The Damned and Other Stories

'I'm over forty, Frances, and rather set in my ways,' I said good-
naturedly, ready to yield if she insisted that our going together on
the visit involved her happiness. 'My work is rather heavy just now
too, as you know. The question is, could I work there--with a lot of
unassorted people in the house?'

'Mabel doesn't mention any other people, Bill,' was my sister's
rejoinder. 'I gather she's alone--as well as lonely.'

By the way she looked sideways out of the window at nothing, it was
obvious she was disappointed, but to my surprise she did not urge the
point; and as I glanced at Mrs. Franklyn's invitation lying upon her
sloping lap, the neat, childish handwriting conjured up a mental
picture of the banker's widow, with her timid, insignificant
personality, her pale grey eyes and her expression as of a backward
child. I thought, too, of the roomy country mansion her late husband
had altered to suit his particular needs, and of my visit to it a few
years ago when its barren spaciousness suggested a wing of Kensington
Museum fitted up temporarily as a place to eat and sleep in. Comparing
it mentally with the poky Chelsea flat where I and my sister kept
impecunious house, I realised other points as well. Unworthy details
flashed across me to entice: the fine library, the organ, the quiet
work-room I should have, perfect service, the delicious cup of early
tea, and hot baths at any moment of the day--without a geyser!

'It's a longish visit, a month--isn't it?' I hedged, smiling at the
details that seduced me, and ashamed of my man's selfishness, yet
knowing that Frances expected it of me. 'There are points about it, I
admit. If you're set on my going with you, I could manage it all
right.'

I spoke at length in this way because my sister made no answer. I saw
her tired eyes gazing into the dreariness of Oakley Street and felt a
pang strike through me. After a pause, in which again she said no
word, I added: 'So, when you write the letter, you might hint,
perhaps, that I usually work all the morning, and--er--am not a very
lively visitor! Then she'll understand, you see.' And I half-rose to
return to my diminutive study, where I was slaving, just then, at an
absorbing article on Comparative Aesthetic Values in the Blind and
Deaf.

But Frances did not move. She kept her grey eyes upon Oakley Street
where the evening mist from the river drew mournful perspectives into
view. It was late October. We heard the omnibuses thundering across
the bridge. The monotony of that broad, characterless street seemed
more than usually depressing. Even in June sunshine it was dead, but
with autumn its melancholy soaked into every house between King's Road
and the Embankment. It washed thought into the past, instead of
inviting it hopefully towards the future. For me, its easy width was
an avenue through which nameless slums across the river sent creeping
messages of depression, and I always regarded it as Winter's main
entrance into London--fog, slush, gloom trooped down it every
November, waving their forbidding banners till March came to rout
them.

Its one claim upon my love was that the south wind swept sometimes
unobstructed up it, soft with suggestions of the sea. These lugubrious
thoughts I naturally kept to myself, though I never ceased to regret
the little flat whose cheapness had seduced us. Now, as I watched my
sister's impassive face, I realised that perhaps she, too, felt as I
felt, yet, brave woman, without betraying it.

'And, look here, Fanny,' I said, putting a hand upon her shoulder as I
crossed the room, 'it would be the very thing for you. You're worn out
with catering and housekeeping. Mabel is your oldest friend, besides,
and you've hardly seen her since he died--'