I vaguely expected to find it altered, and yet I had ceased to expect to see Mrs. Santander appear at any moment. That always happens when one waits for a person who doesn’t come. But there was an alteration—in me. I couldn’t find any satisfaction in struggling with Wolf; the music had lost its hold. So I drew a chair up to the china-cabinet; it had always charmed me with its figures of Chinamen, those white figures, conventional and stiff, but so smooth and luminous and significant. I found myself wondering, as often before, whether the ferocious pleasure in their expressions was really the Oriental artist’s conception of unqualified good humour, or whether they were not, after all, rather cruel people. And this disquieting topic aroused others that I had tried successfully to repress: the exact connotation of my staying in the house as Mrs. Santander’s guest, an unsporting little mouse playing when the cat was so undeniably, so effectually away. To ease myself of these obstinate questionings, I leant forward to open the door of the cabinet, intending to distract myself by taking one of the figures into my hands. Suddenly I heard a sound and looked up. A man was standing in the middle of the room.
‘I’m afraid the cabinet’s locked,’ he said.
In spite of my bewilderment, something in his appearance struck me as odd: he was wearing a hat. It was a grey felt hat, and he had an overcoat that was grey too.
‘I hope you don’t take me for a burglar,’ I said, trying to laugh.
‘Oh no,’ he replied, ‘not that.’ I thought his eyes were smiling, but his mouth was shadowed by a dark moustache. He was a handsome man. Something in his face struck me as familiar; but it was not an unusual type and I might easily have been mistaken.
In the hurry of getting up I knocked over a set of fire-irons—the cabinet flanked the fireplace—and there was a tremendous clatter. It alarmed and then revived me. But I had a curious feeling of defencelessness as I stooped down to pick the fire-irons up, and it was difficult to fix them into their absurd sockets. The man in grey watched my operations without moving. I began to resent his presence. Presently he moved and stood with his back to the fire, stretching out his fingers to the warmth.
‘We haven’t been introduced,’ I said.
‘No,’ he replied, ‘we haven’t.’
Then, while I was growing troubled and exasperated by his behaviour, he offered an explanation. ‘I’m the engineer Mrs. Santander calls in now and then to superintend her electric plant. That’s how I know my way about. She’s so inventive, and she doesn’t like to take risks.’ He volunteered this. ‘And I came in here in case any of the fittings needed adjustment. I see they don’t.’
‘No,’ I said, secretly reassured by the stranger’s account of himself; ‘but I wish—of course, I speak without Mrs. Santander’s authority—I wish you’d have a look at the switches in the library. They’re damned inconvenient.’ I was so pleased with myself for having compassed the expletive that I scarcely noticed how the engineer’s fingers, still avid of warmth, suddenly became rigid.
‘Oh, you’ve been in the library, have you?’ he said.
I replied that I had got no further than the door. ‘But if you can wait,’ I added politely to this superior mechanic who liked to style himself an engineer, ‘Mrs. Santander will be here in a moment.’
‘You’re expecting her?’ asked the mechanic.
‘I’m staying in the house,’ I replied stiffly. The man was silent for several moments. I noticed the refinement in his face, the good cut of his clothes. I pondered upon the physical disability that made it impossible for him to join the army.
‘She makes you comfortable here?’ he asked; and a physical disturbance, sneezing or coughing, I supposed, seized him, for he took out his handkerchief and turned from me with all the instinct of good breeding. But I felt that the question was one his station scarcely entitled him to make, and ignored it. He recovered himself.
‘I’m afraid I can’t wait,’ he said. ‘I must be going home. The wind is dropping. By the way,’ he added, ‘we have a connection in London. I think I may say it’s a good firm. If ever you want an electric plant installed!—I left a card somewhere.’ He searched for it vainly. ‘Never mind,’ he said, with his hand on the door, ‘Mrs. Santander will give you all particulars.’ Indulgently I waved my hand, and he was gone.
A moment later it seemed to me that he wouldn’t be able to cross to the mainland without notifying the ferryman. I rang the bell. The butler appeared. ‘Mrs. Santander is very late, sir,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I replied, momentarily dismissing the question. ‘But there’s a man, a mechanic or something—you probably know.’ The butler looked blank. ‘Anyhow,’ I said, ‘a man has been here attending to the lighting; he wants to go home; would you telephone the boatman to come and fetch him away?’
When the butler had gone to execute my order, my former discomfort and unease returned. The adventure with the engineer had diverted my thoughts from Mrs. Santander. Why didn’t she come? Perhaps she had fallen asleep, dressing. It happened to women when they were having their hair brushed. Gertrude was imperious and difficult; her maid might be afraid to wake her. Then I remembered her saying in her letter, ‘I shall be an awful fright because I’ve had to give my maid the sack.’ It was funny how the colloquialisms jarred when you saw them in black and white; it was different when she was speaking. Ah, just to hear her voice! Of course, the loss of her maid would hinder her, and account for some delay. Lucky maid, I mused confusedly, to have her hair in your hands! Her image was all before me as I walked aimlessly about the room. Half tranced with the delight of that evocation, I stopped in front of a great bowl, ornamented with dragons, that stood on the piano. Half an hour ago I had studied its interior that depicted terracotta fish with magenta fins swimming among conventional weeds. My glance idly sought the pattern again. It was partially covered by a little slip of paper. Ah! the engineer’s card! His London connection! Amusedly I turned it over to read the fellow’s name.
I started violently, the more that at the same moment there came a knock at the door. It was only the butler; but I was so bewildered I scarcely recognized him. Too well-trained, perhaps, to appear to notice my distress, he delivered himself almost in a speech. ‘We can’t find any trace of the person you spoke of, sir. The ferryman’s come across and he says there’s no one at the landing-stage.’
‘The gentleman,’ I said, ‘has left this,’ and I thrust the card into the butler’s hand.
‘Why, that must be Mr. Santander!’ the servant of Mr. Santander’s wife at last brought out.
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘and I think perhaps as it’s getting late, we ought to try and find Mrs. Santander. The dinner will be quite spoiled.’
Telling the butler to wait and not to alarm the servants, I went alone to Gertrude’s room. From the end of a long passage I saw the door standing partly open; I saw, too, that the room was in darkness. There was nothing strange in that, I told myself; but it would be methodical, it would save time, to examine the intervening rooms first. Examine! What a misleading word. I banished it, and ‘search’ came into my mind. I rejected that too. As I explored the shuttered silences I tried to find a formula that would amuse Gertrude, some facetious understatement of my agitated quest. ‘A little tour of inspection’—she would like that. I could almost hear her say: ‘So you expected to find me under a sofa!’ I wouldn’t tell her that I had looked under the sofas, unless to make a joke of it: something about dust left by the housemaid. I rose to my knees, spreading my hands out in the white glow. Not a speck. But wasn’t conversation—conversation with Gertrude—made up of little half-truths, small forays into fiction? With my hand on the door—it was of the last room and led on to the landing—I rehearsed the pleasantry aloud: ‘During the course of a little tour of inspection, Gertrude, I went from one dust-heap to another, from dust unto dust I might almost say. . . .’ This time I must overcome my unaccountable reluctance to enter her room. Screwing up my courage, I stepped into the passage, but for all my resolution I got no further.