Those who go to Strorley, and cross the bridge to the other side of the river, have only to follow the towpath for a little to come to The Willows. It can also be reached by road, through a white gate down a lane that grows more and more willowy as it gets nearer the river and the house, but is quite passable for carts and even for cars, except when there are floods. When there are floods this lane disappears, and when the floods have subsided it is black and oozing for a long time afterwards, with clouds of tiny flies dancing about in it if the weather is at all warm, and the shoes of those who walk stick in it and come off, and those who drive, especially if they drive a car, have trouble. But all is well once a second white gate is reached, on the other side of which is a gravel sweep, a variety of handsome shrubs, nicely kept lawns, and The Willows. There are no big trees in the garden of The Willows, because it was built in the middle of meadows where there weren't any, but all round the iron railings of the square garden—the house being the centre of the square—and concealing the wire netting which keeps the pasturing cows from thrusting their heads through and eating the shrubs, is a fringe of willows. Hence its name.

'A house,' said Wemyss, explaining its name to Lucy on the morning of their arrival, 'should always be named after whatever most insistently catches the eye.'

'Then oughtn't it to have been called The Cows?' asked Lucy; for the meadows round were strewn thickly as far as she could see with recumbent cows, and they caught her eye much more than the tossing bare willow branches.

'No,' said Wemyss, annoyed. 'It ought not have been called The Cows.'

'No—of course I didn't mean that,' she said hastily.

Lucy was nervous, and said what first came into her head, and had been saying things of this nature the whole journey down. She didn't want to, she knew he didn't like it, but she couldn't stop.

They had just arrived, and were standing on the front steps while the servants unloaded the fly that had brought them from the station, and Wemyss was pointing out what he wished her to look at and admire from that raised-up place before taking her indoors. Lucy was glad of any excuse that delayed going indoors, that kept her on the west side of the house, furthest away from the terrace and the library window. Indoors would be the rooms, the unaltered rooms, the library past whose window..., the sitting-room at the top of the house out of whose window..., the bedroom she was going to sleep in with the very bed.... It was too miserably absurd, too unbalanced of her for anything but shame and self-contempt, how she couldn't get away from the feeling that indoors waiting for her would be Vera.

It was a grey, windy morning, with low clouds scurrying across the meadows. The house was raised well above flood level, and standing on the top step she could see how far the meadows stretched beyond the swaying willow hedge. Grey sky, grey water, green fields,—it was all grey and green except the house, which was red brick with handsome stone facings, and made, in its exposed position unhidden by any trees, a great splotch of vivid red in the landscape.

'Like blood,' said Lucy to herself; and was immediately ashamed.

'Oh, how bracing!' she cried, spreading out her arms and letting the wind blow her serge wrap out behind her like a flag. It whipped her skirt round her body, showing its slender pretty lines, and the parlourmaid, going in and out with the luggage, looked curiously at this small juvenile new mistress. 'Oh, I love this wind—don't take me indoors yet——'

Wemyss was pleased that she should like the wind, for was it not by the time it reached his house part, too, of his property? His face, which had clouded a little because of The Cows, cleared again.

But she didn't really like the wind at all, she never had liked anything that blustered and was cold, and if she hadn't been nervous the last thing she would have done was to stand there letting it blow her to pieces.

'And what a lot of laurels!' she exclaimed, holding on her hat with one hand and with the other pointing to a corner filled with these shrubs.

'Yes. I'll take you round the garden after lunch,' said Wemyss. 'We'll go in now.'

'And—and laurustinus. I love laurustinus——'

'Yes. Vera planted that. It has done very well. Come in now——'

'And—look, what are those bare things without any leaves yet?'

'I'll show you everything after lunch, Lucy. Come in——' And he put his arm about her shoulders, and urged her through the door the maid was holding open with difficulty because of the wind.

There she was, then, actually inside The Willows. The door was shut behind her. She looked about her shrinkingly.

They were in a roomy place with a staircase in it.

