Chapter XV: Part 15

He was a good dancer, and though he was not quite tall enough for her, they got on very well together. As he piloted her in and out, for nearly everybody was dancing and the floor was crowded, he talked the whole time. “I study here ee-conom-eegs,” he told her, “at Lon-don School of Ee-conom-eegs,” and he was very serious about his economics, but it was difficult to understand much of what he said about them. Very soon he passed to more intimate matters. “Yes, I like Eng-lish girls vairy moch. Oh, but I am vairy saad, vairy, vairy saad now,” he told her, his hazel eyes dancing with pleasure. “I leef in High-gate and in High-gate I have a girl, an Eng-lish girl, vairy beautiful--Flora. She leefs, too, in High-gate, Flora, and she has blue eyess and golden hair. For two veeks, you see, we have a quarrel. Oh yes, it is vairy seely, but it is vairy saad, too. One night I go to movees. I ask Flora to go too, but no--she cannot go. So I go-by-myself. I am standing outside and I see a girl I know, a girl from High-gate. Vairy nice girl--but--aw, she is noding to me. But I am pol-ite, I say to her, ‘Good-evening, mees. You go to movees too?’ I am by-myself. I take her weet me into movees. Noding, noding at all. But after, she tell Flora--at High-gate--‘Oh, I go weet your foreign friend to movees.’ Flora comes to me and we have a beeg quarrel.” He squeezed Miss Matfield’s hand as if he felt that at this point he must have sympathy or die. “Yes, a beeg quarrel. For two veeks, I do not see Flora at all. I am vairy saad now.”

Miss Matfield said it was rather sad, but told herself that in its mixture of Highgate and foreign-ness it was really quite absurd and wonderlandish, and somehow it gave the key to the whole evening. Nobody in this studio, except herself and Mr. Golspie (and she was not sure about him), was quite real. Something-insky and his friends were very charming, but it was rather a relief when Mr. Golspie marched up, very solid and dominating, and said, “Well, what about a dance with me?”

“Of course,” she told him. “I thought perhaps you didn’t dance. You’ve not been dancing, have you?”

“No. I thought I’d wait for you, Miss Matfield. You’re the partner I want. I can dance all right, but, mind you, I don’t pretend to be good at it, not like some of these lads. Have another drink before we start, eh?”

“If I have another drink to-night, I shall probably be quite drunk. I feel hazy now.”

“No harm in feeling hazier. I’ll look after you, don’t you worry.”

But she shook her head. The music started again, the little Jew wagging his black locks over the piano and his companion solemnly nodding above his drums, and Mr. Golspie grasped her masterfully. He was obviously not a very good dancer, but even if he had been, there would not have been much chance for him to show what he could do in that crowded space, for now there seemed to be twice as many people on the floor.

“How d’you like this show?” he asked, grinning at her.

“I do like it. It’s amusing.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“You sound as if you don’t care for it very much.”

“It’s not bad,” he told her. “But too much of a crowd for my liking. Just the pair of us somewhere would please me better.”

Afterwards there was an interval, during which everybody ate and drank and smoked and talked all at once, and a girl who appeared to be a secretary at some legation came up with Something-insky and another, older man, and the girl who was a secretary was very giddy and gay and apparently rather tight, though not unpleasantly so, and then a little foreign girl with a hideous fur-trimmed jacket joined them, and the six of them made a little group in one corner, where they ate and drank and smoked and talked as hard as anybody. Then the little hostess screamed again, and this time the tall host produced a number of astonishing syllables in a rasping tenor and then put on a colossal smile, and at once everybody sat down somewhere and most of the lights were turned out. Only the corner where the Jew still sat at the piano was fully illuminated. Then there appeared in front of the piano a smallish plump man with an enormous bald head and a yellow fat face, who stood there, smiling vaguely at them while they applauded, like another but alien Humpty-Dumpty. The Jew played a few sonorous and melancholy chords. Humpty-Dumpty put his hand to his mouth, as if to press a button, for when he lowered his hand, his face was quite different; the smile had been wiped off; his eyebrows had descended at least an inch and a half; and his eyes stared tragically out of deep hollows. Miss Matfield noticed all these details. It was queer, but though things in general were curiously hazy, she had only to concentrate her attention upon anything and every detail of it, like Humpty-Dumpty’s lips and eyebrows, stood out in clear relief. This made everything seem tremendously amusing, and she was very happy. Humpty-Dumpty began singing now in a great rich bass voice, which immediately plunged Miss Matfield, who delighted in rich bass voices, into a dreamy ecstasy. He sang one song after another, sometimes sinking into the profoundest melancholy and the bitterness of death, and at other times breaking into high spirits that were as strange and wild as a revolution. With her eyes fixed on that great yellow moon of a face from which these entrancing sounds came, Miss Matfield allowed her mind to be carried floating away on these changing currents of music, and her body to rest against the stalwart arm and shoulder of Mr. Golspie. She was sorry when it came to an end, and Humpty-Dumpty, after bowing, smiling, frowning, shaking his head in an amazingly rapid succession, walked away to eat a whole plateful of sandwiches, wash them down with lager beer, and talk to five people at once with his mouth full.

