Search in the larder revealed the groats, and the nurse began the cooking over the gas-stove. While she made the gruel, Osborn thought of Marie awaiting her trial, preparing for it ... buying groats.
He wished he had known what he knew now, so that he could have helped her more, have thought of the groats for her.
"Nurse," he asked, "do you think she can ever get quite well?"
"Of course she will. Rest and good food will be all she wants."
"Nurse, can I go and say good night to her?"
"Don't make her cry again, Mr. Kerr, and you may come in at eight."
As she went out with the cup of steaming food, she looked back to ask:
"Did you see the baby?"
"Don't mention the damned baby!" said Osborn with deep anger.
"The baby can't help it," answered the nurse, going out.
Osborn sat there thinking. No! The baby couldn't help it. That was very true. Losing his hostility to this fragment of life, he began to feel a faint curiosity. What was it like?
At eight o'clock he would look at the baby.
The nurse looked out of the bedroom door just before eight and signalled to him. This time she did not leave them alone, though she busied herself at the other side of the room, with her back to them, because she knew how shy these young things were. And this time Marie looked at Osborn with the ghost of a smile, barely more than a tremor of the lips. He bent down.
She whispered into his ear: "I don't—think—I could ever—go—through it—again."
"Never again, my sweetheart," he whispered back.
She made a motion with her lips; he kissed them gently. "Good night," he murmured, "sleep well, poor little angel."
"She'll sleep," said the nurse unexpectedly, from near the fire. She was tending the baby now, and Osborn looked across at it in the subdued light. What a little mottled pink thing! What creases! What insignificance to have brought about all this!
"Look at your bonnie baby, Mr. Kerr," said the nurse, holding the mite aloft.
"Is that a bonnie baby?" said Osborn sourly.
"Osborn," whispered Marie from the bed, "he's a beautiful baby!"
Osborn looked down, startled, and saw in her wan face some glimmer of an unknown thing. She—she—was pleased with the baby! She admired and loved it!
He went out astonished.
The next morning, still flat on her pillows, she was nursing the baby with a smile on her mouth. Under her pink cap the faintest colour bloomed in her cheek; she asked for a fresh pink ribbon for her nightgown; she had slept peacefully. Some flowers were sent very early, with congratulations. They were from Rokeby and from Julia, and were arranged near her bed as she lay with this wonderful toy, this little new pet, Osborn's son, beside her. She had emerged out of her black darkness into light.
Throughout Marie's convalescence there were things to buy; little things, but endless; to a woman who has suffered so greatly for their mutual joy can a man deny anything? The husband of a year cannot. Every day, before he went to his work—he was third salesman to one of the best Light Car Companies in town—Osborn held consultation, over the breakfast table, with the nurse. He used to say, as bravely and carelessly as if he felt no pinch at his pocket, "Is there anything you want to-day, Nurse?" And there was always something, a lotion, or a powder, or a new sponge, or a cake of a particular soap. The nurse had no compunction in adding: "If you do see a few nice grapes, or a really tender chicken, Mr. Kerr, I believe she might fancy them."
Osborn's lunches, during that month, grew lighter and lighter; they almost ceased.
Mrs. Ambler proved expensive in the kitchen, breaking for the while through her economical rule, feeling nothing too good for her poor child. She used to remind Osborn every time they met, by word, or look, or expressive sigh, how Marie had suffered. He felt oppressed, overridden and tired; but he was very obedient beneath the rule of the women.
He had to wait upon himself a good deal; sometimes he brought a chop for dinner home in his pocket and grilled it himself.
He slept in the room relegated to him as dressing-room or to a chance visitor, as occasion might arise; it looked forlorn and dusty, and the toilet covers wanted changing.
He longed to have Marie about again, blithe and pretty; and to be rid of this pack. He thought of his mother-in-law and the nurse as a pack.
Several times he succumbed to dining with Rokeby at his club, but he always hurried home in time to say good night to Marie before she fell asleep.
When the baby was nearly three weeks old, he was called upon to lift his wife out of bed for the first time, and to put her in an armchair, which had been prepared with pillows and a rug, by the purring gas-fire. She was so eager to be moved, and he so eager to have her to himself for just a little, that he begged permission to take her into another room for awhile, but the nurse would have none of it, and she was right, for Marie was white and tired when she had sat in the chair for only ten minutes. That staggered Osborn afresh. He was speechlessly sorry for her, and sat by her holding her hand, watching her concernedly, until she asked to be put back into bed again. That was on a Sunday.
The Sunday marked his memory. It disappointed him so bitterly to find that Marie was not stronger. After all the chickens and grapes, and doctors' and nurses' fees, she was not strong; and what could he do more for her? He was not a rich man. After the drain of all this they must live more steadily even than before; he could not waft her and the baby away to some warm south-coast resort to finish her convalescence; he could not take her for long motoring week-ends.
In a week the nurse would go. Would Marie be ready for her to go? If not, could Osborn keep her longer?
He knew he could not. There was only a sum of twelve or thirteen pounds left from the twenty which had represented the nest-egg which he had when he married; five of those pounds the doctor would take; six of them the nurse would take. He tried to arrange the disposal of his salary afresh, and could do no more than cut down his weekly expenditure of ten shillings to five.
But Marie and the baby were worth it all—if only he could get them alone again.
A week after that the nurse left and Osborn came back to Marie's room.
He looked forward to it; part of the dreadfulness of the past month had been their separation; now they were to be alone again, without that anarchic and despotic pack. On the morning, before he left, he wished the nurse good-bye with a false heartiness and handed her, breezily, a cheque. He would see her no more, God be thanked! When he came home that evening his place would be his own, his wife his own, the baby their own; there would be no stranger intruding upon their snug intimacy.
Osborn's heart was light when, at six o'clock, he put his latchkey into the keyhole and entered; he gave the long, low coo-ee which recalled old glad days, and Marie emerged from the kitchen, finger on mouth.
"Hush, don't wake him!"
"Is he in bed?"
"Nurse stayed to put him to bed before she left."
Osborn embraced her. "We're alone at last, hurrah!"
