Marie sang during the rest of the afternoon when she reached home again. She sang while she made a cup of tea; sang while she put her boy to bed, and set about her preparations for her husband's return; he heard her singing when he fitted his latchkey unobtrusively in the lock, and stepped, still furtively, into the hall. He breathed freely again and told himself that the storm had passed.

He sat down by the fire, before which his wife had set his slippers, but he did not unlace his boots. He was hungry; he cast a short look over the dinner-table to judge, by its arrangement, something of what he might be given to eat. Before he had made a guess, Marie ran in.

"Guess!" she cried, "guess what's happened!"

"Dunno, old girl," said Osborn.

"That dear darling Mr. Rokeby has sent us the most gorgeous baby-carriage."

"The devil he has!" said Osborn, with deep feeling, straightening his shoulders as if a burden had been lifted from them.

"It's down in the lobby with the other prams; you must go down and see it."

"I will after dinner. By Jove, that's good of Rokeby! I wonder what made him think of it."

"I can't imagine; he is thoughtful, isn't he?"

"What's it like?"

"It's pale grey, with ball bearings; and C-springs, and an umbrella basket. There's no enamel; it's all nickel. And the upholstery...."

"By Jove, Desmond's done the youngster proud, what?"

"We couldn't possibly have bought such a carriage for him, Osborn!"

Osborn began to feel flattered as well as pleased. He had always noticed, of course, the very particular attraction and beauty and the early cleverness of his son, but he had not guessed that the little beggar had so impressed that confirmed bachelor.

"Rokeby thinks no end of the kid, you know," he said, sitting down to the table.

"That's not to be wondered at, is it?" replied the enthusiastic mother.

Osborn caught her hand as she passed by him and kissed it.

"I've been thinking about you—about us—to-day," he confided.

"Have you?" she said timidly.

"We—we were both," Osborn hesitated, "both a bit—mad last night, weren't we?"

He pressed her hand before he relinquished it so that she might proceed to the kitchen to dish up the dinner. And she went with a lighter heart because of his affection.

Opposite him, beneath the candles which she still lighted with pleasure each night, she regarded him with a new earnestness. The quarrel was over, it seemed; but it had opened for her a door through which she had never passed before, the door into the darkness of human hearts, and she felt as if she would never forget that horrific step across the unveiled threshold. She watched Osborn steadily yet unobtrusively while his mind was given to the meal; she saw him eat with a great hunger, and the rather tired look which had marked his face when he first came in disappeared as he ate. Men who perforce eat lunch very frugally look forward keenly to a good meal, and Osborn had no eyes or words for Marie until the edge of his appetite was satisfied. She did not yet understand this very well; she was inclined to a slight resentment in his absorption with his dinner to the exclusion of herself. But she did not interrupt him by chatter; she just sat there quietly observing until he should be ready for more conversation.

Presently she brought his coffee round to his side, and he lighted a cigarette with a sigh of satisfaction. He appreciated, indefinitely, her gift of silence when a man came in sharpset for dinner; he had spent a day among busy men, talking all the time, and he did not wish to talk any more. After all, a man came home for quiet.

Marie had spent the day alone with the baby. There had been no voice save her singing one uplifted in the flat since early morning; she wanted to sit with Osborn by the fire in their dear old way, and to talk and talk; and to hear him talk. After all, was not the companionable evening the time for which the lonely household woman lived through her silent day?

She brought her coffee to a place near him and sat down there.

"Osborn," she said, "I was awf'ly hurt that you were so angry last night. I do want you to see that it isn't my fault."

He looked at her rather appealingly. "Let's chuck it," he suggested.

"If you will only understand! I don't believe men think; but if you would think over it for just a few minutes, dear old boy, you'd know that I'm just as careful as a woman can be. You used to give me thirty shillings a week for the housekeeping before we had baby; and I've never asked you for any more since, have I? And his food's awf'ly expensive too. I manage on just the same, Osborn."

"Yes, yes," he said, moving uneasily, "but where's all this leading? I mean—"

"It isn't leading anywhere. I only wanted you to see that I can't help anything."

After a pause, with a little line between his brows, he said:

"No, I know you can't. It's all right. You said some perfectly awful things last night—"

"So did you, Osborn."

He rose slowly. "Well, dear, we won't go over it. We've seen things with the gilt off; and that's that. Anyhow, there's nothing to worry about, is there? We're about straight with the world, though it means every penny earmarked before I earn it. And there's no question of buying a pram now, thank God!"

He turned away and searched on the mantelpiece for matches. "It made me shudder," he said very gravely, "three-pound-ten! Four pounds! After all the expenses I'd had."

"Well...." she said, swallowing hard, "well, come and see Mr. Rokeby's present. It's a ten-guinea carriage, Osborn; nothing less."

He swung round and looked at her, palsied in amazement.

"Ten guineas! Ten! Good God! Why ... it takes me the best part of three weeks to earn what that baby of yours just rides about in!"

"Aren't you coming down to see it?"

"I—I shall see it as I go out, thanks."

"When you—go out!"

She looked down quickly and noted that he had not taken off his boots.

She said in a changed voice: "You're going out?"

"I promised a man to look in and see the show at The Happy with him to-night. Just in the prom, you know. We haven't got stalls like giddy bachelors!"

"Osborn, can't you stay in? It—it's lonely all day, and I look forward to your coming home."

"You didn't seem to look forward very kindly last night."

She cried with hot resentment: "I thought you didn't want that mentioned again!"

"Oh, very well! And I shall be in to-morrow night; won't that do? A man can't be always tied up to the kitchen table, you know. Besides, I promised Dicky Vendo I'd go; his wife's away, and he's free."

"Yours isn't away."

"But she's been a damned little shrew, and doesn't deserve me to stay in for her. There! that's what you get by arguing." He laughed a laugh of vexation as much at his own ill-temper as at her pertinacity.

"Very well," she said, drawing back.

The light in the room was subdued, for the candles had not yet given place to the incandescent glare. He cast a glance at her face, but she had withdrawn to the shadow.

"Well," he hesitated, "night-night, in case you don't sit up."

"Good night," she replied. "I shan't sit up."

"You might make up the fire before you go to bed, though, there's a dear girl."

She did not answer, and he went out; she followed him to the doorway, and stood there watching him put on his overcoat and muffler again. His pipe was between his teeth; he removed it for a second to kiss her cheek hastily, then restored it. With a hysterical anger held feverishly in check, she thought that male imperturbability, male selfishness, were incredible.

"Night-night!" he said again, going out. "I'll bring you a programme."

The door shut. She was alone. She advanced passionately upon the strewn dinner-table; it waited there to be cleared by the work of her hands, as imperturbable as he.

She dashed off the candle-shades first.

"What a day!" she gasped.

Early morning and the awakening in the cold, the brushing of grates and the lighting of fires, the sweeping and cooking, to get a man off warmed and comfortable to business; the long, long hours of silence and domestic tasks, waiting for his return; his return to his food; his departure again; a desolate evening of silence and domestic tasks—these were that span of hope and promise called a day.

Married life!



CHAPTER XIII

"THE VERY DEVIL"

When spring had passed, and part of the summer, the Osborn Kerrs did as all their neighbours did; they packed up their best clothes, folded the baby's cot, swathed the ten-guinea perambulator, and with the baby and his cumbersome impedimenta, made an exhausting effort and went to the sea.

They did not go to the sea altogether lightly; it had cost a great deal of thought and arithmetic and discussion as to a stopping-place. Osborn was keen on a boarding-house; he knew a jolly one where he had stayed before, but Marie vetoed that. They wouldn't have babies in boarding-houses; they wouldn't like her keeping the perambulator there, and wheeling it through the hall; likewise they wouldn't like her intruding into the back regions with it. She knew that what one did with a young family was to take rooms, and cater for oneself. So they wrote to engage rooms, and after much correspondence found what would suit their purse, and started for a week by the sea.

The baby fretted a little during its unaccustomed travelling, and, fretting, fretted its parents. Osborn was dimly annoyed with Marie for not being able to keep the baby up to the best standard of infantile behaviour, feeling that the things he was called upon to do, in a public railway carriage, made him look a fool; and Marie was hurt with Osborn that he should show so little sympathy and patience. She wrote, upon arrival, a letter to Mrs. Amber, which brought her down within a couple of days, to stay at a boarding-house within a stone's throw.

Grandmother was very good. She was always nice-tempered and kind and soothing. In the morning she came round early to the rooms in a side street, and took the baby out for his airing upon the promenade, so that Marie and Osborn might bathe together. She it was who persuaded their landlady to take charge of the baby for just one hour, one afternoon, while Marie and Osborn came to take fashionable tea with her at the boarding-house. In the evening, when the pier was lighted and the band played, and the summer life of the place was at its giddiest, she would arrive with her comfortable smile and her knitting to sit within earshot of her sleeping grandson while his parents went out to enjoy themselves.

