[p 45]
CHAPTER V
MORE RIFTS IN THE LUTE

But naturally this kind of thing could not go on for ever.

Quarrels, with little tender makings up like that had a certain charm while their freshness lasted. But when the fallings out became events of almost weekly occurrence, the fallings in were no longer things to be put away in ‘the hushed herbarium where we keep our hearts’ forget-me-nots.’

Larrie was exacting and inclined to be tyrannical. And Dot was careless and childish, and unreasonable. The first week that the mother did not come down to look after [p 46] Peggie, and do her fifty odd acts of straightening, the cottage was in a glorious state of muddle.

Larrie by nature was an order-loving and somewhat methodical man, and had an inborn objection to see Dot’s pretty slippers lying about the house, or stray articles of baby’s clothing on the verandah chairs. He thought breakfast things too ought not to be left on the table till all hours in the morning, and when Dot asked him how he could expect Peggie to dress baby and make the beds and wash up by ten, he retorted brutally that she was a lazy little slattern, and should do it herself.

‘A slattern is a person untidy in herself,’ Dot replied, ‘you can’t say you’ve ever seen me like that, Laurence Armitage!’

And he certainly could not. Whatever her faults were, Dot was a little lady to the backbone, and would have been always sweet and fresh, and guiltless of pins and rents if she had never been able to afford more than fourpence half-penny prints to clothe herself [p 47] with. Shabby finery she had a wholesome detestation for; however plain her dress might be, it was always dainty, her shoes fitted trimly, her collar was above reproach and fastened with precision, her gloves were unsoiled, and her hats always fresh if only trimmed with Indian muslin.

But she was certainly a shocking young person where household matters were concerned. There was plenty of work to do even in so small a place; Peggie, however, had cheerfully taken it on her own shoulders at the beginning, and the things she ought to have done and left undone, the little mother did.

It was not until there was a third member in the family that the housework was appreciably neglected. When the fascination of ‘dressing baby’ was no longer new to Dot, and Peggie, its devoted worshipper, begged to add that duty to her others, Dot consented with alacrity. And Larrie looked on and told himself daily these things ought not to be.

[p 48]
One day there was a very great passage-at-arms. Peggie had gone to Sydney for the day to spend her month’s wages in a fearful and wonderful hat she had long had her eye upon, and Dot was left with the whole burden of the household upon her shoulders.

Generally on the rare occasions of Peggie’s absence, the mother came down and presided over the kitchen and the baby, and Dot had little else to do than lay the table and help to dish up. But to-day Larrie’s wicked conspiracy stood in the way.

The mother sent down a little note; it was very hot, would Dot mind if she did not come, her head was inclined to ache badly? And Larrie had ‘business in town’ and would be back by the train just in time for dinner.

Dot felt overwhelmed with the responsibilities of her position.

‘I think you had better take baby up to mother’s first, Larrie,’ she said, ‘I don’t see how I am to mind him and cook the dinner and do everything.’

‘How does Peggie manage when you’re [p 49] away? My dear Dot, I hope you are not going to give me the idea that you are one of those women utterly without resource,’ said my lord Larrie. ‘My sister Charlotte—’

‘Grace!’ cried Dot, ‘spare me the recapitulation of the puddings she could make and the wonders she could do at sixteen.’

‘Well, I only wanted to show you,’ said Larrie.

He brushed the dust off his shoulders, set his straw hat perfectly straight on his head—he always wore it tilted forward or stuck jauntily back in these wilds—and with a paternal kind of kiss to Dot and a grandfatherly one to the baby, he departed.

‘I’ll just show him what I can do,’ said Dot going kitchenwards. ‘Horrid boy!’

It was six or thereabouts when the ‘horrid boy’ returned. He was hungry—amazingly hungry—and apart from his experiment he really hoped that there was a very nice dinner ready. The white tablecloth was on the dining-room table and the flowers were exquisitely arranged, drooping blossoms of [p 50] wistaria and delicate leaves on a ground of pale yellow silk. There were also some knives and forks in a heap, two salt-cellars and the silver gong. From the bedroom came doleful baby wails that filled all the cottage. From the kitchen a strong smell of burning.

‘Gracious Lor,’ said Peggie.

But ‘Hang it all!’ was her master’s remark.

Peggie set her bandbox down and followed at his heels into the kitchen.

Dot was standing over the fire. Nearly every piece of crockery in the house stood dirty upon the table. Egg shells lay about, the sugar jar, the currant, the peel, the pepper, the flour, and all the store cupboard were in evidence. She turned a peony face towards them. ‘Dinner’s not ready yet, and it’s no use being cross, Larrie, if only you knew what a bother I’ve had with the fire.’ She lifted a saucepan with a groan and set it aside.

‘Is there anything to eat?’ Larrie asked in [p 51] a tone not altogether mild. ‘The place smells like a crematorium.’

Dot sniffed. ‘Does it?’ she said. ‘The meat’s burnt, I couldn’t help it, it burnt while I ran in to dress baby, and then a visitor came after I put some cakes and a batter pudding in the oven, and they burnt, there’s a boiled pudding though, it’ll be cooked in half-an-hour, and we can have eggs for once.’