"Will you help me?" said Marie. "I'm so tired."
"Course I'll help you, little dear," he replied tenderly. "We'll do everything together, just as we used to."
"Osborn," said Marie suddenly, "that's the whole secret of married life, to do everything together, nice things and nasty things."
"Of course, darling. We do, don't we?"
"I suppose we do," she answered doubtfully; "at least there are some things a man doesn't share because he can't."
Her eyes dilated, and he guessed what she was thinking of. "I know, sweetest, I know," he said hastily, "but try not to remember it; it's all over and done with; and, Marie, I suffered, too."
She remembered, then, the tears they had shed together on the night of the baby's birth, and her heart was soft.
The night seemed punctuated to Osborn by the crying of the baby. It woke at regular hours, as if it could read some clock in the darkness; and quickly as, it seemed to him, he must have roused, Marie had wakened quicker, and was hushing the child. He could hear her soft whispers through the darkness, in the subsequent silences during which he guessed, with a thrill of anxious awe, that she was feeding it; frail as she was, she gave of what strength she had to the baby. Never had Marie seemed more wonderful to Osborn.
Very early in the morning she was tending the baby; he wished that he had been able to keep the nurse longer. He left her reluctantly after breakfast, to get through the baby's bath and toilet unaided, before the heavier work of the flat. Women who knew would have understood why Marie trembled and despaired at the tasks before her. When the baby cried as, with hands still weakened, she tried to hold up its slipping little body in the bath, she cried, too. As she cried, she thought how tears seemed to be always near her eyes during these married days. Was something wrong with marriage? Before, in her careless girl-days, she had never wept; she had never so suffered, so wearied and despaired. While she questioned, she dressed the baby in the flannel and lawn things she had made for it a long while ago, and when she had dressed it, she fed it again, and again it slept.
It was astonishing how much heavier a month-old infant could grow during an hour's marketing.
That reminded her that they had something else to buy, a big thing that would swallow up nearly, or quite, a week of Osborn's pay, a perambulator. The baby had luxuries; his toilet set from Rokeby, his christening robe from Julia, his puffed and frilly baby-basket from Grannie Amber, were dreams to delight a mother's heart; but he had no carriage. For a little while she might carry him when she was not too tired; and when she was, he might sleep out on the balcony that jutted from the sitting-room window, and she could stay beside him; but ultimately the question of the perambulator must arise.
As Marie walked home with her baby and her basket, she said to herself: "I won't ask poor Osborn now; not when he's just paid that woman a whole six pounds; not till he's settled the doctor; and there'll be an extra bill for the baby's vaccination soon, and the next furniture instalment's due; but when all that's cleared off, I'll choose the right time and ask him. I shall give him an extra nice dinner, and tell him we'll have to buy one."
In a week, when the doctor called to vaccinate the baby, he ordered the mother to leave off nursing it herself; he put it upon a patent food, not a cheap food; and it formed a pertinacious habit of wearing out best rubber bottle teats quicker than any baby ever known. In the nights Marie did not now reach out in the darkness to her baby and, gathering it to herself, nourish it quietly, without the certainty of waking Osborn; but there had to be a nightlight, there had to be business with a little spirit stove and saucepan, the unlucky jingle of a spoon against the bottle, so that Osborn began to mutter drowsily: "Hang that row!" and she longed to scream at him, "It's your baby, isn't it, as well as mine?"
Osborn was unused to and intolerant of domestic discomforts such as these; in the nights his nerves were frayed; at the breakfast-table he showed it: "You look tired to death, and I'm sure I am," he grumbled. "If this is marriage, give me single blessedness every time. Worry and expense! Expense and worry! Such is life!"
In the evenings she was very subdued; she was losing her life and light; he did not know that during the day, after such display of his irritation, she cried herself sick. He asked her to come out to dinner one evening; he said:
"You and I are getting two old mopes. Look here, girlie, put on your best frock, and come and dine at Pagani's; I can't afford it, but we'll do it."
But she could not.
"Baby," she said, hesitating.
Osborn looked at her in silence. "Good heavens!" he exclaimed, after a while, "aren't we ever to have our evenings out, then? Shall you always be tied here now?"
"A baby ties one," she replied.
"So it does, doesn't it?" said Osborn despondently.
Marie looked at him steadily. Just as she wanted to scream at him in the night, so she now longed to cry: "It's harder on me than you! Do you think I don't want ever to go out? Do you think I don't often long to go into the West End and look at the shops, or do a matinée with mother or Julia, and come back refreshed?"
But with the prudence of her mother's daughter she restrained herself.
"Day in, day out, are we always to live the life domestic pure and simple?" Osborn demanded.
For answer she shrugged her shoulders. Osborn thought her strangely nonchalant, almost contemptuous.
"Well, I, for one, damned well won't do it," he said, rising from the table.
"But I must," Marie replied in a level voice.
It was Osborn's turn to look at her; he wondered just what she meant by it.
"Well," he asked, "I can't help it, can I?"
"Neither can I," said Marie.
Osborn put on his coat and hat and went out. It was the first time he had ever gone out after dinner at home. For some while after he had left Marie remained alone at the table, staring before her. The small dining-room was still charming in the candlelight, but it took on a new aspect for her. The cream walls and golden-brown curtains enclosed her irrevocably. She would never get away from this place, the prison of home. Day in, day out, as Osborn said, it would be the same. The man might come and go at will, the woman had forged her fetters.
Didn't men ever understand anything? What crass vanity, what selfishness, what intolerance, kept them blind?
Marie was hardening. She did not cry. After a while she rose and cleared the table. As Osborn was not there, wishing for her company, she washed up. That would make it so much easier in the morning.
It left her, though, with an hour now in which to sit down and resume her thinking.
The flat was very quiet, very desolate. The man had gone out to seek amusement. How queer women's lives were!
She knew women whose husbands invariably went out at night, as soon as they had fed. What did these women really think of their men? What did these men really think of their women? How much did each know of the other? At what stage in these varied married lives did the wife become merely a servitor, to serve or order the serving of her husband's dinner, for which he came home before, again, he left her?
Married life!
