house-explorer arrested in full flight, falling swiftly towards apology and retreat. (It was a frightfully attractive room, too, full of the brightest colour, and with a big white cast of a statue—a Venus!—in the window.) She backed over the threshold again.
"I thought you was out by that window, sir," said the little old woman intimately, and was nearly shutting the door between them and all the beginnings of this story.
But the voice of the gentleman arrested and wedged open the closing door.
"I——Are you looking at the house?" he said. "I say! Just a moment, Mrs. Rabbit."
He came down the length of the room with a slight flicking noise due to the scandalized excitement of his abandoned laces. The lady was reminded of her not so very distant schooldays, when it would have been considered a suitable answer to such a question as his to reply, "No, I am walking down Piccadilly on my hands." But instead she waved that pink paper again. "The agents," she said. "Recommended—specially. So sorry if I intrude. I ought, I know, to have written first; but I came on an impulse."
By this time the gentleman in the artistic tie, who had also the artistic eye for such matters, had discovered that the lady was young, delightfully slender, either pretty or beautiful, he could scarcely tell which, and very, very well dressed. "I am glad," he said, with remarkable decision, "that I was not out. I will show you the house."
"'Ow can you, sir?" intervened the little old woman.
"Oh! show a house! Why not?"
"The kitchings—you don't understand the range, sir—it's beyond you. And upstairs. You can't show a lady upstairs."
The gentleman reflected upon these difficulties.
"Well, I'm going to show her all I can show her anyhow. And after that, Mrs. Rabbit, you shall come in. You needn't wait."
"I'm thinking," said Mrs. Rabbit, folding stiff little arms and regarding him sternly. "You won't be much good after tea, you know, if you don't get your afternoon's exercise."
"Rendez-vous in the kitchen, Mrs. Rabbit," said Mr. Brumley, firmly, and Mrs. Rabbit after a moment of mute struggle disappeared discontentedly.
"I do not want to be the least bit a bother," said the lady. "I'm intruding, I know, without the least bit of notice. I do hope I'm not disturbing you——" she seemed to make an effort to stop at that, and failed and added—"the least bit. Do please tell me if I am."
"Not at all," said Mr. Brumley. "I hate my afternoon's walk as a prisoner hates the treadmill."
"She's such a nice old creature."
"She's been a mother—and several aunts—to us ever since my wife died. She was the first servant we ever had."
"All this house," he explained to his visitor's questioning eyes, "was my wife's creation. It was a little featureless agent's house on the edge of these pine-woods. She saw something in the shape of the rooms—and that central hall. We've enlarged it of course. Twice. This was two rooms, that is why there is a step down in the centre."
"That window and window-seat——"
"That was her addition," said Mr. Brumley. "All this room is—replete—with her personality." He hesitated, and explained further. "When we prepared this house—we expected to be better off—than we subsequently became—and she could let herself go. Much is from Holland and Italy."
"And that beautiful old writing-desk with the little single rose in a glass!"
"She put it there. She even in a sense put the flower there. It is renewed of course. By Mrs. Rabbit. She trained Mrs. Rabbit."
He sighed slightly, apparently at some thought of Mrs. Rabbit.
"You—you write——" the lady stopped, and then diverted a question that she perhaps considered too blunt, "there?"
"Largely. I am—a sort of author. Perhaps you know my books. Not very important books—but people sometimes read them."
The rose-pink of the lady's cheek deepened by a shade. Within her pretty head, her mind rushed to and fro saying "Brumley? Brumley?" Then she had a saving gleam. "Are you George Brumley?" she asked,—"the George Brumley?"
"My name is George Brumley," he said, with a proud modesty. "Perhaps you know my little Euphemia books? They are still the most read."
The lady made a faint, dishonest assent-like noise; and her rose-pink deepened another shade. But her interlocutor was not watching her very closely just then.
"Euphemia was my wife," he said, "at least, my wife gave her to me—a kind of exhalation. This"—his voice fell with a genuine respect for literary associations—"was Euphemia's home."
"I still," he continued, "go on. I go on writing about Euphemia. I have to. In this house. With my tradition.... But it is becoming painful—painful. Curiously more painful now than at the beginning. And I want to go. I want at last to make a break. That is why I am letting or selling the house.... There will be no more Euphemia."
His voice fell to silence.
The lady surveyed the long low clear room so cleverly prepared for life, with its white wall, its Dutch clock, its Dutch dresser, its pretty seats about the open fireplace, its cleverly placed bureau, its sun-trap at the garden end; she could feel the rich intention of living in its every arrangement and a sense of uncertainty in things struck home to her. She seemed to see a woman, a woman like herself—only very, very much cleverer—flitting about the room and making it. And then this woman had vanished—nowhither. Leaving this gentleman—sadly left—in the care of Mrs. Rabbit.
"And she is dead?" she said with a softness in her dark eyes and a fall in her voice that was quite natural and very pretty.
"She died," said Mr. Brumley, "three years and a half ago." He reflected. "Almost exactly."
He paused and she filled the pause with feeling.
He became suddenly very brave and brisk and businesslike. He led the way back into the hall and made explanations. "It is not so much a hall as a hall living-room. We use that end, except when we go out upon the verandah beyond, as our dining-room. The door to the right is the kitchen."
The lady's attention was caught again by the bright long eventful pictures that had already pleased her. "They are copies of two of Carpaccio's St. George series in Venice," he said. "We bought them together there. But no doubt you've seen the originals. In a little old place with a custodian and rather dark. One of those corners—so full of that delightful out-of-the-wayishness which is so characteristic, I think, of Venice. I don't know if you found that in Venice?"
"I've never been abroad," said the lady. "Never. I should love to go. I suppose you and your wife went—ever so much."
He had a transitory wonder that so fine a lady should be untravelled, but his eagerness to display his backgrounds prevented him thinking that out at the time. "Two or three times," he said, "before our little boy came to us. And always returning with something for this place. Look!" he went on, stepped across an exquisite little brick court to a lawn of soft emerald and turning back upon the house. "That Dellia Robbia placque we lugged all the way back from Florence with us, and that stone bird-bath is from Siena."
"How bright it is!" murmured the lady after a brief still appreciation. "Delightfully bright. As though it would shine even if the sun didn't." And she abandoned herself to the rapture of seeing a house and garden that were for once better even than the agent's superlatives. And within her grasp if she chose—within her grasp.
She made the garden melodious with soft appreciative sounds. She had a small voice for her size but quite a charming one, a little live bird of a voice, bright and sweet. It was a clear unruffled afternoon; even the unseen wheel-barrow had very sensibly ceased to creak and seemed to be somewhere listening....
Only one trivial matter marred their easy explorations;—his boots