ma’am? I know she’d want to see you.’
Edith drew aside respectfully as Dame Laura came in.
The latter said:
‘I’ll wait for a quarter of an hour, anyway. It’s some time since I’ve seen anything of her.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Edith ushered her into the sitting-room and knelt down to turn on the electric fire. Dame Laura looked round the room and uttered an exclamation.
‘Furniture been shifted round, I see. That desk used to be across the corner. And the sofa’s in a different place.’
‘Mrs Prentice thought it would be nice to have a change,’ said Edith. ‘Come in one day, I did, and there she was shoving things round and hauling them about. “Oh, Edith,” she says, “don’t you think the room looks much nicer like this? It makes more space.” Well, I couldn’t see any improvement myself, but naturally I didn’t like to say so. Ladies have their fancies. All I said was: “Now don’t you go and strain yourself, ma’am. Lifting and heaving’s the worst thing for your innards and once they’ve slipped out of place they don’t go back so easy.” I should know. It happened to my own sister-in-law. Did it throwing up the window-sash, she did. On the sofa for the rest of her days, she was.’
‘Probably quite unnecessary,’ said Dame Laura robustly. ‘Thank goodness we’ve got out of the affectation that lying on a sofa is the panacea for every ill.’
‘Don’t even let you have your month after childbirth now,’ said Edith disapprovingly. ‘My poor young niece, now, they made her walk about on the fifth day.’
‘We’re a much healthier race now than we’ve ever been before.’
‘I hope so, I’m sure,’ said Edith gloomily. ‘Terribly delicate I was as a child. Never thought they’d rear me. Fainting fits I used to have, and spasms something awful. And in winter I’d go quite blue—the cold used to fly to me ’art.’
Uninterested in Edith’s past ailments, Dame Laura was surveying the rearranged room.
‘I think it’s a change for the better,’ she said. ‘Mrs Prentice is quite right. I wonder she didn’t do it before.’
‘Nest-building,’ said Edith, with significance.
‘What?’
‘Nest-building. I’ve seen birds at it. Running about with twigs in their mouths.’
‘Oh.’
The two women looked at each other. Without any change of expression, some intelligence appeared to be imparted. Dame Laura asked in an off-hand way:
‘Seen much of Colonel Grant lately?’
Edith shook her head.
‘Poor gentleman,’ she said. ‘If you were to ask me, I’d say he’s had his conger. French for your nose being put out of joint,’ she added in an explanatory fashion.
‘Oh, congé—yes, I see.’
‘He was a nice gentleman,’ said Edith, putting him in the past tense in a funereal manner and as though pronouncing an epitaph. ‘Oh, well!’
As she left the room, she said: ‘I’ll tell you one who won’t like the room being rearranged, and that’s Miss Sarah. She don’t like changes.’
Laura Whitstable raised her beetling eyebrows. Then she pulled a book from a shelf and turned its pages in a desultory manner.
Presently she heard a latch-key inserted and the door of the flat opened. Two voices, Ann’s and a man’s, sounded cheerful and gay in the small vestibule.
Ann’s voice said: ‘Oh, post. Ah, here’s a letter from Sarah.’
She came into the sitting-room with the letter in her hand and stopped short in momentary confusion.
‘Why, Laura, how nice to see you.’ She turned to the man who had followed her into the room. ‘Mr Cauldfield, Dame Laura Whitstable.’
Dame Laura summed him up quickly.
Conventional type. Could be obstinate. Honest. Good-hearted. No humour. Probably sensitive. Very much in love with Ann.
She began talking to him in her bluff fashion.
Ann murmured: ‘I’ll tell Edith to bring us tea,’ and left the room.
‘Not for me, my dear,’ Dame Laura called after her. ‘It’s nearly six o’clock.’
‘Well, Richard and I want tea, we’ve been to a concert. What will you have?’
‘Brandy and soda.’
‘All right.’
Dame Laura said:
‘Fond of music, Mr Cauldfield?’
‘Yes. Particularly of Beethoven.’
‘All English people like Beethoven. Sends me to sleep, I’m sorry to say, but then I’m not particularly musical.’
‘Cigarette, Dame Laura?’ Cauldfield proffered his case.
‘No, thanks, I only smoke cigars.’
She added, looking shrewdly at him: ‘So you’re the type of man who prefers tea to cocktails or sherry at six o’clock?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I’m not particularly fond of tea. But somehow it seems to suit Ann—’ He broke off. ‘That sounds absurd!’
‘Not at all. You display perspicacity. I don’t mean that Ann doesn’t drink cocktails or sherry, she does, but she’s essentially the type of woman who looks her best sitting behind a tea-tray—a tea-tray on which is beautiful old Georgian silver and cups and saucers of fine porcelain.’
Richard was delighted.
‘How absolutely right you are!’
‘I’ve known Ann for a great many years. I’m very fond of her.’
‘I know. She has often spoken about you. And, of course, I know of you from other sources.’
Dame Laura gave him a cheerful grin.
‘Oh yes, I’m one of the best-known women in England. Always sitting on committees, or airing my views on the wireless, or laying down the law generally on what’s good for humanity. However, I do realize one thing and that is that whatever one accomplishes in life, it is really very little and could always quite easily have been accomplished by somebody else.’
‘Oh, come now,’ Richard protested. ‘Surely that’s a very depressing conclusion to come to?’
‘It shouldn’t be. Humility should always lie behind effort.’
‘I don’t think I agree with you.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No. I think that if a man (or woman, of course) is ever to accomplish anything worth doing, the first condition is that he must believe in himself.’
‘Why should he?’
‘Come now, Dame Laura, surely—’
‘I’m old-fashioned. I would prefer that a man should have knowledge of himself and belief in God.’
‘Knowledge—belief, aren’t they the same thing?’
‘I beg your pardon, they’re not at all the same thing. One of my pet theories (quite unrealizable, of course, that’s the pleasant part about theories) is that everybody should spend one month a year in the middle of a desert. Camped by a well, of course, and plentifully supplied with dates or whatever you eat in deserts.’
‘Might be quite pleasant,’ said Richard, smiling. ‘I’d stipulate for a few of the