Near Neighbours

by Molly Clavering

  The procedure followed was always the same, and soon became regular routine. Miss Balfour, having dusted the drawing-room and her bedroom, came downstairs to the dining-room, and there awaited Edna’s return.

  Every single purchase was then laid before her on the table by Edna, who displayed a mixture of the hunter’s pride in his bag and the zeal of a well-trained retriever in fetching it home.

  On a morning almost a fortnight after Mrs. Lenox had gone on holiday, Edna, having accounted for the money she had spent, and bundled her shopping back into the basket, took up her position near the door to regale her mistress with a commentary on her passages with the shop assistants who had served her and whom she invariably suspected of intent to defraud.

  Miss Balfour was not really interested in this recital, but she felt it was unkind to deprive Edna of this innocent enjoyment, so as usual she listened, or appeared to listen, which did just as well.

  Suddenly her wandering attention was brought sharply back by the mention of a name.

  “What was that, Edna?” she asked. “I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch what you were saying.”

  “I was saying,” Edna repeated in an unnecessarily loud voice, “that young Mrs. Harper from next door is fairly going it. I came into MacSween’s Creamery while she was there, and you should have heard her! Cream and a chicken and eggs! And telling Mrs. MacSween she wouldn’t be able to pay the book this week—I don’t know what Mrs. Lenox would say to that, I’m sure! She paid all her books like clockwork.”

  “Oh, well, Edna, perhaps there is some special reason,” said Miss Balfour. “Just take the things down to the kitchen. You have done very well.”

  She spoke so firmly and cheerfully that Edna was forced, though with reluctance, to remove herself and her basket from the room. But when she was alone, Miss Balfour’s face reflected thoughts that were troubled.

  She had never been told in so many words that Mrs. Lenox’s income was only just enough for her family’s needs and left nothing over for expensive luxuries, but that sort of thing could be guessed without anything said.

  Miss Balfour felt extremely worried, and all the more so because she was uncertain what she ought to do.

  Just then a dapper little elderly gentleman who had been hovering on the doorstep of Number Four for some minutes seemed to come to a decision. Stretching out a hand in a spotless wash-leather glove, he rang the bell.

  “Willow, do come and look! There’s such a funny little man at Miss Dorothea’s door!”

  Rowan, reaching the window during a rather sketchy dusting of the Lenoxes’ dining-room, had taken the opportunity to look out, and now called her eldest sister to come and look too.

  “Only selling vacuum cleaners,” said Willow languidly.

  “No. I’m sure he isn’t selling anything, he’s far too well-dressed. Natty is the word . . . now he’s ringing the bell—”

  “Well, if you’re so anxious to find out all about him, why don’t you go and ask your precious Miss Dorothea?” said Willow, still languidly, but with a waspish sting to her voice. “You’re always rushing next door to see her—”

  “I don’t know why you should be so beastly about Miss Dorothea,” said Rowan, flaring up at once. “You’re in a foul temper this morning—”

  “My God, if I were—though I’m not, as it happens—” cried Willow, pushing herself erect and shaking back her bell of fair hair the better to glare at Rowan across the table. “It wouldn’t be surprising! I’m bored to tears with cooking and shopping and housework! I’m sick of it!”

  “Considering that the shopping’s rather fun and Mrs. Baird and I do most of the house-work and Hazel washes up nearly every evening—” began Rowan, when she suddenly realized how absurd they must both look, glaring at one another like two angry cats, and she burst out laughing.

  Willow promptly started to cry, and after one or two vain attempts to comfort her, Rowan went away, knowing that Willow would stop when she wanted to and not a minute sooner.

  “Perhaps she misses Archie,” thought the younger sister. “Poor old Willow!”

  Then her thoughts returned to the little man in his neat grey flannel suit whom she had seen on Miss Dorothea’s doorstep, and she washed up the breakfast dishes—there was no Mrs. Baird to do them on Saturdays—still wondering who he was, because he seemed so very unlike the sort of person who could be an acquaintance of dear Miss Dorothea’s.

