|DEBT appeals to some people. They feel that when they are in debt they
have had more out of life than life owes to them. Sam had given Gatenby
his cheque and was therefore not in debt to him, but he proceeded to
spend the five pounds as recklessly as if it had been borrowed money.
He meant to astonish Ada, and succeeded, but the surprise he sprang did
not work quite as he anticipated. For a moment, indeed, as he bought
her hats and blouses she glowed with unaffected gratitude, and he tasted
with her the joy of headstrong acquisition. But Ada’s glow was quick to
pass.
She had time in the train to forget the splendour of his presents and
the dash that she would cut next Sunday, and to remember that he had
spent a lot of money; he who denied that he had more than two pounds to
spend had spent seven. Obviously, he had lied to her.
It was true, she thought, that he had repented of his lie and of his
meanness, and bought handsomely: the more handsome the purchase, the
more demonstrable the lie.
She recalled her dreadful interview with Anne, Anne’s statements of his
means, and how little they conformed to the scale of Sam’s furnishing.
She pondered Sam’s open-handedness in the blouse-shop, and concluded that
the Branstones were congenital liars about money.
In the future she would know how to act. Sam had plenty.
“So you had money up your sleeve all the time,” she said.
Sam winked facetiously. “There are a lot of funny things up my sleeve,”
he said.
“I’m learning that,” said Ada. Which he took for a compliment; and
grinned.
He had long since made up his mind that the way with women was to
mystify them, to treat them like children at a conjuring entertainment,
to surprise them with results, but never to explain. He nearly choked
with pride over his exploit with Sir William Gatenby. But for the
hat-box and the blouses up there on the rack, what he had done was too
good to be true, and certainly it was too good to be told to a woman.
They did not understand business; no woman could appreciate the daring
spirit of his feat.
If he told Ada that he had borrowed from Gatenby, she would simply say
“Oh, yes,” and treat his unexampled audacity as a matter of course. It
was inspiration, brilliantly conceived and brilliantly executed, and its
bright memory was not to be tarnished by a woman’s dull acceptance of it
as something not in the least extraordinary.
He grinned and did not tell, and what did not occur to him was that if
he offered no explanation she would supply one of her own. It is
idiotic to tell a wife everything, but wise to tell nearly everything;
especially when it is open to her to draw a false conclusion.
Sam did not think a false conclusion open to her, because he still
believed the best of Ada, because he was still in love. But falling out
of love is desperately easy.
“As a walled town,” says Touchstone, “is worthier than a village, so is
the forehead of a married man more honourable than the bare brow of a
bachelor,” and Sam was married. He could lay that flattering unction
to his soul, could hold his head higher, because he was a ratepayer and
bore responsibilities, and went home at night to a house with a garden.
He did all that, and it was empty honour because success in marriage, as
in all else, is not to be had ready-made, but depends upon the will to
make adjustments.
The will can come best from passion, and there was no passion here to
tide them over the awkward age of marriage, the first difficult year
when the adjustments must, if ever, be made. Granted passion, a man can
love a woman whom he knows to be a murderess; let passion lack, and
he can fall out of love because the woman snores or is untidy. Sam’s
marriage was not made in heaven, but by Ada in Heaton Park, and with
a marriage so made it is as easy to fall out of love as off a house.
Little things count more than big when there is no passion to create its
life-long mirage.
If you cannot have the mirage of passion there is a useful substitute
called common sense, another name for compromise, and Ada refused to
compromise. She was for self, unmitigated and supreme. Ada left the
adjustments to Sam, and relaxed in nothing from her perfect selfishness.
The little thing which counted heavily against her, almost at once, was
simply that Ada was untidy. She did not invent places for things, or, if
she did, they were never used. She left her clothes downstairs after she
had been out, and the piano is not the place for a hat or the sofa
for an umbrella. It annoyed Sam to distraction to find her clothes
distributed about their bedroom, slung carelessly over chair backs,
pitched on the floor.
Men are not the untidy sex: the virtue of tidiness, like most others, is
evenly distributed. Sam was tidy by nature, and habit is stronger still.
Ada’s misfortune was that he was used to Anne, that Anne was neat and
Ada a slut. Sam did not know until he missed it how much he appreciated
Anne’s tidiness, how much he needed it and how much he hated untidiness
until he lived with it in Ada. In London, in the hotel, he had excused
what he saw of it, because it was in an hotel; which was also why there
had been little to see, by reason of a good chambermaid.
At home, it hurt him and he could do nothing. Ada did nothing, either.
She had not married for love, and one does not change a habit without
strong motive. His hints appeared to Ada peevish and unreasonable.
She thought he made mountains out of molehills and despised him for
small-mindedness; he thought a woman who could not put a petticoat into
a drawer when he asked her was wilfully provoking him.
She was not wilful of set purpose. She simply refused to disturb her
habits, to accommodate herself to him, to make a sacrifice to love. She
had no love to which to sacrifice.
