Колесо крутится. Леди исчезает / The Wheel Spins. The Lady Vanishe

He laughed gently when his wife flushed to her eyes.

“Sorry to startle you, my dear,” he said, “but isn’t it simpler to believe that we are all of us what we assume to be? Even parsons and their wives.” He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and rose from his chair. “I think I’ll stroll down to the village for a chat with my friends.”

“How can he talk to them when he doesn’t know their language?” demanded Miss Rose bluntly, when the vicar had gone from the garden.

“Oh, he makes them understand,” explained his wife proudly.

“Sympathy, you know, and common humanity. He’d rub noses with a savage.”

“I’m afraid we drove him away by talking scandal,” said Miss Flood-Porter.

“It was my fault,” declared Mrs. Barnes. “I know people think I’m curious. But, really, I have to force myself to show an interest in my neighbour’s affairs. It’s my protest against our terrible national shyness.”

“But we’re proud of that,” broke in Miss Rose.

“England does not need to advertise.”

“Of course not… But we only pass this way once. I have to remind myself that the stranger sitting beside me may be in some trouble and that I might be able to help.”

The sisters looked at her with approval. She was a slender woman in the mid-forties, with a pale oval face, dark hair, and a sweet expression. Her large brown eyes were both kind and frank – her manner sincere.

It was impossible to connect her with anything but rigid honesty.

They knew that she floundered into awkward explanations, rather than run the risk of giving a false impression.

In her turn, she liked the sisters. They were of solid worth and sound respectability. One felt that they would serve on juries with distinction, and do their duty to their God and their neighbour – while permitting no direction as to its nature.

They were also leisured people, with a charming house and garden, well-trained maids and frozen assets in the bank.

Mrs. Barnes knew this, so, being human, it gave her a feeling of superiority to reflect that the one man in their party was her husband.

She could appreciate the sense of ownership, because, up to her fortieth birthday, she had gone on her yearly holiday in the company of a huddle of other spinsters. Since she had left school, she had earned her living by teaching, until the miracle happened which gave her – not only a husband – but a son.