Peggie hastened to her bedroom to change her very best dress for an old one in which she might take command of her region.

‘You really mean to say, Dot, that in all these hours you haven’t been able to cook a little dinner,’ Larrie began. His chin squared itself, his lips closed.

‘It’s no good making faces, my good man,’ Dot said. ‘I’ve cut my thumb, and I’ve burnt my wrist, and had sparks in my eyes, and now this is all the thanks I get.’

‘Eggs when a man comes in hungry for his dinner!—and a pudding not cooked! The table—’

[p 52]
‘Will you go out of the kitchen, Laurence Armitage,’ Dot said facing round. ‘Do you think I’ve not had enough without you beginning?’

‘—The table not set and a crying baby,’ Larrie went on.

‘Larrie, do you want to provoke me into throwing a saucepan at your head like an Irish washerwoman?’ Dot said.

She took the lid off the potatoes and disclosed a pulpy mass boiled out of all recognition.

‘I don’t profess to be perfect; accidents will happen even to the sister Charlottes.’

‘It’s this kind of thing that drives a man from his home to seek comfort and pleasure elsewhere,’ Larrie said darkly. He really felt exceedingly ill-used, and Dot’s heated face and worried expression did not appeal to him at all.

He even steeled his heart to the little tired tremble in her voice that showed the tears were near, and all the time came the distracting sound of baby’s mournful screams that no one had time or inclination to soothe.

[p 53]
‘You’re a bad wife, Dot,’ Larrie said, fully persuaded she was.

Dot gave a hysterical laugh.

‘All this because your food’s not ready to put in your mouth; men are as bad as animals in the Zoo when meal time is delayed!’

‘You fail in your duty in every respect, look at this kitchen, Dot, think of the dinner, listen to your child.’

But Dot, utterly tired and overwrought, burst into a passion of tears and brushed past him.

‘I h-h-hate you,’ she said, ‘I wish I wasn’t married to you, oh I do wish I wasn’t.’

‘And so do I,’ returned Larrie grimly. Even dinner did not restore his equanimity, albeit he made a tolerably hearty one with four boiled eggs, quantities of bread and butter, and half a tin of sardines as dessert.

Dot stayed out in the garden and refused food entirely.

She wept oceans of tired, hot tears and told herself she was the most miserable woman on earth. Later, when only her [p 54] eyelashes were wet and the quiet evening wind had cooled her cheeks and heart, she still wondered why girls all the world over were in such a hurry to marry.

She thought wistfully of her careless, unfettered girlhood that she had cut so short through her own wilfulness.

‘I might have had eight more years,’ she whispered to herself, ‘twenty-five is the proper age to marry, he would have been older and more patient too, and I should never have felt like this.’

She put down her head on the old seat back and sobbed again heartbrokenly for ‘like this’ meant that love was dying.

Then the wind dried her tears once more, and she sat staring at a patch of light that fell from the dining-room lamp out upon the little lawn: she was wondering drearily how she should be able to live out all the other days of her life.

Larrie stepped out on the verandah, she could see the red of his cigar and the dusky outlines of his figure.

[p 55]
‘Dot,’ he called.

The wind carried his voice over the sleeping flowers, and the wet grass down to the broken seat and flung it at her. She slipped out of her place and stole off towards the piece of ground that was still unreclaimed bush; she could not bear his presence yet. But he saw her white flitting dress and followed.

‘The dew’s as heavy as it can be, you’ll get another cold,’ he said, ‘come in.’

She shook her head without looking at him.

‘Come in, and don’t be a silly child,’ he said.

Again she shook her head and walked on.

But he caught her arm and turned her gently but firmly round.

‘I don’t want to have to carry you,’ he said. Then he threw his cigar away and spoke gravely.

‘Look here, Dot, I’m not going to say anything more about this afternoon, we’ll let that go, all I want you to understand is you must give up being childish, and act in a way [p 56] that befits a married woman. I’m tired of this.’

Dot did not speak, she hardly heard the words in fact, only the cold tone they were spoken in. She wondered vaguely if her love had been dying for a long time or if to-night was only the beginning. She hoped she should not live long, she felt quite glad to think the doctor had said she had no constitution; how could she go on living if calm careless affection was going to take the place of the wonderful love that had once made a glory of their every hour. They had both been incredulous of the existence of such a place as the dead level of matrimony—was this it indeed they had already come upon?

‘Well?’ said Larrie, ‘I’m waiting, Dot, are you going to give it up?’

She gave a little start. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Give up being so childish, will you try?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said dully. That was very easy to promise, she felt so old, so very much a woman to-night.

[p 57]
Larrie was only half satisfied with that quiet ‘Yes.’ Where was his little loving eager girl gone who would have done anything in the world once had he asked it, done it gladly and rejoiced at its difficulty, flung her arms round his neck and asked to be tried still more?

Only that spiritless ‘Yes,’ was her answer to-night. He stifled a sigh of bitter disappointment. This was marriage, he supposed.