Marie did not know what she would have done without the wise woman upon this holiday; but when they talked together she was still shy of confidences, and still reluctant to admit any but the most modern interpretation of the married relationship. Mrs. Amber, however, saw all there was to see and felt no resentment about it. Things were so; and they always had been. You might be miserable if you were married, but then you would have been far more miserable if you had not married. She pitied all spinsters profoundly. She was glad her daughter had found a husband and a home; and she would not have dreamed of combating Osborn. He was that strange, wilful despotic thing, a man. She would have handed him without contest that dangerous weapon of complete power over a woman and her children. Mrs. Amber propitiated Osborn; she pleased and flattered him; and her judgment of him was that he was far better than he might have been.

Grannie travelled back with them to town, and she was very useful during the journey. She kept a strict eye upon the hand-luggage and nursed the baby, while Marie and Osborn smiled together over the sketches in a humorous weekly. Their money was all spent, and they were really half-relieved to be going back to the flat, where they need not keep up that air of being so very pleased with every detail of a rather strained holiday. They would meet other people they knew, who had similarly enjoyed themselves, and would cry:

"Have you been away? We're just back. We went to Littlehampton and had a gorgeous time! We had such awf'ly comfortable rooms, not actually on the front, but within a minute's walk. We prefer rooms to an hotel. We enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Where did you go?"

Mrs. Amber was with Marie a great deal during the rest of that hot summer; she had waited for the close intimacy of the honeymoon time, of the first year, to wear away; she had bided her hour very patiently. When the husband began—as he would—to go out for an hour after dinner, just to meet a friend, and would stay two—three, four hours perhaps, then the mother had come into her own again. Sitting with the strangely-quietened Marie by the open windows of the pale sitting-room—which they could use again with perfect economy during the summer weather—Mrs. Amber was well content with the way of things. She knitted placidly for baby George all the while, and Marie, who hated knitting, sewed for him.

They were evenings such as Mrs. Amber the young wife used to spend with her own mother, while young Mr. Amber betook himself to the strange and unexplained haunts of men.

And on one of these evenings, while the weather was still warm enough to sit looking out into the darkness through the opened windows, but when an autumn haze had begun to hang again about the night, Marie had something to tell her mother, which had blanched her cheek and moistened her eyes all day.

"Mother, I don't know what you'll think, but—I'm going to have another baby."

"Oh—my—dear!" said Mrs. Amber.

The two women gazed into each other's eyes, and while a half-pleased expression stole through the solicitude in Mrs. Amber's, Marie's were wide with fear.

"Are you sure, duck?" said the elder woman, her knitting dropped in her lap.

"Sure," Marie murmured hoarsely. "I've been afraid—and I waited before I told you. But I'm sure. It—it'll be next summer—in the hot weather, just when we'd have been going away to the sea. We shan't be able to afford to go to Littlehampton next year."

"An only child," said Mrs. Amber comfortingly, "is a mistake. It's almost cruel to have an only child. You'll be much better with two than one."

"How can you say so? All that to go through again—"

"Oh, duck, I know! But it won't be so bad next time; anyone'll tell you that. Ask your doctor."

"I shan't have the doctor till I'm obliged."

"I'm sure Osborn would wish you to—"

"How do you know what Osborn would wish?" And she said as so many rebellious women have said before her: "He promised I should never have another. He was crying. I've never told you before, but he was. He cried; and promised me."

"Cried!" Mrs. Amber echoed aghast. "Poor fellow, oh, poor fellow! Osborn has a very good heart. The dear boy!"

"What about me, mother? Where's your sympathy for me? I cried, too."

"We're different."

"No, we aren't. And he promised."

"Oh, my duck," said Mrs. Amber in a voice of confidential bustle, "that's not to be depended on. Men always promise these things; I've known it scores of times. But it doesn't do to depend upon them, love."

"I despise men."

"Oh, don't say that, like Miss Winter. I never did approve of that girl."

"She's wiser than I. She won't marry."

"I guess she hasn't had the chance," said Mrs. Amber, with the disbelief of the old married woman in spinster charms.

"Oh, yes, she has, mother. She's had several chances. But she knows when she's lucky; she's her own mistress, and she has her own money and her freedom."

"She's missing a great deal; and some day she'll know it."

"She knows it now, thank you. She knows she's missing illness and pain and poverty and worry, and the whims and fancies and bad tempers of a husband."

Mrs. Amber said soothingly: "Now, now, my dear, you're not yourself, or you wouldn't say such things. It's every woman's duty to marry if she can and have children. As to your husband, it's no use expecting anything of men but what you get; and the sooner you realise it, my love, the happier you'll be."

"I'll never realise it!" Marie fired.

"Then you'll never settle down contentedly as you ought to."

"Why ought I, mother?"

"Because there's nothing else to be done," replied Mrs. Amber sensibly.

"You're right there," Marie moaned, with her forehead against the chair back, "there's nothing else to be done."

"What does Osborn say now about a second baby?"

"He doesn't know."

Mrs. Amber paused and thought before she said: "You ought to tell him at once, my dear. It's possible—he might be pleased."

"He'll be anything but pleased. I dread telling him."

"Oh, my duck!" said Mrs. Amber helplessly.

Marie enumerated: "He'll hate the expense, and the worry, and my illness, and the discomforts he'll have while I'm ill. He'll hate everything."

"Men do, of course, poor things," Mrs. Amber commented with sympathy.

"Poor things!" Marie flared. "I'd like to—"

"No, you wouldn't like to do anything unkind, love. And when you've got your dear little new baby you'll love it, and be just as pleased with it as you are with George. You will, my dear; there's no gainsaying it, because we women are made that way."

"I know," said Marie very sorrowfully.

Mrs. Amber regarded her knitting thoughtfully, then she dropped it to regard her daughter thoughtfully. She rose and shut the windows against the now chill night air of October, and drawing the curtains, made the room look cosy. She looked at the fire laid ready in the grate, but unlighted, and puckered her eyebrows doubtfully.

"The dining-room fire isn't lighted either, is it, duck?"

"No mother. When Osborn goes out in the evenings, I don't light one just for myself after these warm days."

"You should, my love. Really you should make yourself more comfortable."

"Now, mother, I'm sure you never lighted fires for yourself when father was out, unless it was to keep all the pipes in the place from freezing solid. I'm sure you screwed and skimped and saved and worried along, as all we other fools of women do."

Mrs. Amber did not deny this, knowing it to be true; she said something remote, however, about the pleasure of women being duty, and their duty sacrifice.

Marie remained limp in her chair.

"The point is, mother, that I don't know how to tell Osborn."

"Well, my love, let me tell him."

"Oh, mother," said Marie, "would you?"

"I'll tell him with pleasure. You go to bed, and I'll wait here to tell him when he comes in."

"Supposing he's very late?"

"He won't be later than the last Tube train. I shall get home comfortably, my love; don't you worry about me. We old women can take care of ourselves, you know. It's ten o'clock, and you go off to bed."

"I don't know that I want to, mother."

"Shoo!" said Mrs. Amber.

When Marie was in bed, her mother went to the dining-room, established herself in an armchair, and put a match to the fire. Her husband being long dead, she regarded her own sacrificial days as over, and she remained tolerably comfortable on what he had left behind him. In the days of his life, the money had taken him away to those vague haunts of men; but now it solaced, every penny of it, his widow. As she sat by the kindled fire, Mrs. Amber resumed her knitting, and as she knitted she wondered fondly what the new baby would be like; whether it would be boy or girl, and just exactly what piece of work she had better get in hand against its arrival.

So Osborn Kerr, arriving home not very late—it was only just after eleven o'clock—found his mother-in-law seated alone upon his hearth, needles flying over one of the pale blue jerseys in which little George was to winter.

She greeted his stare of astonishment placidly, with her propitiating smile and deceitful words:

"I thought you would be cold, Osborn, so I put a match to the fire."

"Oh, thanks," said Osborn, "thanks very much. Where's Marie?"

"She's gone to bed."

"Gone to bed, and left you here by yourself!" Then a thought assailed him: "I say," he asked himself, "is she—is she staying behind to give me a talking-to about anything? What've I done now?"

The question made him antagonistic, and he looked at her keenly.

"Are you—are you staying the night?" he asked; "because, if so, I'll just take my things out of the dressing-room into our room, unless you have done it?"

She lifted her hands. "Oh, my dear boy, I shouldn't dream of putting you so about! It is only that I stayed to tell you a little bit of news which Marie seemed a trifle reluctant to tell you."

She put her head on one side and looked at him smilingly. There was no sign upon her face to tell him how anxious her heart was, nor how she had offered up a prayer as his latchkey clicked in the lock: "Oh, Lord, don't let him be angry; let him be very kind to Marie, for Christ's sake! Amen."

"If there's anything Marie can't tell me herself—"

In her most propitiatory voice she said, smiling up at the young man, "Can't you guess? I expect you do know, don't you, though Marie thinks you don't?"

Osborn sat down.

"I can't possibly guess. Is it a puzzle, at this time of night?"

"It is not a puzzle," said Mrs. Amber, overflowing with feeling so that she had to remove and wipe her glasses; "it is just the most natural and ordinary and beautiful thing in the world."

He sat forward quickly, beginning to have some glimmer of her significance.

"You can't mean—"

"You and Marie are going to be blessed with another child."

"'Blessed'?" said Osborn, after a short pause, "'blessed'?"

