That winter saw the beginning of an unlovely home.
Tod’s wife had called him a fool for being generous to an old friend,
and those bitter words of hers were never recalled. Millie had all the
obtuseness of the little egoist. She did not know how deeply she had
wounded her man, that she had challenged and affronted all that was best
in him, and that such an insult is not forgotten. Tod might have
forgiven her, but she did not seem to realise that she had sinned
against the man in him, and that forgiveness was necessary.
And so they entered upon that most damnable of all states, a state of
silent and gradual hostility and of spiritual estrangement. The sex
spell had passed; the glamour of it had ceased to blind the man’s eyes,
and there was no beautiful comradeship to take its place. The boy and
girl affair was dead, and Tod found himself living with a woman who
began to betray a moral obtuseness that shocked his secret soul. The
“Giggles” of Pentworth had reappeared, and Tod stared at the apparition
with eyes of profound dismay.
She had called him a fool because his heart had gone out to poor old
Mossup, who wanted coal and food for a sick wife!
There were moments when Tod struggled passionately against this
disillusionment. He was lonely, worried, troubled about the future, and
he tried to get the woman in Millie back into his arms, but she had
grown strangely cold, and Tod was sensitive.
“Oh, shut up; I don’t want to be worried.”
So he left her alone, wondering why she had changed towards him, and
searching his own heart on the chance that the fault might be his own.
He could not help dating her change of temper from the time when the
business had ceased to thrive and money had become difficult. He had
forced economies upon her, and he remembered so well that the “Giggles”
of Pentworth had scorned the boy who had no pocket-money to spend.
Tod did a foolish but lovable thing. He went out into King William
Street one afternoon, bought a set of silver fox furs, and took them
home with him that night. He would show her that, though he had to be
careful, he was not mean, and that he had not forgotten her economies.
He hid the box under the sofa, and played the lover’s game.
“Someone has left a parcel,” he told her, with a touch of his old
affectionate shyness.
“Oh, what parcel?”
“You had better look.”
She glanced round the room, and then at Tod’s mock solemn face.
“What’s the joke?”
“I think it’s rather a nice joke.”
“I’m not good at guessing,” she said tartly.
Tod winced, and made haste to see something under the sofa.
“What’s that—a cardboard box?”
He had expected her to dash at it like a child, tear off the string, and
turn back the tissue paper; but she put a slow hand under the sofa, drew
out the box, and her face was the face of a woman preparing to tell a
lie.
“Gifford’s! I haven’t bought anything at Gifford’s for six months.”
“But I have,” said Tod.
And then she understood.
“Oh, Toddy!”
She had the fur stole round her throat, and her hands in the muff, and
she was looking in the mirror. She ran and kissed Tod.
“Aren’t they just lovely! You are a dear boy.”
That night they were lovers again, and her red mouth gave him kisses.
Tod’s fragment of a St. Luke’s summer lasted just three days. He was
opening his letters in the office when he came across one that made him
feel strangely sick at heart. It was a bill from Horrox & Horrox’s for
thirty-three pounds five shillings and sixpence, and it was accompanied
by a curt note that galled Tod’s pride. “We beg to remind you that this
account has been outstanding for over a year, and has been rendered to
Mrs. Western thrice previously. Unless it is settled immediately we
regret to say we shall be compelled to take other measures.”
Tod pulled out his cheque book, set his teeth, wrote a cheque for the
amount, and sent it round to Horrox & Horrox’s by the hands of the
garage boy. The paying of that bill necessitated his drawing upon money
that he had been scraping together to pay his quarterly tribute to the
Semite of Wardour Street. Tod was angry, and with the anger of a man who
felt that he had been deceived. Why had she hidden that bill? Why hadn’t
she told him?
He did not go home till late in the evening, for he had not the heart to
go home. And yet, after all, it was such a petty thing. Perhaps she had
forgotten, perhaps she had been saving money out of her housekeeping
allowance in order to pay that bill. Tod walked five miles before he
turned in at his own gate; he had been trying to invent excuses for
Millie, to save that little warmth of summer that had come back into
their lives.
Millie had been playing bridge at a house across the road. He found her
sitting in front of the fire, her shoes lying by the fender, and a box
of chocolates in her lap. She had been annoyed by something that had
happened during the evening, and Tod’s glum and worried face suggested
bad news.
He pulled up a chair and sat down.
“Tired, little girl?”
He was quite gentle, hating that bit of paper in his pocket, and hoping
with all heart that she would be able to explain it away.
“Where have you been? I thought you were coming to the Spencers’ with
me?”
“I’ve been rather worried, and I stayed late at the shop.”
“You always are worried,” she said peevishly.
And then Tod pulled out Horrox & Horrox’s receipted bill.
“I got this to-day, Millie. It rather upset my calculations.”
“What is it?” she asked him sharply, with a narrowing of the eyes and
one hand outstretched.
“A bill.”
Her whole face hardened.
“Nothing very wonderful in that, is there?”
“I didn’t expect it, that’s all. You might have told me, Millie.”
He passed her the bill, and she sat up and stared at it, pulling at her
lower lip with a crooked forefinger. She was angry—angry with Horrox’s
and angry with Tod.
“The fools shouldn’t have sent it to you.”
His eyes brightened.
“You were going to pay it?”
“Me?”
Her hard and sulky eyes killed the light in Tod’s.
“How was I going to pay it? Save farthings out of the grocer’s bill! I
wanted it kept back till things were going better.”
“Well, I’ve paid it,” said Tod grimly, “but it hasn’t made things easier
for me.”
And then he softened to her, hating to see her face so hard and sullen.