‘It’s beginning to rain,’ he said heavily, ‘go in.’

She turned to go,—they had been standing for the last few minutes near the old broken seat.

Never yet had they parted after the making up of a quarrel without a kiss, and he would not omit it now.

But he stooped his head in almost an awkward way down to her bent one, and it was not the kiss of a lover.

She merely submitted a drooped cheek to his lips, and went slowly up to the house alone.

[p 58]
CHAPTER VI
LARRIE THE LOAFER

Larrie and Dot had come upon the great rock that lies near the beginning of the matrimonial path of all those who marry for love.

Oh the wonderful capacity they had in those days for torturing themselves! Larrie used to brood continually in secret over the change that had come into their lives; his manner grew cold and indifferent and he consumed as much tobacco as a man long years in the bush, and Dot used to shed hot, angry, grieving tears in private and devote herself to [p 59] the management of the house or the baby in the time that once she had always devoted to her husband.

Once in one of the passionate little outbursts she was subject to, she scoffed at him for his idleness.

‘No wonder you are so fault-finding, Larrie,’ she said, ‘staying at home day after day like an old maid. Other husbands don’t tie themselves to their wives’ apron-strings as you do.’

It was a little unjust of her, this pettish speech, though she had received provocation.

Larrie had had a bad illness, a kind of brain fever soon after his last law examination, and really had been ordered to take a long holiday.

‘You are a man of means,’ the doctor had said. ‘Travel about, loaf generally for a year or two, do anything you like, but avoid regular brain work.’

As a first step to a thorough holiday he had married Dot, and as his means, divided, would [p 60] not permit of travel, he settled down with an easy mind to ‘loaf.’

He used to ride, and fish, and shoot, walk, read, and work in the garden generally, but there were times when he had fits of superlative laziness and did absolutely nothing but lie in the hammocks and smoke, or wander about after Dot.

At first this state of things had been very delightful and idyllic, but after eighteen months Dot found it very trying, and used to wish sincerely that Larrie went off to business in the morning like other men and stayed away till evening. She felt certain he would appreciate both herself and his home more if he did so, and, seeing he was apparently quite well and strong, there seemed no reason for him not to go.

It was this feeling that had prompted the cutting speech about being tied to her apron, a garment by the way which she never wore on any occasion.

Larrie was bitterly offended.

‘You are tired of me, it has come to that [p 61] already,’ he said, and there was such a note of pain in his voice that she had slipped her arm round his neck in her old impetuous way.

‘It was horrid of me,’ she said, ‘of course you have a right to stay at home always if you like. Forgive me, Larrie.’

And he had forgiven her after a time, even kissed her kindly and told her not to mind.

But the very next day he had taken an office in town and sent a man to paint ‘Laurence Armitage, Solicitor,’ in white letters on the door.

All her entreaties now would not keep him at home a day, he caught the business train at eight o’clock in the morning and the evening one home at five.

He was like everyone else’s husband at last, and the garden of Eden had become merely a cottage with a piece of ground attached.

But oh, such long, long days they were to both of them at first.

Larrie, of course, had really nothing to do for weeks and weeks. He used to sit on his uncomfortable cane chair, put his long legs on [p 62] the window-sill and smoke and think half the day. Or he would pin a ‘Back in ten minutes’ notice on his door and stroll aimlessly about town or drop into the offices of other men he knew, and envy them their busy air of occupation.

Dot had never thought so many hours went to the day before.

Baby slept a great deal, and just beginning to teethe, was cross and less companionable than usual. The household tasks that she took upon herself now did not last long, and the little mother did so much sewing for everyone in the cottage that there was really nothing left for Dot to do, but put on occasional buttons and tapes. She resolved to let her voice fill up the blank in her life, it was her one great gift, and she determined she would cultivate it assiduously and then—but she had not yet quite decided what difference the ‘then’ would make.

The Red Road Country had a little plain church at the top of one of its hills, and Dot led the singing as a matter of course.

[p 63]
Sometimes she took long solo parts in the anthems, and then the ugly barn-like place of worship seemed full of glory. Several times people had come all the way from the shore just to hear the clear, sweet, joyous voice of that one little person in the front row. She had been asked more than once to join the choir of different big churches in Sydney, but there was no train service at all on Sunday for the line, and Larrie naturally refused to have an empty house the greater part of the day just because his wife had a voice. Choir practices were on Wednesday afternoons, and Dot attended regularly now; for one thing they helped to pass the time, for another she had a genuine desire to have the singing each Sunday as good as possible, and knew her presence stimulated the other members.

The Red Road Country is growing famous for its healthiness. People with land to sell in the district and the few boarding-house keepers, advertise it as ‘The Sanatorium of New South Wales.’ Doctors are beginning to send their patients there occasionally, instead [p 64] of to the Blue Mountains, and the pure, gum-tree filtered air certainly works wonders.