"Blessed!" repeated Mrs. Amber anxiously.

"Some people," said Osborn, "have rum ideas about blessings."

"Won't you go in and see Marie and tell her you're pleased?"

"Is she awake?"

"I expect she is; most women would be," said Mrs. Amber slowly.

She began with extreme care to roll up her knitting while she awaited his further words; she did not look at him, but glanced about the room, as if seeking some happy idea which she could clothe in the right and most acceptable words.

"Does she expect me to be pleased?" Osborn asked.

"Well," said Mrs. Amber confidentially, "between you and me, she doesn't; and that's why I offered to tell you, Osborn. She didn't like to."

"Poor girl," said Osborn soberly.

He stared in front of him, whistling softly. "Life's queer," he uttered abruptly; "marriage seems so gay at the beginning, and then—all these infernal complications. There's always things nibbling at one; they never seem to stop. When you've weathered one squall another gets up on top of the first...."

"There must be a great deal of give-and-take in marriage," began Mrs. Amber. "I'm as old as both of you put together, and I assure you that everyone has to make sacrifices, and try to do their duty cheerfully, and welcome the children whom God sends them."

A little derision curled Osborn's lips.

"I'm afraid these mere platitudes are no solid help."

Mrs. Amber murmured protestingly, but, not knowing what a platitude was, felt she could not follow up the subject. She rose and picked up her coat from a chair back, and wrapped herself up to face the night.

"Tell Marie you're pleased," she coaxed.

"But she knows I'm not," said Osborn gloomily, "and neither will she be. One child on our income is enough. It would be different if we had plenty of money, but we haven't. Why, a family in this flat! This flat with two bedrooms! Imagine it! When God sends these blessings, as you infer He does, He should build rooms for 'em. I can't."

"Oh, don't!" Mrs. Amber implored, "don't! I'm not superstitious, but—" she looked around her and shuddered—"but you ought not to say such things. It isn't right. People must make sacrifices."

"Don't say it all over again."

She went with her waddling gait, agitatedly, to the door.

"Good night," she said. "Be very, very kind to Marie, won't you?"

"I don't need anyone to tell me how to treat my own wife," he replied stiffly.

"Oh, Osborn, don't be offended."

"I'm not offended," he said shortly. "Good night, and thanks for staying in, and lighting the fire and all that."

He did not remain to watch her slow progress down the stone stairs, but closed the door and went back to the fire. He pulled out his pipe, filled and lighted it. There descended upon him that feeling of hopeless exasperation which many a young man has felt in many such a situation. When one married did one's liabilities never cease? Did they never even remain stationary, allowing a man to settle his course and keep to it, in spite of the boredom involved? Would life be always just a constant ringing of the changes on paying the rent, paying the instalment on the furniture, paying the doctor, paying the nurse, paying to go for one anxious week to Littlehampton? Wasn't there some alternative?

All a man appeared able to do was to escape for furtive minutes from his chains, to steal furtive shillings from his obligations and spend them otherwise.

A lot of men seemed to keep sane under the most unfavourable conditions.

When Osborn had sucked his pipe to the very last draw, he got up with a heavy sigh, stretched himself, took the coal off the fire to effect the minute saving, and went to undress. He wondered whether Marie really was still awake.

She was, and she was lying wide-eyed and watchful for him. As he opened the door cautiously he heard the rustle of her head moving on the pillow, and then the movement of her whole body turning towards him. Her anxiety filled the air with the sense of one poignant question: "Do you know?"

In answer to her unspoken inquiry he went at once to her side, and laid his hand upon her head, where the hair, smoothly parted for the night, looked sleek and innocent like a little girl's.

"Your mother told me," he began; then he bent and kissed her. "I'm awf'ly sorry. I s'pose we've got to make the best of it, old thing. I will if you will. It's the very devil, isn't it?"

"Yes," she sighed.



CHAPTER XIV

DRIFTING

The second baby came in the middle of a blazing summer, unheralded by the hopes, by the buds and blossoms of loving thought, which had opened upon the first child's advent. Marie was remorsefully tender over it, but Osborn continued to be one long uninterrupted sigh. The doctor and nurse seemed to him voracious, greedy creatures seeking for his life-blood. His second child was born at midnight. He came in one day at 6.30 with the fear in his heart men know round and about these agitating times, and found that fear was justified. The nurse had already been sent for, the doctor had looked in once, and the grandmother, fierce and tearful, was putting the first baby to bed. She put it to bed in Osborn's dressing-room, intimating that he would be responsible for it during the night for the next three weeks, anyway.

He could not bear it. He went in and kissed the silent, stone-white Marie, looked resentfully at George, answered his mother-in-law at random, and hurried out again. He was shivering. He remembered too well now that day which, too easily, he had forgotten.

He neither ate nor drank; he walked the Heath madly. He told himself that not for hundreds of precious pounds would he wait in that flat, wait for the sounds of anguish which would inevitably rise and echo about those circumscribed walls. The July sun went down; the moon rose up and found him still walking; still fearing and wondering.

He supposed he was a coward; he could not help it.

It was after twelve o'clock when at last he went home. He went because he suddenly remembered they had left George in his charge, and while there was little he could do for Marie, he could at least be faithful to that trust. He came back shivering as he had gone out; and as he fitted his latchkey with cold fingers into the lock he heard the newborn infant's wail.

The nurse looked out into the corridor at the sound of his entrance; she raised her finger, enjoining silence, and smiled. She was the same nurse who had helped to usher baby George into the world, and who had been so serenely certain that they would send for her again.

She vanished once more into Marie's room.

Osborn crept along the corridor and took off his boots; he was tired out, but still he felt no hunger. Had he been hungry he would have somehow thought it an act of criminal grossness to forage for food. There was none to attend to him, for Mrs. Amber, having waited to reassure herself of her daughter's safety, had been obliged to take the last Tube train home since there was not room for her at the flat. He was about to undress when the nurse came along the corridor and tapped at his door.

He knew what she had come for. Once again, with that air of lase cheerfulness she summoned him to his wife's bedside, and once again he stood there looking down upon Marie as she lay there, quiet and worn. Her quietness was the most striking thing about her. She looked at him steadily and remotely, as if he were a stranger, but with less interest; there was even a little hostility about her regard. It seemed a long while ago since he had fallen beside her bed and wept with her over the catastrophic forces of Nature; they were both ages older; as if a fog had drifted between them, their hearts were obscured from each other. Generations and generations of battle, so old as to be timeless, marked the ground between them.

He spoke hesitatingly, saying:

"How do you feel, dear?"

"I'm—glad it's over."

"So'm I."

"You managed to escape?"

He looked at her hastily, a little red creeping over his pallid face. She spoke almost as to a deserter. "I couldn't have done any good," he said.

She smiled and closed her eyes, as though against him. It was not a natural smile, it drew her lips tight.

"What could I do?" he asked her pleadingly.

She opened her eyes again and looked at him in that remote and quiet regard.

"Men are queer. If you had been suffering, I would never have run away."

He wanted to expostulate, to explain how different such a case would be; how, as a matter of course, a wife's place was beside her husband in good and ill, most particularly ill—but he did not find the heart to do it. She looked so fatigued and was so deadly quiet. He felt at a loss, and looked around vaguely till his eye lighted on the cot. There, beneath the muslin and ribbon which had at last been crisply laundered, lay a burden, now minute, but about to cling and grow like an Old Man of the Sea.

"How's the baby?" he asked, tiptoeing to it.

"It's a girl," said Marie; "I expect you've been told."

He had not been told, having made no inquiry. Here again the story-books which had informed him of romantic life in his very young days had been at fault; they made such an idealised picture of all that had just taken place, and they told about the joy in the heart of a man and the ecstasy in the heart of a woman. Osborn looked down upon a tiny, red and crumpled face.

"I expect she'll grow up as pretty as her mother," he said with an effort, "but now she's—she's curious, isn't she?"

With what relief he hailed the return of the nurse? It was so late that she was stern and cross and cold with him as she shut him out.

Little George awoke at the sounds, cautious though they were, of his father's undressing, and, crying for mummie, could not be consoled until lifted out, and wildly and clumsily petted and lied to, and cajoled. Even then he did not trust this daddy who was such a stranger in the house; who was only jolly by fits and starts when they all woke up in the pink room in the mornings; who hid behind a paper at breakfast, and who, going away in a hurry directly afterwards, only returned after George was asleep, or simulating sleep under threat of a slapping. The baby missed his mother's loving arms and cried miserably, hunched uncomfortably in Osborn's. But at last he must sleep through sheer drowsiness, and they both went to bed. In the morning Osborn dressed him before he went away, and was called upon to make himself generally useful, and made to memorise a string of errands.

The nurse would have no nonsense. She demanded and he complied.

He cursed her within himself. What a pack!

During those days once more Desmond was good to him, sheltering him at his club, inviting him to play golf, or to run out into the country with him in his two-seater. Once they took George because the nurse was so firmly decided that they should do so, and they stayed out past his bedtime, and tired him out, and made him furious.

"It's a gay life!" said Osborn to Rokeby, "a gay life, what?"

