VI

When he asked her, two days later, to spend another evening with him,

she gladly accepted, although she had told herself several times

before that she would refuse; and after that they spent a good deal

of time together. They would have dinner somewhere, and then amuse

themselves by visiting some show of his choice. They saw the new

Jerry Jerningham musical comedy and a crook play; they went twice to

the Colladium; they tried a Talkie or two; and one exciting night

he took her to a big boxing match. She never really learned a great

deal about him; he would talk about odd experiences he had had by

the hour, but he remained mysterious; she never discovered what his

plans were, and at times she suspected that he did not intend to stay

in England much longer, but this suspicion was only based on casual

vague remarks; she never went near his flat, never met his daughter,

and never heard a single word from him about his dead wife, if indeed

she was dead; and yet she felt she knew him as she had never known a

man before. Sometimes he was simply friendly or uncle-ish, dismissing

her with a pat on the shoulder or a squeeze of the arm; sometimes he

turned cynically and grossly amorous, and when he tried to paw her and

she repulsed him, he jeered at her and said things that were all the

more brutal because there was in them a hard core of truth, and then

she saw him as a gross middle-aged toper, loathed him, and despised

herself for having anything to do with him; but then, at other times,

after a happy exciting evening, he would reach out to her in sudden

passion and her own mood would flare up to match with his, and in

some little patch of darkness or in the taxi going home, they would

kiss and clutch and strain to one another, without a single word of

love passing between them, and she would be left shaken and gasping,

unable to decide whether she was a woman who was falling in love with

this strange unlikely man or a crazy little fool who had just had too

much excitement and wine, who ought to go and have a good hot bath and

learn sense and decency. And that was all, so far, though even she

guessed it could not go on like that. Meanwhile, between these curious

expeditions, she chatted and grumbled as usual at the Club, wrote home

in the old strain once a week, and quietly worked away at the office,

where nobody knew what was happening to her.

Then, one night, as he took her back to the Club, he said, quite

casually: “I see they’re having a nice fine spell on the South Coast.

What about a trip down there next week-end, Lilian? Might get hold of a

car.”

“Oh yes,” she cried at once, without thinking, for week-ends out of

London were her dream, even in January. “Let’s do that.”

“Is it a bargain?” he said quickly, triumphantly.

And then she realised what it meant. “No, no. I’m sorry. I spoke

without thinking.”

“Ah, she spoke without thinking, did she? You do far too much thinking.

Girls shouldn’t think too much, not good-looking ones, anyhow. When I

first met you, you’d done nothing but think for a long time, and you

weren’t looking too cheerful on it.”

She made no reply. She was annoyed, partly because she was compelled

to recognise the truth behind this little jeer. When he talked about

her in his casual, rather brutal fashion, he had a strange knack of

fastening upon some unpleasant truth. He seemed to take aim quite

wildly, but somewhere in her mind, a bell rang nearly every time.

He changed his tone now. “Oh, come on. Nobody’s going to hurt you.

Let’s enjoy ourselves while we’re here.”

“No, thank you,” she said quietly, though she found it far more

difficult to resist this kind of appeal.

He pressed her.

“No, I won’t. Sometime, perhaps. But not now. No, I mean it.”

“Well, I’m disappointed in you. Still, I’ll try again. Otherwise,

y’know, you might regret saying that, some day. Oh, you can laugh----”

“I might well laugh. I think men are the limit. You just want your

own way, no matter what it costs--to me, and you’re quite hurt and

disappointed because you can’t have it, and anybody would think to hear

you that you’d been spending weeks thinking it all out purely for my

benefit.”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Golspie cheerfully, and she knew, though she

could not see him properly, that he was grinning. “Just what I have

been doing. That’s why I’m disappointed.”

“And that’s why I’m laughing,” she retorted, though she did not feel

like laughing now. “At your impudent selfishness. Marvellous!”

“And I tell you, young woman, you might regret it one day. I’m going to

ask you again. You think it over.”

“I won’t.”

But she did think it over, and unfortunately she began that very

night, so that it was hours and hours before she got to sleep. Her

angry taut body refused to relax; her head was a huge hot ring round

which her thoughts went galloping dustily; and as she turned in the

uneasy darkness she heard the late taxis and cars go hooting far away,

melancholy hateful sounds in the deep night, like flying rumours of

disaster.

