Meanwhile Wemyss had gone into the drawing-room till such time as his wife should choose to allow him to have his own library to himself again.

For a long while he walked up and down it thinking bitter things, for he was very angry. The drawing-room was a big gaunt room, rarely used of recent years. In the early days, when people called on the newly arrived Wemysses, there had been gatherings in it,—retaliatory festivities to the vicar, to the doctor, to the landlord, with a business acquaintance or two of Wemyss's, wife appended, added to fill out. These festivities, however, died of inanition. Something was wanting, something necessary to nourish life in them. He thought of them as he walked about the echoing room from which the last guest had departed years ago. Vera, of course. Her fault that the parties had left off. She had been so slack, so indifferent. You couldn't expect people to come to your house if you took no pains to get them there. Yet what a fine room for entertaining. The grand piano, too. Never used. And Vera who made such a fuss about music, and pretended she knew all about it.

The piano was clothed from head to foot in a heavy red baize cover, even its legs being buttoned round in what looked like Alpine Sport gaiters, and the baize flap that protected the keys had buttons all along it from one end to the other. In order to play, these buttons had first to be undone,—Wemyss wasn't going to have the expensive piano not taken care of. It had been his wedding present to Vera—how he had loved that woman!—and he had had the baize clothes made specially, and had instructed Vera that whenever the piano was not in use it was to have them on, properly fastened.

What trouble he had had with her at first about it. She was always forgetting to button it up again. She would be playing, and get up and go away to lunch, or tea, or out into the garden, and leave it uncovered with the damp and dust getting into it, and not only uncovered but with its lid open. Then, when she found that he went in to see if she had remembered, she did for a time cover it up in the intervals of playing, but never buttoned all its buttons; invariably he found that some had been forgotten. It had cost £150. Women had no sense of property. They were unfit to have the charge of valuables. Besides, they got tired of them. Vera had actually quite soon got tired of the piano. His present. That wasn't very loving of her. And when he said anything about it she wouldn't speak. Sulked. How profoundly he disliked sulking. And she, who had made such a fuss about music when first he met her, gave up playing, and for years no one had touched the piano. Well, at least it was being taken care of.

From habit he stooped and ran his eye up its gaiters.

All buttoned.

Stay—no; one buttonhole gaped.

He stooped closer and put out his hand to button it, and found the button gone. No button. Only an end of thread. How was that?

He straightened himself, and went to the fireplace and rang the bell. Then he waited, looking at his watch. Long ago he had timed the distances between the different rooms and the servants' quarters, allowing for average walking and one minute's margin for getting under way at the start, so that he knew exactly at what moment the parlourmaid ought to appear.

She appeared just as time was up and his finger was moving towards the bell again.

'Look at that piano-leg,' said Wemyss.

The parlourmaid, not knowing which leg, looked at all three so as to be safe.

'What do you see?' he asked.

The parlourmaid was reluctant to say. What she saw was piano-legs, but she felt that wasn't the right answer.

'What do you not see?' Wemyss asked, louder.

This was much more difficult, because there were so many things she didn't see; her parents, for instance.

'Are you deaf, woman?' he inquired.

She knew the answer to that, and said it quickly. 'No sir,' she said.

'Look at that piano-leg, I say,' said Wemyss, pointing with his pipe.

It was, so to speak, the off fore-leg at which he pointed, and the parlourmaid, relieved to be given a clue, fixed her eye on it earnestly.

'What do you see?' he asked. 'Or, rather, what do you not see?'

The parlourmaid looked hard at what she saw, leaving what she didn't see to take care of itself. It seemed unreasonable to be asked to look at what she didn't see. But though she looked, she could see nothing to justify speech. Therefore she was silent.

'Don't you see there's a button off?'

The parlourmaid, on looking closer, did see that, and said so.

'Isn't it your business to attend to this room?'

She admitted that it was.

'Buttons don't come off of themselves,' Wemyss informed her.

The parlourmaid, this not being a question, said nothing.

'Do they?' he asked loudly.

'No sir,' said the parlourmaid; though she could have told him many a story of things buttons did do of themselves, coming off in your hand when you hadn't so much as begun to touch them. Cups, too. The way cups would fall apart in one's hand——

She, however, merely said, 'No sir.'

'Only wear and tear makes them come off,' Wemyss announced; and continuing judicially, emphasising his words with a raised forefinger, he said: 'Now attend to me. This piano hasn't been used for years. Do you hear that? Not for years. To my certain knowledge not for years. Therefore the cover cannot have been unbuttoned legitimately, it cannot have been unbuttoned by any one authorised to unbutton it. Therefore——'

He pointed his finger straight at her and paused. 'Do you follow me?' he asked sternly.