At nine-thirty Marie prepared the baby's bottle and went to bed. She schooled herself to sleep, knowing that during the night the baby would make his demands, and she fell asleep quickly. She did not hear Osborn come in. He looked about the flat for her before going to his dressing-room, and, not finding her, said to himself wilfully: "Marie's sulking; she wouldn't wait up. Does she always expect a fellow to stay at home?"
By the glim of the nightlight, when he went into their room he saw her sleeping. The child slept, too. Osborn got resentfully into his bed, and thought of Rokeby, with whom he had just parted, and the end of a conversation they had had.
"You could afford to marry, Desmond."
"What's the standard?"
"Being able to keep servants," said Osborn harshly. "You marry the girl you love, a pretty girl you're proud to take about, and she can't come out to dine with you; she can't move from home; babies, they cry all night, burn 'em! And she gets ready to hate you. It's hell!"
On a day of January, like spring, Julia went upon a sentimental errand, influenced by she did not know what; but she guessed it was the youth in the air. It made her think of the youngest thing she knew, and that was Marie's baby, and of what she could do for it; and all that she could do, as far as she saw, was to buy it a superfluous woolly lamb. So after her day's work was over, at half-past five, Julia put on her hat and coat with a purpose, and stepped into the toy department of her favourite stores.
Julia was not mean; from out the whole flock of lambs which she found awaiting her selection she chose a beauty. Its white fluffiness and its beady eyes affected her softly; her handsome face grew motherly as she insinuated the stranger into her muff, where her hands stroked it unconsciously. Julia was far more pleased with the lamb than the baby would be, as she boarded an omnibus and rode towards Hampstead.
It was six when she arrived at the door of No. 30 Welham Mansions, and Marie opened it to her with the baby in her arms, huddled up in a rather soiled shawl from which only his incredibly downy head emerged. He looked solemnly at Julia and emitted an inquiring croak.
"You aren't still carrying that baby out, are you?" Julia asked suddenly.
They entered the sitting-room together.
"What else can I do? If I go out, he's got to go, too."
"You'll get a perambulator?"
"I'm going to ask Osborn soon."
"Why not ask him now?"
"He's had such a lot of expense, poor boy."
"Still," Julia argued, "it's got to be bought, and you ought to be saved. Ask him to-night, after dinner."
"I believe I will," said Marie. "My back ached so."
Julia was more bewildered than angry.
"My goodness!" she said sharply. "What's the matter with life? Why can't a young man and woman have a baby and look healthy over it? I've got to ask someone that, and get an answer."
Julia followed Marie back to the kitchen.
"I'll whip the cream, if he's got to have it," she said grudgingly.
"And I'll go and look nice for once. Then I'll ask him for the perambulator."
Marie came out again in the wedding-frock of chiffons, very tumbled now, looking sweet but with the hectic flush of her exertions still on her cheeks.
"All my clothes are going to glory!" she lamented.
"Tell you what," said Julia, producing frothy mounds of cream round her energetic whisk, "do have my bridesmaid dress. I've never worn it since your wedding—too picturesque for my style, that frock is. But if you—"
"No, I won't!" Marie protested, tears in her eyes. "I'm not going to take anything from you except your old gloves for the housework. It would be scandalous; you, a girl working for her living, and me, a married woman with a husband to work for me—"
"I know which I'd rather be," Julia remarked.
"So do I," said Marie, with a quick intake of breath.
They looked at each other a little defiantly, but did not proceed to any enlightenment. Then Julia went up to Marie and laid her arms about her neck and her cool lips upon her hot cheek.
"Well, leave it at that," she said. "Good-bye, kiddie; take care of yourself. I can't stay. Send for me any time. I must fly!" And was gone.
Osborn came in hungry before seven, sniffed the dinner cooking, and turned into the dining-room. He took off his boots, fished his carpet slippers from behind the coal-scuttle, and put them on with a sigh of relief. The smell which pervaded the flat was savoury and good; the dinner-table was ready to the last saltspoon; the baby was quiet; all seemed to promise one of those smooth domestic evenings sometimes granted to a man.
He settled down by the fire after dinner to read so much of his evening paper as the Tube journey had not given him time for, while Marie made coffee and handed him his cup.
"Osborn," she said.
"Yes, dear."
"I wanted to ask you about something."
Into Osborn's eyes crept a harassed look, almost of fear; it was a very reluctant look, with repugnance in it and resignation and suspicion.
"About something?" he asked cautiously, "or for something?"
Marie had seen the look and had quite an old acquaintance with it. That ever-ready lump rose to her throat, and she had that passing wonder which she had often felt before—why she should cry so easily now.
"For something," she answered hesitatingly.
There was a silence.
Osborn lifted his paper as if to resume reading. His face flushed and his forehead lined.
"What do you want now?" he asked at last.
Marie flushed, too, till her face burned and tears glittered in her eyes.
"I'm afraid," she said, "that—that we'll have to buy a pram, shan't we?"
"A 'pram'?" said Osborn, as if she had asked for a motor-car.
"All babies have to have one. It's time—he ought to have had after the first month. He's getting so heavy, I can't carry him about much longer."
"Then don't carry him about."
"I've got to, unless I stay in altogether."
Osborn became silent. Because he felt desperately poor he also felt desperately angry; because he felt desperately angry he was angry with the most convenient person—his wife.
"Couldn't we buy one," said Marie, after he had remained mute for some while, "from the furniture people on the instalment plan?"
"Instalment plan!" he barked. "I'm sick of instalments! When am I ever going to be free? When's my money ever going to be my own again? Tell me that!"
"I can't tell you anything," said Marie, beginning to cry.
"Tears again!" he groaned. "Always this blasted tap-turning if you ask a woman a lucid question! Don't you see what you're making life for me? Don't you see the eternal drag you're putting on my wheel? I never drink, I never play cards, I don't do what any other fellow under the sun would expect to do; I give you all I can—every penny's gone in this awful domesticity. Domesticity? Slavery, I call it! What more can I do? What more do you expect? You ask for a perambulator as if it were a sixpenny-ha'penny toy! What would a perambulator cost?"