Mr Sullivan Wooster had been sent up for a month. He occupied a high position in the musical world of Sydney. He taught, conducted concerts, gave recitals of his own on organ and piano, and composed pieces that met with high praise in the old world. An attack of pleurisy had prostrated him recently, and he had come up to the Red Road Country for his convalescence, refusing to be sent to a more distant place. A Wednesday afternoon came a week after he had arrived. He was almost dying with the ennui of the place; the abounding gum trees were beginning to prey upon his very soul. He had taken rooms at a cottage where the recommendations had been ‘No children, beautiful views, and a piano.’

But the daughter of the house had artistic yearnings that she longed to impart, a passion for waltzes, and a tousled fringe that Wooster was always dreading to find detachments of [p 65] in his custards. The healthful Eucalypt on hill and dale comprised the view.

Naturally he spent most of his time on the Red Road. When he heard voices in the little church that afternoon, he strolled to the door just for the urgent want of something to do. When he heard Dot’s voice, he went in and sat down in the extreme back seat, much to the discomfiture of a nervous member of the choir.

After the practice was over he shook hands with the clergyman’s wife who had officiated at the little organ. He knew her very well; she had found these lodgings for him, and had sent him tomatoes on one occasion and some of her own orange wine, marvellously nasty stuff, on another.

He asked after her husband, praised the views, thought the weather would change, said nothing bitter about the landlady’s daughter, and offered to preside at the organ the next Sunday. Then he asked to be introduced to the girl with the beautiful voice.

[p 66]
A quarter of an hour later he was walking home with Dot.

Her books—she had three of them—were his excuse, and the fact that he had been walking that way before he turned in at the church. All the way they talked music.

Dot’s eyes were bright, her speech eager. What a pleasant, unlooked for change this was for her!

She knew him well by repute, as indeed did everyone in Sydney—she had been to his concerts, she played his compositions,—some of her friends had been his pupils,—he seemed more like an old than a new friend by the time they reached the top of the second hill. Half way down they noticed the gathering clouds; by the time they reached the gate it had begun to rain heavily.

Dot did not hesitate a moment. He had been ill she knew: a wetting might prove serious.

‘You must come in,’ she said, pushing open her little gate, ‘come and wait till it clears.’ She preceded him up the path and sprang up [p 67] the verandah steps into shelter, shaking the raindrops off her little short curls and laughing breathlessly after the few minutes’ hurry.

‘What a dear little girl!’ he said to himself, following with the utmost gladness.

He had never spent in all his life a pleasanter hour than the next one.

His artistic eye was charmed with the arrangements of the simple drawing-room, it was a real pleasure to run his fingers upon a good piano once more—here was all the music that made the earth a happy abiding place, and above all there was the presence of the sweet little girl with short soft curls, wide, eager eyes, and a voice truly wonderful. Oh the beautiful hour it was!

They had both gone straight to the piano as naturally as ducks go to water; they tried whole pages of different operas together, and went twice through some of the songs, just for the sheer pleasure of singing.

Then he played some Beethoven she had never found beautiful before, and after that [p 68] she played at his request piece after piece, and he was surprised at her culture.

He almost feared once or twice that the whole occurrence was an enchanted dream which would fade presently.

On his knees at the Canterbury drawer he found the score of Faust bent open at the ‘Jewel Song.’ He held it up eagerly.

‘Let me hear you in this,’ he said. ‘You sing it?’

Dot nodded joyously and opened it on the music holder as he took his seat.

She gave a little cough to clear her throat. He stood up, real concern on his face, and closed the book instantly.

‘There is nothing so culpable as over-tiring the voice; it was criminal of me to let you sing so much,’ he said.

There was a warm flush on her cheeks and her eyes were brilliant.

‘Let us have some tea then,’ she said, with an excited little laugh.

She crossed the room and rang the bell [p 69] at the fireplace. Quite a professional look was on his face.

‘I do trust you take proper care of your voice, Miss Armitage,’ was his really anxious remark.

Dot’s eyes flew open, then she laughed aloud just as Peggie appeared in the doorway.

‘Tea, please, Peggie, and baby—baby first,’ was her order.

Peggie departed, surprised displeasure on her face: she wondered who was the strange gentleman her mistress was on such good terms with, and she thought it most inconsiderate that she should want afternoon tea when there was so much ironing on hand. But she slipped a fresh muslin pinafore on the baby and put on his best little red shoes, before she carried him in to them all warm and flushed with his afternoon sleep.

‘I believe you thought I was only a girl, Mr Wooster,’ Dot said with a merry laugh as she stood up with her beautiful darling in her arms for inspection.

[p 70]
Mr Sullivan Wooster was certainly looking as thunderstruck as if the pretty bundle of muslin, and lace and sweetness she held had been a phoenix instead of the dearest little baby in the world.

‘I never dreamt,’ he began. ‘I quite thought—I certainly imagined Mrs Ingram said Miss Armitage; as well—,’ his eyes sought her little bare left hand.

Dot laughed that happy little laugh of hers again. She went over to the Canterbury and emptied a small Dresden cup upon her palm.

‘I always take my rings off before I play,’ she said, ‘it’s a pernicious habit, I know; my husband is always trying to break me of it, but I really do it unconsciously. I never can play properly with them on.’