There was just time for another dance and then it was twelve o’clock. Everybody was silent for a moment. At the end of that moment, they all behaved like men and women who had been reprieved in the very shadow of the gallows, which is perhaps how they saw themselves. Never before had Miss Matfield seen such a raising and clinking of glasses, so much back-slapping, hand-shaking, embracing, and kissing. Something-insky kissed the little girl in the fur-trimmed jacket and the secretary girl from the legation, and then kissed Miss Matfield’s hand fifteen times while the girl in the fur-trimmed coat, who had suddenly burst into tears, kissed her on the cheek. Mr. Golspie shook her by the hand, then gave her a big hug. It was at this moment that the only unpleasant event of the evening occurred. Once or twice before, Miss Matfield had had to escape from a tall bleary-eyed man, one of the very few Englishmen there, who was rather drunk and had been bent on dancing with her. Now he suddenly lurched into the middle of their little group, murmuring something about a happy New Year, and tried to embrace her. Mr. Golspie, however, stepped forward smartly and with one shove of his heavy shoulder sent the man reeling back.

“I think I’d better go now,” she said to Mr. Golspie. “I’m terribly late as it is.”

“All right. I’ll come with you.” Taking no notice of the unpleasant fellow, who was mumbling threats just behind them, he took her by the arm, marched her through the crowd to shake hands with the host and hostess, and then led her towards the door. There they separated to look for their things. When Miss Matfield returned to the little entrance hall of the studio, the unpleasant man was there. Fortunately, Mr. Golspie appeared, too.

“Now wha’s the idea, eh?” said the unpleasant one, thickly and truculently to Mr. Golspie, trying to put a hand on his shoulder.

“The idea is--you go home to bed,” replied Mr. Golspie, giving him one contemptuous glance.

“Home to bed!” the other sneered. “T-t-t-t-t-talk like a dam’ fool. Bed!” Then he recollected himself. “All I wanner do is to wish thish young lady a Hap-py New Year.” And he made a clutch at her.

This time Mr. Golspie instantly pinned both the man’s arms to his side with so powerful a grasp that the man cried out. “Talk like a dam’ fool, do I?” said Mr. Golspie, pushing his face forward. “If you don’t make yourself scarce, you’ll start the worst new year you ever remembered. See?” And he shook the man. “See?” And with that, he sent the man flying back, took three or four steps forward to see if any more persuasion was needed, and when he saw it was not--for the man had obviously had quite enough of Mr. Golspie--he returned to Miss Matfield’s side. “I’ve rung up for a taxi,” he said calmly. “There’s a telephone in there where I had my hat and coat. It’ll be here in a minute. We’ll wait just outside and get a breath of fresh air.”

Miss Matfield, who had been half frightened, half elated by the little scene, and now, what with the wine and the dancing and the music and the embracing and the general excitement of the long evening, was in a fantastic condition, tired and excited and timid and audacious and thrilled all at once, followed her brutal or heroic friend out of the studio and into the shadow of the neighbouring house. Just before the shadow ended, he stopped. “We can wait here as well as anywhere,” he said.

She did not tell him that it would be still more sensible to wait at the front gate. She stopped, and said nothing.

“Well, that wasn’t bad,” he said, “though I’d had enough of it when you said you had to go. They’ll keep it up till the milk comes. I shouldn’t have gone, though, if you hadn’t said you’d come with me. If you want to know my opinion, we’ve had a good Old Year’s Night. We’ve got to see more of each other.”

“Oh, have we?” She was in no condition to be femininely cool and mocking, but she did her best.

“Yes, of course we have,” he replied coolly. “You’re the sort of girl I like, and I don’t often find one.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” she said, and was instantly annoyed with herself for sounding so feeble.

“Well, Miss Matfield--oh, damn it, I can’t keep calling you Miss Matfield, not out of the office, anyhow. What’s your other name?”

“Lilian,” she replied, in a tiny voice.

“That’s good--Lilian. Well, Lilian, now that we’re out of that monkey house in there, with everybody snatching and pecking at each other, I can wish you a proper Happy New Year.” And, saying no more, he swept her to him, kissed her several times, and held her close, so close that she could hardly breathe.

She could not have described it as being either pleasant or unpleasant. It was not an experience that could fall into such easy categories. It could not be tasted, examined, reported on, like most of Miss Matfield’s experiences. If it belonged anywhere, it belonged to the fire, flood and earthquake department. Her quickening blood faced and replied to this huge masculine onslaught, but the rest of her was simply dazed and shaken.

“There’s our taxi,” he said, breathing hard, but otherwise cool enough. “What’s the address?”

Inside the taxi, she suddenly felt very tired and quite disinclined to talk. She drooped, leaned against him, and could only repeat to herself that it was all quite absurd, though all the time she knew very well that whatever else it might be, it was not absurd. Mr. Golspie was quiet too, though in that little enclosed space he seemed now a gigantically vital creature, a being essentially different from herself, a huge throbbing engine of a man.

“Getting near your place?” he inquired, as the taxi began to mount the hill.

“Yes, it’s only about half-way up this hill.”

“We’ll have some more nights out together, shall we? Not all like this, y’know. Just the two of us, roaming round a bit, going to a show or two, and so on. What d’you say?”

“Yes, I’d like to. In fact--I’d love it.” She glanced out of the window, then rapped on it. “We’re just outside now. Please, don’t come out. No, no more. All right then--there! Good-bye--and--and thank you for my nice big dinner.”

