Encounters: stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

own, to exclude the world fro in, to build up in something of herself.
    If she did not go upstairs now Mrs. Tottenham would call her, and that, in this room, would be more than she could bear. Vaguely she pictured headlines:"' Laurels ' Murder Mystery. Bodies in a Cistern. Disappearance of Companion."The darkness was all lurid with her visionary crime.
    Mrs. Tottenham had not been round the house. She did not say the rooms smelt mouldy, and she left the curtain-draperies alone.
    Lydia wondered deeply.
    "Did you know Sevenoaks?"
    The question abashed her. What had Mrs. Tottenham to do with Sevenoaks?

    "N—no. Scarcely. I've been over there sometimes for the day, from Orpington."
    "A friend of mine hves there—a Mr. Merton. He wrote to me to-day. He's come back from the Colonies and bought a place there. It's funny to hear from an old friend, suddenly. It makes me feel quite funny, really."
    She did not sound funny. Her voice was high-pitched with agitation. Lydia had been told all about Mrs. Tottenham's friends, and seldom listened. But she did not remember Mr. Merton.
    "He wants to come and see us. I really hardly like, you know, to suggest the idea to Mr. Tottenham."
    "I thought you'd all your friends in common. How well these night-dresses have washed! They must have laundered nicely at the Hydro."
    "Ah, but this is different, you see."She laughed a little conscious laugh."Mr. Merton was a particular friend of mine. I—Mr. Tottenham didn't used to know him."
    "I see,"said Lydia vaguely. "A friend of yours before your marriage."

    "Well, no. You see, I was very young when I was married. Quite an inexperienced voung girl—a child, you might almost say."
    Lydia supposed that Mrs. Tottenham had been young. She strained her imagination to the effort.
    "I did very well for myself when I married Mr. Tottenham,"the wife said sharply. "I must say I never was a fool. My mother'd never brought me up to go about, but we did a good deal of entertaining at one time, Mr. Tottenham's friends and my own, and we always had things very nice and showy. But it was a lonely life."
    Mrs. Tottenham's confidences were intolerable. Better a hundred times that she should nag.
    "So you liked the Hydro—found it really comfortable?"
    "Oh yes. But it's the coming back—to this.... Lydia, you're a good sort of girl. I wonder if I ought to tell you."
    "Don't tell me anything you would regret,"said Lydia defensively, jerking at the drawer-handles.
    "You see, Mr. Merton was a good deal

    to me at one time; then we tore it, and he went off to Canada and married there. I heard he'd been unhappy, and that there was the rumour of a spUt. Of course he didn't write or anything; we had ab-so-lutely torn it; but I couldn't help hearing things, and she seems to have been a really bad sort of woman—there were children, too. He's bringing the children back with him to Sevenoaks.
    "He wants to come and see me. He's been thinking about me a great deal, he says, and wondering if I've changed, and wishing— He always was a straight sort of man; it was only circumstances drove him crooked. I daresay I was a good bit to blame. I've kept his photograph, though I know I didn't ought, but I liked having it by me to look at."
    She had unlocked a drawer and held a stiff-backed photograph up beneath the light, scrutinising it. Lydia listened to a distant surge of movement in the house beneath her; steps across the oil-cloth, windows shutting, voices cut off by the swinging of a door. She felt, revoltedly, as though Mrs. Tottenham were stepping out of her clothes.
    "He says he's hardly changed at all.

    Seventeen years—they go past you like a flash, he says, when you're working."
    "Seventeen years,"said Lydia deHber-ately,"are bound to make a diiTerence to a woman. Did you care for him?"
    Mrs. Tottenham made no answer; she was staring at the photograph. Her eyes dilated, and she licked her lips.
    "I suppose you'll be glad to see him again?"suggested Lydia. She felt