Mrs. Clemm, summoned to the library, curtsied again. She wore black silk, gathered and spreading as to skirt, flat and perpendicular as to bodice. On her glossy false front was a black lace cap with ribbons which had faded from violet to ash colour, and a heavy watch-chain descended from the lava brooch under her crochet collar. Her small round face rested on the collar like a red apple on a white plate: neat, smooth, circular, with a pursed-up mouth, eyes like black seeds, and round ruddy cheeks with the skin so taut that one had to look close to see that it was as wrinkled as a piece of old crackly.

  Mrs. Clemm was sure there would be no trouble about servants. She herself could do a little cooking: though her hand might be a bit out. But there was her niece to help; and she was quite of her ladyship’s opinion, that there was no need to get in strangers. They were mostly a poor lot; and besides, they might not take to Bells. There were persons who didn’t. Mrs. Clemm smiled a sharp little smile, like the scratch of a pin, as she added that she hoped her ladyship wouldn’t be one of them.

  As for under-servants . . . well, a boy, perhaps? She had a great-nephew she might send for. But about women—under-housemaids—if her ladyship thought they couldn’t manage as they were; well, she really didn’t know. Thudeney-Blazes? Oh, she didn’t think so . . . There was more dead than living at Thudeney-Blazes . . . everyone was leaving there . . . or in the church-yard . . . one house after another being shut . . . death was everywhere, wasn’t it, my lady? Mrs. Clemm said it with another of her short sharp smiles, which provoked the appearance of a frosty dimple.

  “But my niece Georgiana is a hard worker, my lady; her that let you in the other day . . .”

  “That didn’t,” Lady Jane corrected.

  “Oh, my lady, it was too unfortunate. If only your ladyship had have said . . . poor Georgiana had ought to have seen; but she never did have her wits about her, not for answering the door.”

  “But she was only obeying orders. She went to ask Mr. Jones.”

  Mrs. Clemm was silent. Her small hands, wrinkled and resolute, fumbled with the folds of her apron, and her quick eyes made the circuit of the room and then came back to Lady Jane’s.

  “Just so, my lady; but, as I told her, she’d ought to have known—”

  “And who is Mr. Jones?”

  Mrs. Clemm’s smile snapped out again, deprecating, respectful. “Well, my lady, he’s more dead than living, too . . . if I may say so,” was her surprising answer.

  “Is he? I’m sorry to hear that; but who is he?”

  “Well, my lady, he’s . . . he’s my great-uncle, as it were . . . my grandmother’s own brother, as you might say.”

  “Ah; I see.” Lady Jane considered her with growing curiosity. “He must have reached a great age, then.”

  “Yes, my lady; he has that. Though I’m not,” Mrs. Clemm added, the dimple showing, “as old myself as your ladyship might suppose. Living at Bells all these years has been ageing to me; it would be to anybody.”

  “I suppose so. And yet,” Lady Jane continued, “Mr. Jones has survived; has stood it well—as you certainly have?”

  “Oh, not as well as I have,” Mrs. Clemm interjected, as if resentful of the comparison.

  “At any rate, he still mounts guard; mounts it as well as he did thirty years ago.”

  “Thirty years ago?” Mrs. Clemm echoed, her hands dropping from her apron to her sides.

  “Wasn’t he here thirty years ago?”

  “Oh, yes, my lady; certainly; he’s never once been away that I know of.”

  “What a wonderful record! And what exactly are his duties?”

  Mrs. Clemm paused again, her hands still motionless in the folds of her skirt. Lady Jane noticed that the fingers were tightly clenched, as if to check an involuntary gesture.

  “He began as pantry-boy; then footman; then butler, my lady; but it’s hard to say, isn’t it, what an old servant’s duties are, when he’s stayed on in the same house so many years?”

  “Yes; and that house always empty.”

  “Just so, my lady. Everything came to depend on him; one thing after another. His late lordship thought the world of him.”

  “His late lordship? But he was never here! He spent all his life in Canada.”