The dance was over at the Club and most of the lights were out, but a few girls were still drifting about the hall and chattering softly on their way upstairs.

“Hello, Matfield!” somebody cried. “Happy New Year!”

Would it be? It had begun strangely enough. Now that she was back in the familiar and despised Burpenfield atmosphere, the night’s antics ought to have appeared in retrospect gayer and more delightfully adventurous than ever, with Mr. Golspie directing them like a droll and massive fairy prince; but oddly enough, they cut no such figure and she found herself wanting to avoid the thought of them. As she slowly climbed the darkening stairs she shivered a little. She was tired, rather cold, and her head ached. There floated into her mind, as if borne there by white virginal sails, the comforting thought of aspirin and her hot water bottle.

VI

When he asked her, two days later, to spend another evening with him, she gladly accepted, although she had told herself several times before that she would refuse; and after that they spent a good deal of time together. They would have dinner somewhere, and then amuse themselves by visiting some show of his choice. They saw the new Jerry Jerningham musical comedy and a crook play; they went twice to the Colladium; they tried a Talkie or two; and one exciting night he took her to a big boxing match. She never really learned a great deal about him; he would talk about odd experiences he had had by the hour, but he remained mysterious; she never discovered what his plans were, and at times she suspected that he did not intend to stay in England much longer, but this suspicion was only based on casual vague remarks; she never went near his flat, never met his daughter, and never heard a single word from him about his dead wife, if indeed she was dead; and yet she felt she knew him as she had never known a man before. Sometimes he was simply friendly or uncle-ish, dismissing her with a pat on the shoulder or a squeeze of the arm; sometimes he turned cynically and grossly amorous, and when he tried to paw her and she repulsed him, he jeered at her and said things that were all the more brutal because there was in them a hard core of truth, and then she saw him as a gross middle-aged toper, loathed him, and despised herself for having anything to do with him; but then, at other times, after a happy exciting evening, he would reach out to her in sudden passion and her own mood would flare up to match with his, and in some little patch of darkness or in the taxi going home, they would kiss and clutch and strain to one another, without a single word of love passing between them, and she would be left shaken and gasping, unable to decide whether she was a woman who was falling in love with this strange unlikely man or a crazy little fool who had just had too much excitement and wine, who ought to go and have a good hot bath and learn sense and decency. And that was all, so far, though even she guessed it could not go on like that. Meanwhile, between these curious expeditions, she chatted and grumbled as usual at the Club, wrote home in the old strain once a week, and quietly worked away at the office, where nobody knew what was happening to her.

Then, one night, as he took her back to the Club, he said, quite casually: “I see they’re having a nice fine spell on the South Coast. What about a trip down there next week-end, Lilian? Might get hold of a car.”

“Oh yes,” she cried at once, without thinking, for week-ends out of London were her dream, even in January. “Let’s do that.”

“Is it a bargain?” he said quickly, triumphantly.

And then she realised what it meant. “No, no. I’m sorry. I spoke without thinking.”

“Ah, she spoke without thinking, did she? You do far too much thinking. Girls shouldn’t think too much, not good-looking ones, anyhow. When I first met you, you’d done nothing but think for a long time, and you weren’t looking too cheerful on it.”

She made no reply. She was annoyed, partly because she was compelled to recognise the truth behind this little jeer. When he talked about her in his casual, rather brutal fashion, he had a strange knack of fastening upon some unpleasant truth. He seemed to take aim quite wildly, but somewhere in her mind, a bell rang nearly every time.

He changed his tone now. “Oh, come on. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Let’s enjoy ourselves while we’re here.”

“No, thank you,” she said quietly, though she found it far more difficult to resist this kind of appeal.

He pressed her.

“No, I won’t. Sometime, perhaps. But not now. No, I mean it.”

“Well, I’m disappointed in you. Still, I’ll try again. Otherwise, y’know, you might regret saying that, some day. Oh, you can laugh----”

“I might well laugh. I think men are the limit. You just want your own way, no matter what it costs--to me, and you’re quite hurt and disappointed because you can’t have it, and anybody would think to hear you that you’d been spending weeks thinking it all out purely for my benefit.”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Golspie cheerfully, and she knew, though she could not see him properly, that he was grinning. “Just what I have been doing. That’s why I’m disappointed.”

“And that’s why I’m laughing,” she retorted, though she did not feel like laughing now. “At your impudent selfishness. Marvellous!”

“And I tell you, young woman, you might regret it one day. I’m going to ask you again. You think it over.”

“I won’t.”

But she did think it over, and unfortunately she began that very night, so that it was hours and hours before she got to sleep. Her angry taut body refused to relax; her head was a huge hot ring round which her thoughts went galloping dustily; and as she turned in the uneasy darkness she heard the late taxis and cars go hooting far away, melancholy hateful sounds in the deep night, like flying rumours of disaster.

_Chapter Nine_: MR. SMEETH IS WORRIED

I

“Where you going to?” asked Mr. Smeeth, turning round in his chair to look at his wife, who had suddenly made her appearance in the doorway, wearing her hat and coat. She was still flushed with temper. It was surprising how young and smart she looked. Still, she could not go on like that, no matter how young and smart she looked.

