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By Root 427 0

‘The girls’! That’s how she always spoke of them. The girls! And the eldest was well over sixty then. ‘Those stupid girls!’ she used to call them sometimes. Black slaves, that’s all they were, fetching and carrying and agreeing with her. Ten o’clock they had to go to bed and they weren’t allowed a fire in their bedroom, and as for asking their own friends to the house, that would have been unheard of. She despised them, you know, for not getting married, and yet so arranged their lives that it was practically impossible for them to meet anybody. I believe Emily, or perhaps it was Agnes, did have some kind of affair with a curate. But his family wasn’t good enough and Mamma soon put a stop to that!”

“It sounds like a novel,” said Joanna.

“Oh, my dear, it was. And then the dreadful old woman died, but of course it was far too late then. They just went on living there and talking in hushed voices about what poor Mamma would have wished. Even repapering her bedroom they felt to be quite sacrilegious. Still they did enjoy themselves in the parish in a quiet way… But none of them had much stamina, and they just died off one by one. Influenza took off Edith, and Minnie had an operation and didn’t recover and poor Mabel had a stroke—Emily looked after her in the most devoted manner. Really that poor woman has done nothing but nursing for the last ten years. A charming creature, don’t you think? Like a piece of Dresden. So sad for her having financial anxieties—but of course all investments have depreciated.”

“We feel rather awful being in her house,” said Joanna.

“No, no, my dear young lady. You mustn’t feel that way. Her dear good Florence is devoted to her and she told me herself how happy she was to have got such nice tenants.” Here Mr. Pye made a little bow. “She told me she thought she had been most fortunate.”

“The house,” I said, “has a very soothing atmosphere.”

Mr. Pye darted a quick glance at me.

“Really? You feel that? Now, that’s very interesting. I wondered, you know. Yes, I wondered.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Pye?” asked Joanna.

My Pye spread out his plump hands.

“Nothing, nothing. One wondered, that is all. I do believe in atmosphere, you know. People’s thoughts and feelings. They give their impression to the walls and the furniture.”

I did not speak for a moment or two. I was looking round me and wondering how I would describe the atmosphere of Prior’s Lodge. It seemed to me that the curious thing was that it hadn’t any atmosphere! That was really very remarkable.

I reflected on this point so long that I heard nothing of the conversation going on between Joanna and her host. I was recalled to myself, however, by hearing Joanna uttering farewell preliminaries. I came out of my dream and added my quota.

We all went out into the hall. As we came towards the front door a letter came through the box and fell on the mat.

“Afternoon post,” murmured Mr. Pye as he picked it up. “Now, my dear young people, you will come again, won’t you? Such a pleasure to meet some broader minds, if you understand me. Someone with an appreciation of Art. Really you know, these dear good people down here, if you mention the Ballet, it conveys to them pirouetting toes, and tulle skirts and old gentlemen with opera glasses in the Naughty Nineties. It does indeed. Fifty years behind the times—that’s what I put them down, as. A wonderful country, England. It has pockets. Lymstock is one of them. Interesting from a collector’s point of view—I always feel I have voluntarily put myself under a glass shade when I am here. The peaceful backwater where nothing ever happens.”

Shaking hands with us twice over, he helped me with exaggerated care into the car. Joanna took the wheel, she negotiated with some care the circular sweep round a plot of unblemished grass, then with a straight drive ahead, she raised a hand to wave goodbye to our host where he stood on the steps of the house. I leaned forward to do the same.

But our gesture of farewell went unheeded. Mr. Pye had opened his mail.

He was standing staring down at the open sheet in his