'The hall,' said Wemyss, standing still, his arm round her.

'Yes,' said Lucy.

'Oak,' said Wemyss.

'Yes,' said Lucy.

He gazed round him with a sigh of satisfaction at having got back to it.

'All oak,' he said. 'You'll find nothing gimcrack about my house, little Love. Where are those flowers?' he added, turning sharply to the parlourmaid. 'I don't see my yellow flowers.'

'They're in the dining-room, sir,' said the parlourmaid.

'Why aren't they where I could see them the first thing?'

'I understood the orders were they were always to be on the breakfast-table, sir.'

'Breakfast-table! When there isn't any breakfast?'

'I understood——'

'I'm not interested in what you understood.'

Lucy here nervously interrupted, for Everard sounded suddenly very angry, by exclaiming, 'Antlers!' and waving her unpinned-down arm in the direction of the——

'Yes,' said Wemyss, his attention called off the parlourmaid, gazing up at his walls with pride.

'What a lot,' said Lucy.

'Aren't there. I always said I'd have a hall with antlers in it, and I've got it.' He hugged her close to his side. 'And I've got you too,' he said. 'I always get what I'm determined to get.'

'Did you shoot them all yourself?' asked Lucy, thinking the parlourmaid would take the opportunity to disappear, and a little surprised that she continued to stand there.

'What? The beasts they belonged to? Not I. If you want antlers the simple way is to go and buy them. Then you get them all at once, and not gradually. The hall was ready for them all at once, not gradually. I got these at Whiteley's. Kiss me.'

This sudden end to his remarks startled Lucy, and she repeated in her surprise—for there still stood the parlourmaid 'Kiss you?'

'I haven't had my birthday kiss yet.'

'Why, the very first thing when you woke up——'

'Not my real birthday kiss in my own home.'

She looked at the parlourmaid, who was quite frankly looking at her. Well, if the parlourmaid didn't mind, and Everard didn't mind, why should she mind?

She lifted her face and kissed him; but she didn't like kissing him or being kissed in public. What was the point of it? Kissing Everard was a great delight to her. A mixture of all sorts of wonderful sensations, and she loved to do it in different ways, tenderly, passionately, lingeringly, dreamily, amusingly, solemnly; each kind in turn, or in varied combinations. But among her varied combinations there was nothing that included a parlourmaid. Consequently her kiss was of the sort that was to be expected, perfunctory and brief, whereupon Wemyss said, 'Lucy——' in his hurt voice.

She started.

'Oh Everard—what is it?' she asked nervously.

That particular one of his voices always by now made her start, for it always took her by surprise. Pick her way as carefully as she might among his feelings there were always some, apparently, that she hadn't dreamed were there and that she accordingly knocked against. How dreadful if she had hurt him the very first thing on getting into The Willows! And on his birthday too. From the moment he woke that morning, all the way down in the train, all the way in the fly from the station, she had been unremittingly engaged in avoiding hurting him; an activity made extra difficult by the unfortunate way her nervousness about the house at the journey's end impelled her to say the kinds of things she least wanted to. Irreverent things; such as the silly remark on his house's name. She had got on much better the evening before at the house in Lancaster Gate where they had slept, because gloomy as it was it anyhow wasn't The Willows. Also there was no trace in it that she could see of such a thing as a woman ever having lived in it. It was a man's house; the house of a man who has no time for pictures, or interesting books and furniture. It was like a club and an office mixed up together, with capacious leather chairs and solid tables and Turkey carpets and reference books. She found it quite impossible to imagine Vera, or any other woman, in that house. Either Vera had spent most of her time at The Willows, or every trace of her had been very carefully removed. Therefore Lucy, helped besides by extreme fatigue, for she had been sea-sick all the way from Dieppe to Newhaven, Wemyss having crossed that way because he was fond of the sea, had positively been unable to think of Vera in those surroundings and had dropped off to sleep directly she got there and had slept all night; and of course being asleep she naturally hadn't said anything she oughtn't to have said, so that her first appearance in Lancaster Gate was a success; and when she woke next morning, and saw Wemyss's face in such unclouded tranquillity next to hers as he still slept, she lay gazing at it with her heart brimming with tender love and vowed that his birthday should be as unclouded throughout as his dear face was at that moment. She adored him. He was her very life. She wanted nothing in the world except for him to be happy. She would watch every word. She really must see to it that on this day of all days no word should escape her before it had been turned round in her head at least three times, and considered with the utmost care. Such were her resolutions in the morning; and here she was not only saying the wrong things but doing them. It was because she hadn't expected to be told to kiss him in the presence of a parlourmaid. She was always being tripped up by the unexpected. She ought by now to have learned better. How unfortunate.

