the fourth, his wife.
Mrs. Nix, whose maiden name had been Nancy Rolls, was "about" forty
years of age. Even Mr. Nix was not quite sure how old she was: it
was her way to exclaim, with her hearty, cheerful laugh: "We're all
getting on, you know. There was a time when to be thirty seemed to be
as good as dead.... Now that I'm over thirty...." She was round, plump,
red-faced, brown-haired, with beseeching eyes, and a little brown mole
on the middle of her left cheek. She dressed just a little too smartly,
with a little too much colour. Mr. Nix, himself attached to colour, did
not notice this. He liked to see her gay. "Nancy's a real sport," was
his favourite exclamation about her. He had married her when she was a
"baby" seventeen years of age. They had been great "pals" ever since.
Sentiment had perhaps gone a little out of their relationship. They
were both deeply sentimental people, but for some reason sentiment was
the last thing that they evoked from one another. The death of their
boy Lancelot should have brought them together emotionally, but their
attitude had been, for so long, that of an almost masculine good cheer
and good humour, that they bore their great sorrow individually. They
had forgotten the language of emotion.
Mr. Nix, in the deep recesses of his soul, pondered over this. He
wanted now to get closer to Nancy. He was sure that she felt "our
Lance's" death quite desperately, but after the shock of the first
month she put on her bright clothes again, and went about to the
theatre and entertained her friends. "There's enough misery in the
world without my trying to add to it," she would say. "I know some
people think it's bad of me to wear these clothes, but it is what Lance
would have liked."
As they sat in their cosy little flat, perched high on the top floor of
Hortons, evening after evening, Mr. Nix with the paper, Mrs. Nix with a
novel, they were both perhaps conscious that the boy's death had made a
barrier, and as they lay side by side in their bed at night they were
still more conscious of this. The darkness seemed to strip from them
that lively exterior life that they had developed. Mr. Nix would lie
there and think about Nancy for hours....
In the daytime indeed, his hands were full. The servants alone were
problem enough for anybody. First, the men all went away to the war,
and he had to have women--women for everything, women for the kitchen,
women for the hall, women valets. And then, just as he was getting used
to them, the men began to come back--or rather, he had to get new men,
men who must be taught their jobs, and learn his rules, and fall in
with his ways.
Fortunately he was blessed with a wonderful portress, Fanny. Fanny,
on whom, after a time, the whole great establishment seemed to hang.
But what did Fanny do but become restless after the Armistice, fall a
victim to a conscience which persuaded her that she was, by remaining,
keeping a man out of his proper job, and, when he had persuaded her
over that difficulty, what should she do then but become engaged to
one of the valets, whom she presently married. Then the tenants of the
flats were disturbed and agitated by the general unrest. Poor old Mr.
Jay was so deeply agitated by the new world that he died of the shock
of it, and as though that were not enough, old Miss Morganhurst went
out of her mind, and died in a fit.
It became more and more difficult to secure the right kind of tenants.
Hortons had always been a very expensive place, and only wealthy people
could afford to live there. But how strange now the people who had
money! A young man like the Hon. Clive Torby, representative of one of
the finest families in England, found suddenly that he had not a penny
in the world, and gaily took to house-painting, while on the other side
of the shield there were people like the Boddingtons, who simply did
not know how to behave, who, wealthy though they were, should never
have been in Hortons at all.
Then again, Mr. Nix was most seriously disturbed by the strange new
interchanging of the sexes that seemed to have sprung up in this
post-war England. "Positively," he said to his wife one evening, "all
the men seem to be turning into women, and all the women into men." He
read an article in some paper that lamented the rapidity with which
women were abandoning all the mysteries that had made them once so
charming. How thoroughly Mr. Nix agreed with the writer of the article!
He read it all through to Mrs. Nix, who was entirely in accord with
every word of it.
"The girls are nothing better than baggages," she declared; "that's my
belief."
Hortons, its dignity, its traditions, its morality, was in danger.
"I'll save it if I have to die for it," Nix declared.
