Chapter 4

If one were to devote one's mental energies to speculation as
to what is going on behind the noncommittal fronts of any row of
houses in any great city the imaginative mind might be led far.

Bricks, mortar, windows, doors, steps which lead up to the threshold,
are what are to be seen from the outside. Nothing particular may
be transpiring within the walls, or tragedies, crimes, hideous suffering
may be enclosed. The conclusion is obvious to banality--but as
suggestive as banal--so suggestive in fact that the hyper-sensitive
and too imaginative had better, for their own comfort's sake, leave
the matter alone. In most cases the existing conditions would not be
altered even if one knocked at the door and insisted on entering
with drawn sword in the form of attendant policeman The outside
of the slice of a house in which Feather lived was still rather
fresh from its last decorative touching up. It had been painted
cream colour and had white and windows and green window boxes
with variegated vinca vines trailing from them and pink geraniums,
dark blue lobelia and ferns filling the earth stuffed in by the
florist who provided such adornments. Passers-by frequently
glanced at it and thought it a nice little house whose amusing
diminutiveness was a sort of attraction. It was rather like a new
doll's house.

No one glancing at it in passing at the closing of this particular
day had reason to suspect that any unaccustomed event was taking
place behind the cream-coloured front. The front door "brasses"
had been polished, the window-boxes watered and no cries for aid
issued from the rooms behind them. The house was indeed quiet both
inside and out. Inside it was indeed even quieter than usual. The
servants' preparation for departure had been made gradually and
undisturbedly. There had been exhaustive quiet discussion of the
subject each night for weeks, even before Robert Gareth-Lawless'
illness. The smart young footman Edward who had means of gaining
practical information had constituted himself a sort of private
detective. He had in time learned all that was to be learned.
This, it had made itself clear to him on investigation, was not
one of those cases when to wait for evolutionary family events
might be the part of discretion. There were no prospects ahead--none
at all. Matters would only get worse and the whole thing would end
in everybody not only losing their unpaid back wages but having to
walk out into the street through the door of a disgraced household
whose owners would be turned out into the street also when their
belongings were sold over their heads. Better get out before
everything went to pieces and there were unpleasantnesses. There
would be unpleasantnesses because there