  In the dining-room next door Miss Balfour stood gazing in frozen astonishment at her visitor. She had not moved since Edna, with a scared face and bulging eyes, had announced hardly above a whisper: “Mr. Milner to see you, Miss Dorothea,” and shown Belle’s long-vanished and almost completely forgotten husband into the room.

  Looking for the first time at the neat little man—so utterly different from the bullying oaf of her imagination, who had driven Belle to leave him after six months—as he tripped round the end of the big dining-table towards her, Dorothea Balfour felt that the scene had the distorted reality of a bad dream. It was in keeping with this that he should appear perfectly composed and cheerful; and to her alarmed embarrassment was added a sudden wave of angry sympathy with her dead sister.

  She stiffened her backbone, held her head high, and said without a quaver, in a remarkably good imitation of Belle’s chilliest tones:

  “To what do I owe the honour of this—this most unexpected call?”

  Much to her relief, it had the effect of halting him in his approach. His outstretched hands dropped to his sides, but as he stood in front of her, too close for comfort, he continued to smile, at the same time shaking his head in a gently admonishing fashion which she found acutely irritating.

  “Yes,” he said, after a pause which seemed endless to her. “Yes, there is a resemblance, after all. Not in looks, but in manner. I didn’t notice it until you spoke. What a pity!”

  Miss Balfour, now wondering if perhaps he was mentally unsound, said: “I don’t understand you. What are you talking about?”

  And instantly regretted it, because this time she did not sound like Belle in the least, but like her own gentle fluttered self.

  The little man was beaming at her so infectiously that to her horror she almost smiled back.

  He exclaimed with great satisfaction. “That’s better! That was the real Dorothea speaking. The other was only a copy of Belle—and not a very life-like one, I am glad to say! My dear Dorothea, how delighted I am to make your acquaintance after all these years!”

  Advancing upon her he kissed her lightly but firmly on both cheeks.

  No man had ever kissed Miss Balfour before, except Papa, who, she realized vaguely, hardly counted as a man in this connection; and she was so shattered by the novel experience that she could only say weakly:

  “I don’t think you ought to speak about Belle like that.”

  She was surprised and mollified when he became serious at once, and replied: “No, I ought not. You and I are alive, and she is dead, poor soul.”

  After this a silence fell again, which might have lasted for ever as far as Miss Balfour was concerned, because she could not think of anything to say. Her brother-in-law, not afflicted by shyness or undue delicacy of feeling, remained quiet for just the proper length of time to suggest respect for the dead, and then spoke.

  “Do you not think we might talk more comfortably if we sat down?” he said gently.

  An appeal to Miss Balfour’s hospitality never failed. On realizing that they were still standing face to face in the dining-room she was so shocked that, forgetting how very recent was her intention not to talk to him at all, she said they would be more comfortable in the drawing-room, and led the way upstairs.

  She supposed that he wanted to talk about what she called “business” without really knowing what she meant; or perhaps he was going to express contrition for having treated Belle unkindly.

  But once seated in a corner of the big sofa between two of the long windows, Mr. Milner leaned back against the cus
hions and proceeded to chat amiably on a variety of impersonal topics.

  When the door opened and Edna looked in, her mistress was amazed to find how fast the time had passed.

  “Will the gentleman be staying to lunch’m?” asked Edna.

  “Oh—” Miss Balfour hardly knew what to say. Her conscience was pricking her, for in the interest of exchanging views with Belle’s husband, she had quite forgotten his misdeeds.

  Not understanding why she hesitated, Edna said: “There’s plenty, Miss Dorothea,” and Mr. Milner was accepting the invitation which had not been given with cheerful alacrity.

  Edna lingered at the door. “There’s that bottle of sherry in the hall cupboard, Miss Dorothea,” she said meaningly.

  Miss Balfour gave in. There seemed to be nothing else to do. “Please uncork it carefully, Edna, and bring it up,” she said. After a surprisingly short interval—so short that if Miss Balfour had been capable of thinking about it she would have realized that Edna must have already drawn the cork—the sherry made its appearance on the best silver salver, with two of the cut-glass wine-glasses beside it, and a plate of biscuits.