“Out,” she replied, with that special look and special voice she had for him when they had quarrelled. Oh dear!

“Yes, I know that,” he pointed out, “but where you going to?”

Up she blazed then, with her colour flaming and her fine blue eyes flashing at him: “Just _out_, and that’s enough for you. Begrudge every penny you give me, keep me as short as you possibly can, tell me I mustn’t buy this and mustn’t buy that, go peeping and spying about and then lose your silly temper because you’ve seen something you don’t like to see--though--goodness me!--there can’t be a woman in this street who hasn’t a few bills like that in the house, and most of them a lot more and instalments, too, to pay and their husbands not bringing in anything like what you are----” Here Mrs. Smeeth stopped, not because this fine rhetorical sentence had got out of control (it had, but she was capable of finishing it somehow), but simply because she wanted to draw a deep breath. “And then you want to know where I’m going! I suppose you’d like me to give an account of that as well, wouldn’t you? Yes, of course. Oh, of course!” Her head wagged as she brought out these vast sneers. “That would be very nice for you, wouldn’t it? I’ll come and ask if I can spend a penny or tuppence. Then I’ll ask if I can walk down the road----”

“Oh, don’t be so silly, Edie,” cried Mr. Smeeth, who hated this sort of wild ridiculous talk and could not see what good it did. Even after all these years, he was still innocent enough to imagine that his wife was trying to argue and failing absurdly, and he did not realise that she was merely exploding into speech.

“Don’t be so silly!” she repeated indignantly, at the same time coming forward into the room. “I’d like to ask anybody who’s the silly one here. They’d soon tell you. And I’d rather be silly than mean. Yes--_mean_. If you’re not careful, Herbert Smeeth, you’ll soon be too mean to live. Pinching and scraping as if you didn’t know where the next penny was coming from! And the more money you’re getting, the worse you are. It’s growing on you, this meanness. My words, I’d like you to be married to some women, that’s all. They’d teach you something about spending.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” he said crossly, “’cos I wouldn’t have it, wouldn’t have it for a single minute. I’d soon put a stop to _their_ little games. As for being mean, you know as well as I do, Edie, I’m not mean, and never have been. There’s nothing you’ve ever really wanted, or the children either, you haven’t had. But somebody’s got to be careful, that’s all. We’re not made of money. When I got this rise, I hoped we’d begin to save properly. Anybody’d think to hear you talk they’d given me the Bank of England instead of another pound a week. Have a bit of sense, Edie. If we’re going to spend every penny we have now and get into debt, where are we going to be if anything happens to us? Just tell me that.”

“And what is going to happen to us? Bless me, the way you talk! A proper old Jonah you’re turning into! You give me the pip, Dad, honestly you do. Anybody’d think to hear _you_ talk that we’ll have to sell up any day. You can’t enjoy yourself a minute for thinking about what might happen to you the year after next or sometime. We’ve only got to live once and we’ve only got to die once, and for heaven’s sake let’s enjoy ourselves while we can, I say.”

“Yes, and when we can’t--what then? I’ve heard this kind of talk before, and I know where it lands people. And anyhow, I can enjoy myself as well as the next, only I can do it sensibly and I don’t need to spend every penny we get and go and ask any Fred Mittys to help me to do it.”

“That’s right. Bring him in. I’ve been waiting for that, I’ve just been waiting for that. I wondered how long you’d be able to keep Fred Mitty out of this. That’s you all over. You got your knife into him the first time he came here, and after that of course he had to be blamed for everything. Go on. Don’t mind me. Why don’t you say I give him all my housekeeping money, and have done with it. Go on.”

“Well, I’ll say this,” said Mr. Smeeth, his temper rising. “That bill from Sorley’s there’s been all this bother about wouldn’t have been that size and would have been paid before now, if you hadn’t taken it into your head to ask Mitty and his wife and their guzzling pals up here those two nights round Christmas. It’s bad enough them coming here at all--most men wouldn’t have it for a minute, not if they couldn’t stand the sight of ’em and never stayed in the house when they were there, like me--but it’s fifty times worse when you go and run yourself into debt to do it, just so they can all swill it down at my expense. It’s not good enough, and you know it isn’t.”

“Oh, isn’t it? Well, next time Christmas comes round, I’ll tell Fred and everybody else to keep away, and we’ll all go into the workhouse, and then you’ll be satisfied. If you wasn’t getting too mean to live, you’d have thought nothing about it. You talk as if I owed Sorley’s about fifty pounds. Three pounds fifteen, that’s all it is, and you make all this bother.”

“Well, it’s three pound fifteen more than you can pay, it seems,” he retorted.

“Who says it is? I haven’t even asked you to pay it yet. Keep your money. I can pay it all right in time. Sorley’s can wait, for all I care.”

“Well, they can’t for all I care. I believe in paying cash down and no debts running on, always have done, and you know it. And I’ll have that to pay, just because you’ve decided to open a free pub for Mitty and his fine little lot. That’s what it amounts to.”

“That’s right, start again now. You can argue with yourself for an hour or two, and see how you like it. I’m going out. And if you want to know, I’ll tell you where I’m going. I’m going,” she added deliberately, “down to Fred Mitty’s.”

He was furious, but he knew that he could not prevent her from going. He looked at her, and he had to twist round in his chair, for she had retreated towards the door: “Well, see you come back sober,” he said.