The parlourmaid hastily reassembled her wandering thoughts. 'Yes sir,' she said.

'Therefore some one unauthorised has unbuttoned the cover, and some one unauthorised has played on the piano. Do you understand?'

'Yes sir,' said the parlourmaid.

'It is hardly credible,' he went on, 'but nevertheless the conclusion can't be escaped, that some one has actually taken advantage of my absence to play on that piano. Some one in this house has actually dared——'

'There's the tuner,' said the parlourmaid tentatively, not sure if that would be an explanation, for Wemyss's lucid sentences, almost of a legal lucidity, invariably confused her, but giving the suggestion for what it was worth. 'I understood the orders was to let the tuner in once a quarter, sir. Yesterday was his day. He played for a hour. And 'ad the baize and everything off, and the lid leaning against the wall.'

True. True. The tuner. Wemyss had forgotten the tuner. The tuner had standing instructions to come and tune. Well, why couldn't the fool-woman have reminded him sooner? But the tuner having tuned didn't excuse the parlourmaid's not having sewn on the button the tuner had pulled off.

He told her so.

'Yes sir,' she said.

'You will have that button on in five minutes,' he said, pulling out his watch. 'In five minutes exactly from now that button will be on. I shall be staying in this room, so shall see for myself that you carry out my orders.'

'Yes sir,' said the parlourmaid.

He walked to the window and stood staring at the wild afternoon. She remained motionless where she was.

What a birthday he was having. And with what joy he had looked forward to it. It seemed to him very like the old birthdays with Vera, only so much more painful because he had expected so much. Vera had got him used to expecting very little; but it was Lucy, his adored Lucy, who was inflicting this cruel disappointment on him. Lucy! Incredible. And she to come down in that blanket, tempting him, very nearly getting him that way rather than by the only right and decent way of sincere and obvious penitence. Why, even Vera had never done a thing like that, not once in all the years.

'Let's be friends,' says Lucy. Friends! Yes, she did say something about sorry, but what about that blanket? Sorrow with no clothes on couldn't possibly be genuine. It didn't go together with that kind of appeal. It was not the sort of combination one expected in a wife. Why couldn't she come down and apologise properly dressed? God, her little shoulder sticking out—how he had wanted to seize and kiss it ... but then that would have been giving in, that would have meant her triumph. Her triumph, indeed—when it was she, and she only, who had begun the whole thing, running out of the room like that, not obeying him when he called, humiliating him before that damned Lizzie....

He thrust his hands into his pockets and turned away with a jerk from the window.

There, standing motionless, was the parlourmaid.

'What? You still here?' he exclaimed. 'Why the devil don't you go and fetch that button?'

'I understood your orders was none of us is to leave rooms without your permission, sir.'

'You'd better be quick then,' he said, looking at his watch. 'I gave you five minutes, and three of them have gone.'

She disappeared; and in the servants' sitting-room, while she was hastily searching for her thimble and a button that would approximately do, she told the others what they already knew but found satisfaction in repeating often, that if it weren't that Wemyss was most of the week in London, not a day, not a minute, would she stay in the place.

'There's the wages,' the cook reminded her.

Yes; they were good; higher than anywhere she had heard of. But what was the making of the place was the complete freedom from Monday morning every week to Friday tea-time. Almost anything could be put up with from Friday tea-time till Monday morning, seeing that the rest of the week they could do exactly as they chose, with the whole place as good as belonging to them; and she hurried away, and got back to the drawing-room thirty seconds over time.

Wemyss, however, wasn't there with his watch. He was on his way upstairs to the top of the house, telling himself as he went that if Lucy chose to take possession of his library he would go and take possession of her sitting-room. It was only fair. But he knew she wasn't now in the library. He knew she wouldn't stay there all that time. He wanted an excuse to himself for going to where she was. She must beg his pardon properly. He could hold out—oh, he could hold out all right for any length of time, as she'd find out very soon if she tried the sulking game with him—but to-day it was their first day in his home; it was his birthday; and though nothing could be more monstrous than the way she had ruined everything, yet if she begged his pardon properly he would forgive her, he was ready to take her back the moment she showed real penitence. Never was a woman loved as he loved Lucy. If only she would be penitent, if only she would properly and sincerely apologise, then he could kiss her again. He would kiss that little shoulder of hers, make her pull her blouse back so that he could see it as he saw it down in the library, sticking out of that damned blanket—God, how he loved her....