Marie sent the nurse away at the end of three weeks, and tackled her increased household alone. She was unable to nurse the baby, and the doctor ordered it to be fed upon the patent food which George used to have, so she was obliged to ask Osborn to increase the housekeeping allowance.

They discussed long and seriously the ways and means to the increase and the amount of it. "Half a crown," was her reiteration; "on half a crown I'd do it somehow."

And he asked: "Yes! But where's the half-crown to come from?"

"You must find it," she said at last.

With compressed lips and lowering brow the young man thought it out. "I give you all I can—"

"And I take as little as I can."

"I'm sick of these discussions about money."

"So'm I."

"It seems as if we were sick of the whole thing, doesn't it?"

Being a woman, she dared not confirm verbally those reckless words; their very recklessness caused her to fear. If they were sick of the whole thing—well, what about it? What were they to do? They were in it, weren't they, up to their necks? Of two people who mutually recognised the plight, only one must foam and rage and stutter out unpalatable truths about it; it was for the other to pour on the oil, to deceive and pretend and propitiate and cajole, to try to keep things running and the creaking machinery at work.

Because—what else remained to do?

But when Osborn rapped out: "It seems as if we were sick of the whole thing, doesn't it?" though she would not confirm this in words, her silence confirmed it, her silence and her look. They made him hesitate and catch his breath.

"Well?" he asked.

"I'm not going to say such things."

"But you know they're true, don't you?" he asked in despair.

"You ought to think, as I do, that the babies are worth it all."

"When two people begin telling each other what they ought to do, they're reaching the limit."

"You've often told me what I ought to do."

"I don't know what's coming to women."

"A revolution!"

"Rubbish!" said Osborn. "Women have no power to revolt, and no reason either."

"It's true we've no power; that's what keeps most of us quiet."

"I wish it would keep you quiet."

"You see, I can't help it, can I? Keeping quiet doesn't ask you for this other half-crown, and I've got to ask you. I can't help it."

"I daresay not," he admitted reluctantly. "But—"

"Can I have it?" she asked doggedly.

"Oh, take it!" he flared, flung half-a-crown on the table, rose, and went out. She sat for a while looking at the half-crown, then she took it in her hand, and wanted to pitch it into the street for the first beggar to profit by, but, remembering that she was a beggar too, she kept it.

Osborn entered into further discussion of the matter in a reasonable vein.

"Half-a-crown a week's six pound ten a year. Sure you can't manage without?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, lots of women have to—to—manage."

"There's a limit even to management."

"I suppose there is. Very well."

"You mean I'm to have it?"

"All right."

"Thank you very much, dear," said Marie very slowly after a while.

"You don't seem in a particular hurry to say it."

"Why should I say it?"

"What! when I've just arranged to give you six pound ten—"

"To feed your daughter."

"Oh, well—"

"Anyway, I have said it. I've said 'Thank you very much,' haven't I? Do you want me to show more gratitude?"

"It beats me to think what's come over women."

They sat on either side of their hearth looking at one another in unconcealed bewilderment.

"If you cared to let me make out a budget, Osborn," she said suddenly, "I think we could arrange it all better. So much for everything, you know."

"Oh, yes, I know! I know all about it, thanks! If you want to dole out my pocket-money, my dear, I'm off.... I'm completely off it! No, thank you. I'll keep my hands on my own income."

"I only meant—"

"Women never seem satisfied," said Osborn wrathfully.

As he looked at her sitting there, thin and fair and reserved as she never used to be, with the sheen of her glossy hair almost vanished, and all of her pretty insouciance gone, he saw no more the gay girl, the wifely comrade, whom he had married. In her place sat the immemorial hag, the married man's bane, the blood-sucker, the enemy, the asker.

She had taken from him a sum equivalent to twice his weekly tobacco-money.

The sacrifice of all his tobacco would not provide for that red and crumpled baby lying in its fine basket. He took that as a comparison, with no intention of sacrificing his tobacco; but it just gave one the figures involved.

As if feeling through her reserve the gist of his thoughts, she smiled.

"Poor old Osborn!" she said.

"You can stretch an income, and stretch it," said Osborn, "but it isn't eternally elastic, you know."

"Don't I know it!"

"Well, all I ask you to do," said Osborn, "is to remember it."

Then life went round as before, except that a great anxiety as to meeting the weekly bills fell upon Marie. Sometimes they were a shilling up and sometimes a shilling down. The day when the greasy books fell through the letter-box into the hall was a day to add a grey hair to the brightest head.

With two babies to dress, she rose earlier; she swept and dusted and cooked quicker; she sent Osborn off to his work as punctually as before; she wheeled two infants instead of one out in the grey perambulator to the open-air market. And there her bargaining became sharp, thin and shrewish. She fought the merchants smartly, and sometimes she won and sometimes they. During the day Grannie Amber usually came in and lent a hand about the babies' bedtime. At 6.30 Osborn came home, a little peevish until after dinner. After dinner he went out again if the new baby cried or if anything went wrong. Once a quarter the demand for the rent came upon him like a fresh blow; once a month he paid the furniture instalment; once a week he gave up, like life-blood, thirty-two and sixpence to her whose palm was always ready.

"It's a gay life!" he often said with a twisted smile, "A gay life, what?"



CHAPTER XV

SURRENDER

Grannie Amber was afraid—she did not know exactly why—that, the year following the second baby's arrival, Osborn would forget Marie's birthday, and she was anxious that it should not be forgotten. Though she herself had, early in her married life, grown tired and quiet, had early learned to bargain shrewishly with the merchants of the cheaper foods and, after the first three years, had always had her birthdays forgotten; though she had been perfectly willing and ready to urge her daughter into the life domestic, upon a small income, yet regrets took her and sighs, all of perfect resignation, when she saw the darkness under Marie's eyes, when she stood by in the market and heard her hard chaffering, when she noted the worried crinkles come to stay in her brow. So that, resolving that Osborn should not forget, natural as it would have been for him, in her judgment, to do so, she trailed his wife's birthday across his path a fortnight before the actual day, wishing in her thoughtfulness to give him the chance to save from two weeks' salary for some gift.

She sewed in his presence and, as she sewed, entered into a full explanation of her work: "This little skirt, Osborn, is for Marie's birthday. I hope I'll get it done in time; there's only a fortnight, as you know."

He did not know; the fact had slipped his memory in the ceaseless dream of other liabilities due; but as he looked at Grannie Amber, and the purple silk petticoat which she was finely sewing, he assumed a perfect memory of the occasion.

He answered: "I was just going to ask Marie what she'd like for it."

"There are a lot of things she'd like," Mrs. Amber began.

That same evening, when Grannie Amber had rolled up the purple petticoat into her workbag and departed, he asked Marie, as they sat together over the fire:

"What would you like for your birthday, my dear?"

A great pleasure shone in her face as she gazed at him.

"Osborn," she stammered, "can you afford to give me a present at all?"

"I should hope so," he replied.

An eagerness, which he had not seen there for a long while, invaded her face; it was an eagerness of pleasure at his remembrance, at his wish to be kind and to give her happiness. About the gift she was not so precious; she hoped it would be small, and she said, almost reverentially:

"I'd rather you chose, dear."

"I'd been thinking," said Osborn, who had thought of it during dinner, "that you might like to be taken out. How would that do for a present? Of course I'd like to do both—to take you out and give you a swagger gift—but we know it can't be done, don't we?"

"Of course. Of course, my dear."

"You'd like to go out to dinner? And perhaps we could go somewhere after, too."

"The dinner will be enough, Osborn. Oh! it will be lovely!"

"Righto!" he said. "I—I do wish I could take you out oftener, but you know—"

"Of course I know, Osborn."

She thought with excitement of the charming few hours which they would snatch from routine, together, a fortnight hence. She spoke of it to Mrs. Amber, carelessly, with a high-beating heart and secret, delicious thrills: "We're dining out on my birthday, mother, if you won't mind spending the evening here in case the children wake."

"Oh, duck!" cried Mrs. Amber, "oh, my love! I'll be delighted. Mind you enjoy yourselves very much and don't hurry home. Grandmothers are made to be useful."

Nearly every spare minute of every day during those intervening weeks Marie spent in renovating a frock. She had vast ideas, but no money except a few shillings hoarded only a woman knows how, in spite of the pressing claims of the greasy books. Her wedding frock, four years old, emerged from the tissue paper where it had lain these many months, yellowed and soiled, in dire need of the cleaner's ministrations or the dyer's art. Marie could not afford the cleaner, and did not dare the wash-tub and soap, but she bought one of those fourpenny-ha'penny dyes with which impecunious women achieve amazing results, wherewith she dyed the frock, and the bath, and her own hands a shade of blue satisfactory at least by artificial light. Under it she would wear the purple petticoat, whose flounces would cause the skirt to sway and swing in the present mode, and she would evolve herself a hat. She folded a newspaper round, shaped it to her head, covered it with black velvet, borrowed a great old cameo clasp of her mother's, and had a turban, a saucy thing whose rake brought back for a while the lamp to her eyes and the rose to her cheek. The housemaid's gloves and the rubber gloves had never been renewed, and the supply of Julia's wornout suedes could not cope with the destruction of them at No. 30, so that Marie's fine hands were fine no longer. They were reddened and roughened and thickened like the hands of other household women, but each afternoon in the slow fortnight she sat down to careful manicuring. When the result of these pains was fulfilled; when she stood before the glass in her pink bedroom gasping at her reflection, she could have sung and danced and wept in this glad renewal of her youth.

