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<h2> CHAPTER I—PROGRESS OF THE HOUSE </h2>
<p>The winter had been an open one. Things in the trade were slack; and as
Soames had reflected before making up his mind, it had been a good time
for building. The shell of the house at Robin Hill was thus completed by
the end of April.</p>
<p>Now that there was something to be seen for his money, he had been coming
down once, twice, even three times a week, and would mouse about among the
debris for hours, careful never to soil his clothes, moving silently
through the unfinished brickwork of doorways, or circling round the
columns in the central court.</p>
<p>And he would stand before them for minutes' together, as though peering
into the real quality of their substance.</p>
<p>On April 30 he had an appointment with Bosinney to go over the accounts,
and five minutes before the proper time he entered the tent which the
architect had pitched for himself close to the old oak tree.</p>
<p>The accounts were already prepared on a folding table, and with a nod
Soames sat down to study them. It was some time before he raised his head.</p>
<p>"I can't make them out," he said at last; "they come to nearly seven
hundred more than they ought."</p>
<p>After a glance at Bosinney's face he went on quickly:</p>
<p>"If you only make a firm stand against these builder chaps you'll get them
down. They stick you with everything if you don't look sharp.... Take ten
per cent. off all round. I shan't mind it's coming out a hundred or so
over the mark!"</p>
<p>Bosinney shook his head:</p>
<p>"I've taken off every farthing I can!"</p>
<p>Soames pushed back the table with a movement of anger, which sent the
account sheets fluttering to the ground.</p>
<p>"Then all I can say is," he flustered out, "you've made a pretty mess of
it!"</p>
<p>"I've told you a dozen times," Bosinney answered sharply, "that there'd be
extras. I've pointed them out to you over and over again!"</p>
<p>"I know that," growled Soames: "I shouldn't have objected to a ten pound
note here and there. How was I to know that by 'extras' you meant seven
hundred pounds?"</p>
<p>The qualities of both men had contributed to this not-inconsiderable
discrepancy. On the one hand, the architect's devotion to his idea, to the
image of a house which he had created and believed in—had made him
nervous of being stopped, or forced to the use of makeshifts; on the
other, Soames' not less true and wholehearted devotion to the very best
article that could be obtained for the money, had rendered him averse to
believing that things worth thirteen shillings could not be bought with
twelve.</p>
<p>"I wish I'd never undertaken your house," said Bosinney suddenly. "You
come down here worrying me out of my life. You want double the value for
your money anybody else would, and now that you've got a house that for
its size is not to be beaten in the county, you don't want to pay for it.
If you're anxious to be off your bargain, I daresay I can find the balance
above the estimates myself, but I'm d——d if I do another
stroke of work for you!"</p>
<p>Soames regained his composure. Knowing that Bosinney had no capital, he
regarded this as a wild suggestion. He saw, too, that he would be kept
indefinitely out of this house on which he had set his heart, and just at
the crucial point when the architect's personal care made all the
difference. In the meantime there was Irene to be thought of! She had been
very queer lately. He really believed it was only because she had taken to
Bosinney that she tolerated the idea of the house at all. It would not do
to make an open breach with her.</p>
<p>"You needn't get into a rage," he said. "If I'm willing to put up with it,
I suppose you needn't cry out. All I meant was that when you tell me a
thing is going to cost so much, I like to—well, in fact, I—like
to know where I am."</p>
<p>"Look here!" said Bosinney, and Soames was both annoyed and surprised by
the shrewdness of his glance. "You've got my services dirt cheap. For the
kind of work I've put into this house, and the amount of time I've given
to it, you'd have had to pay Littlemaster or some other fool four times as
much. What you want, in fact, is a first-rate man for a fourth-rate fee,
and that's exactly what you've got!"</p>
<p>Soames saw that he really meant what he said, and, angry though he was,
the consequences of a row rose before him too vividly. He saw his house
unfinished, his wife rebellious, himself a laughingstock.</p>
<p>"Let's go over it," he said sulkily, "and see how the money's gone."</p>
<p>"Very well," assented Bosinney. "But we'll hurry up, if you don't mind. I
have to get back in time to take June to the theatre."</p>
<p>Soames cast a stealthy look at him, and said: "Coming to our place, I
suppose to meet her?" He was always coming to their place!</p>
<p>There had been rain the night before-a spring rain, and the earth smelt of
sap and wild grasses. The warm, soft breeze swung the leaves and the
golden buds of the old oak tree, and in the sunshine the blackbirds were
whistling their hearts out.</p>
<p>It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a
painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at
the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what.