She retained control enough to reply:
"I—I have a catalogue. The one I've marked—I'd thought of—is—is three pounds ten."
Osborn threw away restraint.
"Three pounds ten!" he cried. "Within ten bob of a week's salary! Do you realise what you're asking? My God, women have a cheek. You bleed a man and bleed him until—until he don't know where to turn. It's ask, ask, ask—"
Then Marie also flung off restraint and gave all her pent-up nerves play. They faced each other like furies, he red and grim, she shaken and shrill.
"Ask, ask, ask! And what has marriage ever given me? Look at me! I was happy till I married you! I never knew what it was to be so poor and—and grudged till I'd married you! I didn't know what marriage was. I didn't know I'd be hungry and worried—yes, hungry!—and made ashamed to ask for every penny that I couldn't get without asking. Why can't I get it? Why, because you took me away from my job and married me! I cook for you, and sew and sweep and dust for you, and you take it all as a matter of course. All I've given up for you you take as a matter of course!
"All I've suffered for you you take as a matter of course ... you men!"
"I didn't know what it'd be like to have a baby, or, God knows, I'd never have had one—"
"Be quiet!" shouted Osborn. "Be quiet!"
But she raved on:
"No, I wouldn't! I wouldn't, I tell you! What do you expect of women? You expect us to want babies and bear them in all that—hell, and be pleased to have them; and—and to put up with begging from you for them! And you don't care how weak we are—how our backs ache; you don't care if the baby goes out or stays in—if I go out or stay in. It's your child, isn't it? It's not all my fault we had it, is it? There's a lucid question for you! Answer it!"
"I will do no such thing!" he cried angrily. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself—a woman—a woman suggesting she doesn't want a baby!"
"I didn't say it! I suggest I don't want one of yours!"
"My God!" said Osborn, recoiling.
Marie grew ice-cold when she had said a thing that she would have thought impossible to say; but there was a keen triumph in the ice-coldness. She had silenced him.
"Isn't married life ugly?" she asked. "Isn't it little and mean and sordid and stingy and unjust? You create a condition which will tie me to the house; you are angry with the condition because it's expensive; you're angry with me for being house-tied. Can I help it? Can I help anything? Do you think I don't want theatres and to go out to dinner with you as I used to? The baby's yours, isn't he, as well as mine?"
"Marie," said Osborn, "Marie—"
He searched for things to say.
"I wish I had never married you—I wish I had never married at all," said Marie. "Men won't understand; they're impatient, they're brutes! And you haven't answered my question yet."
Osborn went out of the flat.
The inevitable answer of the goaded man—anger, silence and retreat—cried aloud to her.
She was afraid of herself.
What terrible things she had said—she, a little, new, young wife and mother!
She spoke out into the stillness, shocked, appealing, still trembling with her rage.
"Oh, God! Oh, God!... Oh, God, help me!"
When Julia had left the Kerrs' flat and was turning out of the building into the windy street, she met Desmond Rokeby about to enter. Her handsome face was grim beneath her veil and her eyes snapped. As she pulled up short and stood in Rokeby's path, she expressed to him the idea of a very determined obstacle.
"How nice to meet you!" he cried goodhumouredly.
"I'm glad I've met you," she replied.
Rokeby surveyed her quizzically. "What an admission," he said, "from an arch-enemy! You are the enemy of us all, aren't you? Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Where were you going?" Julia countered.
"To No. 30."
"Then—yes—you can do something for me. You can go away again."
"Are they out?" said Rokeby; "are they ill? What's the mystery?"
She looked up and down the road; she gave him the impression that she stamped her feet and frowned, though to appearances she did neither. She ordered:
"Don't loiter here. Osborn—Mr. Kerr'll be home directly, and if he sees you he'll take you in, won't he?"
"Probably, I should say."
"Then come away."
"If I may walk a little way with you."
"I don't care where you walk with me," Julia replied vigorously, "if it isn't into Marie's flat."
She set a brisk pace down the opposite side of the road, as if assuming that Osborn might pass them unnoticing on the other, and Rokeby kept step unprotestingly. "It must be after six o'clock," he said presently.
"It is," she replied.
"Which is your way home?"
Julia described her route with a brevity characteristic of her.
He slackened pace, so that she looked round at him, impatiently questioning.
"Look here, Miss Winter," he coaxed, "don't go home. Stay out and dine with me. Of course we're mere strangers, but we're both so emancipated, aren't we? No, emancipated's an out-of-date word. We've passed that, haven't we, long ago? We're—I dunno what we are; there's no limit to us. Isn't it jolly? So do come into town and dine with me."
"I think I'd like to, thanks," said Julia; "I'm not quite sure."
"Why aren't you quite sure?"
"I might be bored with you. How do I know?"
Rokeby looked at her with an astonished respect and a glim of his saving humour. "So you might; er—I hadn't thought of it; but 'pon my word, I'll do my best. Won't you come if I guarantee that?"
And he wanted her to come, oddly.
"Thanks," said Julia, "I will."
"Queer thing," Rokeby thought in his surprised soul, "when a girl all on her own in this hard world hesitates to come out to a good dinner with not a bad fellow in case she might be bored."
"I know what you're thinking," said Julia calmly; "you're thinking—or you are almost—that it was nearly a bit of cheek on my part. I don't blame you. You're spoilt, all of you. The girls you take out earn their dinners and stalls too conscientiously; no matter how dull you are, they take pains to shine. Frankly, if you take me out, you've got to shine. I demand it. And you'd be surprised at the number of invitations an exacting thing like me gets."
"No, I shouldn't," said Rokeby softly, bending his head to look with a new interest at her face. "That's sheer cleverness, that is; that's brilliance. You've seized it. A woman should have confidence to demand and get."
"Women are too humble."
"I never found them so," Rokeby denied respectfully.
"Well, half of them are too humble, and the other half are slave-drivers. If a girl's got to choose one or the other, she'd better drive."
"That's awf'ly sound," said Rokeby.
They neared a taxicab rank, and the first driver watched their approach with inquiring signal. "Cab!" Rokeby sang out, and the man started his engine.
