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Updated: June 9, 2025
The night was piercing cold, and it blew a storm, with showers of hail and snow. We had made up a cheering fire in an inner room; I sat before it in my wicker-chair; blessing providence, that had still left a shelter for me and my children.
The ancient grandame, again seated on her wicker-chair by the fire, had resumed her eternal spindle, wholly unmoved by the yelling and screaming of the children, and the scolding of the mother, which had preceded the dispersion of the family.
Then, since neither sound nor movement issued from the man in the wicker-chair, the children continued the discussion among themselves, but at the man, knowing that sooner or later he must become involved in it. Judy's answer, moreover, so far as it went, was excellent. The sun rose in the East, and the wind most frequently mentioned came also from that quarter.
Just as Mrs Hamps, having re-created her elaborate smile, was allowing it finally to expire, she had to bring it into existence once more, and very suddenly, for Janet returned to the wall. "You won't forget tennis after tea," said Janet shortly. Edwin said that he should not. "Well, well!" Mrs Hamps commented, and sat down in the wicker-chair of Darius.
To retire in that condition of wakefulness meant another sleepless night, and she slipped a kimono over her, found a book and settled into the big wicker-chair under the light for the half-hour's reading which would reduce her to the necessary state of drowsiness. The book at any other time would have held her attention, but now she found her thoughts wandering. Or was he out?
She did not know whether she fell, or whether he lifted her, but when the blinding mist cleared away again, she was lying in the wicker-chair by the window, and he was walking up and down the room with the ceaseless motion of a prowling animal. She sat up slowly and looked at him. She was shivering all over, as if stricken with cold.
Arnold did not understand, did not even hear, leaning back, long, relaxed, apathetic, in his great wicker-chair and rolling a cigarette with a detached air, as though his hands were not a part of him. But Sylvia heard, and understood, even to the hostility in the old gentleman's well-bred voice.
A tornado of artillery fire had swept over it, and of the houses nothing was left but indecencies, shattered walls and naked rafters, beneath which were choked heaps of household furniture, broken beds, battered lamps, and a wicker-chair overturned as in a drunken brawl.
"I've noticed of late that you are not quite yourself, old friend." He put an affectionate gentleness into the last two words. The real intimacy of their intercourse had never been so vividly expressed before. "Tut, tut, tut!" The wicker-chair creaked heavily. "Irritable," commented Mr. Van Wyk to himself; and aloud, "I'll expect to see you in half an hour, then," he said negligently, moving off.
In one wicker-chair the wicker daubed with royal-red enamel lay a banjo; in another was curled a sleeping terrier indubitable mother of the puppy outside. Near the door stood a piano with a comic opera score on the music-rest, open at No. 12, "I'm a Cheery Fusileery O!" and on its rosewood top an ash-tray full of cigarette-ends and a shaded lamp the base of which needed wiping.
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