As the weeks advanced his troubles extended. One strike followed
another--coal, food, labour, clothes, all faltered, died, were revived
again. Mr. Robsart, the famous novelist, his most eminent tenant, awoke
early one morning to find a pipe leaking. His dining-room wall-paper--a
very beautiful and exclusive one--developed bright pink and purple
spots. It was weeks before anything could be done. Mr. Robsart, who
had been led by an excited female public to believe his personality to
be one upon which the sun never set, said what he thought about this.
The balls faltered in the air, their glittering surfaces menacing and
threatening.
The tight-rope trembled; the crowd roared like angry beasts.... This
dream was ruining Mr. Nix.
And through it all, like a refrain that set rhythm and measure to the
rest, was the sense that he ought to do "something" for Mrs. Nix, that
she was unhappy, but would not tell him about her unhappiness, that he
should come closer to her, and did not know how.
Into this new troubled confusion of Mr. Nix's life came a figure. One
day a young man who had known Lancelot in France came to see them. His
name was Harry Harper. He was little more than a boy, was in the London
Joint City and Midland Bank, and was as fresh and charming a lad as
you would be likely to find anywhere. Mr. Nix liked him at once. In
the first place, he had many new things to tell about Lance, and he
told them in just the right way, with sentiment, but not too much, with
humour a little, and with real appreciation of Lance's bravery, and his
popularity with his men, and his charm with everyone.
Mrs. Nix sat there, on her bright red sofa, whilst young Harper told
his tale, and her face was as red as the furniture. The tears glittered
in her eyes, but they did not fall. Her plump hands were locked lightly
on her lap. She stared before her as though she were seeing straight
through into the horrors of that terrible No Man's Land, where her boy
had faced the best and the worst and made his choice.
"He was always a good boy," she said at last. "You will understand, Mr.
Harper, I'm sure. From his very cradle he was good. He never cried like
other babies and made a fuss. Of course, as he grew older he had a
little of the devil in him, as one might say. I'm sure no mother would
have it otherwise. But--Oh! he _was_ a good boy!"
"There, there, mother," said Mr. Nix, patting her soft shoulder. "I'm
sure it's very good of you, Mr. Harper, to come and tell us all this.
You can understand that we appreciate it."
Young Harper took it all the right way. His tact was wonderful for a
boy of his years. Mr. Nix, who, like most Englishmen, was a deep-dyed
sentimentalist without knowing it, loved the boy.
"You come and see us whenever you like. We're in most evenings. You'll
always be welcome." Harper availed himself of the invitation and came
very often. He was leading, it seemed, a lonely life. His parents lived
in Newcastle and they had many children. His lodgings were far away in
Pimlico, and he had few friends in London. Before a month had passed he
was occupying a little spare bedroom in the Nix quarters--a very little
bedroom, but wonderful for him, he declared, being so marvellously in
the centre of London. "You've given me a home," he cried; "can't thank
you enough. You don't know what Pimlico can be for a fellow!"
As the days passed Mr. Nix was more and more delighted with the
arrangement. Mrs. Nix had a way of going to bed early and Mr. Nix and
Harry would sit up talking. Mr. Nix looked forward to those evenings.
He had, he discovered, been wanting someone with whom he might talk,
and clear his ideas a bit. Harry, although he was so young, had really
thought very deeply. Mr. Nix, whose thinking was rather of an amateur
kind, very quickly forgot the difference between their years. Harry and
he talked as man to man. If anything, Harry was perhaps the older of
the two....
Mr. Nix found that it helped him very much when Harry talked. He did
not seem to be balancing so many balls in mid-air when Harry was
sharing his difficulties.
The boy had, too, a charm. His air of asking Mr. Nix's advice, as a man
of the world. That was what Mr. Nix liked to be considered, and he told
Harry many sensible things, especially about women.
"Don't let them catch you," was the burden of his opinion. "They are
the devil for getting hold of a man before he knows where he is. Play
with them, but don't take them seriously, until the right one comes
along. You'll know it as soon as she does. So much wiser to wait. But
they're clever ... damned clever...."
"You're right, sir," said Harry. "Ab-so-lute-ly: I remember a girl
once----"
He plunged into reminiscence. Finally, however, he declared that he
didn't care very much about women. He meant to lead his life apart from
them. He'd watched other fellows and he knew the mess they could get
into.... Especially married women....