“What’s that?”

But he did not repeat it. He wished it unsaid. The instant after it had slipped out, he wanted to call it back. And, for all her “What’s that?” she had heard him all right; she was staring at him now, with some of her high colour gone and her mouth curiously drawn down; her whole attitude was different from what it had been during their noisy argument; she was really hurt, this time; he had gone too far, miles and miles too far.

“Yes, I heard you, though,” she said quietly, “and it’s the nastiest thing, by a long, long way, that you’ve said to me in twenty years. Did you ever know me come back in any other way but sober?”

“No, no,” he muttered. “I’m sorry ... bit of a joke.” He couldn’t look her in the face.

“Bit of a joke! I wish it was. But it wasn’t. You meant it, Herbert Smeeth. You meant to be as nasty as you could be. There’s only another thing worse you could say to your wife, and you’d better hurry up and get that said.”

“I tell you, I’m sorry.” He got up from his chair now, and looked at her, mumbling something about “going too far.”

“Yes, and I’m sorry too,” she said bitterly. “I didn’t think you’d got a nasty thing like that in your head to say. Oh, I know it slipped out, and now you wish it hadn’t. But it oughtn’t to have been there to slip out. That’s what hurts me.”

“Well, after all, you’ve as good as called me a miser--or at any rate, a mean devil--half a dozen times to-night,” he told her, but not with much confidence.

“Oh!--that’s different--and you know it is.”

“I don’t see that. Still, if you think so, all I can say, Edie, is--I’m sorry.”

But before he had finished, she had gone, slamming the door contemptuously behind her. A few seconds later, she was outside the house. Mr. Smeeth returned wretchedly to his chair by the fire. There was nothing he disliked more than a quarrel with his wife, and this looked like being a particularly bad one. That remark of his would, he knew, take some living down. If she had been a woman who never took a drink at all, there would have been nothing in that remark; but she liked a drink or two, especially in company, and was liable at times to get flushed and excited, as she well knew herself; and if he had thought for months, he could not have said a thing that would have hurt her more. He was still sorry that he had said it, though there was one part of him that could not help enjoying the fact that the shot had told so well. “That got home on her all right, didn’t it?” it chuckled, even while the rest of him, the part that loved Mrs. Smeeth and was her willing slave, grieved and repented. Mr. Smeeth did not often swear, but now he called Fred Mitty, under his breath, every foul name at his command. That earlier argument would not have taken such a bad turn if it had not been for Mitty. They had had these little squabbles about money before, like most couples, he imagined, one of whom is nearly always a spender and the other a saver. This had been a bit more serious than most of their squabbles, if only because the extra money had made her all the more eager to spend and had made him all the more anxious to begin saving. But Mitty and his wife even came into this part of the quarrel, for the whole thing began when he came across that bill from Sorley’s for three pounds fifteen, which she had not paid and couldn’t pay, and Sorley’s off licence and Mr. and Mrs. Swilling Mitty and their bright pals had been responsible for that bill. He had not seen what they had had because on both occasions, being duly warned, he had taken himself off, once to hear “The Messiah,” and the other time to play whist with Saunders, and had taken care each time, being a peaceable man, to arrive back home as late as possible, when Mitty and Co. were no longer there. He didn’t believe for a moment that his wife was so tremendously fond of the Mitty lot as all that, but just because he had grumbled at first and been a bit heavy-handed about them, she had kept it up, out of devilment and to show her independence. She was like that, if you took the wrong line with her, and he had admitted to himself for a week or two now that, if it was peace and quietness he wanted and not a tussle to decide who was master, he had certainly taken the wrong line.

After brooding over it all for about quarter of an hour, he felt so uncomfortable that if his wife had gone anywhere else but the Mitty’s, he would have gone after her, to call for her and then to try and make it up on the way home. But he had his pride, and it refused to allow him to call for her at the Mitty’s. He tried to dismiss the whole wretched business. He lit his pipe and picked up the evening paper. There was nothing in it he wanted to read and had not read before. He tried the wireless, and the first station plunged him into the middle of a talk on modern sculpture by a young gentleman who was apparently very tired. Finding no satisfaction in him, Mr. Smeeth went over to the other station, which was running a sort of pierrot show. The pierrots themselves seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely and so did their audience, who laughed and clapped unceasingly, but Mr. Smeeth merely felt rather out of it and thought the jokes not good enough, for all that laughing, and the songs not worth all that applause. “Overdoing it,” he muttered darkly at the loud speaker, which replied by bombarding him with more tinny laughter and applause. But he was the master; he had only to make a little movement and the pierrots and their cackling friends were banished at once, simply hurled into silence; and now he made this little movement, and the loud speaker was at once emptied of sound, nothing more than a bit of a horn. He had a book from the Public Library somewhere about, and now, in despair, he found it and began reading. It was _My Singing Years_ by the great soprano, Madame Regina Sarisbury, whom he had once heard in an oratorio years ago, and the young woman at the Library had told him it was a most interesting book, on the word of her sister, who was taking singing lessons and had two or three professional engagements. But so far it had not appealed to him very much. As a matter of fact, he was a reluctant and unenterprising reader, one of those people who hold their books almost at arm’s-length and examine them in a very guarded manner, as if at any moment a sentence might explode with a loud report; and he had probably returned more books half-read than any other member of the local Public Library. Nevertheless, he liked to have a Library book about, and to be discovered reading it.