After that, of course, he paid dutiful, expected court to the baby, and made the correct remarks about its eyes and long eyelashes and the quantity of its hair. But he no longer thought the occurrence an enchanted dream that might fade any minute. [p 71] The baby gnawing thoughtfully at its dear little shoe as it sat on the hearthrug, while Dot poured out tea, gave a surprising air of reality to everything.

The rain had not ceased for a moment, so there was good enough excuse for Mr Wooster’s prolonged stay, but Dot was greatly astonished to see Larrie come up the path presently, and know it was half-past five. She excused herself and slipped out to meet him. He came in cold, wet, and cross. It struck him how bright Dot’s face was and how exceedingly beautiful she was looking as she opened the door for him.

‘I have a visitor here, Larrie,’ she said in a whisper, ‘be quick and get your mackintosh off. It is Mr Sullivan Wooster and he is so nice; don’t stay to change your coat.’

But ‘Confound him!’ said Larrie.

He wanted Dot and Dot only just now. All the day he had had an unutterable longing to take her in his arms and beg her to let them start afresh, and make life a beautiful thing again. And now there was a visitor here.

[p 72]
‘You must ask him to stay for dinner, of course,’ Dot said. ‘He’s had pleurisy and can’t go home in the rain. It’s lucky there’s roast fowl to-day, and I’ll open a bottle of those apricots.’

Larrie was sulkily taking off his mackintosh as she talked.

‘What the deuce brought him here?’ he said. Dot said ‘H’sh,’ and gave him a little poke to remind him of the proximity of the drawing-room.

‘I’ll tell you after,’ she said. ‘I must go back now, I’ve left him alone with baby, and perhaps he’s not educated up to them.’

He went kitchenward to ask for dry boots, and Peggie was dishing up. The appetising smell reminded him he was too hungry to tell her to keep things in the oven on the chance of the visitor going. And as he went back again up the hall he saw the weather was too abominable to turn a dog out. But he said ‘Confound it’ under his breath outside the door, as necessary preparation to pressing Mr Sullivan Wooster to stay to dinner.

[p 73]
CHAPTER VII
A POCKET MADAME MELBA

Larrie had not yet taken Dot in his arms as he had intended that afternoon, and he had not asked her to begin afresh, so the result was still ‘dead level.’

But Dot was no longer unhappy. Every minute of her time was filled, and with a real object now in life, she felt she had been childish to waste so many hours in weeping and dwelling on imaginary differences in Larrie’s manner.

She began to teach herself Italian with the aid of several grammars, text books, dictionaries, and Mr Wooster.

[p 74]
She practised the most uninteresting vocal exercises with unwearied patience, and her perpetual singing of scales made Peggie take to a permanently closed kitchen door and remark in confidence to baby that his crying was music to it.

All this because Mr Wooster, musical critic and composer, had told her that if her voice was carefully cultivated and lost none of its wonderful purity and freshness in the process, he did not know any singer in Australia she would not surpass, that her fame would be equal in time to Melba’s or any of the first singers of the day.

She did not tell Larrie this new wonderful secret that made her heart sing even when her lips were silent. She wanted to keep it as a grand surprise to him, and in bursting out on an astonished world to amaze him also, and fill him with pride and gladness at her power. He was so used to her voice, had heard her chirping, and chirruping, and trilling ever since she was five, and though of course he loved it as he loved her, it had [p 75] not occurred to him that she was extraordinarily gifted.

Naturally he had heard praise and admiration and considered them only her due, but she had lived so quietly in this lonely Red Road country, both before and after her marriage, that she had never had the opportunity of hearing really competent criticism before. Even she herself had not dreamed her gift was so rich.

Fond of singing she had always been, it came as naturally to her as speech; she knew she had the best voice in the district, but that was not saying much; and sometimes when she had been to concerts in Sydney it had struck her that she could render certain songs of the performers quite as well as they did, if not better.

Mr Wooster’s words had been as a flash of lightning illuminating all her future life. What dreams she had over the piano as she climbed to clear B’s and wonderful birdlike upper C’s! How proud Larrie would be of her, what fame should be hers, how they [p 76] would travel with the wealth to come, and oh, what a brilliant, beautiful future baby’s should be!

She told Wooster that she wanted to keep the secret from her husband at present, and he smilingly acquiesced, so great was her happiness in it. In asking Larrie’s permission to give a few lessons to his wife he only said, as twenty others had done before, that her voice was very good indeed and would be much improved by training.

Larrie gave his consent half unwillingly; Dot’s singing he considered was quite good enough for anything, he was quite satisfied; but he saw it would seem churlish to refuse, and Dot would take it as a fresh instance of his ‘tyranny,’ so he allowed the lessons to begin.

He was not half so happy as Dot in those days. Poor Larrie!

It was very slow, unexciting work sitting in a twelve-foot-square office all day, waiting for clients who never came.

He had the feelings of an exile, too, whenever [p 77] he thought of the dear little cottage where the days had all been short and bright. It seemed as if Dot had banished him from the little kingdom because she was tired of him, and it was real torture to him to notice how light-hearted and happy she seemed without him, while he was more miserable than he had ever been in his life.