'Oh Everard—what is it?' she asked nervously; but she knew before he could answer, and throwing her objections to public caresses to the winds, for anything was better than that he should be hurt at just that moment, she put up her free arm and drew his head down and kissed him again,—lingeringly this time, a kiss of tender, appealing love. What must it be like, she thought while she kissed him and her heart yearned over him, to be so fearfully sensitive. It made things difficult for her, but how much, much more difficult for him. And how wonderful the way his sensitiveness had developed since marriage. There had been no sign of it before.

Implicit in her kiss was an appeal not to let anything she said or did spoil his birthday, to forgive her, to understand. And at the back of her mind, quite uncontrollable, quite unauthorised, ran beneath these other thoughts this thought: 'I am certainly abject.'

This time he was quickly placated because of his excitement at getting home. 'Nobody can hurt me as you can,' was all he said.

'Oh but as though I ever, ever mean to,' she breathed, her arm round his neck.

Meanwhile the parlourmaid looked on.

'Why doesn't she go?' whispered Lucy, making the most of having got his ear.

'Certainly not,' said Wemyss out loud, raising his head. 'I might want her. Do you like the hall, little Love?'

'Very much,' she said, loosing him.

'Don't you think it's a very fine staircase?'

'Very fine,' she said.

He gazed about him with pride, standing in the middle of the Turkey carpet holding her close to his side.

'Now look at the window,' he said, turning her round when she had had time to absorb the staircase. 'Look—isn't it a jolly window? No nonsense about that window. You can really see out of it, and it really lets in light. Vera'—she winced—'tried to stuff it all up with curtains. She said she wanted colour, or something. Having got a beautiful garden to look out at, what does she try to do but shut most of it out again by putting up curtains.'

The attempt had evidently not succeeded, for the window, which was as big as a window in the waiting-room of a London terminus, had nothing to interfere with it but the hanging cord of a drawn-up brown holland blind. Through it Lucy could see the whole half of the garden on the right side of the front door with the tossing willow hedge, the meadows, and the cows. The leafless branches of some creeper beat against it and made a loud irregular tapping in the pauses of Wemyss's observations.

'Plate glass,' he said.

'Yes,' said Lucy; and something in his voice made her add in a tone of admiration, 'Fancy.'

Looking at the window they had their backs to the stairs. Suddenly she heard footsteps coming down them from the landing above.

'Who's that?' she said quickly, with a little gasp, before she could think, before she could stop, not turning her head, her eyes staring at the window.

'Who's what?' asked Wemyss. 'You do think it's a jolly window, don't you, little Love?'

The footsteps on the stairs stopped, and a gong she had noticed at the angle of the turn was sounded. Her body, which had shrunk together, relaxed. What a fool she was.

'Lunch,' said Wemyss. 'Come along—but isn't it a jolly window, little Love?'

'Very jolly.'

He turned her round to march her off to the dining-room, while the housemaid, who had come down from the landing, continued to beat the gong, though there they were obeying it under her very nose.

'Don't you think that's a good place to have a gong?' he asked, raising his voice because the gong, which had begun quietly, was getting rapidly louder. 'Then when you're upstairs in your sitting-room you'll hear it just as distinctly as if you were downstairs. Vera——'

But what he was going to say about Vera was drowned this time in the increasing fury of the gong.