"Where are we going?" Julia asked.
"Where you like," Desmond answered, "only let's start there."
He opened the door, she passed in, and he directed, "Piccadilly; and I'll tell you just where, presently."
He followed Julia in, and they were away, over suburban roads darker than the streets of the West.
Rokeby felt a certain triumph in capturing Julia. Besides her modern fighting quality, to which he was not entirely antagonistic, he realised that she was a pleasure to the eye, a well-tailored, handsome girl, town-bred, town-poised, of the neat, trim type so approved by the male eye. She knew her value too. She made a man think. Cheap attentions she would have handed back as trash, without thanks, to the donor. She conferred a favour, but would never receive one. Her self-assurance was no less than royal, and a word or touch in violation would have been stamped a rank impertinence. Rokeby, who had made the same pleasant uses of taxicabs as most men about town, knew all this with a half-sigh.
"Where would you like to dine?" he asked. "What kind of a place do you like?"
"A quiet place, to-night," said Julia; "it's better for talking, and this evening I've got to talk to someone."
Whereby she flattered Rokeby more than by any degree of easy flirtation which other women might have permitted, as they sped along the ever-brightening streets.
"We'll go to the Pall Mall, if you like, Miss Winter; it's little, it's good, it's quiet; interesting people go there; we'll make two more. How about that?"
"It'll do excellently."
"We shall probably get a balcony table if all those downstairs are booked."
As Rokeby said, they were in time for a balcony table, and he ordered dinner and wine before recurring to his former question.
"What was all the mystery about No. 30?"
"I don't call it a mystery; it was just a very ordinary domestic proposition; I didn't want them to be interrupted this evening, because, you see—you will laugh—"
"No, I swear I won't; do tell me."
"Marie wants to ask for a perambulator."
"'Him'?"
"Yes, him. Who's always 'him' to the household—the husband, the tyrant, the terror. Ugh!"
"Oh, come, Miss Winter. Osborn Kerr—I've known him for years; there's nothing of the tyrant and the terror about him. Why this embroidery of the sad tale?"
"Well, why was Marie afraid to ask him, then?"
"I don't know anything about it. I'm at a disadvantage with you, it seems."
"I'm quite willing to tell you; that's what I'm dining with you for, isn't it?"
"Is it?" said Rokeby, with a very charming smile which but few women knew.
She hurried on: "Yes, it is. You see, I didn't want you to come in and spoil it all, prevent Marie from asking her husband for the perambulator."
"You were awf'ly thoughtful, and I'm sure I didn't want to chip in at the wrong moment; but, I say, would it have mattered so much? Because I'd love to know why; you're interesting me, you know. She could have asked him another time, couldn't she?"
"You see, she was all ready to-night."
"'All ready'?"
"She put on the frock she was married in; and there was the whipped cream he's so fond of, with a cherry pie; and it all seemed so propitious that I thought it would be a pity if you spoilt it."
"You're right. I wouldn't have cut in for the world. But, I say," he cried gleefully, "what guile! What plotfulness! There's no getting even with a woman, is there? Little Mrs. Osborn and you lay your heads together, and she puts on her wedding frock—"
Julia eyed him with a steely disdain.
"Kindly tell me why a woman should trouble herself to make plans to coax her husband?"
"Ask me another. How do I know? She did it, didn't she?"
"Yes, because he was one of those beastly 'hims,' to be toadied and cajoled and fussed into a good humour before his wife dare ask for a carriage for the baby that belongs to both of them."
"Oh, I see! I see! I say, I'm stupid, aren't I?"
"I'll forgive you your stupidity if you promise me never to marry and make any woman miserable."
Rokeby became slightly nettled.
"Why shouldn't I marry and make some woman happy?" he demanded.
"Ask me another; you men don't seem to, do you?"
"You're not very sympathetic to—"
"Nor you. Look here! Bread and butter, and candles and bootblacking, and laundering, and expenses for a baby when you've got one, are all everyday things, aren't they? If a woman's got to fuss and plan and cry and worry and fight just every day for the everyday things, is life worth while at all? Isn't a girl like me, in full possession of her health, mistress of her own life, filling her own pocket, better off than a girl like Marie who's married and lost it all?"
"Are you?" he demanded, stirred enough to look right into Julia's eyes; and he saw what deep eyes they were, and what sincere trouble and question lay in them.
She fenced doggedly: "I don't see why Marie should be made wretched; she's only twenty-six. Is she to have that kind of fuss every day of her life?"
"She won't want a new perambulator every day, we'll hope."
"Oh ... don't be cheap! You know what I mean. Why can't men meet domestic liabilities fairly and squarely with their wives? Why must they be coaxed to look at a bill which they authorise their wives to incur? Why is a man vexed because he's got to pay the butcher, when he eats meat every day of his life?"
"Since you ask, my dear girl, I'll tell you. People are too selfish to marry nowadays and make a good job of it. Most men always were; but then women used to go to the wall and go unprotestingly. Now something's roused them to jib. They're making the hell of a row. They won't stand it; and nobody else can. So what's to be done?"
"Is this marriage?" Julia asked coldly.
"No," said Rokeby, "it's war."
"It ought not to be."
"What do you suggest?"
"N-nothing."
"Nor does anyone else," Rokeby stated.
They were through the first course, and he replenished her glass with sparkling hock. "Eat, drink, and be merry," he counselled lachrymosely, "for to-morrow we may be married."
"Never for me."
"That's rash. People are caught—oh! it's the very devil to keep out of the net."
"What will be the end of things?"
"What things?"
"Marie's and Osborn's."
"My dear Miss Winter, you exaggerate. They'll shake down, and that's all."
"Will they be happy?"
"You'll have to ask them that, later. But, you see, I know Osborn Kerr, and he'll make the best of it like other people. I wish I could convince you. Don't distress yourself over the normal troubles of normal people."
But Julia still worried on: "She looked so white and tired to-day; she'd been carrying that great baby about round the shops, and she's not strong yet."
"Can't the baby stay peaceably at home?"
"Then she's got to stay too. Where she goes the baby must go. She's given up going out at all except just for her marketing."