Dot could persuade herself both into and out of anything she wished with happy feminine ease. But with Larrie it was different. He was long-headed and his reasoning was nearly always excellent, but when he had once planted an idea in that head of his, it almost required an earthquake to uproot it. That was what Dot stigmatised his ‘aggravating obstinacy.’

He had upbraided her more than once for having what he called ‘moods,’ not being always the same to him, having the odd little fits of coldness or petulance that most women have occasionally, and can never explain logically and satisfactorily. But Dot used to retort that if she was subject to moods, he [p 78] had ‘tenses’ which were infinitely more objectionable.

A matter that she would shed a few tears over and then dismiss, he would brood over until he worked himself up into a state of positive wretchedness.

He really could not help himself, it was a certain kink in his nature that made him so, and the ‘tenses’ were times of misery both to himself and Dot.

Once in the early days of the baby, he had taken up the notion that Dot cared for it far more than she did for him, she was so wrapped up in it, and would spare him so little time from it.

He had grown absolutely jealous of the poor innocent little morsel, and so miserably unhappy, that it had needed a domestic cyclone and manifest neglect of the child before Dot could bring him to a healthy state of mind again.

He loved his little sweet wife with a passionate fervour and devotedness, that only one man in a thousand is capable of.

[p 79]
She was as necessary to him as the breath to his lungs, the blood to his heart. Had it been needful, he would have fought the whole world single-handed for her sake and never felt one of the scars.

But the very strength of his love made it a little cruel sometimes, he demanded almost too much of her and she could not always understand or be patient with it.

And now there was a cloud gathering on the domestic sky, and Dot with astonishing blindness thought it was a new, wonderful sun that was going to cast a warm, beautiful light over everything again.

‘Oh, what will Larrie say?’ she exclaimed in a fit of eager, childlike pleasure one afternoon when she had sung the ‘Jewel Song,’ in a way that even Wooster, carping critic as he was, could pronounce none other than perfect.

He looked at her tenderly, he nearly always said ‘dear little girl’ to himself when she was like that.

‘I think he will say he could not be prouder [p 80] of his wife than he is,’ he answered. ‘When shall you tell him?’

‘Oh, not yet,’ Dot said. ‘Not yet on any account, electric shocks are the salt of life. Imagine his face when I lay the programme before him, “The Jewel Song—Mrs—Lawrence—Armitage.”’ Her eyes sparkled, she gave one of her happy little laughs. ‘How I wish the battery was ready!’

Wooster was standing in the window looking absently out.

He had a clear cut face, ascetic would describe it, only women novelists are credited with adoring that word. It was not the face of a musician at all, at least it had not the liquid dreaming eyes, and wide, massive, brow framed in wavy hair that we conjure up generally when we speak of a musician’s face. It was monkish rather, the lips were clean shaved and somewhat severe, the hair very short and dark, and the eyes just now merely thoughtful. They were brown in colour, almost black on occasion, and had perhaps even more variety of expression than most [p 81] people’s eyes. In figure he was rather below the average height but he bore himself easily. ‘I would rather you spoke to your husband, Mrs Armitage, before the programmes are printed,’ he said, unconsciously making chords with his fingers on the window ledge. It had occurred to him that perhaps it was rather a bold step for his pupil to be contemplating a public appearance without her husband’s knowledge.

‘Not for any consideration,’ Dot said with great decision. ‘All I am living for is the programme surprise. He shall know two days before the concert, not a second sooner.’

Wooster played a chromatic scale with his thumb and second finger till he found the dust on the ledge made them unclean. He pocketed them and turned round.

‘He may consider I am abusing my privileges in preparing to bring you out like this,’ he said.

But Dot cried, ‘Nonsense,’ with haste and impatience. ‘It is the last thing he would think of,’ [p 82] she said; ‘why, he will be delighted, of course. He does not dream he has a wife talented enough to sing in the Centennial Hall before a mighty audience of all musical Sydney.’

‘Then you really will not tell him?’

‘Is there a stronger word than “No?” One absolute and irrevocable? If there is, consider it said.’

He laughed.

‘Suppose my nervous prudence makes me present him with the bagged cat.’

‘In that case,’ said Dot, ‘I should take my revenge in flat A’s. Have you no regard for me?’

He forgot the dust and played another slow scale.

[p 83]
CHAPTER VIII
PICTURES IN THE FIRE

May had come in wet and blustering. The gum trees waved wild mournful arms up to dull skies, the cottage garden was flowerless, green, and dripping. Even the creeping roses that bloomed eternally, hung crushed and wet or dropped their poor spoiled petals on the spongy paths.

Three months ago the back paddock had been a place of delight for the eye, all tall waving lines of Indian corn grown for the fowls, there had been poppies amongst it, real scarlet English poppies that some one had sown, as well as the white and pink garden [p 84] varieties. Dot had hidden there for fun one light evening with baby in her arms, and Larrie had sought her vainly for half an hour, it was so tall and thick. And when he had found her she had a wreath of poppies around her head, and baby was stuck all over with pink ones; the two had looked such darlings he had picked them both up in his arms and carried them all the way to the verandah hammock, and when he dropped them in, had said with breathless conviction,

To-day in the paddock there were only dead brown stalks and leaves, broken or bending before the rain. The poppy days were dead and the long light beautiful evenings, things of the vanished summer.

