She has changed a bit—back to

her old natural self: she never mentions him. The place has changed

too in certain ways: it has more cheerfulness, I think. She has put it

in, this cheerfulness, spaded it in, if you know what I mean; but it

lies about uneasily and is not natural—quite. The organ is a beauty.

She must be very rich now, but she’s as gentle and sweet as ever. Do

you know, Bill, I think he must have frightened her into marrying him.

I get the impression she was afraid of him.’ This last sentence was

inked out, I but I read it through the scratching; the letters being

too big to hide. ‘He had an inflexible will beneath all that oily

kindness which passed for spiritual. He was a real personality, I

mean. I’m sure he’d have sent you and me cheerfully to the stake in

another century—for our own good. Isn’t it odd she never speaks of

him, even to me?’ This, again, was stroked through, though without the

intention to obliterate— merely because it was repetition, probably.

‘The only reminder of him in the house now is a big copy of the

presentation portrait that stands on the stairs of the Multitechnic

Institute at Peckham—you know—that life-size one with his fat hand

sprinkled with rings resting on a thick Bible and the other slipped

between the buttons of a tight frock-coat. It hangs in the dining-room

and rather dominates our meals. I wish Mabel would take it down. I

think she’d like to, if she dared. There’s not a single photograph of

him anywhere, even in her own room. Mrs. Marsh is here—you remember

her, his housekeeper, the wife of the man who got penal servitude for

killing a baby or something—you said she robbed him and justified her

stealing because the story of the unjust steward was in the Bible! How

we laughed over that! She’s just the same too, gliding about all over

the house and turning up when least expected.’

Other reminiscences filled the next two sides of the letter, and

ran, without a trace of punctuation, into instructions about a

Salamander stove for heating my workroom in the flat; these were

followed by things I was to tell the cook, and by requests for several

articles she had forgotten and would like sent after her, two of them

blouses, with descriptions so lengthy and.contradictory that I sighed

as I read them—’unless you come down soon, in which case perhaps you

wouldn’t mind bringing them; not the mauve one I wear in the evening

sometimes, but the pale blue one with lace round the collar and the

crinkly front. They’re in the cupboard—or the drawer, I’m not sure

which—of my bedroom. Ask Annie if you’re in doubt. Thanks most

awfully.

Send a telegram, remember, and we’ll meet you in the motor any

time. I don’t quite know if I shall stay the whole month—alone. It

all depends….’ And she closed the letter, the italicised words

increasing recklessly towards the end, with a repetition that Mabel

would love to have me ‘for myself,’ as also to have a ‘man in the

house’, and that I only had to telegraph the day and the train….

This letter, coming by the second post, interrupted me in a moment of

absorbing work, and, having read it through to make sure there was

nothing requiring instant attention, I threw it aside and went on with

my notes and reading. Within five minutes, however, it was back at me

again. That restless thing called ‘between the lines’ fluttered about

my mind. My interest in the Balkan States—political article that had

been ‘ordered’—faded. Somewhere, somehow I felt disquieted,

disturbed. At first I persisted in my work, forcing myself to

concentrate, but soon found that a layer of new impressions floated

between the article and my attention.