"Ah! married women!" repeated Mr. Nix with a sigh. There wasn't much
that he didn't know about married women. It was terrible the way that
they were kicking over the traces these days. Really stopped at
nothing. Why, he remembered a married woman....
Then Harry remembered a married woman....
Then Mr. Nix remembered still another married woman.
This led quite naturally to certain disclosures about Mrs. Nix. Mr.
Nix had indeed reasons to be thankful. _There_ was a woman who was
corrupted by none of these modern ideas.
She was no prude, she knew her world, but she believed in the good old
rules--"One man for one woman."
"It's been a bit lonely for her," Mr. Nix continued, "since Lancelot
went, and it's a bit difficult to make her happy. I'm so busy all day,
you see. Takes the whole of a man's time to run a place like this
nowadays, I can tell you. Be nice to her, Harry. See as much of her as
you can. She likes you."
"Indeed, I will," said Harry fervently. "You two are the first real
friends I've ever had. I'm grateful, I can tell you."
Now, strangely enough, the more Mr. Nix thought of his wife, the more
seriously and earnestly he puzzled as to the right way to bring her
close to him, and make her happy, the less he seemed to realise her.
There comes, perhaps, that moment in most married lives when the
intimacy of years has thickened the personalities of man and wife so
deeply with custom and habit that the real individualities can no
longer be discerned. Something of the kind came now to Mr. Nix. The
more he attempted to draw closer to Nancy, the more he realised that he
was hearing a voice, watching a physical form, having physical contact,
but dealing with shadows. He knew so precisely her every movement, her
laugh, the way that she caught her breath when she was agitated, the
touch of her step on the carpet, that she was no longer a person at
all. She was part of himself, perhaps, but a part of himself that he
could not treat with his imagination. He had not known before that he
had an imagination. The war had given it birth and now it was growing,
demanding food, living, thrusting, experiencing, leading its master
into many queer places--but neglecting altogether Mrs. Nix.
He found himself, as he sat in his little office downstairs, positively
trying to force himself to realise what his wife was like. She had
bright yellow hair, a rosy face, a plump figure; she wore two rings,
one with a ruby stone, another a pearl. She was marvellously young for
her age.... She....
Then, when with a start of surprise he realised what he was doing, he
wondered positively whether he were not going mad. He buried himself
more and more in the work of the place, of the office, fighting to keep
everything straight and proper, realising, although he was frightened
to admit it, that Hortons was more vivid to him than anything or
anybody else.
Except Harry! "Thank God that boy's here," he thought. "I don't know
what we'd do without him. That was a piece of luck for us."
He lay on his bed staring up into the dark ceiling; he heard his
wife's regular breathing at his side, and he saw, there in the
living dusk above him, the golden balls dancing, rising and falling,
multiplying, diminishing, tumbling faster and faster and faster.
Then, with the months of June and July, Mr. Nix was given very little
more time in which to speculate about life, women, and his wife.
Everything in his business affairs became so complicated that his life
extended into a real struggle for existence. He had the sense that
Hortons, which had hitherto shown him a kindly, friendly face, was
suddenly hostile, as though it said to him: "Well, I've stood your
hanky-panky long enough. I'll have no more of it. I'm finished with
your management of me!"
Strange how a building suddenly decides to fall to pieces! Hortons
so decided. Every window, every door, every pipe, every chimney
misbehaved; tenants appeared from all sides bitterly complaining.
Servants rioted; the discontent that was already flooding the world
poured through the arteries of the building, sweeping it, deluging.
Mr. Nix showed them the character that he had. He took off his coat and
set to work. He was no longer the round ball-like little man with the
cherubic countenance and the amiable smile. He was stern, autocratic,
unbending. He argued, persuaded, advised. He wrote, to his own
surprise, a very stiff letter to the Board of Directors, telling them
that they must understand that times were difficult. Rome wasn't built
in a day, and that if they were dissatisfied with him they must find
someone else in his place. To his amazement, he received a very polite
letter from the Secretary of the Board, saying that the Directors were
thoroughly satisfied with him and had no complaints.