He was discovered now. Edna came in, pulling off her close-fitting little hat, and fussy and breathless, as usual. In a few minutes, she would swing completely round, becoming slack, indifferent, languid, as if the house bored her. Mr. Smeeth knew this, and it irritated him, though he was very fond of the girl.

“Where’s mother?”

“Your mother’s out.”

“Where’s she gone to? She said she wasn’t going out to-night!”

“The question is, not where she’s gone to, but where you’ve been too,” he said, rather severely, looking at her over the top of his eyeglasses.

Edna did not stop to examine the logic of this, or if she did, she did not comment upon it, being still young enough to recognize the right of parents to talk in this fashion. “Been to the pictures--first house,” she replied.

“What again! I’m surprised you don’t go and live there. You’ve been once this week, haven’t you? Yes, I thought so. And I suppose you’ll be wanting to go on Saturday. That’ll be three times in one week--three times. Paid ninepence too, I suppose. And who gave you the money to go to-night?”

“Mother did.” And Edna looked slightly confused. Her father, noticing this, jumped at once to the wrong conclusion, namely, that Edna had been told to say nothing about this extra visit to the pictures to him and had suddenly realized what she had done. The truth was, however, that Edna was confused, not because she had spent another ninepence, but because the money was still in her possession, for she had gone to the pictures as the guest of one Harry Gibson, Minnie Watson’s friend’s friend, who, in his turn, was supposed, by his parents in their turn, to have been attending an evening class in accountancy on this particular night.

Mr. Smeeth nodded grimly and tightened his lips. “There’ll have to be something said about this, Edna. When I agreed to let you go and learn this millinery business, I didn’t agree to let you go to the pictures every night in the week, too.”

“I don’t go every night, and you know very well I don’t, Dad. Some weeks I only go once.”

“It’s a funny thing I never seem to notice those weeks,” said Mr. Smeeth with fine irony. It would have been still finer irony if he had stopped to consider that it really was not funny at all but quite natural. “But apart from the waste of money, I don’t like all this picture-going. Doing you no good at all. Doing you harm. I don’t object to a girl having her amusement,” he continued, dropping into that noble, broad-minded tone of voice that all parents, schoolmasters, clergymen, and other public moralists have at their command. “I go to the pictures now and again myself. But going to the pictures now and again’s one thing, and _living_ for pictures is another thing altogether. Teaches you nothing but silliness. Get false ideas into your head. Why don’t you settle down with a book?” He held out his own book. “Do a bit of quiet reading. Amuse yourself and learn something about the world at the same time. Take this book I’m reading, f’r’instance--_My Singing Years_ by Madame Regina Sarisbury--this is a book that tells you something worth knowing, all about the--er--musical career.”

“I read a book last week,” Edna announced.

“Yes, and been to the pictures three times since then,” said her father, who was determined to have his grievance. “Too much going out and amusing yourself altogether, my girl. Why, you’re worse than George was at your age. It’s my belief you girls are worse than the boys nowadays, more set on having amusement, pictures and dances and what not. I walked from the tram to-night with Mr. Gibson, who lives in the corner house at the bottom of the next street, and he was telling me that his son--I forget his name, but he’s about your age, perhaps a year or so older----”

“Do you mean Harry Gibson?” asked Edna.

“Is it Harry? Yes, I think it is. Well, Mr. Gibson was telling me that this boy of his is attending three evening classes a week--accountancy, book-keeping, and something else--three evening classes. That boy means to get on and be somebody in the world. He’s not wasting all his time, he’s using it to some purpose. I’m not saying that you ought to go to evening classes----”

Here he broke off because he noticed that a mysterious smile that had been hovering for the last minute now seemed to have definitely settled on Edna’s face. This smile made him angry, or rather gave him an excuse for exploding the anger that had been waiting inside him. “And for goodness’ sake, Edna, take that silly grin off your face when I’m trying to talk sense to you,” he shouted, making her jump. “You’re not at the pictures now. You’re nothing but a great silly baby.”

“What have I done now?” she began indignantly.

“Any more of that impudence from you,” Mr. Smeeth shouted at her, glaring. But there was no more of that impudence, which suddenly melted to tears. Edna, not a strong character at any time and now completely taken aback by her father’s sudden rage, hastily left the room, whimpering.

Mr. Smeeth spent the next few minutes telling himself all the things that were wrong with his daughter and that justified any man getting angry with her now and then. He worked hard, but he did not succeed in convincing himself. He put away _My Singing Years_ and turned the wireless on again. At half-past ten, George came in, got a grunt or two from his father (who was, in truth, afraid of talking), retired to the kitchen in search of food and then went to bed. At eleven Mrs. Smeeth returned.

“Have you had anything to eat?” she asked. Sometimes he had a little snack just before going to bed.

He shook his head.

“Can I get you something?” she enquired politely.

