Two Flights Up Read Online Free PDF

expressman taking out a trunk, and in the lower hall Aunt Margaret, gloved and hatted, and with a spot of colour in her thin cheeks. Holly was with her, but Mrs. Bayne was not in sight.
    “Not leaving us, are you?” Warrington asked.
    “I’ll be coming back again,” she said. “At least I hope—”
    Suddenly her chin quivered; she gave a quick glance at the staircase, which remained obstinately empty; then she wrung his hand, coughed, and went out onto the doorstep, to turn there to Holly.
    “Tell your mother I said good-bye.”
    “I will. And remember, just be happy, Aunt Margaret.”
    “I’d be a good bit happier if you—”
    “Oh, that’s all right,” said Holly hastily. “You’d better hurry.”
    Margaret walked away, and the expressman drove off. Holly stood on the doorstep with a queer breathless look on her face; then she turned and went quietly into the house.
    Warrington thought about that a great deal. The old house was quieter and more depressing than ever; indeed, for a week or so there was no tea table laid in the drawing room, and Mrs. Bayne had her meals in her bedroom. Holly was carrying trays once more.
    “Nothing seriously wrong, I hope?” he asked her one day, finding her stopped halfway for breath. He had time to look at the tray. It contained a sizable meal.
    “No,” she said briefly. “Nothing serious.” She refused his offer of assistance, but it is rather a pity that he did not look back as he went on up. She was staring after him, at his broad shoulders, his air of solid dependability, with something of the same look with which she had followed Aunt Margaret that last day. But he went on.
    Later he heard the doorbell, and Furness Brooks’s high, slightly affected voice in the lower hall. A slightly possessive voice, too, it seemed to him.
    When he went out to his dinner, the drawing-room door was closed, and there was a low murmur of voices beyond it.

CHAPTER SIX
    O NE HAS TO REMEMBER , in order to understand what followed, Howard Warrington’s total ignorance of the household. He had never heard of Tom Bayne, defaulting cashier of the Harrison Bank. He had no background whatever for Mrs. Bayne, or Margaret, or for Holly.
    His occasional glimpses into their lives were those of the individual who, confronted with a series of peepshows at a fair, looks in each for a second and then passes on.
    There was, for him, no such understanding as Mrs. McCook’s across the street, a few days after Mrs. Bayne was up and about again.
    “There’s a taxicab at Ninety-one, Clara!” she called. “It must be about time—yes, it is! Mrs. Bayne’s getting into it. That big fellow who’s got the third-floor front is helping her. I haven’t seen that duvetyne before.”
    No, it meant nothing to him. Not the taxicab, nor Mrs. Bayne’s grim set face, nor Molly’s depressed one. Odd to think it, too, considering how vitally that visit of Mrs. Bayne’s to the penitentiary was to affect him. Odder still to know that he never noticed the change in her on her return. He looked in and saw her in her customary seat in the drawing room, her hat still on her head, quite alone and gazing at nothing with singular intensity.
    She had never even heard Warrington come in.
    He did not know of the invisible bands that were closing around Holly, and how Margaret’s desertion and this visit of Mrs. Bayne’s were acting on her. Nor did he overhear, who seemed always to be overhearing things, the conversation between Holly and her mother which took place after he went upstairs.
    “Here’s your tea, Mother. You mustn’t look like that. I’m sure that he’ll get better.”
    Mrs. Bayne did not turn her head. She merely moved her eyes until they rested on the girl.
    “Better!” she said. “Of course he’ll get better. They’re letting him out.”
    “When?”
    Mrs. Bayne said nothing. She took off her hat, still with that fixed and dreadful look, and picked up her cup before she spoke.
    “And all my