He went on during that month from struggle to struggle. He forgot
Harry; he puzzled no longer about Mrs. Nix. He was so tired when night
came that he slept the sleep of a drugged man. He no longer saw the
dancing balls. He was invigorated, uplifted, desperately excited.
He found in himself a capacity for organisation that he had never
suspected. He discovered that it delighted him to meet and to conquer
his servants. He saw in their eyes, and he was delighted to see it,
their own astonishment at this new character that he was developing.
He browbeat them, told them to go, showed them that they had better
stay, held them together and forced them to content. They were afraid
of him. By Jove!--They were afraid of him! He looked at himself in the
glass. He blessed the crisis that had shown him in his true colours. He
contemplated the life of Napoleon....
He went out, and with his own right arm fetched in sulky and
wage-demanding workmen. He talked to them and found that there was a
great deal to be said on their side.
He began to discover that strange truth that almost everyone was
discovering just at this time--namely, that when you read the papers or
thought of your fellow human beings in the mass, you hated and despised
them, but that, if you talked to any individual, man or woman, you
liked and understood them.
Pride grew in his heart, and happiness and contentment.
By the middle of July Hortons was itself again. The crisis was over.
Prices were impossible, labour rebellious, the world topsy-turvy, but
Hortons was at peace. He sighed, put back his shoulders, patted his
little stomach appreciatively, loved all the world and, once again,
considered Mrs. Nix.
He would give her now all his time. He would take her out; make her
presents; they should have a splendid new life together.
He came back one evening after a successful meeting with the Board,
opened his little hall door, hung up his coat, whistling to himself,
opened his drawing-room door, saw Mrs. Nix on the red sofa, enveloped
in the arms of Harry, who was kissing her ears, her eyes, her mouth.
He saw this, and then he saw the neat little sitting-room sway and
heave. A bright blue vase, holding yellow sprays of some dried flower,
raced towards him across the mantelpiece, and he stepped back, putting
his hand on to a chair behind him to avoid its contact. The room
steadied itself and he realised that he felt sick. He put up his hand
to his mouth. Then every sensation was swallowed up by a mad, violent
anger, an anger that seemed to increase with every wild beat of his
heart, as though that heart were, of its own purpose, pounding him on
to some desperate act.
Behind his anger he saw the two faces. Nancy was sitting square on the
sofa, her hands spread out, plunging deep into the red stuff of the
sofa. Harry was standing, his face white, his eyes bewildered and
defiant.
"You might at least have locked the door," Mr. Nix said, whispering.
His knees trembled so that he suddenly sat down and stared across at
them.
"Why didn't you lock the door?" he repeated. "You knew I'd be coming
back."
"Look here ..." Harry began. He stopped, took a pull at himself,
straightened his back, stood instinctively as though he were obeying
orders--"I love your wife. I've loved her for weeks. Of course, it's
all my fault. She doesn't care for me in that way. She's just lonely,
that's all."
"Lonely!" said Mr. Nix.
"Yes--lonely! You don't know that you've been neglecting her all
this time, do you? But you have! And it's your own fault, all this.
Nothing's happened. She'd never deceive you. She's too good for that.
But it would be your own fault if she did.... Not that I'm not a cad.
Of course I am, coming in and your being such a friend to me and then
behaving like this. I'm a cad all right, but you're to blame too. She's
the only one who hasn't done any wrong."
Where had Mr. Nix heard all this before? He'd seen it on the stage.
Just like this. Exactly. Nevertheless, his anger mounted. He saw the
room coloured crimson. He suddenly bounded from his chair and rushed
at Harry. He tried to hit him in the face. There was a most ludicrous
struggle. The two hot faces were suddenly close to one another. Then a
chair fell with a crash, and, as though the noise made both men feel
the absurdity of their situation, they withdrew from one another and
stood there glaring....
Mr. Nix hated that he should be trembling as he was. Every part of him
was shaking, and he was so conscious of this that he wanted to escape
and return only when he was calmer.
"Very well ..." he said. "Of course, I know what to do. I hope that I
shall never see either of you again."
"One moment." It was his wife's voice, and he turned round surprised
that it should sound just as it had always sounded.
That was pathetic, and there was an impulse in him, that he instantly
fiercely defeated, to go to her and take her hand.
