The Scent of Water Read Online Free PDF Page B

now?” Mary pleaded.
    “I think the lady would prefer it, Baker,” said his wife.
    He ruminated over this for a long time. “Might do,” he said. Then suddenly he stumped into the kitchen and went stalking through it like doom, his coat swinging behind him, out through the hall to the front door and down the passage to fetch her luggage.
    “Could I put these in water, Mrs. Baker?” Mary asked shakily, picking up the lilies. She felt shaky, so awe-inspiring was Mr. Baker when set in motion. “Is there, do you think, a silver tankard that I could put them in?”
    Mrs. Baker opened the door of a cupboard in the wall where a row of jugs and mugs hung on hooks. The tankard was among them. “This do, dear?” she asked, taking it down.
    “Thank you,” said Mary with extravagant gratitude. She filled it with water, arranged her flowers in it and carried them out and put them on the bamboo table in the hall. Then she had to move hastily aside, for Mr. Baker was coming back into the hall with her hat box on his back, hung around his neck by the strap, two heavy suitcases one in each hand, and two more cases, her dressing case and writing case, gripped to his sides under his armpits. Thin as he was, the weight seemed nothing to him. He tramped by like a prophet, not glancing at her, his head up and his eyes probing the darkness of the staircase as the eyes of Elijah probed the thunderclouds. He mounted the stairs two at a time and strode heavily down the passage above. Then she heard him enter a bedroom and there was a resounding crash as he dropped the lot.
    Mrs. Baker was beside her. “I’ve put you in Miss Lindsay’s room, dear. The other bedrooms, they’re not really habitable now. It’s a comfortable bed. She died in it and it’s well aired.” Mr. Baker came tramping down the stairs. “That’s right, Baker. If there’s anything else in the car put it in the hall. Then you can go. You can get the tea for me at home if you’ve a mind. There’s kippers in the larder. I’m taking the lady upstairs. Leave your car outside tonight, dear, and we’ll find somewhere to put it in the morning.”
    Mr. Baker tramped away with a muttered “Good night, miss,” but without a glance in his wife’s direction. But Mary did not doubt that he would get the tea. That Mrs. Baker was accustomed to be obeyed she could see already, yet she felt that Mr. Baker was no yes man. He obeyed under no compulsion but because he had deliberately chosen the path of peace.
    They climbed the stairs and came to the room where Mr. Baker had flung the luggage on the floor. Mrs. Baker gathered it together again and put it tidy, while Mary looked around the room, with its two windows looking east and south on the garden. She thought it must be the same room where she had washed her hands because on the old-fashioned marble-topped washstand stood the honeysuckle china she remembered. “Has it always been there?” she asked Mrs. Baker. “It’s not been brought from another room?”
    “It’s been there as long as I remember, dear,” said Mrs. Baker. “And I was always in and out of this house even as a child. I used to help my father bring the milk around and I was very friendly with Mrs. Kennedy who looked after Miss Lindsay.”
    “Did she wear a white mobcap, very old-fashioned even for those days?” asked Mary, and as she poured out the hot water that Mrs. Baker had put beside the basin in a brass can, and washed her hands, she could feel again the soft scented towel against her face.
    “Yes, dear. She died fifteen years ago, and then I came to look after Miss Lindsay. Mr. Postlethwaite the gardener, he lasted longer. You could see their graves from your window if the trees wasn’t so tall and thick.”
    Drying her hands Mary went to the east window. It looked out over the lilacs to the church. The square tower rose straight in front of her, against a sky that was now golden, but the trees hid the gravestones. She leaned at the