She had rendezvous with Osborn at the chosen restaurant at seven. Never, it seemed to her, had she felt lighter-footed and lighter-hearted. It was as if the old days were back, the old days when an unlessoned girl met an unlessoned man to dream of heaven together, in some restaurant room full of the lessons and sophistries of love. Westwards she travelled by Tube, emerged at Leicester Square, and walked on flying feet past the Haymarket, across the great stream of traffic at the top, into Shaftesbury Avenue, and into the foyer of a famous restaurant. She sat down on a velvet couch, snuggled her furs around her, and felt a lady of luxury. Osborn kept her waiting some ten minutes, but soon the damper which that put upon her spirits evaporated, leaving her all pure bliss. It was entrancing to sit here once more—where she had often kept Osborn sitting in the old days of her imperiousness and his humility—and to watch the well-dressed people come in and out, pass to and fro, and enact scenes which suggested the gaudiest stories to her receptive mind. Light and warmth, rich colour and abundant life flowed there like tides, and many servants stood about the foyer to obey her behests.

The restaurant to Marie was revel and entertainment, and when the slight blankness with which his lateness had oppressed her had been overswayed by her enjoyment, she could have wished to sit here for hours, doing nothing, saying nothing, eating nothing, but just breathing in this atmosphere of wealth and ease.

But Osborn came, hurrying, between seven and seven-fifteen, apology on his lips. A man had come in late to buy a car and they had talked ... never was there such a long-winded customer. He took Marie's arm lightly in his hand, hurried her in, and chose a table, the nearest vacant one. He dropped into his seat and passed his hand over his brow and eyes to brush away the daze of fatigue. He was tired and very, very hungry, too hungry to watch with his old appreciation the dainty movements of his wife, as she shrugged her furs from her shoulders, and drew off her white gloves, and smiled at him radiantly, with the sense of those dear, old, lost, spoiled-girl days returning momentarily to her.

Osborn's brows were knitted over the wine-list and his hand moved restlessly in his pocket. Very carefully he considered and weighed the prices and at last gave his order quickly.

"Half a bottle of '93." Leaning slightly towards his wife, he added: "I'm afraid it can't be a bottle of the one and only these days, kiddie."

"Not now that we're family people!" she cried bravely.

While he leaned back quietly, awaiting the arrival of the first course, and, could she have known it, craving the food with the keen craving of the man who has lunched too lightly, she looked at her hands, from which the white gloves were now removed. A pang, not altogether new, but of renewed sharpness, shot through her, as she looked down at the reddened, hardened fingers with the slight vegetable stains upon them, clasped together on the table edge. Where were the nails trained and kept to an exquisite filbert shape? The oval of the cuticles? The slender softness and coolness of the finger-tips? The backs of the hands were roughened and the palms seamed; there was a tiny crack at a finger-joint; it seemed to her that the spoiling of her beautiful hands had made so insidious a pace through these years that she had, day by day, been almost unaware of the havoc in progress. But looking down upon them in this place of ease and grace, she saw, surprised and sorrowful, the whole of the sad mischief. Her hands were as the hands of a scullery-maid taken out, most unsuitably, to dinner. While Osborn still awaited the first course, she drew her hands down and hid them on her lap. There was time enough to display their effect when they must emerge for the use of the table implements.

Surrounding her were women whose white hands, jewelled and unjewelled, played about their business, lovely as pale and delicate flowers. She cast her glances right and left, seeing them and envying. And she looked at their clothes, their smart and slender shoes, the richness of their cloaks hanging over chair backs, and she saw her own frock as it was, dyed and mended and demode.

She knew. "It looked nice when I tried it on at home because there were no comparisons. Here, where there's competition, I—I'm hopeless. I'd better have worn a suit."

Her turban, that thing which had paraded so saucily in the pink room while the babies slept regardless, was an outsider—a gamin among hats.

She was not the first woman who has decked herself at home to her own gratification, to emerge into a wealthier world to her own despair.

While these things were borne in, with the flashlight speed of woman's impressions, upon her brain, the first course arrived and they ate. After it, Osborn roused himself to talk. He asked her several times if she were enjoying herself, and she told him with smiling lips that she was.

"It's not so often that we go out, is it?" he remarked. "We must make the best of the times we get."

"This is lovely."

"Poor old girl!" said Osborn, "you don't get out on the loose very much, do you? But I don't suppose you want to, though; women are different from men. A woman's interest centres in her home, and you've quite enough to do to keep your mind occupied, haven't you?"

"And my hands. Look at them!"

She spread them before him.

"Poor old girl!" said Osborn, looking.

A recollection stirred in him, too, of what those hands had been in the days of their romance. "You used to have the prettiest hands I ever saw," he said.

She snatched them petulantly under the table again.

"Don't!"

"Don't what?"

"Don't—say that! I can't bear to think how ugly I'm getting."

Her husband looked at her with a faint, bewildered smile. "Come!" he adjured her, "you mustn't get morbid. You're not ugly, you silly girl. You were one of the prettiest girls I ever saw."

"But now?"

"Now?" He looked at her quickly. "You're as pretty as ever you were, of course."

"I'm not," she denied, reading the lie in his eyes.

"Women are bound to change, no doubt," he conceded. "I daresay having the babies aged you a bit. But you needn't get anxious about your looks yet."

"I'm not thirty, but I look it."

"No, no, you don't," he said constrainedly.

She smiled, and contented herself with watching him eat the next course while she toyed with it. As a woman, food meant little to her; she was concerned more with the prettiness of its serving; but Osborn was avidly hungry and his enjoyment was palpable.

She thought: "Poor boy! How he likes the good things of life! And how few of them he gets! He oughtn't to have married."

She looked around her again, and saw, a little way across the floor, a gay woman in black. Her hair and eyes were black, her complexion was white, her lips were red. She had with her two men who worshipped. Of her Marie said to herself:

"She's older than I, but she's keeping her looks; her hands are not so nice as mine used to be, but now they're far nicer. She's keeping herself young and gay; she sees to it that she's pampered. But if she had married a poor man, and had two babies, and had been obliged to do all the chores, I wonder...."

"What interests you, my dear?" Osborn asked.

She told him in a fitful, inarticulate way. "I was looking at that woman over there, the one in black, with the diamond comb in her hair. And—and I was wondering—in a way—I can hardly explain—what is really the best thing to do with one's life. She's older than I—a good deal older—but see how smooth her face is. She looks as if she could never do anything other than laugh. And her hands—see, she uses them to show them off—aren't they lovely? But I was wondering, if she was in my shoes, how would she look? What would she do if babies woke her up half a dozen times every night, so that when the morning came she was very tired?

"Tired, and yet she must get up and cook and sweep, and take the children out, and everything. Would her face be smooth and would she laugh then? I was wondering, too, whether she'd take the same trouble over her hair at six o'clock of a cold morning. And, if she had my life, would men admire her so much? Would they look at her as they are looking now?"

Osborn stared at his wife, half-amazed, half-frowning.

"One would think," he said, "to hear you talk, that you weren't happy; that you hadn't all—all—all a woman in your position of life can have."

She flushed quickly. "Don't think that! I was just wondering about her, that's all, as I used to wonder about the people we saw when you took me out to dinner in our engaged days. Do you remember? You used to laugh at me and call me the Eternal Question, and all kinds of silly things."

"I don't remember that."

"No? Well, it was a very long while ago."

"It sounded as if you were envying her."

"I was envying her."

"Haven't you all you want?" he said again in resentful surprise.

"I want to be awf'ly young again, and to have a smooth face and manicured hands, and lots of admiration."

"I'll tell you what it is," said Osborn, regaining his good temper with an effort, "this wine has gone to your head."

After he had presented this very satisfactory solution, both laughed; but while he laughed with relief at dismissing the question, she laughed only acquiescently and unconvinced, the laugh which should be called the Laugh of the Wise Wives. It appeased him and it relieved her, as a groan relieves a person in pain. She sipped her unaccustomed wine and looked around her with her wide eyes, which were far, far more widely opened now than in the days of her blind youth.

When a rather tired and preoccupied man takes his wife of four years' standing out to dinner he knows that he need not exert himself to talk, to shine, to please, as with a woman who holds the piquancy of a stranger; so while Osborn spoke spasmodically, or drifted into silence, Marie could look around her and think thoughts which chilled the ardour of her soul. It seemed to her, that evening of her twenty-ninth birthday, that a door was opened to her, revealing nakedly the fears and the trepidations and the minute cares of marriage which have creased many a woman's brow before her time. The restaurant was to her the tide of life, upon which the black-haired woman and her sisters sailed victoriously, but upon which she, and wives like her, trained for the race only in the backwaters of their homes, embarked timidly to their disgrace and peril. What wife of a husband with two hundred a year could row against the black-haired woman and keep pride of place?

