The one intensified the other. An outcast from the auspices of middle-class propriety, she was driven into the refuge of her queer fantastic world. She sought that refuge fanatically, it was a facet of her vindictiveness. From out of that world of shadows she should, some day, thrust the rapier of mischief into the paunch of their gross solidity. It was all a little confused in her mind. But she felt that she owned, by right of citizenship—unshared citizenship, and consequent sovereignty, a sovereignty like that of Adam in Eden—she felt that she owned those privileges which had always given to the hero of mythical combat an advantage so preponderatingly unfair and so divine: the cap of invisibility, the armour that no sword could pierce, the sword that could pierce all armour, the winged shoes, the nightingale for counsellor, the philtre of oblivion, the mirror of prophecy. And at night, flitting round her house or down into her shop, to the echo of her own low laughter, now masked, now sandalled, now casqued within a head incongruous to the body and more incongruous to the feet, like the unfolding in a game of drawing Consequences, she knew herself elusive, evanescent, protean.
But no one must know, no one must suspect.
VIII
It was on an evening in December that Bertie’s letter came. She was alone in the shop when she heard the click of the letterbox, and, getting the letter out, she instantly recognized the writing, and her heart, for a second, ceased to beat. She stood holding the letter, incredulous, and strangely afraid. Without knowing in exactly what way the opportunity would come to her, she had never for one instant doubted that somehow or other it would come. She tore the flap and read:
“My dear Alice,—
“It is now some forty years since that terrible and painful scene which ended in our separation, and I think you will agree with me that so many years should have sufficed to heal our differences. We are both, my dear sister, past the prime of our life, and it is my earnest wish (as I trust it may be yours also) that a reconciliation should sweeten the advent of old age. I write, therefore, to propose that we take advantage of this season of good-will to bury the feud which has so long severed us. Our father and mother, as you must be well aware, have long since gone to their rest; but I remain (an old fellow now), and my dear wife and Emily and her husband. Would you give us a welcome if we came to visit you this Christmas-tide? I will add no entreaty, but leave the rest to the dictates of your heart.—Your brother,
“Albert.”
She recognized Bertie’s style; he had always been partial to books. She was convulsed by an inward laughter. So they had got wind of her riches! So they had an eye on her will! So her prosperity might sanction, at last, her discreditable trade! Would she welcome them, indeed? They should see how she would welcome them. Bertie, his wife, Emily, her husband—that would make four. She would have them all. There was plenty of room, fortunately, in the old house upstairs. She would have them on Christmas-eve. For a clear day, Christmas-day, she would have them to herself; all to herself! Her mind worked rapidly. She sat perched on a stool beside the counter, nibbling the tips of her fingers and making her plans. Her excitement was such that she found it difficult to keep the plans in her head consecutive; but she knew it was urgent that she should do so; she grabbed back her intentions as they tried to evade her. The envelope—Bertie had addressed her as “Miss Lydia Protheroe.” He must have winced as he saw himself confronted by the necessity of writing that name. Bertie must be sixty-five now; Emily must be fifty-nine. So Emily had married—the little sister; she had always been a sly, mercenary little thing. Emily, Bertie, Bertie’s wife—they all rushed back to her in their old familiarity. Bertie must have grown very like his father; she hated the implication of continuance. Natura il fece, e poi roppe la stampa; that was not the case with people like her father and Bertie. They were always the same. Their moral timidity extended itself into physical plagiarism. What would Emily’s husband be like? All sugar to the rich sister-in-law, well-primed by the rest of the family. She let out a shrill of laughter. She would get them all into the house. She would put up the shutters and turn the key, and her Christmas entertainment would begin.
IX
They arrived in response to her invitation, on Christmas-eve, all four of them, driving up in the station fly, Bertie on the box. She stood on the doorway, awaiting them, and “Lydia Protheroe, Theatrical Costumier and Wig-maker,” flaunted over her head in the gilt lettering on the black ground. She was conscious of her exquisite disparity with this description. Sleek bands, and snuff-coloured gown; Bertie and Emily should find her as they had left her; the difference should only by degrees dawn upon them. She was glad now that she should have rejected the alteration in her appearance which, to a less subtle mind, would have been so blatantly indicated. There was nothing blatant about Lydia Protheroe; oh no! it was all very surreptitious, very delicate; she was an artist; everybody said so; her touch very light, but very certain. She was a rapier to Bertie’s bludgeon. Bertie: he had descended from the fly, he had taken both her hands in his, he had grown whiskers like his father’s, his father’s watch-chain (she recognized it) spanned his stomach, he was pressing her hands and looking into her eyes with what she was sure he inwardly phrased as “a world of tenderness and forgiveness,” while simultaneously he tried to scan out of the corner of his eye the wares displayed in her shop-window—the dragon’s head, the waxen figure of a fairy, the crowns and harps—and she saw him wince, but at the same time, she saw his determination to ignore all this, or to accept it, if he was forced to, in a spirit of jovial resignation; and now Emily was kissing her, Emily with those same thin ungenerous lips and pointed nose, so like her own features and yet so different, because of a recklessness in Lydia’s eyes which was not in Emily’s—subtle again—and now Bertie’s wife enveloped her in a soft, fat little hug; and there was Emily’s husband, whom they called Fred, and who was a pink-faced little man in a bowler hat and, for some reason, an evening tie, pushed forward to embrace his sister-in-law with a reluctance he tried to turn into enthusiasm.