The silence remained unbroken, over Christmas and on into the new year of 1912. One morning in March, Mrs. Bell asked her to come to tea next day, the eighth of the month. It was a date that Emmie never afterwards forgot.
She said she was sorry; she had an engagement.
“Oh, what a pity. I’m expecting the Alderleys and I wanted you to know them. Can’t you come in afterwards?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” said Miss Verinder. “I’m going out of town to-morrow for the whole day.”
“How annoying! Well then, the day after?”
“Good,” said Mrs. Bell. “I shall put off the Alderleys. Hope you’ll have an enjoyable day.”
Miss Verinder’s engagement was to visit a certain town in the Midlands, and truly she looked forward to it with no pleasurable anticipations, but rather with a sinking of the heart. She was going to Upperslade Park only because she felt that it was her duty to go there. The asylum authorities had sent a very troublesome letter to Dyke, and she as his representative must attend to it properly. They asked for a large increase of the annual payment, on the ground of the enhancement of cost of everything since the time long ago when the bargain was made. They said that a bargain was a bargain, and they “would not go back on it”; but they could not possibly continue to maintain Mrs. Dyke as well as in the past, giving her the greatest comfort, the best food, and the closest attendance, at a dead loss. If, then, it was impossible to adopt their suggestion, they would go on taking care of her quite adequately, but much less luxuriously. There was a possibility, of course, that her health would suffer from the deprivation of comforts to which she had grown accustomed. Farther, they pointed out that although the asylum was to some extent a public institution enjoying an endowment, they had no power to devote a penny of these funds to the benefit of the private paying patients.
Emmie travelled by the North-Western Railway, and it was one of those days with which March can surprise and disgust even those who remember the evil notoriety of the month. Dark skies, rain, and wind travelled with her all the way. She drove through the ugly town, seeing nothing but wet pavements and tramcars; through outskirts of factories and smoking chimneys, and on to a broad long road skirted on either side by villas and gardens. Her cabman stopped at an iron gateway in a high brick wall. This was Upperslade Park. A man came out of a lodge and spoke to her at the cab window. Then he unlocked the gate, and the cab drove in.