Even the hammocks that had swung invitingly in the sunshine, lay in tangled heaps on the laundry shelf; the verandah was in a flood, and gusts of wind and rain blew into the house at every fresh opening of a door or window.

[p 85]
There was an iron roof to the cottage, and had not Dot’s enthusiasm been so great just now, the ceaseless, melancholy drip and beat of the rain upon it would have proved too monotonous an accompaniment to her songs. But in truth she hardly heard it. To-morrow she was going to tell Larrie.

The morning post would bring her the programme, and two days later the great concert was to take place. She danced baby round the house in her excitement, such hard work it had been to keep her secret when there had been no other thought in her head for weeks.

She painted a delightful little picture that to-morrow was going to frame.

The background was the dining-room with the red curtains drawn, and a glowing log in the open fireplace; she put baby on the rug in his new pale blue frock with the short sleeves, and Larrie in the big easy chair with his feet on the fender and a pipe in his lips. And since in mental pictures the brush may depict thoughts, she drew him, thinking [p 86] anxiously of his income which the sudden depreciation in the value of property all over the colony was just now affecting greatly.

And then she was going to ask him to take her to the big concert at the Centennial Hall to show him the names on the programme in a careless way.

And his face was to grow first amazed, and then bright with pride and gladness, and the rest of the evening they were to spend in making plans for the brilliant future.

How delicious it was going to be! Her heart was throbbing with anticipation, her very blood seemed leaping in her veins.

But baby objected to be jumped up and down in the ecstatic little way she was treating him to; he gave vigorous signs of annoyance, so she sank into her low chair, and rocked soothingly. But she could not keep silent when he said with such wise, round eyes that he knew everything about everything, and was as pleased as herself.

‘Bab-bab,’ he began encouragingly, and hit at her with his dear little fists.

[p 87]
And ‘He should be a little prince, he should,’ was her deliciously inconsequent answer, punctuated with kisses on his wee nose.

‘Bab-bab-bab’—he tried to walk excitedly up the front of her dress in a horizontal position, and then make gleeful clutches at her hair.

But the short little curls slipped through his fingers, and he kept tumbling back in her lap, a little heap of cuddlesome sweetness.

‘Little son, small little sweet, mamma’s boy bonnie,’ she whispered again and again and again, her face in his neck or on his soft thick hair. That was her way of telling him that all the rest of their lives was going to be a bright golden dream, a triumphal march through the world, over a carpet of rose leaves and under a canopy of the bluest sky ever stretched out.

The very way he rounded his eyes and stuck his fingers in her mouth to be bitten, and crowed ‘bab-bab,’ showed how perfectly he understood and approved.

[p 88]
But presently he began to nod like a little heavy-headed rose, and she nestled him up close to her breast and sang softly, happily below her breath.

Drip, drip on the roof fell the rain; splash, splash in the path-puddles where the blown roses were drowning; tap tap, at the misty window panes.

There was a kink somewhere in the rocking-chair, it made a not unmusical little sound at each backward swing, marking time to Dot’s low singing. Baby could not have slept properly without that gentle jerk between the rise and fall.

The logs fell asunder.

All Dot’s enchanted castles were building in the red glow, now they rose up gloriously with the blaze, and the gladness in her eyes deepened.

‘Bab-a-bab,’ murmured baby sleepily, a gleam of blue just peeping through the long lashes to discover the noise. But the soft singing bore him off again, and the rock, rock, rock of the chair.

The lashes lay quiet again on the little cheeks, one small hand uncurled from Dot’s finger, and lay open on her knee. Again the logs fell apart, again the castles grew glorious. Baby’s hand curled up again, but the sweet lashes were too heavy to lift.

A wild gust of wind flung itself at the cottage, every door and window rattled, the garden gate clicked and then banged.

Some one opened the front door, and the sound of the rain grew louder, then the [p 90] dining-room handle was turned. Dot gave a little whispered cry of surprise. ‘Larrie!’ she said, but so softly that baby’s hand never stirred.

It was hours before his usual time, and never before had he shortened his voluntarily imposed exile.

She noticed how exceedingly wet he was, there was not a dry thread upon him, the water was even now pouring off him and making a pool on the floor. Then she saw the white passion on his face, the terrible look of his lips, his eyes. She laid the child down on the sofa cushions and went towards him slowly, and with fading colour. What dreadful thing was coming?

‘Larrie!’ she said, a frightened tremble in her voice, as she put out her hands to touch him. But the anger in his eyes deepened. He went closer to her, he actually grasped her roughly by the shoulders and shook her.

‘How dared you?’ he said. ‘How dared you?’

She looked at him with parted lips and [p 91] widening eyes. She could find nothing to say so intense was her amaze.