"Well," said Rokeby, rubbing his head, "I don't know, I'm sure, what you or I can do. We'd better leave it all alone."
"If I hadn't spent everything I had in the bank only yesterday for a new suit I'd send her a baby-carriage to-morrow. It'll be three weeks before I've put by enough again."
"Don't rob yourself," said Rokeby quickly, with a softening face. "Look here, let me know what happens, will you?"
"About the perambulator?"
"Ah!"
"Will you be fairy godfather, then?"
"If you'd like me to."
"Oh, I would! You—you—"
"What am I?"
"You dear!"
"'Rah! 'Rah!" cried Rokeby, "shake hands on that!" She laid in his frankly a short and capable hand. "I'm not a 'him,' am I? Oh, say I'm not."
"You're not—yet. You're a dear."
"Am now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."
"Amen," said Julia, twinkling.
"Here are pêches melba," said Rokeby, "women always like them. I'm glad they're on our programme to-night."
"I adore them."
"You might try to remember, before we leave the subject," Rokeby suggested, "that the prospects of these 'hims' aren't very rosy either sometimes. You see it comes hard on a man, though doubtless he's a black-hearted scoundrel to admit it, when he marries and has to stretch an income, which was perfectly palmy in the bachelor days, to meet the needs of two, or three, or however many it may ultimately have to meet. He can't help a yelp now and then. It's a horrid sound, but it relieves him. The only remedy I can suggest for the existing state of affairs is that all wives of over a year's standing should pack cotton wool in their ears. Eh? That's brains, isn't it? Kindly applaud."
"'M ..." said Julia, tightening her lips.
"Osborn entered marriage with the most exalted expectations," Rokeby went on.
"So did Marie."
"I assure you I never knew a chap more in love."
"Nor I a girl."
"Oh, chuck it!" begged Rokeby, laughing. "Do chuck it, will you? Then you'll be a dear too. Look here, wouldn't you like to go on somewhere after this? I can telephone from here for seats."
But she would not. So they lingered on for awhile, talking and smoking over their coffee; and at last, when Julia looked across the room at the clock over the big mirrors, she was astonished and half vexed to find how much time had slipped by. Then she insisted on going, but Rokeby insisted, too, upon his escort all the way home, and she did not gainsay him. As he lifted her furs over her straight shoulders, waving away the waiter who hastened forward for the service, he murmured:
"Were you bored?"
"I've loved it," said Julia graciously, for she could be generous.
They walked home, according to her wishes, for it was a perfect night, and she a robust young creature who loved to give her energy a fling. She walked with a peculiar effect of hope and buoyancy, in spite of her habit of sombre sayings, and Rokeby found a pleasure in noting her. She looked what she was, a woman who had never yet encountered defeat.
This did not rouse in him the hunting desire to run her to earth, or to the dead wall against which she would sturdily plant that fine back of hers, and to vanquish her vainglory; but it made him softer, more protective of her than he had felt before; it made him wish that always she would keep this spirit and courage which burned like a brave candle in the mists of life. As they said good-bye upon the imposing pillar-guarded steps of her boarding-house—called in modern fashion a Ladies' Club—he held her hand longer than he had ever imagined he might want to hold the hand of this dragon of a girl.
"Be happy," he adjured her, "don't take other folks' troubles upon you; let 'em settle their own. Haven't you enough to do?"
"I always feel that there is no end to what I could do," Julia confessed.
"Yes, you generous thing!" Rokeby cried, "but don't abuse yourself. There—you don't want my advice, do you? Forgive me! And thank you so much for an interesting evening. And—and—good night."
He stood at the bottom of the steps watching reluctantly while Julia entered. She had a latchkey which, ordinary possession as it was, seemed a symbol of her freedom. While he would have granted it generously, the freedom somehow piqued Rokeby a little. He stood smiling rather sadly till she shut the door.
A scurrying housemaid paused in her rush upstairs to say:
"Oh, miss! You were rung up on the 'phone just now, and I took the message. From a Mrs. Kerr, miss, and she would be glad if you could go round at once."
Julia stood still for a moment or two, keeping her hands very still in her muff. "I expect ..." she began to think. Then she rushed for the cab-whistle, which hung in the hall, pulled open the door, and whistled until a cab came creeping round the corner, feeling in its blind way for the invisible fare. She ran down the steps, signalling, and it spurted up.
"Number Thirty Welham Mansions, Hampstead," she said as she jumped in.
It was an extravagant method of travel—being some distance to Hampstead—for a young woman earning three pounds ten a week and spending most of it gorgeously, but she did not care. The four shillings were a nothing compared to Marie's need of her. She passed the time in speculations of wrathful trend, until they pulled up in the quiet road from which she had so recently driven away with Desmond Rokeby.
Marie opened the door to her—Marie with a face like white marble and burning eyes. Her dead composure was wonderful and scornful, but Julia would have none of it; as soon as the door was shut upon them and they stood there, between the cream walls and black etchings of the hall, she seized Marie in her arms, exclaiming:
"My poor dear! What's up? Has he—"
For a long while Marie wept on Julia's breast, before the ashes of the dining-room fire, while the clock with the kind voice ticked musically on and on, and the room grew chillier, and herself more tired; but at last she could tell all.
"We—we've had—an awful—quarrel."
"Oh dear!" Julia commented, "oh dear!" She did not know what else to say.
"I asked him—about the pram."
"Yes, yes! As you said you would."
"He is so angry, so unjust."
"My poor old kiddie!"
"And I was so angry, perhaps I was unjust too."
"No, no, you weren't," said Julia viciously. "I'm sure of it. Nothing could be unjust to him. He deserves it all."
"No, he doesn't You don't understand. But he wasn't fair to-night; he was so angry, and it wasn't my fault. Do they think we like asking, I wonder? And I don't know what I said, Julia, but I know I made him think I didn't want baby."
"Well?"
"But I do want him, Julia. I don't know what I'd do without him; I love him so much—they just grow into your life, Julia, babies do. He's so sweet."
"Course you love him. I know that. So does Osborn, so don't cry."
"He said I ought to be ashamed of myself."