  Setting it down with such hearty good will that everything rattled, the faithful handmaid announced:

  “I’ve put clean towels and a fresh cake of soap in the top bathroom’m,” and once more withdrew.

  “That’s a very good maid you have, the real old-fashioned kind,” Mr. Milner said approvingly. “I can see that she knows how to look after you.”

  “Yes—oh, yes,” replied Miss Dorothea distractedly. “Won’t you pour yourself out a glass of sherry?”

  He was beside the tray in a flash, he was pouring out the wine, exclaiming reverently, “Pre-war Amontillado! My dear Dorothea, this is indeed a treat!” He was bringing her a brimming glass, he was drinking to their better acquaintance. . . . It really was like a dream, though not such a nightmare as she had thought at first!

  Yet throughout the meal that followed, while her guest ate heartily and prattled on like Tennyson’s brook, Miss Balfour, emboldened by sherry, was making up her mind that she really must ask him why he had called on her, and show him quite clearly that Belle’s wrongs were still remembered.

  She waited until they had gone back to the drawing-room for coffee. Then she cut across his praises of Edinburgh as seen by morning light from the train.

  “I think it is time that I should know why you have come to see me, Mr. Milner,” she said.

  “‘Mr. Milner!” he answered reproachfully. “Surely, surely, my dear Dorothea, that is a very cold, stiff way of addressing a brother? Montagu, please, or even better, Monty, as all my friends call me—”

  “This is the first time I’ve ever seen you, and I really cannot call you anything but Mr. Milner,” said Miss Balfour.

  (“And I wish,” she added to herself with unwonted irritation, “that you wouldn’t talk in that stupid affected way, like an out-of-date play!”)

  He sighed. “I am sorry. I always think of you as Dorothea. My sister Dorothea.”

  “Why have you come to see me?” asked Miss Balfour firmly.

  “I felt that two people, alone in the world save for one another, might find mutual comfort in companionship,” he said with dignity.

  Miss Balfour felt this to be quite ridiculous.

  “Considering the nature of the relationship between you and my poor sister,” she said coldly, “I cannot think that you and I would ever become good companions.”

  To her horror she could hear herself speaking in the same stilted manner as her brother-in-law.

  “‘Let the dead past bury its dead’, Dorothea,” he replied. “I do not complain. Why should you?”

  “You have nothing to complain about,” Miss Balfour said.

  “But I have. When I think that you treated Belle so badly that she was forced to leave you, it—it makes my blood boil!” Mr. Milner stared at her.

  “I know one should not speak ill of the dead,” he said. “And I have eaten your salt, Dorothea, and so must not quarrel with you, but—”

  “That is such a silly saying, I always think,” said Miss Balfour, “as if salt were the only thing one’s guests ate! And,” she continued, in case he might think she had been side-tracked, “whether we quarrel or not, you can’t deny that if Belle had to leave you, things must have been pretty bad.”

  “Look here!” he said, jumping up and walking about the room. “I agree that if Belle had left me, you might be right. But, you see, she didn’t. I left her.”

  Miss Balfour could only stare at him speechlessly. For some reason, perhaps because he had dropped his old-fashioned actor’s rolling phrases, she believed him. Her honesty told her that this version of the old story was much more credible than the one she had always believed. The little man trotting up and down the floor in such agitation was not capable of ill-treating anyone, certainly not Belle, who could have picked him up and carried him under her arm!

  He had come to a standstill and was staring down at her unhappily.

  “It was a rotten thing to do. I was a coward,” he said. “But I really got to the stage when I simply couldn’t stand it—so I bolted. I don’t suppose I need to tell you what it was like.”

  Miss Balfour shook her head.

  “No,” she answered almost inaudibly.

  “I was a fool, of course,” he went on. “If I’d been willing to wait a little, I might have seen what she was really like, and escaped. But—well—she was a big handsome creature in those days, and I was in love with her. And she—she liked me, you know, and didn’t mind my knowing it. And she seemed to be well-to-do, and I was on the rocks. It served me right, I daresay.”