  Mrs. Clemm seemed slightly disconcerted. “Certainly, my lady.” (Her voice said: “Who are you, to set me right as to the chronicles of Bells?”) “But by letter, my lady; I can show you the letters. And there was his lordship before, the sixteenth Viscount. He did come here once.”

  “Ah, did he?” Lady Jane was embarrassed to find how little she knew of them all. She rose from her seat. “They were lucky, all these absentees, to have someone to watch over their interests so faithfully. I should like to see Mr. Jones—to thank him. Will you take me to him now?”

  “Now?” Mrs. Clemm moved back a step or two; Lady Jane fancied her cheeks paled a little under their ruddy varnish. “Oh, not today, my lady.”

  “Why? Isn’t he well enough?”

  “Not nearly. He’s between life and death, as it were,” Mrs. Clemm repeated, as if the phrase were the nearest approach she could find to a definition of Mr. Jones’ state.

  “He wouldn’t even know who I was?”

  Mrs. Clemm considered a moment. “I don’t say that, my lady;” her tone implied that to do so might appear disrespectful. “He’d know you, my lady; but you wouldn’t know him.” She broke off and added hastily: “I mean, for what he is: he’s in no state for you to see him.”

  “He’s so very ill? Poor man! And is everything possible being done?”

  “Oh, everything; and more, too, my lady. But perhaps,” Mrs. Clemm suggested, with a clink of keys, “this would be a good time for your ladyship to take a look about the house. If your ladyship has no objection, I should like to begin with the linen.”

  IV

  “And Mr. Jones?” Stramer queried, a few days later, as they sat, Lady Jane and the party from Kent, about an improvised tea-table in a recess of one of the great holly-hedges.

  The day was as hushed and warm as that on which she had first come to Bells, and Lady Jane looked up with a smile of ownership at the old walls which seemed to smile back, the windows which now looked at her with friendly eyes.

  “Mr. Jones? Who’s Mr. Jones?” the others asked; only Stramer recalled their former talk.

  Lady Jane hesitated. “Mr. Jones is my invisible guardian; or rather, the guardian of Bells.”

  They remembered then. “Invisible? You don’t mean to say you haven’t seen him yet?”

  “Not yet; perhaps I never shall. He’s very old—and very ill, I’m afraid.”

  “And he still rules here?”

  “Oh, absolutely. The fact is,” Lady Jane added, “I believe he’s the only person left who really knows all about Bells.”

  “Jane, my dear! That big shrub over there against the wall! I verily believe it’s Templetonia retusa. It is! Did anyone ever hear of its standing an English winter?” Gardeners all, they dashed off towards the shrub in its sheltered angle. “I shall certainly try it on a south wall at Dipway,” cried the hostess from Kent.

  Tea over, they moved on to inspect the house. The short autumn day was drawing to a close; but the party had been able to come only for an afternoon, instead of staying over the week-end, and having lingered so long in the gardens they had only time, indoors, to puzzle out what they could through the shadows. Perhaps, Lady Jane thought, it was the best hour to see a house like Bells, so long abandoned, and not yet warmed into new life.

  The fire she had had lit in the saloon sent its radiance to meet them, giving the great room an air of expectancy and welcome. The portraits, the Italian cabinets, the shabby armchairs and rugs, all looked as if life had but lately left them; and Lady Jane said to herself: “Perhaps Mrs. Clemm is right in advising me to live here and close the blue parlour.”

  “My dear, what a fine room! Pity it faces north. Of course you’ll have to shut it in winter. It would cost a fortune to heat.”

  Lady Jane hesitated. “I don’t know: I had meant to. But there seems to be no other . . .”

  “No other? In all this house?” They laughed; and one of the visitors, going ahead and crossing a panelled anteroom, cried out: “But here! A delicious room; windows south—yes, and west. The warmest of the house. This is perfect.”

  They followed, and the blue room echoed with exclamations. “Those charming curtains with the parrots . . . and the blue of that petit point fire-screen! But, Jane, of course you must live here. Look at this citron-wood desk!”

  Lady Jane stood on the threshold. “It seems that the chimney smokes hopelessly.”

  “Hopelessly? Nonsense! Have you consulted anybody? I’ll send you a wonderful man . . .”