"Oh, indeed? Indeed! And may one ask why?"
"B—because I asked for a pram, I s'pose."
"Really! Indeed! I'd like to—"
"Perhaps it wasn't just that. I don't know—but he got so angry and said he couldn't afford it, and I said, 'P—p—perhaps on the instalment p—p—plan?' and he said he was sick of instalments and when was his money ever going to be his own again? And I can't help it, Julia, can I? I haven't money of my own. And then I got angry and said things; and he said I ought to be ashamed of myself."
"But aren't you going to have the pram?"
"I don't know. I don't expect so. He went out without saying."
"That's like a man. Go out and slam the door if you don't want to give an answer!"
"Julia, I—I'm afraid I hurt his feelings. I made him say, 'My God!'"
"That's nothing. They speak of God like a man in the street. That means nothing."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure, you poor lamb? I'm as sure as sure."
"Do you think you know much about men, Julia?"
"I know too much, thank you."
"I hope you didn't mind coming here again? I didn't know what to do; I was so wretched, and there was no one to speak to; no one to tell; so I thought of you."
"That's right, my dear. Always think of me, if I can do anything. You know I'll always come."
"You are a darling, Julia."
The two girls hugged each other strenuously.
Marie said with a break yet in her voice, "It seemed to me I was being quite reasonable."
"There are all sorts of men," said Julia, "kind men and unkind; mean men and generous; good-tempered and bad-tempered; every sort except a reasonable one. There's never been a reasonable man born yet."
When Julia had pronounced this dictum, she stroked Marie's hair, and said: "You know, baby, you ought to go to bed like the other baby. You're tired out and your young man'll be home soon, I've no doubt."
"I don't suppose he'll be later than eleven."
"Well, I'd rather not be still here when he comes, thank you."
"Oh, you wouldn't say I'd told you anything!"
"I won't give myself a chance. I'll put you to bed and then I'll go home."
Julia was like a mother to Marie when she helped her to undress, and tucked her up in the bed beside the infant's cot. And when Marie asked anxiously, with her mind still troubled: "Julia, you know that I love baby, don't you?" she was warm in her assurances.
"Would you mind," said Marie, "making up the dining-room fire a little, please, dear, in case Osborn is cold when he comes in?"
Julia stroked on her gloves slowly. "Certainly," she replied, after a pause.
"I should only put on a couple of lumps, dear," said Marie from the bed.
"Righto!" Julia answered at the door. "Good night, babies!"
Very softly she closed the door and left them.
She stood for a few moments in the dining-room trying to persuade herself to make up the fire for Osborn. She hated doing it; she grudged him his fire and his armchair and pipe and the comfort of those carpet slippers she saw behind the coal-box. But at last she took up the tongs, saying to herself sourly:
"It's for Marie, after all, because she asked me; not for him."
She chose her lumps of coal carefully, the two biggest, heavy enough to crush out altogether the tiny glow of the embers which remained; she battened them down and remained to assure herself that they would not burn.
"He won't be able to say the fire wasn't made up," she thought.
She placed Osborn's carpet slippers carefully in front of it.
"He can't say he wasn't made comfortable when he came in."
She went out, with a small sense of satisfaction, and called softly along the corridor, "Good night, babies," before she left the flat. It was very, very cold, and she was more than ready for her own bed.
She travelled homewards upon the Tube.
Before she slept, however, Julia had a letter to write, to Desmond Rokeby; she addressed it to his business address, which she happened to know, and marked it Very urgent. The contents were as urgent as the instruction upon the envelope, and once again that night she left the Ladies' Club to post the letter at the pillar-box at the corner. It would be cleared at midnight, and Rokeby should get his news by the first post in the morning.
Then Julia Winter slept; but although her head was full of two babies, a grown-girl one and a tiny weakling one, together in a soiled pink room, it was not of them that she dreamed. She was sitting once more at a balcony table in the quiet red restaurant with the big mirrors, facing an unusual kind of man who cared as little what she thought of him as she cared what he thought of her; the restaurant was warm and rosy, and they drifted upon the flying hours, like two voyagers upon a happy river.
Marie heard Osborn come in and go to the dining-room and hit an unresponsive mass of coal vigorously, but she gave no sign. In the darkness she listened for all the sounds she had learned to know so well; his movements in the dressing-room, his splashing as he washed face and hands in the bathroom, his pat-pat tread in carpet slippers along the corridor to their door. To-night he paused here, as if listening; and it seemed as if her heart paused, too, while she also listened for him. But he spoke no word, and she spoke none, and the baby slept, so presently she heard the cautious turning of the handle and his careful entry.
She feigned sleep.
He knew, by tiny signs he had learnt to discover, that she was not asleep, but he feigned belief that she was.
His bed creaked to tell her that he was getting into it, in the darkness, by her side.
Both Marie and Osborn were still angry, sore, insulted and resentful, and, like other married people in small homes, they must intrude upon each other intimately, sleep side by side, wake side by side, and remain as closely conscious of each other as if they dwelt together, by mutual desire, in a perpetual garden of roses. True, there was a bed in Osborn's dressing-room, but it was an uncomfortable bed of the fold-up family, and when he came in to-night it was folded against the wall, and he did not know exactly where its particular blankets were kept. He looked at it, thinking, "God! If I could only sleep here for a night or two!" But he allowed himself to be daunted by the problem of the blankets, and he went, as usual, to the room he shared with Marie.
But each was too angry to speak, and the presence of each was fuel to the other's anger.
Osborn was wakened in the morning by Marie's attentions to the baby. Though he had gone to sleep turned as completely away from her as possible, in the night he had rolled over, and now he watched her quietly and sulkily in the grey dawn, with just one eye opened upon her above the rim of his bedclothes. If she looked he meant to close his eyes again quickly, pretending sleep.