He knew now that he was in for a serious quarrel. Mrs. Smeeth easily lost her temper and squabbled, but she recovered it with equal swiftness and ease. If she had marched in and called him a few names and looked as if she was about to throw something at him, he would have known that the whole thing could have been settled before they went to sleep. But when Mrs. Smeeth was quietly polite to him, it meant that for once she had really hardened her heart. She would now turn herself into a very efficient housewife. Nothing would be allowed to go wrong; every meal would be on the table at the proper time and every dish done to a turn; he would not be given the slightest chance to grumble. But as a wife, a real wife, she would cease to exist. Not a smile, not a friendly glance, would come his way; and they would be estranged for days, perhaps weeks.

“No, thanks. I don’t want anything. Don’t feel like it.” Which was true enough, but he hoped it would suggest that he was not very well. She remained quite stony, however.

“Both the children in?” she asked.

“Look here, Edie,” he began desperately, “don’t be silly.”

“I’m not silly. I’m going to bed now.” And off she went.

He was in for it now, days of it, perhaps weeks of it; and in order to get out of it, not only would he have to apologize at great length, but he would probably have to buy something as well, in short to spend more money. Yet the root of the whole trouble was that too much money was being spent already. He wished he had never set eyes on Sorley’s miserable bill. He wished he had gone out and paid it without a word. He wished--“Oh, damn and blast!” he cried, and in his sudden spasm of fury he screwed up his face so hard and shook his head so violently that his eyeglasses fell off and he spent several minutes groping about the black wool rug before he could find them. Oh--a miserable evening!

II

Between Thursday evening, when hostilities began, and Saturday morning, Mr. Smeeth had tried unsuccessfully once or twice to make his peace and to replace this strange polite woman by his real wife. On Saturday morning he determined to do no more; she could have her sulk, if she wanted it; he would simply make the best of his position as a sort of super-lodger. He trotted down Chaucer Road, on his way to the tram, hardening his heart. The morning, which already had a companionable Saturday look about it, smiled upon him, if only faintly. For a day in late January, it was beginning well; no fog, snow or rain; but a slight sparkle and nip of frost and the early ghost of a sun somewhere above. Mr. Smeeth was very fond of Saturday; he liked the morning in the office (he always had a pipe at about half-past eleven, unless he was very busy), and he liked the afternoon out of the office. It was difficult for him to forget that his wife had quarrelled with him, but he hardened his heart and did his best to forget. Unfortunately--as he knew only too well, for he had said it often enough--it never rains but it pours. This treacherous Saturday was destined to give him a series of shocks, of varying degrees of severity.

The first, and slightest, of these shocks arrived when he walked over to his desk, rubbing his hands as usual and exchanging a remark or two with everybody. His inkwells had not been filled up, and no fresh blotting-paper had been put on his desk.

“Hello!” he cried, looking round. “Where’s Stanley?”

“Hasn’t turned up,” replied Turgis.

“Well, well, well, well,” said Mr. Smeeth fussily. “Does anybody know what’s happened to him? Is he ill or something?”

Nobody knew. Miss Sellers thought he had probably caught a cold, because she was sure she had heard him sneeze several times while he was copying the letters the night before. Turgis said with gloomy satisfaction that he had probably been knocked down and run over while trying to shadow somebody on his way to the office.

“I don’t suppose for a minute he has,” said Mr. Smeeth sharply. “But you needn’t seem so pleased about it, Turgis. Not a nice way of saying a thing like that at all. I don’t like to hear anybody talking like that in this office. Don’t know what has come over you lately, Turgis.” And it was true. He hadn’t liked the way Turgis had looked and talked for some time now.

The mystery of Stanley was cleared up when Mr. Dersingham, very much the Saturday man in plus fours, arrived to go through the letters, for among these was one from Stanley’s father, apparently a man of few words, who announced that Stanley was needed badly by his uncle, just returned to the ironmongering in Homerton, where the boy would be nearer home and have a better chance of getting on than in Angel Pavement--and sorry no better notice given but half fortnight’s wages due could be kept but please send Insurance Card all filled in--_Yrs truly, Thos. Poole._

“That means getting another boy,” said Mr. Dersingham. “I’m sorry about that one, too. He was a lazy little devil like all of ’em, but he looked rather bright, didn’t he?”

“Wasn’t a bad boy at all, Mr. Dersingham,” said Mr. Smeeth, meditatively. “I’m sorry he’s left us, too. We might get a lot worse. He fancied himself as a budding detective, Stanley did--we used to pull his leg about shadowing people and all that.”

“Did he? A detective, eh? And I never knew that. He’d got that from reading about ’em, you know. I’m fond of a good detective yarn myself. But I never wanted to be one when I was a boy. They weren’t quite so much the thing then, were they? I remember I wanted to be an explorer--you know, expeditions across the desert and all that sort of thing. All the exploring I’ve done lately, Smeeth, has been looking for some of those mouldy Jew cabinet-making places in back streets in North London. Ah--well!” And for a moment the large pink face of Mr. Dersingham looked clouded, as if he had suddenly discovered that life was quite different from what he imagined it would be when he was in the Fourth at Worrell.

“We live and learn, sir, don’t we?” said Mr. Smeeth vaguely.

“Do we? I dunno. People always say we do, don’t they? But I dunno. I doubt it sometimes, I do, Smeeth, honestly,” the other replied, first glancing at Mr. Smeeth and then looking out of the window, through which nothing could be seen but a ramshackle roof and a few chimney pots beyond. A queer melancholy, quite unlike the proper spirit of any office on Saturday morning, invaded the room, and for a minute the pair of them were lost in it.

