“A month, Ivy,” he repeated. “You must find out the sort of creature you’re marrying.”
“I shall never see you,” she pouted.
“You shall see me all day and every day, if you like. My secretary went for a holiday on Saturday. Do you remember once offering yourself for the position? I don’t mind now. You can tell your aunt and say you’re coming as a great favour to me. Then we shall see how quickly you get tired of me... Sit still, you little eel!”
Ivy had slipped on to the floor again and laid her head on his knees:
“Tired of you... Tired of you! I love you. And I can never thank you or be worthy of you—” She stopped abruptly and sprang up. “Eric! My darling!”
The taxi came to a standstill, and he helped her out. As they stood decorously on the steps of her father’s house, he looked at his watch and said:
“Eight hours ago you were respectfully calling me ‘Mr. Lane.’”
He saw her shivering; and her eyes filled with fear:
“Eight hours ago—seven and a half—I prayed that our train might have a collision... Is her ladyship expecting us, Henry?”
Though Ivy had only once described her home—and then in a single sentence—, one glance at the outside and another at the hall enabled Eric to deduce the character of the occupants and the moral atmosphere of the house. A young footman with two wound-stripes on his livery coat took his hat and asked whether he would like to wash before dinner. Ivy had already run upstairs to her room, and, as he followed the footman, Eric saw massive orderliness on every hand. In the dim hall stood a heavy oak table, flanked by two black oak chairs and surmounted by a presentation salver and a rack with leather-cased Bradshaw, Whittaker and Law List. It was painfully irregular, he felt, that doors, intended by the genius of orderliness to be shut, should have been left open; but he was fortunate in gaining a glimpse, through one, of mahogany side-board and massive dining-table set with eight heavy mahogany chairs and, through another, of glass-fronted fumed-oak book-cases, a double writing-table and red leather couches. The furniture seemed to have been bought in sets and ordered by post; the books—each surely an accepted classic, though Eric could see nothing of them but their calf backs—might well have been supplied by measure. The house was lighted by gas, and each room had its accredited box of matches. The all-pervading solemnity filled Eric with unseemly thoughts of irresponsible humour; he longed to transpose the match-boxes marked “HALL” and “COAT ROOM” and to see what would happen; over the basin, as he washed, was a mirror and shelf with two hair-brushes, one branded “J. F. M.” and the other “VISITORS.” Perhaps Gaymer had been detected changing the match-boxes; perhaps that was why he had been forbidden the house....