_Chapter Nine_: MR. SMEETH IS WORRIED

I

“Where you going to?” asked Mr. Smeeth, turning round in his chair to

look at his wife, who had suddenly made her appearance in the doorway,

wearing her hat and coat. She was still flushed with temper. It was

surprising how young and smart she looked. Still, she could not go on

like that, no matter how young and smart she looked.

“Out,” she replied, with that special look and special voice she had

for him when they had quarrelled. Oh dear!

“Yes, I know that,” he pointed out, “but where you going to?”

Up she blazed then, with her colour flaming and her fine blue eyes

flashing at him: “Just _out_, and that’s enough for you. Begrudge

every penny you give me, keep me as short as you possibly can, tell

me I mustn’t buy this and mustn’t buy that, go peeping and spying

about and then lose your silly temper because you’ve seen something

you don’t like to see--though--goodness me!--there can’t be a woman in

this street who hasn’t a few bills like that in the house, and most of

them a lot more and instalments, too, to pay and their husbands not

bringing in anything like what you are----” Here Mrs. Smeeth stopped,

not because this fine rhetorical sentence had got out of control (it

had, but she was capable of finishing it somehow), but simply because

she wanted to draw a deep breath. “And then you want to know where I’m

going! I suppose you’d like me to give an account of that as well,

wouldn’t you? Yes, of course. Oh, of course!” Her head wagged as she

brought out these vast sneers. “That would be very nice for you,

wouldn’t it? I’ll come and ask if I can spend a penny or tuppence. Then

I’ll ask if I can walk down the road----”

“Oh, don’t be so silly, Edie,” cried Mr. Smeeth, who hated this sort of

wild ridiculous talk and could not see what good it did. Even after all

these years, he was still innocent enough to imagine that his wife was

trying to argue and failing absurdly, and he did not realise that she

was merely exploding into speech.

“Don’t be so silly!” she repeated indignantly, at the same time coming

forward into the room. “I’d like to ask anybody who’s the silly

one here. They’d soon tell you. And I’d rather be silly than mean.

Yes--_mean_. If you’re not careful, Herbert Smeeth, you’ll soon be too

mean to live. Pinching and scraping as if you didn’t know where the

next penny was coming from! And the more money you’re getting, the

worse you are. It’s growing on you, this meanness. My words, I’d like

you to be married to some women, that’s all. They’d teach you something

about spending.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” he said crossly, “’cos I wouldn’t have it,

wouldn’t have it for a single minute. I’d soon put a stop to _their_

little games. As for being mean, you know as well as I do, Edie, I’m

not mean, and never have been. There’s nothing you’ve ever really

wanted, or the children either, you haven’t had. But somebody’s got to

be careful, that’s all. We’re not made of money. When I got this rise,

I hoped we’d begin to save properly. Anybody’d think to hear you talk

they’d given me the Bank of England instead of another pound a week.

Have a bit of sense, Edie. If we’re going to spend every penny we have

now and get into debt, where are we going to be if anything happens to

us? Just tell me that.”

“And what is going to happen to us? Bless me, the way you talk! A

proper old Jonah you’re turning into! You give me the pip, Dad,

honestly you do. Anybody’d think to hear _you_ talk that we’ll have to

sell up any day. You can’t enjoy yourself a minute for thinking about

what might happen to you the year after next or sometime. We’ve only

got to live once and we’ve only got to die once, and for heaven’s sake

let’s enjoy ourselves while we can, I say.”

“Yes, and when we can’t--what then? I’ve heard this kind of talk

before, and I know where it lands people. And anyhow, I can enjoy

myself as well as the next, only I can do it sensibly and I don’t need

to spend every penny we get and go and ask any Fred Mittys to help me

to do it.”

“That’s right. Bring him in. I’ve been waiting for that, I’ve just been

waiting for that. I wondered how long you’d be able to keep Fred Mitty

out of this. That’s you all over. You got your knife into him the first

time he came here, and after that of course he had to be blamed for

everything. Go on. Don’t mind me. Why don’t you say I give him all my

housekeeping money, and have done with it. Go on.”