“Well, well,” cried Mr. Dersingham with a sudden briskness, “you’ll have to see about getting another boy. I’m sorry about that, though. That boy might have been a useful chap later on. He’s missed a good opening. If that other fellow, Turgis, had gone, I don’t think I’d have minded very much. How’s he getting on, that fellow? I don’t see much of him, but I must say I don’t like the look of him these days. He slouches about, looking like nothing on earth. What’s the matter with him?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Dersingham. I’ve noticed it, too. There’s been something wrong with him lately. He does his work, but only after a fashion, and it’s not a fashion I like, I must say. Something on his mind, I should say.”

“And a thoroughly nasty mind too, by the look of him! Well, look here, Smeeth, you’d better take him on one side and have a good talk to him. Tell him I’m not satisfied with him and you’re not satisfied with him, and that if he doesn’t buck up pretty soon, he’ll have to clear out. Tell him he’s a fool to himself, too, with the business growing as it is and all sorts of chances coming along for smart fellows. You know the kind of thing to say. Threaten him with the sack, if you like; I don’t mind. I shouldn’t care if I saw the last of the fellow this morning. I never did think much of him. Got a Bolshie look about him. All right, then, Smeeth--see about that, and about getting another boy. And I shall be off in about half an hour or so, and Mr. Golspie won’t be in, this morning. So just--er--carry on, will you.”

Mr. Smeeth was really sorry that Stanley had gone, and not merely because it meant getting another boy and showing him what to do. He realized now that he had liked Stanley and would miss that freckled snub nose of his, that sandy bullet head, and all the ridiculous detective talk. But that was not all. Nobody knew better than Mr. Smeeth that office boys come and go, are here to-day and gone to-morrow, but nevertheless this sudden departure of Stanley troubled him, if only because he disliked change of any kind and found himself visited by a vague mistrust, a flicker or two of apprehension, whenever it occurred. Stanley had become part of the office for him, and now Stanley had gone. It was not important, but still, he did not like it.

“If we finish in good time this morning,” he said to Turgis, after he had told them all about Stanley and had handed over the copying and posting of the letters to little Poppy Sellers, “I want to have a little talk with you, Turgis. You’re not in a great hurry to get away, are you?”

Turgis wasn’t. Indeed, the outside world appeared to have lost as much favour with him as the office had.

It was an easy morning. At twelve, Miss Matfield had nothing more to do, and was allowed to go, looking rather more pleased with herself and the world than she usually did. Turgis lounged up and gave Miss Sellers a hand with the copying, for which he received several grateful glances from the brown eyes beneath the fringe. Mr. Smeeth, sending out a fragrant drift of Benenden’s Own Mixture, fussed about and locked up, then gave the letters to Poppy and packed her off.

“Now then,” he said to Turgis, as soon as they were alone.

“Yes, Mr. Smeeth?” replied Turgis mournfully.

Mr. Smeeth looked at him, and perhaps saw him clearly for the first time for weeks. There were dark rings under his eyes, and the eyes themselves had a queer reddish look, as if their owner was not getting enough sleep. He never had much colour, but now he was very pale, and the bony ridge of his rather large nose shone as it caught the light, as if the skin had been drawn back from it at each side. The lad didn’t look at all well. Mr. Smeeth, who knew that Turgis lived in lodgings and was a lonely sort of chap, felt sorry for him.

“Here, Turgis,” he said, “there’s plenty of time. We’ll go out and talk there. Can you drink a glass of beer?”

Turgis, pleased and flattered by this invitation, said that he could.

“Well, we’ll go across the road and have a glass of beer there. Do us no harm. Everything’s locked up, I think, isn’t it? All right, then. We’ll go.” And so they went down the stairs, Mr. Smeeth kept up a cheerful clatter of talk: “I’ll just pop round the corner to Benenden’s to get some tobacco first. Always get my tobacco there, have done for years. His own mixture, y’know--mixes it himself. Better than this ounce packet stuff. You get it fresh. You don’t smoke a pipe, do you? Cigarettes, eh? You ought to try a pipe. Cheaper and a better smoke and better for your health, too. I’ve tried to get my boy George to start a pipe, but he won’t drop his cigarettes. Gaspers all the time. Too much trouble just to fill and light a pipe, that’s it. I wonder how these _Kwik-Work_ people are going on? Always seem to be busy enough, but I never knew anybody that used their blades. I stick to the old-fashioned razor. I’ve used the same two for twenty years. I call it a silly waste of money buying these safety razor blades. No wonder they give the razors away nowadays. They know once you’ve got the razor you’ll have to keep on buying their blades. That’s the catch, you see. Well, just wait a minute. I’ll call on my old friend, Mr. Benenden.”

But he didn’t, because his old friend Mr. Benenden was not there. Behind the counter was a plump young woman with bright ginger hair, and if Cleopatra herself in full regalia had been standing there, Mr. Smeeth could not have stared at her in greater astonishment.

“Yes?” said the plump young woman.

To explain what he wanted in T. Benenden’s, when year after year he had merely had to put his pouch on the counter, was in itself so novel an action that Mr. Smeeth found himself at a loss to perform it. “But--where’s Mr. Benenden?”

The young woman smiled. “You a regular customer here?” she asked.