  “I don’t suppose it was all your fault,” said Miss Balfour.

  “If she had been more like you—oh, well, it’s all over now,” he said. “By the way, where were you, when we got married? You never appeared.”

  “I was at Kersland,” Miss Balfour said, looking back more than a quarter of a century at herself, painfully young and shy though over thirty, at Belle, six years older but in the full bloom of her good looks, handsome, dashing and overbearing. “Mamma and I went there because her father was dying, and after he was dead Papa sent for Mamma to come home, but I stayed on with my aunt. She is dead now, too, of course . . .”

  “So you and I are the only ones left, and you live all alone in this great house?”

  The tone of his voice did not escape Miss Balfour.

  “Yes,” she said. “And you—where do you live?”

  “Oh, here and there, you know, here and there!” he replied, with a return to his affected manner. “Wherever my roving fancy takes me. I am a rolling stone, my dear.”

  She nodded. “And I suppose you haven’t gathered any moss?” she asked.

  “I flatter myself that you will not find any moss growing on me,” he said, with an airy laugh.

  “That was not what I meant,” said Miss Balfour quietly.

  He sat down, carefully hitching up the knees of his trousers.

  “How did you guess?” he said. “You are quite right, of course. I’ve never had a bean, and at the moment I am utterly and completely broke to the wide.”

  “I don’t know,” said Miss Balfour. “I just guessed. Is that why you didn’t come to see me sooner? I mean, Belle died several weeks ago.”

  “Yes. I saw it in an English paper that some tourists left on a table outside a café,” he told her. “It was in Italy. You can live wonderfully cheaply in Italy if you know the ropes. It took me a long time to scrape the fare together to get here.”

  “I think,” said Miss Balfour. “That you had better fetch your luggage from wherever you left it, and come here—for a visit, at least.”

  There was nothing impulsive about this invitation. Ever since she had learned that Belle had driven him to leave her, Miss Balfour had been feeling more and more strongly that some recompense must be made to him. He had been a coward, as he had admitted himself, but remembering
what life with Belle could be, Miss Balfour did not blame him very much.

  But the effect on him of her suggestion astonished her, for looking across at him she saw that his eyes were full of tears, and in great embarrassment she hurriedly looked away again.

  Monty Milner had not bargained for this. He had hoped to talk his sister-in-law into helping him, it is true. He had intended, if need be, to base his appeal on the grounds that Belle had once loved him, or failing this, to hint that a husband had rights to his wife’s property by law.

  Something about Miss Balfour had prevented him from doing this, had made him tell her the truth, and now, as he blinked the easy tears away—he had always been emotional—he heard himself saying:

  “That’s uncommonly good of you, Dorothea, but I think you should consult your lawyer first. He might not approve.”

  To himself he said with surprised congratulation: “You’re not such a bad little b— after all, Monty!”

  “My lawyer? But what can it possibly have to do with Mr. Ferrier?” asked Miss Balfour, bewildered once more.

  “I wouldn’t feel comfortable about it if you didn’t tell him,” he replied doggedly. “Ring him up and make an appointment to see him—I’ll come with you, if he wants me to,” he added, thinking ruefully that the lawyer would probably recommend Miss Balfour to have nothing to do with him, and he would have done himself out of a good home for—what? For the sake of the transparent honesty and kindness that had looked at him out of his sister-in-law’s faded, but still pretty brown eyes.

  CHAPTER 8

  In his determination to be noble and protect Dorothea from himself, Mr. Milner had lost sight of the fact that it was Saturday afternoon.

  He was rather dashed when his sister-in-law pointed out that it was no use trying to telephone to Mr. Ferrier or any other lawyer before Monday, and Montagu had much better be sensible and spend the week-end here at Number Four.

  (She called him “Montagu” firmly, though with a blush, because she had decided it was silly not to, and his pleasure in being accepted as a brother-in-law, as this seemed to show, made it worth while.)