As Marie wondered things which all her sisterhood have long ached over, she saw Osborn looking at the black-haired woman too, and in his eyes there was a light of admiration, a keenness, a speculation which drew the tired lines from his face and left it eager once more. It was the male look which once he had looked only for her. With a heart beating sharply she recognised and wanted it again, but she felt strangely impotent. She in her dyed gown, her gamin of a hat, with her spoiled hands and thin cheeks—and that tall, rounded beauty with all her life and vivacity, undrained, throbbing in her from toes to finger-tips! What a comparison!

Vain and profitless was the unequal competition. She felt one moment as if, should it come to a struggle, she would relinquish it in sheer despair; the next, as if she would fight, teeth and nails, body and brains, for her inalienable rights over this man. All the while these emotions surged up in her, and ebbed and flowed in again, her intelligence told her the wild absurdity of such supposition. The raven woman was a stranger; and socially, to all appearance, she must always remain so. Yet Marie could not still the passionate unrest of her heart without taking her husband's eyes from the table where two obsequious men adored a goddess.

She drummed her hard finger-tips sharply on the table.

"Osborn, do you know her?"

"Know her? No." He added carelessly: "I wish I did."

Marie said in a voice which she tried hard to keep detached: "Why? Oh, yes.... I—I suppose she's the type men would admire very much."

"Well, you were admiring her a few minutes ago."

"In—in a way I was. I mean, she's so smooth, so—so well-kept, and her frock is lovely, with those diamond shoulder-straps and all that black tulle. I thought—you stared as if you knew her."

"I hope I shouldn't stare at any woman because I knew her. As a matter of fact, I believe I know who she is; she's an actress; bound to succeed if she takes the right line, I should think. Just now she's got six lines to speak in that new piece of Mutro's. You know—what's it called?"

"What's her name?"

"Roselle Dates, I think."

Osborn looked at his wife solicitously.

"I'm afraid you're a bit tired, dear; you're getting pale. You had a jolly colour when I met you."

She touched her cheeks mechanically with her fingertips.

"Had I? That was because I was so excited at the prospect of our lovely evening."

"Dear old girl! So it's been a lovely evening?"

"Perfect. I wish it was beginning all over again," she answered hollowly, wishing that she meant what she said.

What was the matter with her? Why did she feel so grey, so plain, so sparkless?

"I ought to rouge a little," she said. "Everyone else does."

He protested quickly and strongly.

"But," she said, "if I'm tired? If I'm a fright? What then?"

"I shouldn't like my wife to make up."

"But, Osborn, I want you to think I'm pretty, well turned out, smart, like all the other women here."

She waved a hand vaguely around, but her look was on the raven woman, on whose face the white cosmetic, exquisitely applied, was like pale rose petals.

"I do think you're pretty. As for your turn-out—" he glanced over it quickly—"it's all right, isn't it? It's what we can afford, anyway. We can't help it, can we?"

She shook her head. "I've had no new clothes since we were married," she murmured suddenly in a voice of yearning.

"Well," said Osborn after a pause, "you had such lots; such a big trousseau, hadn't you? It's supposed to last some while."

"It's lasted!" Her laugh rang out with a curious merriment; her eyes were downcast so that he could not see the tears in them, but something about his wife touched him profoundly.

He exclaimed, with rejuvenated sentiment: "You know I'd always give you everything I could! You know it isn't because I won't that I don't give you the most wonderful clothes in town, so that you could beat every other woman hollow."

His sentiment flushed her cheeks and cleared the mist from her eyes. She asked, half shyly and coquettishly:

"Do you think I should?"

"Of course you would, little girl. You're charming; anything more unlike the mother of two great kids I never saw."

"Ah," she said slowly, "but you forget to tell me."

"What?"

"All those—dear little—things."

"Women are rum," he declared. "I believe they're always wanting their husbands to propose to them."

"It would be nice," she said seriously.

Osborn laughed a good deal. "A woman's never tired of love-making."

"A married woman doesn't often get the chance."

"A married man doesn't often get the time."

She looked yet again at the actress across the room, and strange echoes of questions stirred in her. Such a woman, she thought, would always make a man find time. How did they do it? What was the real secret of feminine victory, triumphant and deathless? Was it not to keep burning always, night and day, winter and summer, autumn and spring, throughout the seasons, the clear-flamed lamp of romance?

Behind the wife there stood shades, sturdy, greedy, disagreeable shades, and the two-hundred-pound husband always saw them; they were the butcher, the grocer, the milkman, the doctor, the landlord and the tax-collector.

How could she trim her lamp brightly to burn?

In the restaurant many diners had gone; many, lingering, thought of going; waiters hovered near ready to hand bills, and empty liqueur glasses and coffee cups, and ash trays, and the dead ends of cigarettes lay under the rose lights on all the tables. Osborn had drunk a benedictine and smoked a cigar appreciatively; Marie had begun to think, reluctantly, yet clingingly, maternally, of her babies in the pink room at home. She lifted her furs from the chair back, and a waiter hurried to adjust the stole over her shoulders.

"Sorry," said Osborn, going through the slight motion of attempting to rise from his chair; "I should have done that."

"Never mind, dear," she answered.

Then he paid the bill, got into his own coat, and they walked out. As they went, he asked: "Well, old girl, have you really enjoyed it?"

"It was lovely. Thank you so much!"

"Sure it was the sort of birthday present you wanted?"

"Absolutely the one and only thing, Osborn."

"Happy young woman!" He took her arm and squeezed it.

"Cab, sir?" the commissionaire asked.

"We're walking, thanks."

They walked to the nearest Tube station, took train to Hampstead, and arrived home at eleven, to release the sleepy grandmother on duty.

"Had a lovely time, duck?" asked Mrs. Amber, trotting out into the hall.

"Tophole, Grannie," said Osborn. "Marie's thoroughly enjoyed herself."

"Simply lovely, mother," said Marie. "We went to the Royal Red, and Osborn gave me a scrumptious dinner. Babies been good?"

"Not a sound—the little angels."

Marie kissed her mother good night, waved her out, and went quietly along the corridor to the bedroom; she switched up the light, bent over the cots of the sleeping children, and assured herself of their well-being. They slumbered on, placid and dreamless. Then she went to her dressing-table, and planting her palms flat upon it, leaned forward upon them, and gazed at herself mercilessly. She tore off her hat, rumpled her hair, rubbed her cheeks and gazed again. There were some little fine lines at the corners of her eyes, and as she looked and looked under the strong light, there stood out, silvery around her temples, amid the fairness, the first half-dozen grey hairs. The sight of them petrified her; she had not known she had so many.

"Oh!" she breathed.

Her fingers travelled down her neck. It had lost its roundness and, as she turned it this way and that, examining, two muscles stood out; her collar-bones showed faintly. The crude abundance of colour of the dyed dress enhanced her lack of colour.

"Well ..." she began to judge slowly. Then "I suppose there's no help for it."

Two tears dropped down her face. She sobbed and checked herself. She heard her husband moving about quickly in his dressing-room, and she hurried off her own garments, let down her hair, and brushed and plaited it hastily. He came in and kissed her.

"She's had a good time!" he exclaimed, well pleased.



CHAPTER XVI

ISOLATION

Julia was waiting for a guest in that weird institution which she called her club. The weird institution, however, had lost some of its weirdness and gained in comfort and cachet. It now boasted many members of distinction, new decorations and enlarged subscriptions. Miss Julia Winter sat in the mauve drawing-room under soft light, in the delicate glow of which her face took on suave and gentle lines, and her eyes held hints of womanly mystery. Before her, one of the many tables of the club drawing-room stood furnished with blue-and-white tea equipage. Behind her back, as she sat settled in the corner of a chesterfield, a fat silk pillow was crushed. For a picture of modern bachelor-womanhood which knew how to do itself thoroughly well, Julia could not, in these moments, have been excelled.

The door opened and a page, after assuring himself of Miss Winter's presence, announced: "Mrs. Kerr!"

A quiet and slender woman, in a shabby suit dated some six years ago, came to meet Julia listlessly. Her listlessness, however, was only bodily, for into her eyes some eager spirit had leapt and her hands went out involuntarily. They were engulfed in Julia's well-shaped large ones, and Marie was drawn down upon the mauve couch and the fat pillow made to transfer its amenities.

Each woman looked at the other with a long, careful look.

"How comfortable this is!" Marie observed.

"Is it, dear?" said Julia. "Lean back and rest. You look tired. Been shopping?"

"Just a few things for the children; I take the opportunity of being in town, you know."

"Did you come up this morning?"

"Yes, before lunch. Mother's staying in the flat with the children."

"How are they all—your big family of three?"

"Awf'ly well, thank you. Baby's got a tooth."

"How splendid! I just must come and see her again. And Georgie?"

"George has grown a lot since you saw him last. I've been hunting about for a little jersey suit for him; they're all so expensive; I'll have to knit one myself."

"My dear girl! When do you get time to knit jersey suits?"

"In the evenings, when dinner is over. There's always an hour or so before bedtime, you know."

After a short silence, Julia asked: "I suppose you have lunched, dear? Otherwise I'll order sandwiches."