"One moment," she repeated. "I've got something to say to this." She
rose and stood, her hands moving nervously against her dress, her eyes
staring straight into her husband's face. "It's quite right that I was
kissing Harry, but it isn't right that I love him. I don't love him
a bit. I don't love anybody. I'm just sick of men. I've been sick of
them a long time. It was just because I didn't feel Harry was a man at
all that I let him kiss me. A dog or a baby would have done just as
well.... I don't care what you do. You can turn me out. I want to be
turned out. I want to be free, I want to be with women, and work on my
own, and do sensible things, and have my own life with no men in it....
No men in it anywhere. I've been wanting this for years; ever since
the war started. The world's just run for men and you think you're so
important that you're _everything_. But you're not. Not to a woman of
my age who's been through it all, and hasn't children. What have I been
sitting at home for, waiting for you, seeing after your food, keeping
you in a good temper, looking after you? Why should I? I'm myself--not
half of you. And Harry too. He was a nice boy at first. But suddenly he
wants me to love him, to belong to him, to follow him. Why should I, a
boy like that? I want to be with other women, women who understand me,
women who know how I feel, women who have their own world and their own
life, and are independent of men altogether.... I've wanted to go for
months--and now I'm going."
She moved towards the door. The absurdity of what she had said kept him
standing there in front of her. She wanted only women! Oh, of course,
that was only bluff, put up to carry off a difficult situation.
People did not _want_ their own sex--a man for a woman, a woman for a
man. That was the way the world went, and it was right that it should
be so.
Nevertheless, her words had had behind them a strange ring of
conviction. He stared at her in his round, puzzled, solid way. He did
not move from where he was, and she could not reach the door without
brushing against him, so she also stayed.
Another mood came to her. "Oh! I'm so sorry ..." she said. "I've done
very wrong to hurt you. You've always done your very best, but it was
over--you and I--so long ago. Long, long before Lance was killed!"
"Over?" he repeated.
"Yes, over--men never know unless it's worth some woman's while to tell
them."
Harry's voice broke in.
"I'd better go.... I ought to ... I mustn't...." He murmured something
more, but they neither of them noticed him. They were intent upon one
another. He left the room.
Mr. Nix stared desolately around him. "I don't know what to do," he
repeated to himself. "I don't know what to do."
She sighed as she might have done with a child who was trying her.
"We've both got to think it out," she said. "I'm glad now that it's
happened. It ends all that falseness. I'll talk it over with you as
long as you like."
She moved forward; he stood aside and she left the room. He sat down
on the red sofa and stayed there, until late into the night, trying
to puzzle out his position. Sometimes, in his distress, he spoke to
himself aloud.
"That's what it is ... the world's changed. Entirely changed. Women
don't want men any more. But that's awful! They can't get on alone.
Nancy can't get on alone. She thinks she can, but she can't. She gets
taken in by the first silly boy that comes along. I believe she cares
for Harry more than she said.... She must.... She wouldn't have let him
kiss her...."
And that was the first thing that he found in the voyage of mental
discovery that he was now making--namely, that he couldn't be jealous
of Harry if he tried. His anger had left him. There was nothing in
that. He knew it absolutely. Nancy had spoken the truth when she had
said that she didn't care for that boy any more than for a dog or a
baby. No, he felt no jealousy, and now, oddly enough, no anger.
But he did not know how he felt. He did not know what to do. Again he
saw the golden balls tossing in the air above him, and there was she,
alluring, glittering, tumbling, escaping.
He thought, with a smile of contempt, of his conquest of Hortons. That
was no achievement. But this, this new woman, this new Nancy, here was
something.
He slept that night on the sofa, taking off his coat and wrapping a rug
around him. He slept the slumber of the dead.
Next day they had only one talk together, and that a very little one.
Suddenly after breakfast she turned round upon him.
"Well," she said, "what are you going to do?"
"I don't know," he answered, and then because he felt that she would
despise him for being so indeterminate, he went on, "It doesn't
matter about Harry. I was only angry for a moment seeing you together
like that. I know that you don't care for him. It was what you said
afterwards--about not caring for me any more. Did you mean that?"