“I wish you’d tell me things, dear. I haven’t kept anything back from
you. Besides, it’s not good for the business to be threatened for not
paying your bills. Horrox’s letter made me mad.”
She gave him a quick, appraising glance, and then stared sulkily at the
fire.
“It’s not the only one,” she said; “you may as well know.”
He looked at her blankly, mastered a sudden spasm of anger, and became
more quietly and grimly serious. Tod was no whimperer. Games had taught
him not to squeal when he was hurt.
“You had better tell me. How much do you owe?”
She jigged a foot.
“About seventy pounds.”
“As much as that! It’s got to be settled.”
She expected him to explode, make a scene, and she would have understood
such a storm and known how to meet it; but Tod did not explode. He
seemed to grow quieter. And his self-control irritated his wife and
baffled her. It was like storming at a man who kept reading a book.
“I want you to realise what all this means.”
He pulled his chair close to hers, picked up a book, and, using the back
of Horrox’s bill, he began to jot down figures. His deliberation and his
calmness frightened her a little. She had no complete understanding of
the real Tod in her husband, and she noticed his compressed lips and the
intent steadiness of his blue eyes, and almost hated him for his
self-restraint. There was no flurry, no jerking movement of the hand
that was pencilling figures on the back of Horrox’s bill. In the words
of the vulgarly undisciplined: “I could have screamed.” That was the
effect Tod’s patience had upon his wife. What a silly, serious fool he
was! Why didn’t he stamp about and swear? Why didn’t he hit her in the
face—master her with his man’s strength? Her sensual nature would have
reacted to physical violence. She might have fought back at him like a
wild cat, but she would have ended by wiping his shoes.
Tod was too finely made to be the mate or master of such a woman, but he
succeeded in frightening her, and she hated him for the grave and
dispassionate way in which he did it.
“I want to go through these figures with you, Millie.”
“Oh, all right!”
He bent sideways towards her, using the pencil as a pointer.
“This shows what we have in hand, and what the business brings in
roughly each month. This column here shows what I owe, and what the
business and the house cost each month. It makes a pretty serious sum on
the wrong side. I had kept a hundred pounds out of the thousand as a
reserve in case of emergencies. I shall have to use it to pay these
bills.”
She stared at the pencilled figures, and swung a restless and rebellious
foot.
“I thought you were going to make such a success of it,” she said.
Tod held his temper fast by the throat.
“And so I may. This is going to cripple me for a time. Can’t you
realise, dear, that a young business has to be nursed, that it can’t
carry bills like this? We are sailing on the edge of bankruptcy. If
matters don’t mend we shall have to give up this house.”
He had frightened her, and frightened her so seriously that she began to
hate him. She was sullen, and quite untouched by his gentleness, the
gentleness of a man who was utterly in earnest. But she did not want to
give up “Carnarvon.” Her fear roused in her a strange spirit of
comradeship, the comradeship that unites two people who are in danger of
being swamped in an open boat. She began to look round for something
that she could use as a baler, while Tod stuck to the oars and kept the
boat’s nose towards the shore.
It is more than probable that Tod’s wife could have saved the business
if she had been given full authority and allowed to use her cunning. She
had an instinctive appreciation of what “business” meant in a town like
Shaston, and she had none of Tod’s scruples. Messrs. Pumpelly and Britt
would have found her a very notable rival, a handsome young woman with a
complete and natural knowledge of how to bribe men and make them serve
her. Had Tod been a man with a commercial imagination and a cynical
determination to make money, he would have stuck to the office and the
garage, put Millie in a car and let her play the part of out-of-door
partner. No sly women touting for votes at an election would have shown
more ingenuity. And she would have had no mercy on the men whom she
employed. Tod was too generous and too straight.
She even proposed some such adventure, seeing herself as a golden-haired
young fascinatress, interviewing hotel managers and dropping smiles and
half-sovereigns into the hands of persuadable porters.
“I bet I’d make things hum.”
But Tod would not have it. He was not inclined to see his wife turning
herself into a business tout.
Then Tod caught “flu,” and lay worrying himself to death over the
quarterly tribute that was due to the Semite of Wardour Street. He was
short of the money by ten pounds, and he could think of nothing else.
Worry and aspirin scuffled together over the question of his
temperature, and the drug had the worst of the squabble.
He kept babbling about selling things, and in the weakness of his fever
he allowed the truth about Mr. Burgetrode to slip into his wife’s hands.
She had wanted him to write to Mr. Burgetrode.
“I can’t. He cut me off, you know.”
“When you married me?”
“What’s it matter? I want an orange, dear. I want to suck an orange.”
The woman in her was touched for the moment, but much of her tenderness
was swallowed up in her anger against Mr. Burgetrode. “Thought I wasn’t
good enough, did he? Mean old beast!”
Tod talked delirious nonsense half the night.
“Ten pounds—I want ten pounds. Arthur had it; can’t ask Arthur. Beastly
Jew. Sell the piano and send him a cheque. Oh, darling, my head aches
so!”
Listening to his child’s anguish, Millie came by an idea. Tod was better
next morning, but utterly miserable and weak.
“I am going up to see that man in Wardour Street,” she said.
He protested. “But you can’t.”
“Of course I can. What’s his name—Goldstein?”
“Yes—Maurice Goldstein. But—Millie——”
“Don’t you worry, old dear. I’ll talk him around and explain things. I
dare say he’s not a bad sort, some bald-headed old blighter——”
“He’s quite young,” said Tod, “not more than forty. If he’d give me
another month——”
“You leave it to me,” laughed the young woman.
So Millie dressed herself in those silver fox furs and her most
fashionable hat, scented herself, gave her eyelashes the faintest of
touches, and travelled up to town to interview Mr. Goldstein.