  “Besides, if you put in one of those one-pipe heaters . . . At Dipway . . .”

  Stramer was looking over Lady Jane’s shoulder. “What does Mr. Jones say about it?”

  “He says no one has ever been able to use this room; not for ages. It was the housekeeper who told me. She’s his great-niece, and seems simply to transmit his oracles.”

  Stramer shrugged. “Well, he’s lived at Bells longer than you have. Perhaps he’s right.”

  “How absurd!” one of the ladies cried. “The housekeeper and Mr. Jones probably spend their evenings here, and don’t want to be disturbed. Look—ashes on the hearth! What did I tell you?”

  Lady Jane echoed the laugh as they turned away. They had still to see the library, damp and dilapidated, the panelled dining-room, the breakfast-parlour, and such bedrooms as had any old furniture left; not many, for the late lords of Bells, at one time or another, had evidently sold most of its removable treasures.

  When the visitors came down their motors were waiting. A lamp had been placed in the hall, but the rooms beyond were lit only by the broad clear band of western sky showing through uncurtained casements. On the doorstep one of the ladies exclaimed that she had lost her hand-bag—no, she remembered; she had laid it on the desk in the blue room. Which way was the blue room?

  “I’ll get it,” Jane said, turning back. She heard Stramer following. He asked if he should bring the lamp.

  “Oh, no; I can see.”

  She crossed the threshold of the blue room, guided by the light from its western window; then she stopped. Someone was in the room already; she felt rather than saw another presence. Stramer, behind her, paused also; he did not speak or move. What she saw, or thought she saw, was simply an old man with bent shoulders turning away from the citron-wood desk. Almost before she had received the impression there was no one there; only the slightest stir of the needlework curtain over the farther door. She heard no step or other sound.

  “There’s the bag,” she said, as if the act of speaking, and saying something obvious, were a relief.

  In the hall her glance crossed Stramer’s, but failed to find there the reflection of what her own had registered.

  He shook hands, smiling. “Well, good-bye. I commit you to Mr. Jones’s care; only don’t let him say that you’re not shown to visitors.”

  She smiled: “Come back and try,” and then shivered a little as the lights of the last motor vanished beyond the great black hedges.

  V

  Lady Jane had exulted in her resolve to keep Bells to herself till she and the old house should have had time to make friends. But after a few days she recalled the uneasy feeling which had come over her as she stood on the threshold after her first tentative ring. Yes; she had been right in thinking she would have to have people about her to take the chill off. The house was too old, too mysterious, too much withdrawn into its own secret past, for her poor little present to fit into it without uneasiness.

  But it was not a time of year when, among Lady Jane’s friends, it was easy to find people free. Her own family were all in the north, and impossible to dislodge. One of her sisters, when invited, simply sent her back a list of shooting-dates; and her mother wrote: “Why not come to us? What can you have to do all alone in that empty house at this time of year? Next summer we’re all coming.”

  Having tried one or two friends with the same result, Lady Jane bethought her of Stramer. He was finishing a novel, she knew, and at such times he liked to settle down somewhere in the country where he could be sure of not being disturbed. Bells was a perfect asylum, and though it was probable that some other friend had anticipated her, and provided the requisite seclusion, Lady Jane decided to invite him. “Do bring your work and stay till it’s finished—and don’t be in a hurry to finish. I promise that no one shall bother you—” and she added, half-nervously: “Not even Mr. Jones.” As she wrote she felt an absurd impulse to blot the words out. “He might not like it,” she thought; and the “he” did not refer to Stramer.

  Was the solitude already making her superstitious? She thrust the letter into an envelope, and carried it herself to the post-office at Thudeney-Blazes. Two days later a wire from Stramer announced his arrival.

  •

  He came on a cold stormy afternoon, just before dinner, and as they went up to dress Lady Jane called after him: “We shall sit in the blue parlour this evening.” The house-maid Georgiana was crossing the passage with hot water for the visitor. She stopped and cast a vacant glance at Lady Jane. The latter met it, and said carelessly: “You hear, Georgiana? The fire in the blue parlour.”

