CHAPTER XII

An emissary from Tottenham Court Road sped down to Polterham, surveyed the vacant house, returned with professional computations.  Quarrier and Lilian abode at the old home until everything should be ready for them, and Mrs. Liversedge represented her brother on the spot—­solving the doubts of workmen, hiring servants, making minor purchases.  She invited Denzil to bring his wife, and dwell for the present under the Liversedge roof, but her brother preferred to wait.  “I don’t like makeshifts; we must go straight into our own house; the dignity of the Radical candidate requires it.”  So the work glowed, and as little time as possible was spent over its completion.

It was midway in January when the day and hour of arrival were at last appointed.  No one was to be in the house but the servants.  At four in the afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Quarrier would receive Mr. and Mrs. Liversedge, and thus make formal declaration of their readiness to welcome friends.  Since her return to England, Lilian had seen no one.  She begged Denzil not to invite Glazzard to Clapham.

They reached Polterham at one o’clock, in the tumult of a snowstorm; ten minutes more, and the whitened cab deposited them at their doorway.  Quarrier knew, of course, what the general appearance of the interior would be, and he was well satisfied with the way in which his directions had been carried out.  His companion was at first overawed rather than pleased.  He led her from room to room, saying frequently, “Do you like it?  Will it do?”

“It frightens me!” murmured Lilian, at length.  “How shall I manage such a house?”

She was pale, and inclined to tearfulness, for the situation tired her fortitude in a degree Denzil could not estimate.  Fears which were all but terrors, self-reproach which had the poignancy of remorse, tormented her gentle, timid nature.  For a week and more she had not known unbroken sleep; dreams of fantastic misery awakened her to worse distress in the calculating of her perils and conflict with insidious doubts.  At the dead hour before dawn, faiths of childhood revived before her conscience, upbraiding, menacing.  The common rules of every-day honour spoke to her with stern reproval.  Denzil’s arguments, when she tried to muster them in her defence, answered with hollow, meaningless sound.  Love alone would stead her; she could but shut her eyes, and breathe, as if in prayer, the declaration that her love was a sacred thing, cancelling verbal untruth.

She changed her dress, and went down to luncheon.  The large dining-room seemed to oppress her insignificance; to eat was impossible, and with difficulty she conversed before the servants.  Fortunately, Denzil was in his best spirits; he enjoyed the wintery atmosphere, talked of skating on the ice which had known him as a boy, laughed over an old story about a snowball with a stone in it which had stunned him in one of the fights between town and Grammar School.