The earth gave forth a fainting warmth, stealing up through the chilly
garment in which winter had wrapped her. It was her long caress of
invitation, to draw men down to lie within her arms, to roll their bodies
on her, and put their lips to her breast.</p>
<p>On just such a day as this Soames had got from Irene the promise he had
asked her for so often. Seated on the fallen trunk of a tree, he had
promised for the twentieth time that if their marriage were not a success,
she should be as free as if she had never married him!</p>
<p>"Do you swear it?" she had said. A few days back she had reminded him of
that oath. He had answered: "Nonsense! I couldn't have sworn any such
thing!" By some awkward fatality he remembered it now. What queer things
men would swear for the sake of women! He would have sworn it at any time
to gain her! He would swear it now, if thereby he could touch her—but
nobody could touch her, she was cold-hearted!</p>
<p>And memories crowded on him with the fresh, sweet savour of the spring
wind-memories of his courtship.</p>
<p>In the spring of the year 1881 he was visiting his old school-fellow and
client, George Liversedge, of Branksome, who, with the view of developing
his pine-woods in the neighbourhood of Bournemouth, had placed the
formation of the company necessary to the scheme in Soames's hands. Mrs.
Liversedge, with a sense of the fitness of things, had given a musical tea
in his honour. Later in the course of this function, which Soames, no
musician, had regarded as an unmitigated bore, his eye had been caught by
the face of a girl dressed in mourning, standing by herself. The lines of
her tall, as yet rather thin figure, showed through the wispy, clinging
stuff of her black dress, her black-gloved hands were crossed in front of
her, her lips slightly parted, and her large, dark eyes wandered from face
to face. Her hair, done low on her neck, seemed to gleam above her black
collar like coils of shining metal. And as Soames stood looking at her,
the sensation that most men have felt at one time or another went stealing
through him—a peculiar satisfaction of the senses, a peculiar
certainty, which novelists and old ladies call love at first sight. Still
stealthily watching her, he at once made his way to his hostess, and stood
doggedly waiting for the music to cease.</p>
<p>"Who is that girl with yellow hair and dark eyes?" he asked.</p>
<p>"That—oh! Irene Heron. Her father, Professor Heron, died this year.
She lives with her stepmother. She's a nice girl, a pretty girl, but no
money!"</p>
<p>"Introduce me, please," said Soames.</p>
<p>It was very little that he found to say, nor did he find her responsive to
that little. But he went away with the resolution to see her again. He
effected his object by chance, meeting her on the pier with her
stepmother, who had the habit of walking there from twelve to one of a
forenoon. Soames made this lady's acquaintance with alacrity, nor was it
long before he perceived in her the ally he was looking for. His keen
scent for the commercial side of family life soon told him that Irene cost
her stepmother more than the fifty pounds a year she brought her; it also
told him that Mrs. Heron, a woman yet in the prime of life, desired to be
married again. The strange ripening beauty of her stepdaughter stood in
the way of this desirable consummation. And Soames, in his stealthy
tenacity, laid his plans.</p>
<p>He left Bournemouth without having given himself away, but in a month's
time came back, and this time he spoke, not to the girl, but to her
stepmother. He had made up his mind, he said; he would wait any time. And
he had long to wait, watching Irene bloom, the lines of her young figure
softening, the stronger blood deepening the gleam of her eyes, and warming
her face to a creamy glow; and at each visit he proposed to her, and when
that visit was at an end, took her refusal away with him, back to London,
sore at heart, but steadfast and silent as the grave. He tried to come at
the secret springs of her resistance; only once had he a gleam of light.
It was at one of those assembly dances, which afford the only outlet to
the passions of the population of seaside watering-places. He was sitting
with her in an embrasure, his senses tingling with the contact of the
waltz. She had looked at him over her, slowly waving fan; and he had lost
his head. Seizing that moving wrist, he pressed his lips to the flesh of
her arm. And she had shuddered—to this day he had not forgotten that
shudder—nor the look so passionately averse she had given him.</p>
<p>A year after that she had yielded. What had made her yield he could never
make out; and from Mrs. Heron, a woman of some diplomatic talent, he
learnt nothing. Once after they were married he asked her, "What made you
refuse me so often?" She had answered by a strange silence. An enigma to
him from the day that he first saw her, she was an enigma to him still....</p>
<p>Bosinney was waiting for him at the door; and on his rugged, good-looking,
face was a queer, yearning, yet happy look, as though he too saw a promise
of bliss in the spring sky, sniffed a coming happiness in the spring air.