  While Lady Jane was dressing she heard a knock, and saw Mrs. Clemm’s round face just inside the door, like a red apple on a garden wall.

  “Is there anything wrong about the saloon, my lady? Georgiana understood—”

  “That I want the fire in the blue parlour. Yes, What’s wrong with the saloon is that one freezes there.”

  “But the chimney smokes in the blue parlour.”

  “Well, we’ll give it a trial, and if it does I’ll send for someone to arrange it.”

  “Nothing can be done, my lady. Everything has been tried, and—”

  Lady Jane swung about suddenly. She had heard Stramer singing a cheerful hunting-song in a cracked voice, in his dressing-room at the other end of the corridor.

  “That will do, Mrs. Clemm. I want the fire in the blue parlour.”

  “Yes, my lady.” The door closed on the housekeeper.

  •

  “So you decided on the saloon after all?” Stramer said, as Lady Jane led the way there after their brief repast.

  “Yes: I hope you won’t be frozen. Mr. Jones swears that the chimney in the blue parlour isn’t safe; so, until I can fetch the mason over from Strawbridge—”

  “Oh, I see.” Stramer drew up to the blaze in the great fire-place. “We’re very well off here; though heating this room is going to be ruinous. Meanwhile, I note that Mr. Jones still rules.”

  Lady Jane gave a slight laugh.

  “Tell me,” Stramer continued, as she bent over the mixing of the Turkish coffee, “what is there about him? I’m getting curious.”

  Lady Jane laughed again, and heard the embarrassment in her laugh. “So am I.”

  “Why—you don’t mean to say you haven’t seen him yet?”

  “No. He’s still too ill.”

  “What’s the matter with him? What does the doctor say?”

  “He won’t see the doctor.”

  “But look here—if things take a worse turn—I don’t know; but mightn’t you be held to have been negligent?”

  “What can I do? Mrs. Clemm says he has a doctor who treats him by correspondence. I don’t see that I can interfere.”

  “Isn’t there someone beside Mrs. Clemm whom you can consult?”

  She considered: certainly, as yet, she had not made much effort to get into relation with her neighbours. “I expected the vicar to call. But I’ve enquired: there’s no vicar any longer at Thudeney-Blazes. A curate comes from Strawbridge every other Sunday. And the one who comes now is new: nobody about the place seems to know him.”

  “But I thought the chapel here was in use? It looked so when you showed it to us the other day.”

  “I thought so too. It used to be the parish church of Lynke-Linnet and Lower-Lynke; but it seems that was years ago. The parishioners objected to coming so far; and there weren’t enough of them. Mrs. Clemm says that nearly everybody has died off or left. It’s the same at Thudeney-Blazes.”

  Stramer glanced about the great room, with its circle of warmth and light by the hearth, and the sullen shadows huddled at its farther end, as if hungrily listening. “With this emptiness at the centre, life was bound to cease gradually on the outskirts.”

  Lady Jane followed his glance. “Yes; it’s all wrong. I must try to wake the place up.”

  “Why not open it to the public? Have a visitors’ day?”

  She thought a moment. In itself the suggestion was distasteful; she could imagine few things that would bore her more. Yet to do so might be a duty, a first step toward reëstablishing relations between the lifeless house and its neighbourhood. Secretly, she felt that even the coming and going of indifferent unknown people would help to take the chill from those rooms, to brush from their walls the dust of too-heavy memories.

  “Who’s that?” asked Stramer. Lady Jane started in spite of herself, and glanced over her shoulder; but he was only looking past her at a portrait which a dart of flame from the hearth had momentarily called from its obscurity.

  “That’s a Lady Thudeney.” She got up and went toward the picture with a lamp. “Might be an Opie, don’t you think? It’s a strange face, under the smirk of the period.”

  Stramer took the lamp and held it up. The portrait was that of a young woman in a short-waisted muslin gown caught beneath the breast by a cameo. Between clusters of beribboned curls a long fair oval looked out dumbly, inexpressively, in a stare of frozen beauty. “It’s as if the house had been too empty even then,” Lady Jane murmured. “I wonder which she was? Oh, I know: it must be ‘Also His Wife.’”