! I came to fetch my husband home to tea—the car's outside—but of course I know I'm early. I'd such a lot of shopping to do, but I got through it quicker than I thought. Well, how are you?"
It seemed to Louie that she did not do it very well; the manner of the grande dame was the last thing she ought to have attempted. As Evie put up her hand as if it held an invisible quizzing-glass, Louie wondered whether she had come primarily to see her husband at all.
"Really, this is stupendous!" she said. "I wonder if you could show me round—that is, unless I'm interfering with your duties? Do tell me what these things are!"
They were the mechanical calculators; her comment on them was: "How quaint!" Followed by eyes, Louie took her to the lifts; she said they must have one like that put into the new house they had taken in Iddesleigh Gate. "It used to belong to Baron Stillhausen—you've heard of Baron Stillhausen, the famous diplomat?" she said. From the lifts Louie took her to the department where the girls in dolly-caps pulled at the snaky telephone plugs. "Oh," she exclaimed, "so this is where you talk to my husband in the evenings from, is it?"... Louie had a little start.... She answered, however, that the private line was in another place, and led the way. No, Evie Jeffries oughtn't to attempt this kind of thing; her touch was too heavy. She told more about herself than she ascertained about anybody else. As they left the private line Louie somehow had the impression that Evie Jeffries was counting the paces from Louie's chair to her husband's room.
She returned to her own place slowly. She wished Evie Jeffries had not come. Her coming seemed all at once to have diminished Louie's composure; it was as if a closed question had been clumsily opened again. "Where do you live? I should like to come and see you," Evie had said, as they had parted at the door of Jim's room; and that was odd, since for quite a number of years Evie Jeffries, had given no sign that she wanted to visit her. Kitty Windus, yes; Miriam Levey, yes; but she had not wanted to see Louie Causton. But she wanted to see Louie now, and had come that afternoon, Louie was now convinced, expressly to see her. Why? Had Jim been talking? Had Kitty and Miriam Levey been talking? Louie did not know. She only knew that she had been settled and at peace and was now so no longer.
And through it all shone an unquenchable recollection—the recollection of how she had once stumbled upon Evie Soames, not in wonderful furs, asking for her lordly husband, but dressed in a skirt and blouse, cheek to cheek in a dark back room with a fancy-stationer's son.