But there was something about the frailty of her figure as she sat up in bed, turning to the table with the spirit-lamp and saucepan upon it, a quality of wistful charm in her little undressed head, which went towards softening him. She was quiet, too; she spoke no word, nor looked towards him. He watched her patiently waiting for the boiling of the milk; he watched the care with which she mixed the food; and then she got out of bed, not minding the stark cold, and gave the bottle to the drowsy baby. She bent over it for a minute, smoothing its downy head with her light fingers; then she propped the bottle comfortably for the baby, by some ingenious management of its bed-clothing, and looked at the clock by her bedside. After she had looked at the clock she stood hesitating for awhile and he knew what she was deciding.
She wanted five minutes more of that warm bed after a night broken, as usual, by the baby's demands; but it was time to get up and sweep and cook and light fires and lay Osborn's breakfast-table.
After all, it was Osborn who broke the silence between them, sulkily.
"I should give yourself five more minutes; you'll freeze out there."
Marie turned round quickly and looked at his long, comfortable outline under his pink quilt. She hesitated, then spoke in her natural voice, which he was secretly relieved to hear:
"It's half-past six; I'll have to dress."
"Poor old girl!" Osborn mumbled from his pillow. After she had gone quietly out, and he listened to the sounds of running water in the bathroom, and after she had come back, and he watched her again, one eye cocked furtively over the blankets, while she moved about quickly, he thought and considered and argued with himself about her. But, after all, she did as other women do, didn't she? She had a home and a husband and child, and she was bound to look after them, wasn't she? He gave her all he could, and sometimes it seemed to him—though he didn't mean to grouse—that she might have managed better. His mother, for instance, grown grey and quiet in the service of himself and his father, had worked wonders with the limited family money.
Had she been still alive, she might have given Marie a few wrinkles, perhaps....
There is little doubt that Mrs. Kerr the departed could have given her young daughter-in-law a few wrinkles had she met her—wrinkles of the most unprofitable kind upon her fair face; but as it was, Mrs. Kerr senior lay quietly afar off from No. 30 Welham Mansions, impotent to reform, and Osborn lay thinking his thoughts in silence while Marie, having dressed to petticoat and camisole, wreathed up her long and lustrous hair.
The baby sucked intermittently at his bottle.
When Marie had put on her blouse and skirt, and a pinafore to protect them, she went out without further conversation. Osborn wondered a little whether she sulked, but she was not sulking; she was only occupied much as he was, in thinking and considering and arguing with herself about him. She was modern enough to remain proud and critical and impatient after domestic experiences which would have gone far towards cowing the generation of women before her. Her mother had bowed beneath such experiences without so much as an inquiry or expostulation. As Marie hurried about with brush and duster, with black-lead and fire-fuel, as she stood over the purring stove, and watched toast and eggs and coffee come to their various perfections, each over its ring of flame, she was absorbed in wondering:
"It is I who am right? It's I who have the harder time? It's the woman upon whom everything falls? But can't it all be put right somehow? Couldn't I make him see?"
Something definite emerged from her prospecting, at least; the resolve to seek an understanding with Osborn, not now, over breakfast with its time-limit and its haste, but perhaps to-night, after dinner, when he'd come in, and been fed and rested, and had put on his warm slippers. She faced Osborn over the breakfast-table with a brightness which he was relieved to see; but after he had noted it with inward approval, he hid himself behind his newspaper; he wanted to say little; to get away very, very quietly.
He had known many men who had to fly before the domestic sirocco; he had laughed at and despised them in his heart. But—poor beggars! No doubt they had hidden themselves behind newspapers with a child-like faith in the impenetrability of the shield, even as he was hiding.
Poor beggars!
It was no better than the ostrich habit of tucking your head into the sand, to crowd yourself behind your morning paper. You felt awfully nervy behind it, and you kept a scowl handy. There was something in the tension which made you bolt your good food quickly, indifferent as your lunch would be presently, and which made you glad when you were ready to rise, and remark with a forced bonhomie:
"Well, so long, girlie! I must be off."
Marie followed Osborn out into the narrow hall, where now faint daubs marked the cream distemper, and helped him on with his coat, and found his gloves and muffler. "It's cold, dear," she said solicitously, "wrap up well."
"Oh, that's all right! Take care of yourself and baby. Good-bye!"
He stooped and kissed her lips quickly, avoiding her eyes, and went out whistling. A forlornness overtook her; she ran back through the dining-room to the window, and, leaning out, watched for him to emerge from the doorway below; when he came, and started down the street towards the tramcar terminus, she made ready to wave as she used to do should he look up.
But he did not look up, as he strode purposefully away. A few months ago he would have lagged a little, glancing up and waving frequently before he finally disappeared. This morning as she watched the thought smote: "When did he forget to wave to me? When did we leave off—all this?"
She remembered it was when she began to be so really busy, after the baby came. Baby was crying sometimes as they finished breakfast; she must hurry to him; it was time for his bath; he must have his bath, mustn't he? She couldn't help that. But she rather thought that perhaps this was the beginning of the end of all those dear smiles and salutes right down the street back to the girl above. Perhaps Osborn had looked up in vain many mornings, hoping to see her leaning out there, and at last had ceased to mind whether she were there or not.
A surprise came for Marie after lunch. She was making herself ready to carry her baby and her basket to the open-air market a street away, where the thriftier housewives of the neighbourhood shopped, when a delivery carman left at her door the handsome baby-carriage which Julia's note had sent Desmond Rokeby out post-haste to buy. Such a perambulator Marie had never hoped for, nor dreamed of; it boasted every luxury of contrivance, from the umbrella basket, slung to the handles, to its C-springs and its big, smooth-rolling tyres. In colour it was French-grey, extremely dainty; and it came with Desmond's love to his godson and a tactfully expressed hope that his gift had not been forestalled. So Marie put her baby in, and her basket, too; and after she had finished admiring her pink-and-white son among the lavender upholstery, she wheeled him out proudly to the open-air market, where the equipage drew forth delighted comments from the vendors who knew her well. She did not come straight home, as she had to do when carrying the baby; but, her purchases finished, she turned towards the Heath, and wheeled about proudly there for a while, envying no one, not the smart nurses who propelled their smart perambulators, nor the few mothers who strolled beside them. She felt that, with the finest baby in town in a French-grey and lavender chariot, she could meet and beat any turnout of the kind.
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!"