“Well, I’ll say this,” said Mr. Smeeth, his temper rising. “That bill

from Sorley’s there’s been all this bother about wouldn’t have been

that size and would have been paid before now, if you hadn’t taken it

into your head to ask Mitty and his wife and their guzzling pals up

here those two nights round Christmas. It’s bad enough them coming here

at all--most men wouldn’t have it for a minute, not if they couldn’t

stand the sight of ’em and never stayed in the house when they were

there, like me--but it’s fifty times worse when you go and run yourself

into debt to do it, just so they can all swill it down at my expense.

It’s not good enough, and you know it isn’t.”

“Oh, isn’t it? Well, next time Christmas comes round, I’ll tell Fred

and everybody else to keep away, and we’ll all go into the workhouse,

and then you’ll be satisfied. If you wasn’t getting too mean to live,

you’d have thought nothing about it. You talk as if I owed Sorley’s

about fifty pounds. Three pounds fifteen, that’s all it is, and you

make all this bother.”

“Well, it’s three pound fifteen more than you can pay, it seems,” he

retorted.

“Who says it is? I haven’t even asked you to pay it yet. Keep your

money. I can pay it all right in time. Sorley’s can wait, for all I

care.”

“Well, they can’t for all I care. I believe in paying cash down and no

debts running on, always have done, and you know it. And I’ll have that

to pay, just because you’ve decided to open a free pub for Mitty and

his fine little lot. That’s what it amounts to.”

“That’s right, start again now. You can argue with yourself for an

hour or two, and see how you like it. I’m going out. And if you

want to know, I’ll tell you where I’m going. I’m going,” she added

deliberately, “down to Fred Mitty’s.”

He was furious, but he knew that he could not prevent her from going.

He looked at her, and he had to twist round in his chair, for she had

retreated towards the door: “Well, see you come back sober,” he said.

“What’s that?”

But he did not repeat it. He wished it unsaid. The instant after it

had slipped out, he wanted to call it back. And, for all her “What’s

that?” she had heard him all right; she was staring at him now, with

some of her high colour gone and her mouth curiously drawn down; her

whole attitude was different from what it had been during their noisy

argument; she was really hurt, this time; he had gone too far, miles

and miles too far.

“Yes, I heard you, though,” she said quietly, “and it’s the nastiest

thing, by a long, long way, that you’ve said to me in twenty years. Did

you ever know me come back in any other way but sober?”

“No, no,” he muttered. “I’m sorry ... bit of a joke.” He couldn’t look

her in the face.

“Bit of a joke! I wish it was. But it wasn’t. You meant it, Herbert

Smeeth. You meant to be as nasty as you could be. There’s only another

thing worse you could say to your wife, and you’d better hurry up and

get that said.”

“I tell you, I’m sorry.” He got up from his chair now, and looked at

her, mumbling something about “going too far.”

“Yes, and I’m sorry too,” she said bitterly. “I didn’t think you’d got

a nasty thing like that in your head to say. Oh, I know it slipped out,

and now you wish it hadn’t. But it oughtn’t to have been there to slip

out. That’s what hurts me.”

“Well, after all, you’ve as good as called me a miser--or at any rate,

a mean devil--half a dozen times to-night,” he told her, but not with

much confidence.

“Oh!--that’s different--and you know it is.”

“I don’t see that. Still, if you think so, all I can say, Edie, is--I’m

sorry.”

But before he had finished, she had gone, slamming the door

contemptuously behind her. A few seconds later, she was outside the

house. Mr. Smeeth returned wretchedly to his chair by the fire. There

was nothing he disliked more than a quarrel with his wife, and this

looked like being a particularly bad one. That remark of his would, he

knew, take some living down. If she had been a woman who never took a

drink at all, there would have been nothing in that remark; but she

liked a drink or two, especially in company, and was liable at times

to get flushed and excited, as she well knew herself; and if he had

thought for months, he could not have said a thing that would have

hurt her more. He was still sorry that he had said it, though there

was one part of him that could not help enjoying the fact that the

shot had told so well. “That got home on her all right, didn’t it?” it

chuckled, even while the rest of him, the part that loved Mrs. Smeeth

and was her willing slave, grieved and repented. Mr. Smeeth did not

often swear, but now he called Fred Mitty, under his breath, every foul

name at his command. That earlier argument would not have taken such

a bad turn if it had not been for Mitty. They had had these little

squabbles about money before, like most couples, he imagined, one of

whom is nearly always a spender and the other a saver. This had been

a bit more serious than most of their squabbles, if only because the

extra money had made her all the more eager to spend and had made him

all the more anxious to begin saving. But Mitty and his wife even came

into this part of the quarrel, for the whole thing began when he came

across that bill from Sorley’s for three pounds fifteen, which she had

not paid and couldn’t pay, and Sorley’s off licence and Mr. and Mrs.

