Nightingale Wood Read Online Free PDF Page B

came, and Mr Wither’s furniture, at fifty years old, was as good as the day he bought it, and entirely lacking the personality given to furniture by a busy, vivid family life.
    No one scuffed the Wither furniture with their boots when they came home tight from a party, or scratched it during a charade, or used it for making an aeroplane or a cage for bears. No one left cigarettes to burn long scars on its edges or put wet-rimmed glasses down on it. There it stood, superior and glossy, and twelve big rooms full of it weighed upon young and probably silly spirits.
    Time seemed slowed to half its usual pace by the heavy ticking of an old clock in an alcove, the faint smell of furniture polish, the meagre clusters of flowers in thin glass vases, and the dull shine on well-polished wood. Three middle-aged religious maids kept all this glory going; with their faith, the wireless, and their disapproval of almost everything, they were well content.
    Viola was frightened, as well as depressed. She dreaded to meet Mr Wither at tea after her flight from him at lunch. She did not dare to look at him as the party took their places round a small fire in the huge pallid drawing-room and Mrs Wither began to pour out; she gazed down at her plate, but presently she became aware of a creaking towards her, and Mr Wither saying:
    ‘Did you forget our little talk? I quite wondered where you had run off to.’ And Mr Wither laughed, an alarming sound.
    She glanced at him and nodded, dumb with nervousness.
    ‘Ah well, another time, perhaps,’ creaking back again. ‘I expect you will be busy for a few days, settling down, will you not?’
    She nodded, and no more was said.
    But in Mr Wither’s bosom, till now only mildly disapproving of his daughter-in-law, a strong suspicion and disapproval had been planted.
    The hellish one had consumed a bucket of coal all for nothing, the arrangement of the prospectuses, the curves of the cushion – all had been wasted. Worse, Mr Wither had been done out of his little talk, and he still did not know how much money Viola had. She had now been under his roof for nearly five hours, and she was the only female in that situation about whose income Mr Wither was ignorant.
    It was all most annoying. Mr Wither stared into the smouldering fire, chewed a very small tea cake, and decided that a firm hand must be taken with Viola.
    After tea (good lord, was it still so early?) Viola went upstairs again to her room. No one asked her what she was going to do until dinner time. Noises from a bathroom suggested that Tina was washing her head; Mrs Wither and Madge had merely disappeared. She shut her door, crossed the room listlessly, pushed up the heavy window and, balancing herself on the sill, gazed out across the view.
    It was a beautiful evening. The wind had fallen and the sun gone down behind coral-red clouds. The air was mild, and scented by new leaves. One star was out; among the woods, already dark, a thrush was singing.
    It was all enough to break your heart and Viola began to cry.
    Girls of nineteen may be put in two classes: those who assume that they will marry immediately and those who fear that they will never marry at all. Viola Thompson, only daughter of Howard Thompson, part proprietor of Burgess and Thompson, Ladies’ Outfitters, had belonged in the latter class.
    She had a poor opinion of her own charms, and when Teddy Wither fell in love with her she was more embarrassed and distressed than flattered.
    Teddy had gone into Burgess and Thompson’s one Saturday morning when he was home from London for one of his rare weekends, to buy himself a handkerchief. He had a cold, and his handkerchief had blown out of his pocket on the drive into Chesterbourne.
    It is, of course, nonsense to say that just anyone will fall in love with just anyone else. Teddy had never loved anyone but himself, yet when he saw Viola, smiling with the other shopgirl as she tucked a thick pale curl away, he fell painfully and