“Keeping you?” she said. “What do you mean?” Suddenly the footsteps which had been very faint grew distinct in a stone shifting. Andrews’s mind pierced its maze of vague thinking in a flash of fear, and he half ran across the room to the door through which he had entered the night before. A sense of overwhelming desolation passed over him, a wonder whether he would ever know peace from pursuit, and he gave an unconscious whimper like a rabbit snared. The reality of the sound seemed to acquaint the girl with the measure of his fear.
“Don’t go out there,” she called to him.
He hesitated with his hand upon the latch. The girl was feeling her cheek with the tips of her fingers. “It’s only the woman come to tidy the place,” she said.
“I mustn’t meet her,” Andrews whispered, afraid that their voices would reach the path outside.
“If you go out there,” the girl said, “you’ll meet her. She’ll be coming from the well now. Better go back where you slept,” and then as he moved across the room, “no.” A slow flush crept from her neck across her face.
“What’s the matter now?” he asked angrily.
“If she discovers you—hiding—she’ll think—”
“God, you’re respectable,” he said with resentful amazement. It was as though the calm spirit that had watched the dead man had become tarnished by the latter’s own earthy cunning. Some yellow sunlight, clear and cold with frost, struck across the room from the window and fell across her face, belying the dull good sense of the words she spoke.
“No, but you can’t,” she said. “It’s not as if you were in any danger.”
He came close to her and put his hands upon her arms and pulled her close to him. “Listen to me,” he said, “I am in danger. I’d rather kill that old woman whoever she is than be talked about in Shoreham. I’m a coward, do you see, and it would be easier to kill her than the man who’d be after me. Now will you let me hide?” He loosened her and she pushed herself away from him. “There must be some other way,” she said. She suddenly began to speak rapidly. “You are my brother, do you see? You arrived last week hearing that he was dying because you didn’t like me to be alone.” She grimaced a little as though at a bad taste.
A splash of water from an overfull pail interrupted her. Footsteps sounded almost at the threshold of the door. “You must invent things,” she said. “What more is there? I must have forgotten—”
“What shall I call you? Your name?” Andrews whispered rapidly, as with a high squeak the latch of the door rose.
“Elizabeth,” she said, “Elizabeth.”
The door opened and it seemed incongruous after the panic that the footsteps had evoked to see only an old woman with a pail of water which went slip slop over the brim and splashed upon the floor. She was a little stout old woman who gave the impression of being very tightly pulled together by a great number of buttons that strayed from their normal positions and peeped out from interstices and side turnings in her voluminous clothes. She had small eyes and very faint, almost indistinguishable eyebrows. Her hair was some of it white and some of it grey and through it wandered stray strands of a very pale metallic gold which looked unnecessarily flippant on an old head. When she saw Andrews standing by the girl she put down the pail on the floor and preened her mouth to whistle until it appeared but one more addition to her collection of buttons. She did not actually whistle but hovered delicately upon the point, while her eyes, which changed from surprise to questioning and last to a somewhat sly amusement, seemed to whistle instead. Under her unembarrassed amused stare Andrews fidgeted and longed for his companion to speak.
At last the old woman, waiting no longer for an invitation, entered. Her eyes having taken in the pair of them were no longer interested. She placed the pail down on the stone floor and then with an old and very dirty rag began to scrub. She had cleaned but a small space when she found it necessary to pull aside the table on which the coffin lay, and this she did with a complete and to Andrews an amazing unconcern. Her eyes had taken in all they desired to see, but her thoughts remained amused. She suddenly chuckled and hastily beat the water in her pail and coughed to hide the sound.
The girl smiled towards Andrews and, with a small pout of the lips that said quite plainly, “now for it,” spoke. “This is my brother, Mrs. Butler,” she said.
The voice that came from the figure kneeling on the floor was startingly unexpected. It consorted, not with the white or the grey hairs, but with the too metallic yellow strands. It was soft, almost young, just avoided beauty. It was like a pretty sweet cake that had been soaked in port wine. It would have been lovely, if it had had the certainty of loveliness, but it was damped all through.
“Well now, I didn’t know that you had a brother, Miss Elizabeth,” it said.
“He came a week ago when he heard Mr. Jennings was dying,” the girl went on.
“And so a brother should.” The old woman wrung out her cloth into the pail and sat back unexpectedly on her heels. Her eyes were not soft like her voice but as sharp as they were small. Both Andrews and the girl became conscious of their stiff, unreal attitudes, standing a little apart from each other waiting for nothing. “You had all the looks in your family, Miss Elizabeth,” Mrs. Butler said. “Your brother
