Free The Partnership by Phyllis Bentley Page B

herself—seemed able to grasp this essential principle, but Annice’s breakfasts were always on the tick. She had, indeed, desired to serve themeal to Lydia in bed, but her Spartan mistress refused this with disgust, and Annice yielded, reserving to herself the right of waking Lydia half an hour before the special breakfast-time. Punctually every morning she entered Lydia’s room, drew up her blinds, announced the time, and informed her what kind of a day it was and the sort of coat she ought to wear. Sometimes, it is true, she sounded a trifle breathless, as though she had had to hurry a good deal, and sometimes she seemed to be holding some of her clothes in position with one hand; but she was not often more than a few seconds late. On the rare occasions when this calamity did occur the alarmed self-reproach in her voice as she announced the time was truly wonderful.
    Every day that passed, in fact, made Annice a more integral and a more indispensable part of the Mellor household, and the deepening winter deepened the affection and gratitude with which Lydia regarded her.
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    When two women have lived together in filial intimacy for a long period of time, the emotions of one communicate themselves rapidly to the other without the medium of words. Lydia never needed to be told when something had occurred to distress Louise; she was wont to tease her mother by saying that she could feel it in the air as soon as she opened the front door, and certainly shecould read it in Louise’s smile, her look, her slightest action.
    One winter evening she experienced this depression of her nerves. Charles had no engagement that night, and the three Mellors sat comfortably together round the hearth. Outside, the wind howled in seasonable fashion; within, an enormous fire roared in fierce red and gold up the chimney—Dyson had sent them in a cellarful of logs, and Annice, being a miner’s daughter, knew only too well how to arrange coal so that its combustion was rapid. The Tolefree ancestor looked benignly down from above the hearth, as usual. As usual, Charles, his silvery head nestling snugly into a well-placed cushion, his grey eyes sparkling with jolly malice, one plump white hand extended to shield his face from the blaze, discoursed brilliantly of things in general and wittily of people in particular, while Lydia egged him on, as usual. As usual, Louise was vaguely knitting some Christmas garment for the poor. Everything was as usual, and Lydia should have enjoyed her usual quiet content; but for some unaccountable reason her spirits began to sink. She shifted restlessly in her chair, sighed once or twice, wondered uneasily what was the matter with her, and suddenly shot a startled glance at Louise. The glance revealed that her diagnosis of her uneasiness was correct, for the face her mother bent above her work was closed and brooding. Instantly Lydia’s spirits sank to zero, and she began torack her brain for the cause of Louise’s depression. Was her rheumatism worse? Had Charles’s cough shown disquieting symptoms? Or was Louise perhaps suffering from some casual sarcasm from an outsider or from Dyson? Charles’s stout heart was impervious to all such, but they wounded the gentler spirit of his wife; as did, too, the spectacle of any of the more cruel and debasing twists of life. It was a characteristic of her mother, as Lydia knew, to bury the cause of trouble in her heart till its first bitterness was over and she could speak of it as though she did not care. In a day or two she would no doubt casually reveal this present grief, whatever it was, and the air would clear; but meanwhile her fair face was clouded, and Lydia felt miserable. She sighed again and responded at random to one of Charles’s best anecdotes. It was astonishing, she reflected, how obtuse the male sex were to impressions of the kind she was just experiencing. Her father was undoubtedly one of the most sensitive and