'Why doesn't she leave off?' Lucy tried to call out to him, straining her voice to its utmost, for the maid was very good at the gong and was now extracting the dreadfullest din out of it.

'Eh?' shouted Wemyss.

In the dining-room, whither they were preceded by the parlourmaid, who at last had left off standing still and had opened the door for them, as Lucy could hear the gong continuing to be beaten though muffled now by doors and distance, she again said, 'Why doesn't she leave off?'

Wemyss took out his watch.

'She will in another fifty seconds,' he said.

Lucy's mouth and eyebrows became all inquiry.

'It is beaten for exactly two and a half minutes before every meal,' he explained.

'Oh?' said Lucy. 'Even when we're visibly collected?'

'She doesn't know that.'

'But she saw us.'

'But she doesn't know it officially.'

'Oh,' said Lucy.

'I had to make that rule,' said Wemyss, arranging his knives and forks more accurately beside his plate, 'because they would leave off beating it almost as soon as they'd begun, and then Vera was late and her excuse was that she hadn't heard. For a time after that I used to have it beaten all up the stairs right to the door of her sitting-room. Isn't it a fine gong? Listen——' And he raised his hand.

'Very fine,' said Lucy, who was thoroughly convinced there wasn't a finer, more robust gong in existence.

'There. Time's up,' he said, as three great strokes were followed by a blessed silence.

He pulled out his watch again. 'Let's see. Yes—to the tick. You wouldn't believe the trouble I had to get them to keep time.'

'It's wonderful,' said Lucy.

The dining-room was a narrow room full of a table. It had a window facing west and a window facing north, and in spite of the uninterrupted expanses of plate glass was a bleak, dark room. But then the weather was bleak and dark, and one saw such a lot of it out of the two big windows as one sat at the long table and watched the rolling clouds blowing straight towards one from the north-west; for Lucy's place was facing the north window, on Wemyss's left hand. Wemyss sat at the end of the table facing the west window. The table was so long that if Lucy had sat in the usual seat of wives, opposite her husband, communication would have been difficult,—indeed, as she remarked, she would have disappeared below the dip of the horizon.

'I like a long table,' said Wemyss to this. 'It looks so hospitable.'

'Yes,' said Lucy a little doubtfully, but willing to admit that its length at least showed a readiness for hospitality. 'I suppose it does. Or it would if there were people all round it.'

'People? You don't mean to say you want people already?'

'Good heavens no,' said Lucy hastily.' Of course I don't. Why, of course, Everard, I didn't mean that,' she added, laying her hand on his and smiling at him so as to dispel the gathering cloud on his face; and once more she flung all thoughts of the parlourmaid to the winds. 'You know I don't want a soul in the world but you.'

'Well, that's what I thought,' said Wemyss, mollified. 'I know all I want is you.'

(Was this same parlourmaid here in Vera's time? Lucy asked herself very privately and unconsciously and beneath the concerned attentiveness she was concentrating on Wemyss.)

'What lovely kingcups!' she said aloud.

'Oh yes, there they are—I hadn't noticed them. Yes, aren't they? They're my birthday flowers.' And he repeated his formula: 'It's my birthday and Spring's.'

But Lucy, of course, didn't know the proper ritual, it being her first experience of one of Wemyss's birthdays, besides having wished him his many happy returns hours ago when he first opened his eyes and found hers gazing at him with love; so all she did was to make the natural but unfortunate remark that surely Spring began on the 21st of March,—or was it the 25th? No, that was Christmas Day—no, she didn't mean that——

'You're always saying things and then saying you didn't mean them,' interrupted Wemyss, vexed, for he thought that Lucy of all people should have recognised the allegorical nature of his formula. If it had been Vera, now,—but even Vera had managed to understand that much. 'I wish you would begin with what you do mean, it would be so much simpler. What, pray, do you mean now?'

'I can't think,' said Lucy timidly, for she had offended him again, and this time she couldn't even remotely imagine how.