And presently he found out that he, too, did not love. But that was
all. Then and afterwards that was, damnably, all. He did not love, but
neither did he hate. He had never loved her deeply enough to hate her.
That was the tragedy of Sam’s marriage: indifference, the deadliest sin.
He was indifferent to her, to her untidiness and even to her
extravagance. She could not treat clothes reasonably, she did not know
how to wear them when she had them, but she lusted madly to possess
them. She was grossly, inexcusably extravagant, and he was indifferent.
He was indifferent because he was growing rich, and wanted his energies
for the purpose of growing richer, not of quarrelling with her.
That was another tragedy. They never quarrelled. They never cleared the
air, they never flushed the drain. They did not make adjustments, but
left things where they were, in a bad place. On honeymoon, they turned
from looking at each other to look at London, and at home, after one
experience of revelation, they did not seek another, but rebounded and
looked anywhere but at themselves.
But Peter was looking, and Anne, through the eyes of George, was
looking, and it seemed to her that things were happening as she had
expected they would happen. She had said the girl was no good and what
George told her in his fumbling way gave her to see that the girl turned
wife was equally no good. Anne tightened her lips grimly and went on
with her efficient charring. She thought her time would come.
Peter looked for the coming of love to bless this marriage to which he
had consented in the belief that his God of love would sanctify. He
had trusted to the strength of Sam, and to the hope that Sam’s strength
would turn to sweetness; and it only turned to business. It did not
lead Ada from materialism, but drew Peter himself, unwittingly at
first, towards it. Peter found himself selecting texts for Sam’s “Church
Child’s Calendar,” a labour of love, which nevertheless had nothing to
do with Ada, except in the most indirect way, and nothing to do with the
Sam and Ada situation.
It was the fact that, to them, there seemed to be no situation which
distressed Peter. They simply let things be, and things let be obey
the law of gravity. He hoped, ardently, for children. Children blessed
marriage in the physical sense, and from that blessing the other, the
spiritual blessing, might arise.
There was at one time hope that Ada might have a child... and then the
hope was blighted, and the doctor told them not to hope again. Ada would
never be a mother.
“I could have told them that,” said Anne. “You’d only to look at the
girl to see it.” Which may only have been wisdom after the event, but
certainly did not imply that Anne was disappointed; though Peter was,
and bitterly.
Sam, too, had wanted a son, but not, as Peter thought, by Ada and
for Ada. He wanted an heir for dynastic reasons. He was the Branstone
Publishing Company, its parent and original, and wanted flesh of his
flesh to publish after him. He dreamed of a young Sam in the cap of the
Grammar School, who should go to the University to which he had not gone
and have the chances he had missed. He built many castles in Spain for
the son who was never born.
Ada got up from bed and flashed greedily into new clothes. If the
measure of her buying was the measure of her grief, she had been deeply
touched. Perhaps she was touched, for she had aimed at marriage, which
is incomplete without a child. But in the shops, the fashion papers,
her clothes and the clothes of other women she found distraction and
an occupation. She passed a milestone and went on her way. Ada was no
stoic, no hider of her grief, and since she did not complain she must
have thought her childlessness was nothing to complain about. When she
set her heart on marriage, she hadn’t, perhaps, looked further than the
ring, the ceremony and the honourable state of being Mrs. Branstone.
She plunged to shops and spending money, Sam to business and making it;
and some, at any rate, of the now thwarted love he had been storing for
his son passed to the business. Somewhere at the back of his mind he
knew his business was not lovable; that it was pitch; that one cannot
touch pitch without being defiled. But neither can one deal successfully
in pitch without arriving at faith in the virtues of pitch. At intimate
moments he was aware that the “Social Evil” pamphlet was pernicious,
but Sam Branstone, inducing a bookseller to stock it, was more than an
advocate who believes temporarily in his brief: he was a missionary with
faith in his mission. So, too, with the texts. He sold them with the
conviction that it was good for people to have texts on their walls. He
counterfeited sincerity until he came to be sincere, or, at all events,
to forget that he was insincere.
Further and further into the unsearched recesses of his mind he pressed
the thought that he sold texts because their sales were good for
him, and with his working, everyday, non-introspective mind he had a
sincerity about his wares, convenient but none the less authentic,-which
was invaluable both to his self-respect and as a first aid to success
in salesmanship. He never, in the old days, praised a house with the
ringing voice of absolute conviction which he used about Law’s “Serious
Call.” He had not read Law, but the sales hung fire till he became
persuaded of Law’s tremendous worth.
He had a serious call of his own, a call to sell good books at
good profits, and the call expressed itself in his clothes and his
appearance. He seemed older, graver, took his frock-coat into daily
wear, used only black in ties and socks, and had the air of one, who,
if not a clergyman, was often in their company, though as a fact he was
more frequently with commercial travellers, and in the hotels at night
his repertoire of smoke-room stories came no less gaily from his tongue
than of old.
And about this time his moustache began to droop like a curtain over his
resolute mouth.