"I've lunched, thank you."

"Met your husband, I suppose?"

"N—no. I had something, quickly, at Swan and Edgar's. I was in a hurry."

Julia signalled a waitress serving tea at the other end of the vast room. "The usual tea," she ordered, "and sandwiches."

Marie leaned back against her cushion restfully. She had the slow glance of a woman much preoccupied, whose mind comes very heavily back to matters not of her immediate concern. She went on for a little while talking of the topics which filled her brain to the exclusion of all else.

"We're thinking of sending George to a day school soon—at least, I am. I've not spoken of it to Osborn yet; there hasn't been a chance."

"How do you mean—no chance? I thought married people lived together."

"Oh, well ... you don't understand. One has to make an opportunity; get a man into the right mood. He won't like the expense, of course, though it's only a guinea and a half a term, if you send them till mid-day only. That would do at first, don't you think? I don't believe in pushing children. Still, a guinea and a half a term is four and a half guineas a year. Well, I can't help it, can I? He'll have to go to school soon, there's no doubt of that. He's getting too much for me, and it would be a great help, having him out of the way in the mornings, while I'm doing my work."

"I think it would be a very good plan, darling," Julia replied.

"I know you'd agree with me about it. I shall tell Osborn you think it's a good plan, and I shall get mother to tell him too. We shall persuade him."

"How is your husband?" Julia asked punctiliously.

"Very well, thank you."

"Still delighted with domestic life?"

"Oh, that doesn't last, of course," said Marie, looking away and sighing. "A man always gets to think of his home as just the place where bills are sent. Osborn's out a good deal in the evenings, like other men, of course. There's one thing—it leaves me very free. There's always something to be done, you see, and I can get through a great deal in the evenings if he's out."

"And if he's in?"

"Oh well, a man likes one to sit down and talk to him, naturally."

"How awf'ly obliging wives are!"

"My dear, if you were married, you'd know that the only way is to humour them."

The waitress came in with the tea tray and set the table daintily. To Julia it was a matter of course, but Marie watched the deft girl who handled things so swiftly and quietly; she took in the neatness of her black frock, and the starched whiteness of her laundering; and when the maid had left them, she turned with an envious, smiling sigh to Julia, and said:

"The servants here are so nice. I always used to think, when I had a maid, she'd look like that. We were going to have one, you know, when Osborn got his first rise after we were married, but George came; and now—three of them! It'll always be impossible, of course."

"I daresay you'd rather have the children than the maid."

"Of course I would—the priceless things!" Marie cried, her small pale face warming with maternity.

Julia dispensed tea; and for awhile refused to allow her guest to talk more until she was refreshed. And when she was refreshed and rested among the amenities of the mauve room, that absorption in the affairs around which her whole life moved and had its being grew less keen; her preoccupations lifted; she left the problem which, even here, had begun to worry her, as to whether a pound, or three-quarters of a pound only, of wool would make George a jersey suit, and she turned her eyes with a kind of wondering recollection upon the world outside. She began by looking around the room at the many well-dressed, softly chattering women; at the cut of their gowns and the last thing in hats; then her look wandered to Julia and took in her freshness, the beauty of her tailoring, and the expensiveness of her appearance generally.

"I feel so shabby among you all," she murmured, with a smile which appeared to Julia as a ghost.

"You look very pretty," said Julia, "as you always do, dear."

"When one is first married," Marie said quietly, "one always imagines one will never get old and tired and spoiled, as thousands of other women do; but one does it all the same. One's day is just so full, and with babies one's night is often so full, too, that there simply isn't time to fuss over one's own appearance. With three children and no help, you've got to let something go, and in my case—"

She broke off, to continue: "It's been me."

Julia laid one of her hands over Marie's lying in her lap. Marie's hands produced the effect of toilers glad to rest. They hardly stirred under Julia's, even to give an answering squeeze. And Julia felt, with a burning and angry heart, how rough and tired they were.

"Julia," said Marie, "I've often wanted to ask someone who would be honest with me—and you're the honestest person I knew—do you think I—I've let myself go very badly?"

"My dear kiddie!" Julia cried low, "why, you—you've been brilliant."

"Look at me," said Marie, thrusting forward her face.

Julia looked, to see the lines from nostrils to mouth, the lines at the corners of the eyes, the enervated pallor and the grey hairs among the golden-brown. She was sorry and bitter.

"You look a dear," she said irresolutely.

Marie sank back upon the fat pillow again with a laugh. It was the laugh of a woman who was beat and owned it.

"You can't stand up against it," she said. "I don't care who says you can. Day in, day out; night in, night out; no, you can't stand up against it. I've often thought it out, and something has to go. The woman's the only thing who can be let go; the children must be reared and the man must be fed; but the woman must just serve her purpose."

Tears swelled in Julia's eyes. "Don't," she begged huskily, "don't get bitter."

Marie returned her look with the simple and wide-eyed one she remembered so well. "I'm not," she stated; "I was just thinking, and it comes to that. You must feed a man and look after him and make him comfortable, or—or you wouldn't keep him at all."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that. But I sometimes think," she whispered, "if I let myself go, get plain and drab, will I keep him then?"

"It is in his service," said Julia.

Marie said wisely: "That doesn't count. And often—I get frightened when he sometimes takes me out, and we dine at a restaurant. I look round and see the difference between most of the women there and me. In restaurants one always seems to see such wonderful women—women who seem as if their purpose was just being taken out to dinner and to be attractive. I compare my clothes with theirs and my hands with theirs; and I think: 'Supposing Osborn is comparing me, too?'"

"He wouldn't."

"Not consciously, perhaps. But he is admiring the other women all the time; I see him doing it. Why shouldn't he? All the women he sees about him in town—the pretty girls in the streets.... He used to admire me so much, when I was very pretty ... the—the things he used to say! But now, I sometimes wonder—"

"What else do you wonder, poor kid?"

"When he goes out alone—sometimes to dinner—in the evenings—"

"Whether he's taking someone—"

Marie nodded. "Someone prettier than I; as I used to be; someone who's not tired with having children; and who hasn't rusted and got dull and stupid from thinking of nothing but grocers' bills, and from staying at home."

"You must try not to think—"

"But I do think. Men are like that; men hate being annoyed and want to be amused. They get to—to—marriage is funny; Osborn seems to get to look upon me as someone who's always going to ask for something. I—I know when he had a nice commission the other day, he didn't tell me about it, in case there was something for the children I'd be asking him for."

"Oh!"

"It hurts," said Marie, "always to be considered an asker; but of course men don't think of it like that."

"They ought to think, then."

"Men aren't like women. They set their own lines of conduct."

"What's that in the marriage service," Julia inquired, "about bestowing upon a woman all a man's worldly goods?"

"Ah, well, you think all those things at the time; but they don't work out, really."

"As I always thought," said Julia.

Marie was still away upon her trail. "I don't really let myself go as much as you might think. I'm always dressed for breakfast, if I've been up half the night; I don't allow myself to be slovenly. And however I've had to hurry over putting the children to bed, and cooking dinner and things, I always change my blouse and put on my best slippers before Osborn comes in. I feel—at home I feel as if I look quite nice; but when I come out of it"—she indicated her surroundings—"I realise I'm just a dowd who's fast losing what looks she had. When I come out, and see others, I—I know I can't compete. It makes you almost afraid to come out. And Osborn—while I'm at home, plodding along, you see, he's out, seeing the others all the time. He sees them in the restaurants, and they pass him in the street—girls as I used to be."

"You must leave all these thoughts alone."

"Girls, Julia, as—as I could be again, if I had the chance."

"Would you like a cigarette?" Julia asked abruptly; "if so, we'll go to the smoke-room."

"I'd love it; it's ages since I smoked. But I haven't time. I must be going."

"Already?"

"It'll be the children's bedtime, and mother can't manage them alone."

"Oh, of course, dear," Julia said. "How stupid of me!" She folded very tenderly round Marie's neck the stole which had been star turn in the trousseau six years ago, and very tenderly she pressed her hands.

"Don't make the jersey suit for George; I want to give it to him for Christmas!"

"Oh, Julia, I couldn't!"

"Yes, you could and will."

"You're an old darling."

"That's all right, Mrs. Osborn Kerr. Now I'll take you as far as your Tube or 'bus. Which is it?"

Marie went home the warmer for Julia's companionship and her visit to the most up-to-date women's club in town; she looked almost girlish again when she stepped into No. 30 Welham Mansions, to relieve Grannie Amber of the onerous responsibilities which she undertook so gladly.

"Well, duck," said Mrs. Amber, coming out with her funny walk, which was at once a waddle, because of her weight, and a trip, from the energy of her disposition, "have you had a lovely day?"

"Such a nice time, thank you, mother. Babes been good?"

"Perfect little angels!" Mrs. Amber lied with innocent sincerity.

"I'll begin putting them to bed directly I've laid down these parcels. I've got the cream socks and the flannel for baby's new petticoats, but the jersey suits were too dear. Julia's going to give George one for Christmas."

"That's very kind of her, love. I always think she has a good heart, though I don't like her opinions. The bath water's hot, my duck, and baby's in bed, and the others are undressed, all ready, waiting for you."

