Hole and Corner Read Online Free PDF Page B

not minded, and now she was beginning to mind horribly. If Anthony didn’t say something in a minute—
    From the drawing-room Mrs Huddleston’s bell rang sharp and clear. Shirley had never been so glad to hear it in her life. She put up a shaking hand and smoothed her hair. Anthony walked to the door and opened it. Perhaps he would go away. She hoped with all her heart that he would go away. But then perhaps she wouldn’t ever see him again. He would never want to see her again. She ought to feel glad about this. She didn’t feel glad. She felt utterly desolate and miserable.
    Mrs Huddleston’s bell rang again, more sharply than before, and just as Shirley ran past him out of the room, Anthony said,
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    He said it with the cold politeness of the total stranger who has trodden on your foot or bumped into you in a crowd.
    It was ten minutes before Mrs Huddleston was ready for her nephew. She didn’t use lipstick, but she put on a little rouge. And the cushions had to be beaten up, the lights switched on, and the curtains drawn.
    The room was in a rosy glow when Anthony was admitted. It smelled of scented pastilles, and eau-de-cologne, and the forced white lilac which stood in a tall iridescent jar on the piano. He reflected that there were far too many things in the room, and that he was one of them. Shirley perhaps was another. She had retreated to the window, and stood there until he had embraced his aunt and seated himself, when she took a chair behind him. As he talked, he could catch teasing glimpses of her in the Venetian mirror which hung above the piano. It reflected the white lilac, and it reflected Shirley, who was very nearly as pale. He had stopped feeling angry, but he was still feeling very much surprised, and under the surprise there was a hint of amusement and a hint of compunction. And were they dining together to-night. Or weren’t they? He thought they were, but he didn’t think Shirley thought so.
    The amusement quickened. He smiled amiably at Mrs Huddleston, who was encouraged to expand an already diffuse narrative—“Quite a new treatment and very expensive, as all these things are. And I asked him most pressingly whether the waters have a very disagreeable taste, and he said he was afraid they had, only I mustn’t mind that. And the baths aren’t exactly mud-baths, but a sort of special stuff that they pack you in right up to the chin, and you do it for one hour the first day, and two the second, and three the third, and then you stop for three days, and when you start again you begin with two hours the first day, and three the second, and four the third, and then you stop again.…”
    Mrs Huddleston, however, did not stop. She was still talking when the tea came in, and Shirley was still sitting on her stiff little chair by the window. She had tried to get away, but Mrs Huddleston wouldn’t let her go. Now she had to pour out the tea, and when Anthony took his cup he looked at her with laughing eyes that asked a question. He had his back to Mrs Huddleston, so he could look as he pleased. His eyes said, “You’re not going to go on being angry, are you?” But hers couldn’t say anything at all. They had to be the eyes of a perfectly correct secretary who was only pouring out the tea because her employer was an interesting invalid, and she never stopped watching her and Anthony for a single second, so that it was quite impossible to frown at him or to look repressive.
    Mrs Huddleston had a most excellent appetite. She could not, naturally, admit this, and ate merely to keep up her strength, and under pressure from her medical advisers. Having provided her with a good-sized piece of cake, Anthony wandered round the room, cup in hand, fetching up presently by the piano, where he was quite out of Mrs Huddleston’s sight. Putting down his cup, he proceeded to make peace overtures to Shirley in pantomime.