I agreed. I had recovered from my attack of selfishness.
I expressed my pleasure.
“You’ve written to accept,” I said,
half statement and half question.
Frances nodded. “I thanked for you,”
she added quietly, “explaining that you were
not free at the moment, but that later, if not inconvenient,
you might come down for a bit and join me.”
I stared. Frances sometimes had this independent
way of deciding things. I was convicted, and
punished into the bargain.
Of course there followed argument and explanation,
as between brother and sister who were affectionate,
but the recording of our talk could be of little interest.
It was arranged thus, Frances and I both satisfied.
Two days later she departed for The Towers, leaving
me alone in the flat with everything planned for my
comfort and good behavior—she was rather
a tyrant in her quiet way—and her last words
as I saw her off from Charing Cross rang in my head
for a long time after she was gone:
“I’ll write and let you know, Bill.
Eat properly, mind, and let me know if anything goes
wrong.”
She waved her small gloved hand, nodded her head till
the feather brushed the window, and was gone.
After the note announcing her safe arrival a week
of silence passed, and then a letter came; there were
various suggestions for my welfare, and the rest was
the usual rambling information and description Frances
loved, generously italicized.
" ...and we are quite alone,” she went on in
her enormous handwriting that seemed such a waste
of space and labor, “though some others are
coming presently, I believe. You could work here
to your heart’s content. Mabel quite understands,
and says she would love to have you when you feel
free to come. She has changed a bit—back
to her old natural self: she never mentions him.
The place has changed too in certain ways: it
has more cheerfulness, I think. She has put it
in, this cheerfulness, spaded it in, if you know what
I mean; but it lies about uneasily and is not natural—quite.
The organ is a beauty. She must be very rich
now, but she’s as gentle and sweet as ever.
Do you know, Bill, I think he must have frightened
her into marrying him. I get the impression she
was afraid of him.” This last sentence was
inked out, I but I read it through the scratching;
the letters being too big to hide. “He
had an inflexible will beneath all that oily kindness
which passed for spiritual. He was a real personality,
I mean. I’m sure he’d have sent you
and me cheerfully to the stake in another century—for
our own good. Isn’t it odd she never speaks
of him, even to me?” This, again, was stroked
through, though without the intention to obliterate—merely
because it was repetition, probably. “The
only reminder of him in the house now is a big copy
of the presentation portrait that stands on the stairs
of the Multitechnic Institute at Peckham—you
