So the great experiment was set under way. Advertisements were put in the local paper and in the Times, and various answers came.
And now, today, the first of the guests was to arrive. Giles had gone off early in the car to try and obtain some army wire netting that had been advertised as for sale on the other side of the county. Molly announced the necessity of walking to the village to make some last purchases.
The only thing that was wrong was the weather. For the last two days it had been bitterly cold, and now the snow was beginning to fall. Molly hurried up the drive, thick, feathery flakes falling on her waterproofed shoulders and bright curly hair. The weather forecasts had been lugubrious in the extreme. Heavy snowfall was to be expected.
She hoped anxiously that all the pipes wouldn’t freeze. It would be too bad if everything went wrong just as they started. She glanced at her watch. Past teatime. Would Giles have got back yet? Would he be wondering where she was?
‘I had to go to the village again for something I had forgotten,’ she would say. And he would laugh and say, ‘More tins?’
Tins were a joke between them. They were always on the lookout for tins of food. The larder was really quite nicely stocked now in case of emergencies.
And, Molly thought with a grimace as she looked up at the sky, it looked as though emergencies were going to present themselves very soon.
The house was empty. Giles was not back yet. Molly went first into the kitchen, then upstairs, going round the newly prepared bedrooms. Mrs Boyle in the south room with the mahogany and the fourposter. Major Metcalf in the blue room with the oak. Mr Wren in the east room with the bay window. All the rooms looked very nice—and what a blessing that Aunt Katherine had had such a splendid stock of linen. Molly patted a counterpane into place and went downstairs again. It was nearly dark. The house felt suddenly very quiet and empty. It was a lonely house, two miles from a village, two miles, as Molly put it, from anywhere.
She had often been alone in the house before—but she had never before been so conscious of being alone in it.
The snow beat in a soft flurry against the windowpanes. It made a whispery, uneasy sound. Supposing Giles couldn’t get back—supposing the snow was so thick that the car couldn’t get through? Supposing she had to stay alone here—stay alone for days, perhaps.
She looked round the kitchen—a big, comfortable kitchen that seemed to call for a big, comfortable cook presiding at the kitchen table, her jaws moving rhythmically as she ate rock cakes and drank black tea—she should be flanked by a tall, elderly parlormaid on one side and a round, rosy housemaid on the other, with a kitchen-maid at the other end of the table observing her betters with frightened eyes. And instead there was just herself, Molly Davis, playing a role that did not yet seem a very natural role to play. Her whole life, at the moment, seemed unreal—Giles seemed unreal. She was playing a part—just playing a part.
A shadow passed the window, and she jumped—a strange man was coming through the snow. She heard the rattle of the side door. The stranger stood there in the open doorway, shaking off snow, a strange man, walking into the empty house.
And then, suddenly, illusion fled.
‘Oh Giles,’ she cried, ‘I’m so glad you’ve come!’
‘Hullo, sweetheart! What filthy weather! Lord, I’m frozen.’
He stamped his feet and blew through his hands.
Automatically Molly picked up the coat that he had thrown in a Giles-like manner onto the oak chest. She put it on a hanger, taking out of the stuffed pockets a muffler, a newspaper, a ball of string, and the morning’s correspondence which he had shoved in pell mell. Moving into the kitchen, she laid down the articles on the dresser and put the kettle on the gas.
‘Did you get the netting?’ she asked. ‘What ages you’ve been.’
‘It wasn’t the right kind. Wouldn’t have been any good for us. I went on to another dump, but that wasn’t any good, either. What have you been doing with yourself? Nobody turned up yet, I suppose?’
‘Mrs Boyle isn’t coming till tomorrow, anyway.’
‘Major Metcalf and Mr Wren ought to be here today.’
‘Major Metcalf sent a card to say he wouldn’t be here till tomorrow.’
‘Then that leaves us and Mr Wren for dinner. What do you think he’s like? Correct sort of retired civil servant is my idea.’
‘No, I think he’s an artist.’
‘In that case,’ said Giles, ‘we’d better get a week’s rent in advance.’
‘Oh, no, Giles, they bring luggage. If they don’t pay we hang on to their luggage.’
‘And suppose their luggage is stones wrapped up in newspaper? The truth is, Molly, we don’t in the least know what we’re up against in this business. I hope they don’t spot what beginners we are.’
‘Mrs Boyle is sure to,’ said Molly. ‘She’s that kind of woman.’
‘How do you know? You haven’t seen her?’
Molly turned away. She spread a newspaper on the table, fetched some cheese, and set to work to grate it.
‘What’s this?’ inquired her husband.
‘It’s going to be Welsh rarebit,’ Molly informed him. ‘Bread crumbs and mashed potatoes and just a teeny weeny bit of cheese to justify its name.’
‘Aren’t you a clever cook?’ said her admiring husband.
‘I wonder. I can do one thing at a time. It’s assembling them that needs so much practice. Breakfast is the worst.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it all happens at once—eggs and bacon and hot milk and coffee and toast. The milk boils over, or the toast burns, or the bacon frizzles, or the eggs go hard. You have to be as active as a scalded cat watching everything at once.’
‘I shall have to creep down unobserved tomorrow morning and watch this scalded-cat impersonation.’
‘The kettle’s boiling,’ said
