He bowed to me and went to the door. There he turned and looked straight at me before the door shut on him.
"What an extraordinary thing!" cried Rollo. "I can't understand the agent's allowing him to have a key when things have gone as far as they have, with the deal on the verge of completion."
"Who is he?" I asked. "He said he was some connection of yours."
"Of mine! I don't know him. A connection, he said?"
"Yes, he was at the recital. He told me then."
"So you'd met him before. I've no notion who he is. My father may know him. What's his name?"
"I never heard it. We weren't introduced at the recital. He was just beside me and addressed a few words to me. The next time I saw him was here."
"How very strange, and you seem a little upset."
"It was finding someone here... looking at the house."
Rollo nodded. "Oh well, we'll find out who he is. I am a little concerned about the dining-room ceiling. There's a certain amount of damp there. The surveyor pointed it out. I thought I'd come and take a look at it."
I was still feeling dazed as I followed him into the dining room. Rollo looked at the ceiling and said he would consult the builders and after that we went into the garden. He was very precise. "You should employ a professional gardener although it's small," he said. "Philip will be no good at it. Are you?"
"I doubt it," I said.
"Then a good gardener is definitely the answer. Get someone to plan it for you and keep it trim. It could be quite charming then."
We went through the house and out into the square.
"It's good of you to take so much trouble," I told him.
"For my own brother and his wife!" He turned to look at me, his eyes were appraising but warm. "I want you to know, Ellen, how very much we welcome you into the family."
I still felt uneasy. I just could not shake off the feeling.
Rollo called a cab. Clop-clop went the horse's hoofs, and Rollo sat beside me upright, looking satisfied as though something he had undertaken had succeeded very well.
As we turned into the square my heart gave a leap of terror, for standing on the pavement looking straight into the cab was the dark man.
He lifted his hat and bowed to me.
I glanced at Rollo. He had not noticed.
I could not get that morning's events out of my mind. I did not go into the house in Finlay Square again. I couldn't bring myself to. I did walk past it once or twice looking up at those long windows. I said to myself: Nothing would induce me to go there again.
The wedding was three weeks away. My dress was being made by Lady Emily's own dressmaker. Cousin William Loring was happy to pay for it. Mine was going to be one of the weddings of the year and even Cousin Agatha was growing excited about it, bustling about as if she had arranged it. Although it was the marriage of a Poor Relation everything must be perfect, because society must see the kind of reception the Lorings gave to their family. Her great sorrow was that all this fuss was for me, but when she convinced herself that it was a kind of rehearsal for Esmeralda's wedding she was reconciled. And of course Esmeralda was to be a bridesmaid.
"What a fuss getting married is," said Esmeralda. "I'm so glad I'm not the bride."
We had chosen a good many furnishings for the house and much would be done while we were away on our honeymoon, which would be for four weeks. Italy was the chosen place. Philip was delighted that I had never been and looked forward to showing me. Venice was to be our first call and there we should stay until we felt the urge to move on.
I should have been excited and happy, and yet I couldn't dismiss the feeling that I was on the edge of some disaster.
It's marriage, I thought. I'm not ready for it. I want to wait a while.
But how could I say to Philip: 'Let's postpone our marriage. Let's get to know each other'? He would burst into laughter and say that if we did not know each other by now we never would.
It wasn't exactly what I meant. We didn't know each other because we scarcely knew anything of the world, either of us. If the genie of the lamp could rise before me and ask me what I wished I would have no hesitation in saying: Time.
I was frightened by the speed with which the time was flying past. Two more weeks, ten more days...
I wanted to stop time, to say: "Wait. I must think." I was not sleeping very well and would lie awake during the night and my problem would niggle away at me. I fancied Rollo had changed towards me since that last encounter in the house. He seemed to avoid me.
Philip was exuberant. It was clear that he did not suffer from my doubts. I saw Philip afresh now. He was all enthusiasms for whatever obsessed him at the moment, and I thought again and again: He's very young. So was I for that matter, but it seemed to me that I had grown up since my engagement. Grown up, yes, and left Philip behind.
It was the Sunday before our wedding day. There were six more days to go. We were to be married at St. George's Hanover Square and then go back to the Lorings' house for the reception. In the late afternoon we should leave for Venice.
I should have been congratulating myself on my good fortune and at times I did, but not for long. Into my thoughts would creep an insidious notion that I was making a mistake, a mistake fraught with danger, and that I would never again be the old Ellen who, even as a Poor Relation, had enjoyed life wholeheartedly and had often been able to laugh at her own misfortunes.
In the afternoon Philip and I walked through the Park to Kensington Gardens. We skirted the Palace and watched the ducks on the Round Pond; then we walked back across the grass and sat by the Serpentine and talked. Philip was gay. At least he had no doubts, capable as he was of complete absorption in the moment. I remembered that even as children when we would be doing something which would assuredly bring us some punishment, he had never thought ahead. I have never known anyone who had such a capacity for living in and enjoying the moment. It is a great gift. Darling Philip, I was to be grateful later that he possessed it.
"Six whole days," he was saying. "It seems a lifetime. I'll be glad when all the fuss is over. It won't be long, Ellen, before we're sailing down the Grand Canal with our gondolier soothing us with his beautiful song. Aren't you pleased?"
"Of course. It'll be wonderful."
"It was always us, wasn't it? As soon as I came home from school I'd ask if you were there. Of course we always had to have Esmeralda trailing on, but I wanted to be with you in spite of that."
"You're cruel to Esmeralda. In the first place you should have been kinder to her in your youth and in the second place you should have married her."
"As we're not allowed two wives in this country and I'd already decided on you, how could I?"
"You were always obstinate."
"And what of you? Ours will be a nice explosive union, Ellen. We shall argue and fight and make it up and love each other until the end of our days."
"Let's try to do that, Philip," I said.
He took my hand and held it firmly.
"I've no qualms," he told me seriously.
"It's not too late to get out of it even now. If you'd like more time..."
"More time! I want less time. A week's a hell of a long way off."
And so we chatted on that seat in the Park and afterwards I tried to remember every word that was said in case in that conversation there might have been some clue to what followed. Try as I might, I could remember nothing. It seemed to be the sort of conversation Philip and I had had a thousand times.
In the evening we went to church and afterwards I walked home with Cousin Agatha, Cousin William and Esmeralda. We retired early, for there was never entertaining on Sundays, and I sat by my window for some time looking out on the gardens and thinking that this time next week I should be married. Philip and I would be on our way to Venice.