Soames looked at him waiting there. What was the matter with the fellow
that he looked so happy? What was he waiting for with that smile on his
lips and in his eyes? Soames could not see that for which Bosinney was
waiting as he stood there drinking in the flower-scented wind. And once
more he felt baffled in the presence of this man whom by habit he
despised. He hastened on to the house.</p>
<p>"The only colour for those tiles," he heard Bosinney say,—"is ruby
with a grey tint in the stuff, to give a transparent effect. I should like
Irene's opinion. I'm ordering the purple leather curtains for the doorway
of this court; and if you distemper the drawing-room ivory cream over
paper, you'll get an illusive look. You want to aim all through the
decorations at what I call charm."</p>
<p>Soames said: "You mean that my wife has charm!"</p>
<p>Bosinney evaded the question.</p>
<p>"You should have a clump of iris plants in the centre of that court."</p>
<p>Soames smiled superciliously.</p>
<p>"I'll look into Beech's some time," he said, "and see what's appropriate!"</p>
<p>They found little else to say to each other, but on the way to the Station
Soames asked:</p>
<p>"I suppose you find Irene very artistic."</p>
<p>"Yes." The abrupt answer was as distinct a snub as saying: "If you want to
discuss her you can do it with someone else!"</p>
<p>And the slow, sulky anger Soames had felt all the afternoon burned the
brighter within him.</p>
<p>Neither spoke again till they were close to the Station, then Soames
asked:</p>
<p>"When do you expect to have finished?"</p>
<p>"By the end of June, if you really wish me to decorate as well."</p>
<p>Soames nodded. "But you quite understand," he said, "that the house is
costing me a lot beyond what I contemplated. I may as well tell you that I
should have thrown it up, only I'm not in the habit of giving up what I've
set my mind on."</p>
<p>Bosinney made no reply. And Soames gave him askance a look of dogged
dislike—for in spite of his fastidious air and that supercilious,
dandified taciturnity, Soames, with his set lips and squared chin, was not
unlike a bulldog....</p>
<p>When, at seven o'clock that evening, June arrived at 62, Montpellier
Square, the maid Bilson told her that Mr. Bosinney was in the
drawing-room; the mistress—she said—was dressing, and would be
down in a minute. She would tell her that Miss June was here.</p>
<p>June stopped her at once.</p>
<p>"All right, Bilson," she said, "I'll just go in. You, needn't hurry Mrs.
Soames."</p>
<p>She took off her cloak, and Bilson, with an understanding look, did not
even open the drawing-room door for her, but ran downstairs.</p>
<p>June paused for a moment to look at herself in the little old-fashioned
silver mirror above the oaken rug chest—a slim, imperious young
figure, with a small resolute face, in a white frock, cut moon-shaped at
the base of a neck too slender for her crown of twisted red-gold hair.</p>
<p>She opened the drawing-room door softly, meaning to take him by surprise.
The room was filled with a sweet hot scent of flowering azaleas.</p>
<p>She took a long breath of the perfume, and heard Bosinney's voice, not in
the room, but quite close, saying.</p>
<p>"Ah! there were such heaps of things I wanted to talk about, and now we
shan't have time!"</p>
<p>Irene's voice answered: "Why not at dinner?"</p>
<p>"How can one talk...."</p>
<p>June's first thought was to go away, but instead she crossed to the long
window opening on the little court. It was from there that the scent of
the azaleas came, and, standing with their backs to her, their faces
buried in the golden-pink blossoms, stood her lover and Irene.</p>
<p>Silent but unashamed, with flaming cheeks and angry eyes, the girl
watched.</p>
<p>"Come on Sunday by yourself—We can go over the house together."</p>
<p>June saw Irene look up at him through her screen of blossoms. It was not
the look of a coquette, but—far worse to the watching girl—of
a woman fearful lest that look should say too much.</p>
<p>"I've promised to go for a drive with Uncle...."</p>
<p>"The big one! Make him bring you; it's only ten miles—the very thing
for his horses."</p>
<p>"Poor old Uncle Swithin!"</p>
<p>A wave of the azalea scent drifted into June's face; she felt sick and
dizzy.</p>
<p>"Do! ah! do!"</p>
<p>"But why?"</p>
<p>"I must see you there—I thought you'd like to help me...."</p>
<p>The answer seemed to the girl to come softly with a tremble from amongst
the blossoms: "So I do!"</p>
<p>And she stepped into the open space of the window.</p>
<p>"How stuffy it is here!" she said; "I can't bear this scent!"</p>
<p>Her eyes, so angry and direct, swept both their faces.</p>
<p>"Were you talking about the house? I haven't seen it yet, you know—shall
we all go on Sunday?"'</p>
<p>From Irene's face the colour had flown.</p>
<p>"I am going for a drive that day with Uncle Swithin," she answered.</p>
<p>"Uncle Swithin! What does he matter? You can throw him over!"</p>
<p>"I am not in the habit of throwing people over!"</p>
<p>There was a sound of footsteps and June saw Soames standing just behind
her.</p>
<p>"Well! if you are all ready," said Irene, looking from one to the other
with a strange smile, "dinner is too!"</p>
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