"You are a good grannie!"

Grannie Amber stayed a while longer to watch the two elder children's bathing; she squeezed her plump form alongside Marie in the tiny bathroom, and from time to time emitted laughs and cries of fond delight. She made herself busy, when the matter was over, in folding towels and wiping up the pools of water which the rampant children had splashed upon the floor. She followed them with her waddling trip along the corridor to see them snugly tucked up in their beds in what had been Osborn's dressing-room, and at last, having murmured, "God bless you all, ducks!" her good work accomplished, she stole away.

The flush of exertion stained Marie's pale cheeks now; it was 6.15, and there was no time for anything but to fly to the kitchen. It was always so, but happily there was seldom time to think about it. If you began to question why, the potatoes boiled dry in immediate protest against your discontent. By the time Marie had set the gas-stove going full blast the very tips of her nose and ears were crimson. Without pause she ran back into her bedroom to put on her best slippers, the only evening toilet she had time to make. She stood a few seconds leaning towards the glass, as she had stood that birthday night after her husband had taken her to dine at the Royal Red, and she fingered her blouse, her hair, her manicure tools passionately, sadly and appealingly, as if she begged them: "Do your best." The underlying anxiety which her confidences to Julia had awakened looked haggardly from her face.

"I am growing very old," she thought, terrified. "I am growing much older than thirty-one. I look older than Osborn."

She was quivering to woman's ageless problem, the problem of the body, the problem of the tired brain and the driven heart; the problem of the great and cruel competition between the woman of pleasure and the woman of toil.

While she still stood there, she heard her husband's key in the lock.

She put up her hands to smooth the worry away from her face and, with the impress of her fingers white on her flushed cheeks, stared at herself again. Surely that was better? She wore a smile, the smile of the Wise Wives, and went out to meet him. He was shedding his overcoat, and as he hung it up he whistled a tune with joy in it. She was struck instantly by something about him, a tiny but material change, which she could not fathom.

"Hallo, old girl!" he turned to say cheerfully.

"Hallo, dear!" she replied.

"Dinner ready?"

"Quite! I'll bring it in."

He went into the dining-room and stood on the hearth in the attitude long appropriate to a master of the house. His eyes were shining, though his brow still wore its habitual creases as if he were thinking very carefully. He stared before him, but without noting anything. They still had a pretty dinner-table, a dinner-table almost, if not quite, up to early-married standards, and the shaded candles were lighted and beneath them there were cut flowers. He never wondered how Marie managed to stretch that weekly thirty-two and sixpence to cover the cost of a third baby, occasional new candle-shades and perpetual flowers. It was better not to inquire. Inquiry raised ideas and suggestions and requests. He could not afford to inquire. It struck him vaguely this evening, as he stood looking out somewhere beyond the dining-room and whistling his happy tune, that everything was very fairly comfortable.

His wife came in with a big tray and arranged the dinner temptingly upon the table. When it was all ready he drew up his chair and sat down with an air of appetite. And he talked; it was as if he exerted himself to interest her and to be interested, himself, in all that she said. He listened and commented upon her day's shopping, asked where she lunched, heard about her visit to Julia at a chic club, and observed lightly how fashionable she was getting.

He said she looked tired to-night, and must take care of herself.

He was going to stay at home this evening, to sit by the fire and talk to her; his manner was almost loverlike, and her heart thrilled to it as she had not thought it could thrill again. She looked at him with eyes in which her wonder showed; and in her quietened body her passion seemed to raise its subdued head again, sweet and strong and young.

"I shan't be two minutes clearing away," she said, when they rose. She felt no more fatigue, but piled all the things on the big tray and carried it out to the kitchen almost like a feather-weight, and in less than the two minutes she had assigned, she was back again with the coffee things, her feet light and her eyes dreaming. She drew her chair nearer his before the hearth, and stretched out her hand to him, hungering across the space. He squeezed and dropped it, and leaned forward, clearing his throat as if he were going to speak words of moment.

He checked himself and obviously said something else.

"Your coffee is good, dear; you do look after me in a simply tophole way."

His words were like the prelude of a song to her. She listened for more, with a smile, a real smile, no more wise, but foolish. It had the foolishness of all love in it, so easily and completely could he give her pain, or pleasure.

He answered the smile with one of constraint.

Feeling in the pocket of his lounge coat, he uttered abruptly:

"I brought you a few sweets, dear; passed a shop on my way; thought—"

He handed over a packet of chocolates and sat back with a sigh expressive of satisfaction, while, with a cry of delight and gratitude, she untied the ribbons.

"You are a dear!" she said tremulously. "I must share them with the children; and this pink ribbon—pink for a girl, blue for a boy! It'll do for baby's bonnet. What lovely ribbon, silk all through!"

"Oh, well, they weren't cheap chocolates," Osborn observed.

"I see that. They're delicious." She broke one slowly between her teeth. Sweets! They brought back those dear old spoiled-girl days to her; precious days which no woman values till she has lost them, and the prize of which no man understands.

"Glad you like them," he said, looking at her with a strange, an almost guilty softness. "I like you to have things that you enjoy. You know that, don't you?"

"Of course I do, dear."

Osborn cleared his throat and leaned forward again, his clasped hands between his knees. He looked down at the hands attentively, appearing to take an undue interest in them.

He began slowly:

"Er—speaking of things you'd enjoy, old girl, we—we've often talked about—wondered when—my ship would be coming in. Grand to see her, wouldn't it be, steaming into harbour, fine as paint, full cargo and all?"

He choked slightly over his words, as with excitement, and that shining in his eyes intensified. She caught it as for a moment he lifted them, and it took her breath away, but in the same instant she knew that this shining was not for her.

"Osborn!" she uttered, and could say no more.

He continued: "I've got something to tell you."

"I felt it when you first came in. Oh, Osborn, darling, don't keep me waiting. What is it?"

"Well—in a way—it's what we've both been thinking of—"

"The ship's—come in!"

As she breathed rather than spoke the words she sank back in her chair; her conviction was so sure that she could have shrieked with ecstasy; yet at the same time it came with such an overpowering relief that she had the sensation of one kept too long from sleep lying down at last to rest. She would have been content to wait, until after a long dreamful contemplation of the news, for detail and description of the voyage and adventure of the most elusive craft in the world, only that, once off, Osborn plunged on as if he would have her know all as soon as might be.

He started again, with scarcely a pause, after just a nod to confirm her exclamation.

"I'll begin at the beginning. That's the best way, eh, old girl? I see it's staggered you as it staggered me. Woodall—you've heard me speak of Woodall, one of our travellers?—was just about to start for a long trip—New York, Chicago, then Montreal and all over Canada, California, then New Zealand; it was a fine trip, selling our Runaway two-seater. Well, when I got to our place this morning the boss sent for me at once, and told me the news about poor old Woodall—knocked down by a taxi in the street last night, and now in hospital for they don't know how long. The tickets were bought and the tour arranged, and—and—in short, you see, they'd got to pick another man at a moment's notice, to go instead. And so—"

The wife leaned forward, her eyes opened wide and warily on her husband's face. Not looking at her, he rattled on:

"So the boss offered it to me. You don't need telling that I accepted, do you?"

She replied, "No," in a quiet voice.

"I knew you'd think I ought to take it," he said, with a swift glance at her. "Of course, it mayn't be permanent, but I think it's up to me to make it so. I guess I can hold down a job of that kind as well as anyone else, if I've the chance. It's a fine chance! Do you know what it means?"

She uttered a questioning sound.

"Five hundred a year," he said huskily, "with a good commission and all expenses paid. The expenses are—are princely. You see, a fellow selling motors isn't like a fellow selling tea. He's got to do the splendid—get among the right people; among all sorts of people. Oh, it'll be life!"

Passion was subdued again in her; it was old and drowsy and quiet. Knitting her fingers tightly round her knee, she rocked a little, and asked:

"When do you start?"

"Of course it's rather sudden—"

"So I understood from what you said. When will it be, Osborn?"

"To-morrow."

She stared into his face, unbelieving.

"To-morrow?" she whispered.

He got up hurriedly and fumbled about the mantel-piece in a fake search for cigarettes.

"You see, I've got to follow out Woodall's programme exactly; he would have started to-morrow."

"How—how long will you be away?"

"A year."

"A year!" she half screamed. "Oh, no! no! no!"

He looked at her with something of fear and something of sulkiness. He was on the defensive, willing to be very kind, but resolute not to be nagged nor argued with. "Don't," he protested, "don't take it like that."

"I'm sorry, dear," she said more quietly. "It hit me, rather. To-morrow is so soon, and a year is such a long, long time."

"Not so very. A year's nothing. Besides, I've got to go; it's no use making a fuss, is it?"

"I won't make a fuss."

"There'll be a good deal to do. I wanted you to look over my things to-night. I'll help you carry them in here, shall I?"

She rose mechanically and went into the erstwhile dressing-room quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping children. He waited in the doorway, and she handed out to him pile after pile of his underwear, following the last consignment by carrying out a big armful herself. They returned to the dining-room and laid the garments on the table.