The Case of William Smith

Chapter Fourteen

William took Katharine round to see Mr. Tattlecombe after the shop closed next day, and found that the visit was in the nature of an Occasion. Mr. Tattlecombe had come out of his splint that morning and had moved across the landing to the upstairs parlour, which dated from the time before Abigail’s marriage when old Mrs. Salt had lived with her son and for the best part of fifteen years had never gone downstairs. The carpet was the one she had chosen, and so were the plush armchairs. The crochet antimacassars were her own handiwork. A photographic enlargement of her in a Victorian widow’s cap looked down from over the mantelpiece.

Mr. Tattlecombe sat in the largest of the armchairs with his leg up on a foot-rest and a brown and white striped woollen shawl spread over it. Abigail Salt had put on her Sunday dress. There was tea, and cake, and sandwiches, and a cold fish mould, and a jelly, and a trifle, and a plate of Abigail’s famous cheese straws, and a pot of her cousin Sarah Hill’s famous apple honey.

Mr. Tattlecombe was as pleased as Punch. If favour was deceitful and beauty was vain, it was nevertheless pleasant to the eye. He found Miss Eversley pleasant to the eye. And not one of the flaunting kind – a very modest, quiet-spoken, ladylike young woman. And fond of William – you couldn’t be in the room with them without getting hold of that. Abigail Salt agreed. A nice girl, if she was any judge of girls, and she thought she was. Something about her that made you wonder why she hadn’t looked higher than William Smith. But easy to see that they were in love. Funny how a thing like that came out when they weren’t so much as looking at each other and the talk was all about the shop, and those painted toys, and Abel’s leg, and Sarah’s apple honey, and how did she get her cheese straws so light. She found herself giving Katharine the recipe, which was a thing she wouldn’t have believed if anyone had told her.

Then, when everything was going as well as it possibly could, who should open the door and look in on them but poor Emily? Not that she wasn’t welcome – Abigail Salt would never have allowed herself to harbour the thought that Emily’s room was preferable to her company. If such a thought presented itself, it would be turned out and the door banged in its face. But she didn’t know when Emily had done such a thing as join them when there was company. Go away down to the kitchen was what she would do, and make her own tea and go picking over the larder for something to eat. And many a time Abigail had been obliged to make it the subject of prayer, for to have your larder picked over was what would try the patience of a saint. If Abby wasn’t a saint she was a kind-hearted woman, and she had put up with Emily and her ways for the best part of thirty years. She lifted her eyes placidly to the tall black figure in the doorway and said,

‘Come in, my dear. This is Miss Eversley. And I think you know Mr. Smith – my sister-in-law, Miss Salt.’

Emily stood there in a black woollen dress with an uneven hem. It dipped at the back and lifted where her angular hips took it up, the neck sagged, and the sleeves left the bony wrists uncovered. She poked her head forward, with its thatch of dark hair piled up like a grizzled haycock, turned lack-lustre eyes on Abel, on Katharine, on William, and came into the room and up to the table. When William offered her a chair she looked at him again. The chair might have been a cup of cold poison or an instrument of torture. William was to consider himself detected and spurned. She went round to the other side of the table, chose a ridiculous small chair a long way after Sheraton, set it down as near to Abigail and as far from William as possible, and began to eat cheese and tomato sandwiches with great rapidity, one down, t’other come on. Without saying anything at all she had contrived to cast a blight. She ate her sandwiches and she drank her tea.

Mr. Tattlecombe, with rising colour, reflected that there were trials that were sent by the Lord and you had to put up with them. But he couldn’t feel like that about Emily, and in his opinion she ought to be in a home.

It was whilst Katharine was telling him that they thought of getting married on Saturday that Emily Salt stopped in the middle of a sandwich to make her first remark. Her voice was harsh and deep, almost as deep as a man’s. She said,

‘Marry in haste and repent at leisure – there’s a proverb about that.’

Abel’s eyes went as blue as marbles.

‘And there’s one about least said soonest mended, Emily Salt.’

She might not have heard him. She went on eating sandwiches until she had finished the plate. Then she pushed back her chair so roughly that it fell over, and went out of the room as she had come, looking sideways at Abel, at William, at Katharine, turning on the threshold to look again, and then shutting the door so quickly that it seemed as if it must bang. Only it didn’t – it didn’t make any sound at all. It shut, and there was no sound at all. And no sound from the other side of it. Emily Salt might be standing there, pressed close against the panels, listening. Or she might have gone upstairs, or she might have gone down, or she might have flown away on a broomstick.

Inside the room they went on talking. But everyone’s voice had dropped. Emily might be standing there, pressed up against the door.