A Little Treachery

15

Meanwhile, the young woman she had let in had gone lightly up the stairs, as directed, and then, left to herself in the upper region, was more than ever like a cat exploring a new home. She prowled, soft-footed. She peeped hither and thither, her big and glistening eyes very wide open and looking dark above the low illumination of a bedside lamp. She peered behind doors and under the legs of furniture; she seemed to snuff the air, she rubbed the stuffs of the draperies between slim, ready fingers, she patted the beds. She stared searchingly into the depths of the mirror, as if with a kind of primitive intent and like a creature not understanding the properties of a looking-glass and expecting to see within that hollow oval something not visible in the room. Now and again a brief whisper escaped her. ‘God ’a mercy!’ ‘A bad break, Emmy, my poor lass.’ And the acute, guileful little face appeared alternately at the two windows, wide-eyed, surveying the traffic whizzing by at a distance of a few feet on the one hand, the valley now sunk in night on the other. She thought nothing of the traffic; but at the other view, deep, branchy, still arbitrarily patterned by the dwindled strips of snow which gave it a sort of ghostly visibility, she appeared lost in dubious wonder.

Altogether, some quality in her situation seemed to amaze her, to the point of alarm. Indeed, if Emmy had shrieked with rapture, it might well have been only to prevent herself from shrieking with consternation.

Certain features seemed to her downright forbidding. Catherine was by no means a deeply domesticated woman, but she had prepared the house with thoroughness to welcome her guest, and everything was austerely clean and stood in order. ‘Bathroom like on the first day in Paradise’ – Emmy skimpingly used snowy towels, scentless soap. She appeared to observe this spotless condition of things in particular with uneasiness, for she glanced at her shoes. She had no slippers with her, so she moved on tip-toe.

All she did, however, she did very rapidly; then stood an instant critically surveying herself – her furbished if unwashed face, her smoothed hair, and the small, frilled tea-apron which she had tied on. She had bought the apron in the town as she came from the station. It was as if the little stray cat had bought itself a collar and bell, in order to make a meekly domesticated impression. The apron indicated that Emmy was prepared to wash up, for instance. It was the apron over which she lingered longest. She did not know whether it was not really a bit much. She would chance it.

Actually, she had not bought it from guile, but because she was truly at a loss in these surroundings. It was at the station, with its elms and rookery, its loud thrush and its view over the Lammas-lands, that she had begun to experience those qualms and misgivings, and to feel badly at sea, and altogether to lose her grip a bit, as she expressed it to herself. She had never imagined living in such a place, not actually living. It was the sort of place one passed through in a train or coach.

What, she asked herself, did this old Judy want of her? A companion? A slave? A victim? A friend? Or was she simply in need of the wherewithal?

Queer little body with crooked shoulders – something a bit wrong with her spine, perhaps – and with the dark, sunken eye, the terrible frown, the voice which seemed out of practice, which she seemed hardly able to raise, being inclined to mutter. And dressed in clothes not bad in themselves, of good, expensive stuff, but which obviously had never been bought for her, and of such a fashion –! Well, such as to be almost impressive. Looking, too, as if she might be a bit of a tartar on occasion. Emmy didn’t mind this last item, as some might have done; she was used to tartars and had developed a pliancy, a rubber-like durability, which was proof against the capers of the worst of them. ‘Better when she lays on a smile, however. Quite a surprise, in fact.’ Still, tartars are like that, as Emmy well knew. Often they have charm.

In short, she could no more size up Catherine Hare than Catherine could size up her; and that she was puzzled spoke well for her intelligence. Almost any other girl of her age would have taken one look at Catherine and dismissed her as a poor old thing without past or future.

Emmy made no such mistake.

She was not impressed as most young people would have been; she was impressed in a peculiar manner. Dramatic presentments and exaggerated lineaments of character, masks, their owners’ stock in trade, which concealed no equivalent emotion – Emmy was used to these. She had been brought up in a society singularly tolerant of eccentrics. She regarded her hostess with provisional respect. More than one well-feathered old party she had seen who had lived like a miser and dressed with an incredible contempt of fashion and value, and sometimes of cleanliness. This one, though, she thought, was not unkempt; and a touch of queerness did not scare Emmy. She was not daunted on those grounds.

But what had bothered her from the beginning was her distinct impression that she had got into the wrong drawer. She was a young woman of many experiences, but an experience of respectability and careful housekeeping was not among them. And that did make her uneasy. She felt like a child. She didn’t want to be turfed out straight away for some sort of bad behaviour, like a dirty puppy. That would be awkward. Yet she couldn’t quite make up her mind what number to put on.

In spite of herself, it was the child anxious to make a good impression who appeared, with confiding, ingratiating smile, upon the kitchen stairs; and that bright, strained gaze with the shade of anxiety traceable in it moved Catherine to the most generous estimate. One had a natural impulse to stroke the little cat and make it at home.

Emotional warmth, as well as a somewhat dubious excitement, animated her voice now as she invited Emmy to the tea-table: ‘You must be cold and tired.’

Tea! Emmy swooped upon this comfortable, intelligible overture with rapture. The young girl with a good appetite would do for the time being. But in fact in this role Emmy was pretty natural.