‘How dared you?’ he repeated. He shook her again to hasten her answer.

But she only said ‘I think you’re mad,’ and caught her breath.

He saw he was wetting the shoulders of her pretty pink tea-gown with his coat and took his hands away.

The genuine surprise on her face disarmed him a little, it even occurred to him for the first time that he might have the inexpressible relief of finding he was mistaken.

His eyes grew a shade quieter and he did not speak for a minute.

In the brief interval wifely concern appeared on Dot’s face. She put her hand on his wet sleeve and tried to move him towards the hall.

‘Come and get dry things,’ she said, ‘how wet you are!’

But he would not stir.

‘I want to speak to you,’ he said.

‘When you are dry,’ urged Dot, ‘it can wait three minutes.’

[p 92]
He sat down on a chair.

‘Now,’ he said.

She sat down, too, just on the edge of the sofa by the sleeping child. She was concerned because a fly would hover round its face and distract her attention.

‘I went to Bayley’s this morning to get some notepaper printed,’ Larrie said, and paused. But Dot seemed to find nothing very remarkable in that, and looked merely attentive.

‘There was a proof of that on the counter,’ he continued, and threw a sheet of old English printing on pale green paper towards her.

She started up, vexation on her face.

‘Oh what a shame!’ she cried. She read it through standing up, and the knowledge that all the colours were straightway rubbed out of her beautiful picture, made two curves of disappointment show at her mouth corners.

‘Then it is your name?’ said Larrie, and his voice sounded positively faint.

Dot brightened a little. ‘Of course it is,’ she said, ‘I wish you hadn’t seen it though; [p 93] I was dying to surprise you, Larrie.’ Then she went up closer to him. ‘Aren’t you going to kiss your own pocket Madame Melba?’

She felt how flat the scene had fallen even as she spoke, and was fit to cry at the disappointment. Then she remembered Larrie’s anger a few minutes back, ‘But what made you so cross?’ she said.

‘How dare you do such a thing?’ he said, his eyes beginning to blaze again, ‘how dare you; this comes of letting that infernal fellow come to the house so much.’

‘You mean Mr Wooster?’ Dot was beginning to fear for her husband’s sanity.

‘It’s his concert, you are singing at his instigation, you have kept it hidden from me.’ His voice rose.

‘Of course I have,’ Dot said. Then she spoke very slowly, ‘Do you really mean to say, Larrie, that all this is because I am going to sing on Friday?’

‘Friday!’ shouted Larrie, he had actually not seen the date, so absorbed had he been [p 94] in the sight of his own name on that green paper, with Mrs prefixed.

‘Because I’m going to sing on Friday?’ repeated Dot.

With a superhuman effort he controlled himself; he knew the impotence of anger.

‘Tell me everything,’ he said shortly, ‘and stand there.’

Dot was moving towards the sofa again. She came back to him to save time though the tone was provocative; she knew that he would have held her by sheer physical force if she refused while he was like this. Then she told him the very high opinion Mr Wooster had of her voice; how he felt confident she had but to be heard by competent critics to be assured of success, how he had arranged this concert to give her the opportunity and how she had been keeping the secret just to surprise him. He heard her to the end and acquitted her of concealing it for any unworthy motive.

‘But I should not dream of allowing you to appear in public,’ he said, ‘so you can tell [p 95] Wooster as soon as you like that he must fill your place.’ He stood up as if the matter was settled, he even took off his hat and remarked that it was wet.

But Dot had gone very white.

‘You mean to say, Larrie, that you would try to stop me now?’ she said.

‘I mean to say I shall stop you, there will be no trying about it,’ he answered.

His temper had not perfectly balanced itself again, and that together with the unpleasant dampness he was just beginning to feel, made his speech somewhat despotic.

‘Your reasons?’ Dot’s voice was quiet, dangerously so.

‘I do not care for my wife to sing in a public place like that, I don’t approve of the way the thing has been managed, I don’t like you having so much to do with that fellow, that is quite enough,’ he moved to the door. ‘Where’s that old brown coat of mine, I hope you haven’t given it away.’

But Dot was sitting on the sofa again, fighting with herself far too fiercely to think [p 96] of old brown coats, indeed, the question conveyed no intelligence to her at all. Out of twenty conflicting emotions, rebellion was by far the strongest. She said, ‘I shall go, I shall go,’ again and again and again in such stormy whispers, that baby stirred and tossed the linen antimacassar off his hands. Larrie had gone to get dry.

‘I shall go,’ she repeated with strong emphasis on the last word.

‘Bab, bab, bab,’ said baby softly. He yawned deliciously and flung up his arms.

Dot gave him a hurried pat or two.

‘Go to sleep,’ she said.

‘Googul,’ he answered insinuatingly. He struggled into a sitting position and leaned towards her. But she lifted him on to her knee quite unresponsively. There was nothing in her mind but Larrie’s command that meant death to her rose-coloured dreams. She hardly recognised baby’s presence at all.

‘He is not my master,’ she said aloud, her eyes full of rebellion.

But ‘Yes he is,’ answered Larrie quietly, as he came in again through the second door.