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Algernon Blackwood
1914
"I'm over forty, Frances, and rather set in my ways," I saidgood-naturedly, ready to yield if she insisted that our going togetheron the visit involved her happiness. "My work is rather heavy just nowtoo, as you know. The question is, could I work there—with a lot ofunassorted people in the house?"
"Mabel doesn't mention any other people, Bill," was my sister'srejoinder. "I gather she's alone—as well as lonely."
By the way she looked sideways out of the window at nothing, it wasobvious she was disappointed, but to my surprise she did not urge thepoint; and as I glanced at Mrs. Franklyn's invitation lying upon hersloping lap, the neat, childish handwriting conjured up a mental pictureof the banker's widow, with her timid, insignificant personality, herpale grey eyes and her expression as of a backward child. I thought,too, of the roomy country mansion her late husband had altered to suithis particular needs, and of my visit to it a few years ago when itsbarren spaciousness suggested a wing of Kensington Museum fitted uptemporarily as a place to eat and sleep in. Comparing it mentally withthe poky Chelsea flat where I and my sister kept impecunious house, Irealized other points as well. Unworthy details flashed across me toentice: the fine library, the organ, the quiet work-room I should have,perfect service, the delicious cup of early tea, and hot baths at anymoment of the day—without a geyser!
"It's a longish visit, a month—isn't it?" I hedged, smiling at thedetails that seduced me, and ashamed of my man's selfishness, yetknowing that Frances expected it of me. "There are points about it, Iadmit. If you're set on my going with you, I could manage it all right."
I spoke at length in this way because my sister made no answer. I sawher tired eyes gazing into the dreariness of Oakley Street and felt apang strike through me. After a pause, in which again she said no word,I added: "So, when you write the letter, you might hint, perhaps, that Iusually work all the morning, and—er—am not a very lively visitor!Then she'll understand, you see." And I half-rose to return to mydiminutive study, where I was slaving, just then, at an absorbingarticle on Comparative Aesthetic Values in the Blind and Deaf.
But Frances did not move. She kept her grey eyes upon Oakley Streetwhere the evening mist from the river drew mournful perspectives intoview. It was late October. We heard the omnibuses thundering across thebridge. The monotony of that broad, characterless street seemed morethan usually depressing. Even in June sunshine it was dead, but withautumn its melancholy soaked into every house between King's Road andthe Embankment. It washed thought into the past, instead of inviting ithopefully towards the future. For me, its easy width was an avenuethrough which nameless slums across the river sent creeping messages ofdepression, and I always regarded it as Winter's main entrance intoLondon—fog, slush, gloom trooped down it every November, waving theirforbidding banners till March came to rout them.
Its one claim upon my love was that the south wind swept sometimesunobstructed up it, soft with suggestions of the sea. These lugubriousthoughts I naturally kept to myself, though I never ceased to regret thelittle flat whose cheapness had seduced us. Now, as I watched mysister's impassive face, I realized that perhaps she, too, felt as Ifelt, yet, brave woman, without betraying it.
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