Consider Her Ways by John Wyndham Read Free Book Online Page B

passed through one concentration of identical blocks which was in size, though in no other way, quite a town, and then, two or three miles farther on, ran through an ornamental gateway into a kind of park.
    In one way it was not unlike the estate we had left, for everything was meticulously tended; the lawns like velvet, the flower-beds vivid with spring blossoms, but it differed essentially in that the buildings were not blocks. They were houses, quite small for the most part, and varied in style, often no larger than roomy cottages. The place had a subduing effect on my small
companions; for the first time they left off chattering, and gazed about them with obvious awe.
    The driver stopped once to inquire the way of an overalled Amazon who was striding along with a hod on her shoulder. She directed us, and gave me a cheerful, respectful grin through the window, and presently we drew up again in front of a neat little two-storey Regency-style house.
    This time there was no trolley. The little women, assisted by the driver, fussed over helping me out, and then half-supported me into the house, in a kind of buttressing formation.
    Inside, I was manoeuvred with some difficulty through a door on the left, and found myself in a beautiful room, elegantly decorated and furnished in the period-style of the house. A white-haired woman in a purple silk dress was sitting in a wing-chair beside a wood fire. Both her face and her hands told of considerable age, but she looked at me from keen, lively eyes.
    ‘Welcome, my dear,’ she said, in a voice which had no trace of the quaver I half-expected.
    Her glance went to a chair. Then she looked at me again, and thought better of it.
    ‘I expect you’d be more comfortable on the couch,’ she suggested.
    I regarded the couch – a genuine Georgian piece, I thought – doubtfully.
    ‘Will it stand it?’ I wondered.
    ‘Oh, I think so,’ she said, but not too certainly.
    The retinue deposited me there carefully, and stood by, with anxious expressions. When it was clear that though it creaked it was probably going to hold, the old lady shooed them away, and rang a little silver bell. A diminutive figure, a perfect parlourmaid three-foot-ten in height, entered.
    ‘The brown sherry, please, Mildred,’ instructed the old lady. ‘You’ll take sherry, my dear?’ she added to me.
    ‘Y-yes
– yes, thank you,’ I said, faintly. After a pause I added: ‘You will excuse me, Mrs – er – Miss –?’
    ‘Oh, I should have introduced myself. My name is Laura – not Miss, or Mrs, just Laura. You, I know, are Orchis – Mother Orchis.’
    ‘So they tell me,’ I owned, distastefully.
    We studied one another. For the first time since the hallucination had set in I saw sympathy, even pity, in someone else’s eyes. I looked round the room again, noticing the perfection of details.
    ‘This is – I’m not mad, am I?’ I asked.
    She shook her head slowly, but before she could reply the miniature parlourmaid returned, bearing a cut-glass decanter and glasses on a silver tray. As she poured out a glass for each of us I saw the old lady glance from her to me and back again, as though comparing us. There was a curious, uninterpretable expression on her face. I made an effort.
    ‘Shouldn’t it be Madeira?’ I suggested.
    She looked surprised, and then smiled, and nodded appreciatively.
    ‘I think you have accomplished the purpose of this visit in one sentence,’ she said.
    The parlourmaid left, and we raised our glasses. The old lady sipped at hers and then placed it on an occasional table beside her.
    ‘Nevertheless,’ she went on, ‘we had better go into it a little more. Did they tell you why they have sent you to me, my dear?’
    ‘No,’ I shook my head.
    ‘It is because I am an historian,’ she informed me. ‘Access to history is a privilege. It is not granted to many of us nowadays – and then somewhat reluctantly. Fortunately, a feeling that no branches of knowledge should