‘I’m glad you liked it,’ she said. ‘I always say that men are easier to cook for than women.’
‘Oh, do you think so?’
‘Yes, they have better appetites for one thing. My husband——’ She stopped.
‘Yes?’
‘He had a very good appetite. He was a guardsman, you know—in the Grenadiers. He was a fine big man. You remind me of him, sir.’
Philip was slightly above middle height. A sedentary life had thickened his figure, and doubled his chin, but he couldn’t help being pleased at being compared to a guardsman.
‘And for all he was so big,’ went on Mrs. Weaver, ‘he was like a child in some ways. He went on playing with soldiers to the end—he was that proud of his regiment. He hated the Coldstream Guards and wouldn’t hear them mentioned. I nursed him all through his last illness, when the hospital threw him out, saying they could do nothing more for him. I washed him and shaved him and did everything for him. If you were to fall ill, sir——’
‘Oh, I hope I shan’t,’ said Philip hastily. ‘But it’s nice to think——’ he didn’t finish the sentence. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘is there anything you want? Anything I can do for you to make you more comfortable? I’m afraid your room isn’t very comfortable.’
‘Oh, no, sir, I’m very happy with you. But there’s just one thing——’
‘What is it?’ asked Philip, when she hesitated.
‘Well, sir, it sounds so silly.’
‘Never mind, I’m often silly myself.’
‘I hardly like to tell you.’
‘Out with it.’
‘It’s the small tortoiseshell butterfly, sir. I can’t bear the sight of it. There was one fluttering about the room when my husband was dying. When I see one I go——’
Philip took a hasty glance round the darkening kitchen.
‘I don’t know much about the habits of small tortoiseshell butterflies,’ he said, ‘but I fancy they only breed once a year, in the summer. If you happen to see a stray one, call me and I’ll get rid of it. I’m quite handy with a butterfly-net.’ He made a mental note to buy one.
‘Thank you,’ she answered, without smiling. ‘And I don’t like anything that’s made of tortoiseshell, either. It makes me want to . . .’
‘I’ll see there isn’t any,’ said Philip firmly. ‘I’ll go along now and round up every bit I find. There’s a cigarette-box in my sitting-room—But I’m afraid you must be lonely, as well as having too much to do. Mrs. Featherstone is coming in to-morrow, the daily woman, you know. She lives in the village. She’ll be company for you.’
Mrs. Weaver didn’t seem to welcome this idea.
‘At any rate she’ll only be here in the mornings,’ she said.
Philip bowed himself out and made straight for the cigarette-box. It was a useful object and a nice one, with Cigarettes scribbled across the lid in silver, and silver mountings at the corners. A wedding-present perhaps. But it must go, and so must the buhl clock on the chimney-piece. How bare the room looked without them! What else? Philip ranged the house for the dark, seductive gleam of tortoiseshell, suddenly developing an attachment for the substance that he had never had before; the sense of so many unoccupied rooms all round him gave him an odd feeling; but his search went unrewarded until he came to his own bedroom where, on the dressing-table, lay his comb. He could easily do without it for a day or two; its job was almost a sinecure, he had so little hair. But where to put the culprits so that they shouldn’t offend Mrs. Weaver’s vision and make her do—whatever they did make her do? In the corner cupboard, of course. There she would never see them.
He opened the two rounded doors, and stood and stared. Unpacking, he had heaped his pharmacopoeia (almost his first thought was for it) on to the two lower shelves of the corner cupboard. He had never counted the separate items but there must be nearly thirty. He hadn’t bothered to set them straight or even to stand all of them up: that was to be for another day, the day until which Philip postponed so many things. And now they were all arranged and tidy.
Philip’s first reaction was one of gratitude to Mrs. Weaver, who had taken so much trouble for him. His second was more complex. On the middle shelf the medicines had been put in the way that any tidy-minded person might have put them. But on the lowest shelf they had been arranged in a certain order that betrayed intention and design. They had been drawn up in a kind of formation, the tallest bottles lining the cupboard wall, the medium-sized ones in front of them, and at the feet, so to speak, of these, a third row of smaller vessels, jars and tubes and such-like. The two formations faced each other at right angles, and in between was an empty triangular space like a stage, which seemed to be waiting for something to happen.
Clearly it all meant something: but what did it mean?
Then the meaning flashed on Philip. The bottles were soldiers, two sides drawn up for combat: and the space between them was a battlefield.
He smiled at this odd fantasy of Mrs. Weaver’s; it was some kind of psychological legacy from her guardsman-husband, who in his last illness used to play at soldiers. And yet mingling with his amusement was a faint uneasiness; there was too much tension, too much implied enmity in the little scene for it to have been set for comedy. Philip was sensitive to the influence of objects; he responded not only to their aesthetic but to their personal appeal. Among the bits and pieces that he had brought from London was a silk Heriz rug. He liked all Eastern carpets but the silk rugs of Heriz had a special fascination for him, particularly this one. Framing a brick-red ground its border had a scrolling pattern in crimson; and the crimson reappeared in figures on the ground itself together with other colours, palest buff and turquoise blue. But it was the wooing of the two reds that most delighted him. In favoured moments he could get an ecstasy from contemplating it that amounted to a minor mystical experience. The best moment was when he was called; then, tea-cup in hand, he would fix his eyes on the rug beside his bed and await ravishment.
Here was another kind of symbolism and Philip didn’t altogether like it. . . . But the top shelf was still unoccupied. Into it he put the little clock, the cigarette-box and the comb, all the gleanings of his tortoise-shell harvest. He thrust them to the back, without any regard to military formation, and in front of them erected a barricade of miscellaneous objects—a long roll of cotton-wool in a blue wrapper, some packets of paper handkerchiefs, and other things of vaguely medical use, which effectually obscured them.
Putting the matter out of his mind he was turning to go when a thought struck him: Why not lock the medicine-cupboard? He went back. The cupboard had a lock, and it had a key; but the key didn’t turn in the lock, and the tongue of the lock had no slot to fit into-the slot had been torn out. Philip frowned. The vandalism of these days! The deception, so characteristic of them, of fitting a sham lock which didn’t do its job! The eyewash! Then he smiled at himself and almost blushed. What had induced him to think of locking the cupboard, as if it was some sort of Bluebeard’s chamber, as if it harboured a threat! It was too silly, and might offend Mrs. Weaver, whose only fault was that she had been kind enough to tidy up for him. Besides, she would have no reason to go to the cupboard again; it would be the daily woman’s job to ‘do’ his bedroom; Mrs. Weaver wasn’t even under contract to ‘do’ his sitting-room—the ‘lounge’ as she called it.
At eight o’clock next day Mrs. Weaver brought him his early morning tea. Bethinking himself, he said, ‘How kind of you to put my medicine-cupboard straight. It was in an awful mess.’ She gave him a surprised, uncomprehending look, so he repeated what he had said, with additional expressions of gratitude. Still getting no reply he asked her to give him his bed-jacket. This she did, at once, helping him into it with affectionate concern.