The Spinster 1905 — Background and Themes

yes--inherited from his dead mother, who had been one of the Neapolitan aristocracy--were glittering.

“What is it, Nino?” I asked as I sat down.

We had been such intimate friends that even my five years’ absence abroad had not built up a barrier between us.

“I wonder if it is Miss Bassett?” he said, looking at me earnestly.

“But was she a great friend of yours?” I said. “If Lady Inley’s description of her is accurate, I can hardly imagine so.”

“Vere doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“Then Miss Bassett----”

“Oh, she does look like that; dried up, unemotional, tame, English, even comic.”

“The regular spinster, eh?”

“She looks it. But, damn it all, Vere has no business to say she has no emotions, to wonder why such people are born. But she doesn’t know--Vere doesn’t know.”

His agitation grew, and was inexplicable to me. But I knew Inley, knew that he was bound to tell me what was on his mind. He could be reserved, but not with me. So I took a cigar, cut the end off it deliberately, struck a match, lighted it, and began to smoke in silence. He followed my example quickly, and then said:

“Vere talks like that, and, but for Miss Bassett, Vere would have been murdered two years ago.”

I started, and dropped my cigar on the table.

He fixed his eyes on me, and put his hand up to his throat. Nino was half Neapolitan, and I saw a man being hanged. I picked up my cigar with a hand that slightly shook.

“But,” I said, “I always thought Lady Inley and you were very happy together.”

It sounded banal, even ridiculous, but I hardly knew what to say. I was startled. The tolling of the bell, too, was getting on my nerves.

“One doesn’t write such things,” he said. “You’ve been abroad for years.”

“It’s all right now?”

“I suppose so. Vere has never had the least suspicion.”

He drew his chair closer to mine, and was about to go on speaking when the servants came in with the coffee.

“Who’s the bell tolling for, Hurst?” he said to the butler.

“I couldn’t say, my lord.”

When the servants had gone Inley continued, at first in a calmer voice:

“Miss Bassett lived in the red cottage just beyond the gate of the South Lodge from time immemorial. You generally came to us in Scotland, I know, but I should think you must have seen her.”

Suddenly a recollection flashed upon me--a recollection of a long, flat figure, a drab face, thin hair coming away from a wrinkled forehead under a mushroom hat, flapping, old-fashioned golden earrings.

“Not the person I used to call ‘the Plank’?” I said.

He thought for a moment.

“Yes; I believe you did-. I’d forgotten.”

“She was always in church twenty minutes before the service began, and always dropped her hymn-book coming out if there were visitors in the Abbey pew!”

“Yes, yes; that’s it. Miss Bassett is very nervous in little ways.”

“I remember her now perfectly. And you say she----”

I looked at him, and hesitated.

“She saved Vere’s life and, indirectly, mine. I’ll tell you now we’re together again at last. I shall never tell Vere.”

He looked towards the windows, across which dark blue silk curtains were drawn, as if he could see the passing-bell swinging in the old square tower. Then he turned to me.

“You know how mad I was about Vere. It’s always like that with me. Unless I’m stone I’m fire. After we were married I got even madder. Having her all to myself was like enchantment, and in Italy, too, my other native land.”

I thought of Lady Inley’s eyes.

“I can understand,” I said.

“Of course, when we got back it had to be different. Friends came in, and she was run after and admired and written about. You know the publicity of life in modern London.”

“City of public-houses and society spies.”

“I bore it, because it’s supposed to be the thing. And Vere rather likes it, somehow. So I let her have her fun, as long as it was fun. I didn’t intend it should ever be anything else.”

He frowned. When he did that, and his thick eyebrows nearly met, he looked all Italian.

“We did the usual things--Paris, Ascot, Scotland, and so on--till Vere had to lie up.”

“Yes; Hugo came along. I was glad when that was over. I thought she was going to die. You knew Seymour Glynd?”

“Life Guards? Killed hunting a year ago?”