Stewart came into the office one day with a parcel under his arm. He had
seen neither Sam nor his office lately, and stared wide-eyed at both.
Carter, partner in the printing business, still occupied the dilapidated
office where Sam had found him, but the Branstone Publishing Company had
ampler premises next door, in a building which Sam rented as warehouse
for his stock. Gilt lettering on its windows called the attention of the
passer-by to the Branstone + Classics.
Sam still looked after detail, and when Stewart came in was correcting
proofs of a tear-off calendar with a Bible at his elbow.
“I suppose,” said Stewart, “that you _are_ Branstone, but why disguise
yourself as a Scottish Elder?”
“I am in my usual clothes,” said Sam, rather huffed.
“If the clothes are the man, this is no place for me. Do you often use
the Bible in your business hours?”
He often did, not only to check with a quite beautiful precision the
texts on his calendars by the Authorised Version, but in another way,
and one which seemed to show, if it showed anything, that he looked
upon the Bible with intimate familiarity. Perhaps one mascot was the
vellum-bound copy of the “Social Evil” pamphlet and the other the Bible.
At any rate, his price code used in the office was made up this way:
M Y F A T H E R G O D
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 20
New clerks initiated into that code used to wonder at it for a day. Then
they got used to it.
“I’m correcting the proofs of this calendar,” Sam explained. “You see,
it’s a shaving calendar. You hang this up by your shaving-mirror and
study the text for the day while you shave.”
“I don’t,” said Stewart. “I go to the barber’s. My hand’s unsteady in
the morning. But I see the idea. First read the text, then wipe your
razor on it.”
“That is not the idea. See.” He pointed to the card of the calendar, and
read solemnly:
“A text a day
Drives care away.”
“It wouldn’t drive my sort of care away,” said Stewart. “Mine’s
serious.”
“There can be no trouble too serious for you to find consolation in this
calendar.”
“But suppose I have toothache on quarter-day, and the consolation you
offer for that date is consolation to a man who can’t pay his rent?
Seriously, Branstone, am I behind the scenes in this office, or do you
never drop the showman? I admit you’re in the pi-market, and you’ve
dressed the pi-man’s part and you’ve got his patter, too, but I don’t
know that you need exercise it on me. This stock of yours looks dire,”
he commented, strolling round the office. “I suppose it’s the stuff that
sells?”
“My business,” said Sam, “is founded on a rock.”
“I came in here to sell you a fortune,” said Stewart. “If you’re going
to talk cant at me, I’ll take the fortune to a London publisher. Your
business may be founded on a rock, but the name of the rock is the
‘Social Evil.’”
“The word rock,” said Sam, with a twinkle in his eye, “is also used for
a kind of toffee.”
“Well, now that I know you’re sane, I’ll talk to you. And I’ll talk
toffee, too I didn’t think in the days of my earnest youth that I
should come to this, but you never know what debt will do to a man. I’ve
written a novel. At least, it isn’t a novel, it’s an outrage on decency.
It’s a violent assault on the emotions. It’s the sort of thing I deserve
shooting for writing. Treacle is bitter compared with it, and it does
not contain one word of literature. It is a cast-iron certainty.”
“I must read it,” said Sam.
“You’re growing distrustful,” said Stewart sadly.
“I don’t buy pigs in pokes, even when they’re yours,” said Sam. “Come
along in a couple of days.”
He read the novel, and was ready for Stewart when he came.
“I have taken the liberty,” he said, “of marking some passages in this
manuscript which you may care to alter.”
“Oh? I know it’s mawkish, but I don’t believe there is a limit to what
they’ll stand--and like.”
“I refer particularly to the character you have called Hetaera.”
“But only once. After that she’s called Hetty.”
“Hetty,” said Sam severely, “will have to be cut out. She is an impure
woman.”
“Even the most popular of novels should bear some relationship to life.”
“If you wish me to publish this one, Hetty must go. Branstones have a
reputation to sustain.”
“Good God!” said Stewart. “Hetty is the one oasis of truth in a desert
of sloppy sentimentality. She’s true because I happen to know her.”
“That is nothing to your credit, Stewart.”
Stewart stared. “Are you pulling my leg, Sam, or is this really
serious?”
“Why should you doubt my seriousness when I ask that fiction should be
devoid of offence?”
“Don’t you mean devoid of truth?” He recovered his temper and his
perspective. After all, he was very short of money. “All right, Sam,” he
said. “Edit me. Censor me. I thought I knew things, but there are deeps
below the lowest depths, and you have reached them. I surrender. What
are the terms?”
Sam offered terms which were quite generous. He might want Stewart
again.
The novel was purged of Hetty and published. The three-page prayer of
the distressed heroine was used, in paraphrase, from quite a number of
nonconformist pulpits, and the book was a huge success. It was the
first of that series--Branstone’s Happy Novels for Healthy Homes--which
carried the strength of the literary emetic to a point of concentrated
sweetness undreamt of before, and discovered somewhere a public stomach
which did not reject its nauseating jam, but revelled in it.