But the visits to Lady Place came to a sad end, for in James died suddenly of heart-failure. Sibyl decided that she could not go on living alone in the country. A manager was found for the brewery, Lady Place was let unfurnished upon a long lease, and Sibyl and the four-years-old heir of the Willowes name and traditions moved to a small place in Hampstead. Sibyl had proposed to sell some of the furniture, for there was a great deal more of it than she needed, and most of it was too large to fit into her new dwelling. This project was opposed by Henry, and with considerable heat. The family establishment must, he admitted, be broken up, but he would allow no part of it to be alienated. All the furniture that could not be found room for at Hampstead or at Apsley Terrace must be stored till Titus should be of an age to resume the tenure of Lady Place.
To Laura it seemed as though some familiar murmuring brook had suddenly gone underground. There it flowed, silenced and obscured, until the moment when it should reappear and murmur again between green banks. She thought of Titus as a grown man and herself as an old woman meeting among the familiar belongings. She believed that when she was old the ghostlike feeling that distressed her would matter less. She hoped that she might not die before that day, if it were only that she would remember so well, as Titus could not, how the furniture stood in the rooms and the pictures hung on the walls.
But by then, she said to herself, Titus would have a wife with tastes of her own. Sibyl would have liked to alter several things, but tradition had been too strong for her. It would be a very different matter in twenty years’ time. The chairs and tables and cabinets would come out blinking and forgetful from their long storage in darkness. They would have lost the individuality by which they had made certain corners so surely their own. The Lady Place she had known was over. She could remember it if she pleased; but she must not think of it.
Meanwhile Emma’s harp trailed its strings in her bedroom. Ratafee was removed to Hampstead. Titus had insisted upon this.
She wondered if Henry felt as she did. He had shown a great deal of Willowes spirit over the furniture, but otherwise he had not expressed himself. In person Henry, so it was said, resembled his grandfather who had made the move from Dorset to Somerset—the sacrilegious move which the home-loving of the Willowes had so soon sanctified that in the third generation she was feeling like this about Lady Place. Henry seemed to resemble his grandfather in spirit also. He could house all the family traditions in his practical mind, and for the rest talk about bricks and mortar. He concerned himself with the terms of Sibyl’s lease, the agreement with the manager of the brewery, and the question of finding a satisfactory place to carry his family to for the holidays.
After some experiments they settled down to a routine that with a few modifications for the sake of variety or convenience served them for the next fifteen years. In spring they went to some moderately popular health resort and stayed in a hotel, for it was found that the uncertainty of an English spring, let alone the uncertainty of a Christian Easter, made lodgings unsatisfactory at that time of year. In summer they went into lodgings, or took a furnished house in some seaside village without any attractions. They did this, not to be economical—there was no need for economy—but because they found rather plain dull holidays the most refreshing. Henry was content with a little unsophisticated golf and float-fishing. The children bathed and played on the beach and went on bicycling expeditions; and Caroline and Laura watched the children bathe and play, and replenished their stock of underclothes, and rested from the strain of London housekeeping. Sometimes Caroline did a little reading. Sometimes Sibyl and Titus stayed with them, or Titus stayed with them alone while his mother paid visits.
Laura looked forward with pleasure to the summer holidays (the Easter holidays she never cared about, as she had a particular dislike for palms); but after the first shock of arrival and smelling the sea, the days seemed to dribble out very much like the days in London. When the end came, and she looked back from the wagonette over the past weeks, she found that after all she had done few of the things she intended to do. She would have liked to go by herself for long walks inland and find strange herbs, but she was too useful to be allowed to stray. She had once formed an indistinct project of observing limpets. But for all her observations she discovered little save that if you sit very still for a long time the limpet will begin to move sideways, and that it is almost impossible to sit very still for a long time and keep your attention fixed upon such a small object as a limpet without feeling slightly hypnotised and slightly sick. On the lowest count she seldom contrived to read all the books or to finish all the needlework which she had taken with her. And the freckles on her nose mocked her with the receptivity of her skin compared to the dullness of her senses.
They were submerged in the usual quiet summer holidays when the war broke out. The parish magazine said: “The vicar had scarcely left East Bingham
