Perhaps she tried us all rather hard. Money seemed to melt in her hands; and, though I did not grudge her my last penny if it was going to turn her thoughts, I am not ashamed to confess that I have reached an age where I set great store by my personal comfort. When you have lived for thirty years under the same vine and fig-tree, you begin to regard your home as a frame and setting which you are not too anxious to share with any one; hitherto my guests, when any have done me the honour to make my house their own, have recognized that the hostess has the first claim on their consideration. Not so Phyllida, who seems to have been brought up in a very different school. She was ruthless in her unpunctuality at meals and in her general disregard of every one else's convenience; plans were chopped and changed up to the last moment, and there were times when I felt that she was deliberately making everything as difficult as possible—almost as though the absurd old feud had not been forgotten and I had put myself at her mercy. More than anything else I felt the loss of the car. They used it so unmercifully that I hourly expected the man to give notice; and in the meantime poor Aunt Ann was left to go by taxi—when she could find one.
I ought never to have lent it? My dear, you are preaching to the converted, but I have a reason different from yours. I was standing helplessly outside Covent Garden one night, when a taxi providentially drove up and I got into it. Only when I was half-way home did I remember that I had not told the man where to take me. Laugh, if you will; but I have never been so frightened! The wildest stories of kidnapping and robbery surged into my head. I was wearing my tiara, and the man had made a bee-line for me... Yet we were driving the shortest way to Mount Street, and the mystery was not explained until the man—with delightful and most unexpected civility—jumped down from the box, opened the door and stood cap in hand, waiting to help me out. Almost as though one had been Royalty...
"You have forgotten me, Lady Ann?," he asked.
And then I'm not sure that the second shock wasn't worse than the first. Colonel Butler! Phyllida's soldier-hero, driving a cab! He had won a Military Cross and a D.S.O.—with a bar, I believe; he had always seemed a manly, straightforward young fellow—and here he was driving a cab! "This—this—" I felt myself apostrophizing Phyllida, Brackenbury, that poor fool Ruth—"this is what I've saved you from." ... And then one had a certain revulsion of feeling: the pity of it! ... And then stark horror! If Phyllida met him! Not then; I knew she was at a dance with Will and would not be back for hours, but at any moment when I was not there to protect her from herself. I recalled her dreadful threat that, if she saw or heard of Hilary Butler, she would fling herself into his arms and beg him to marry her...
"But—of course I remember you," I said.
He smiled—without embarrassment of any kind—and walked up the steps with me.
"Have you a key?," he asked, "or shall I ring?"
He spoke so nicely... If you like, just a touch of what I think must be West Country; but, when things were at their worst and I felt that we had to be prepared for anything, it was a slight consolation to know that he could easily have it drilled out of him... I could have done the same for Ruth twenty-three years ago, but she seemed to pride herself on her provincialism.
Now I wonder what you would have done... When Phyllida was nursing him at the hospital—or just afterwards—, he was always in Mount Street, lunching, dining; before they took to going about by themselves quite so much, we had all been to the play, he had seen us home—just like this—and asked me—just like this—whether I had my key or whether he should ring... There was no one at home; even Arthur was in the country. I felt I couldn't suddenly freeze...
"I have my key, thanks," I said. "Won't you come in for a moment?"