Swilling Mitty and their bright pals had been responsible for that

bill. He had not seen what they had had because on both occasions,

being duly warned, he had taken himself off, once to hear “The

Messiah,” and the other time to play whist with Saunders, and had taken

care each time, being a peaceable man, to arrive back home as late as

possible, when Mitty and Co. were no longer there. He didn’t believe

for a moment that his wife was so tremendously fond of the Mitty lot

as all that, but just because he had grumbled at first and been a bit

heavy-handed about them, she had kept it up, out of devilment and to

show her independence. She was like that, if you took the wrong line

with her, and he had admitted to himself for a week or two now that, if

it was peace and quietness he wanted and not a tussle to decide who was

master, he had certainly taken the wrong line.

After brooding over it all for about quarter of an hour, he felt so

uncomfortable that if his wife had gone anywhere else but the Mitty’s,

he would have gone after her, to call for her and then to try and make

it up on the way home. But he had his pride, and it refused to allow

him to call for her at the Mitty’s. He tried to dismiss the whole

wretched business. He lit his pipe and picked up the evening paper.

There was nothing in it he wanted to read and had not read before. He

tried the wireless, and the first station plunged him into the middle

of a talk on modern sculpture by a young gentleman who was apparently

very tired. Finding no satisfaction in him, Mr. Smeeth went over to the

other station, which was running a sort of pierrot show. The pierrots

themselves seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely and so did

their audience, who laughed and clapped unceasingly, but Mr. Smeeth

merely felt rather out of it and thought the jokes not good enough,

for all that laughing, and the songs not worth all that applause.

“Overdoing it,” he muttered darkly at the loud speaker, which replied

by bombarding him with more tinny laughter and applause. But he was

the master; he had only to make a little movement and the pierrots

and their cackling friends were banished at once, simply hurled into

silence; and now he made this little movement, and the loud speaker was

at once emptied of sound, nothing more than a bit of a horn. He had

a book from the Public Library somewhere about, and now, in despair,

he found it and began reading. It was _My Singing Years_ by the great

soprano, Madame Regina Sarisbury, whom he had once heard in an oratorio

years ago, and the young woman at the Library had told him it was

a most interesting book, on the word of her sister, who was taking

singing lessons and had two or three professional engagements. But so

far it had not appealed to him very much. As a matter of fact, he was a

reluctant and unenterprising reader, one of those people who hold their

books almost at arm’s-length and examine them in a very guarded manner,

as if at any moment a sentence might explode with a loud report; and

he had probably returned more books half-read than any other member of

the local Public Library. Nevertheless, he liked to have a Library book

about, and to be discovered reading it.

He was discovered now. Edna came in, pulling off her close-fitting

little hat, and fussy and breathless, as usual. In a few minutes, she

would swing completely round, becoming slack, indifferent, languid, as

if the house bored her. Mr. Smeeth knew this, and it irritated him,

though he was very fond of the girl.

“Where’s mother?”

“Your mother’s out.”

“Where’s she gone to? She said she wasn’t going out to-night!”

“The question is, not where she’s gone to, but where you’ve been too,”

he said, rather severely, looking at her over the top of his eyeglasses.

Edna did not stop to examine the logic of this, or if she did, she did

not comment upon it, being still young enough to recognize the right of

parents to talk in this fashion. “Been to the pictures--first house,”

she replied.

“What again! I’m surprised you don’t go and live there. You’ve been

once this week, haven’t you? Yes, I thought so. And I suppose you’ll be

wanting to go on Saturday. That’ll be three times in one week--three

times. Paid ninepence too, I suppose. And who gave you the money to go

to-night?”

“Mother did.” And Edna looked slightly confused. Her father, noticing

this, jumped at once to the wrong conclusion, namely, that Edna had

been told to say nothing about this extra visit to the pictures to him

and had suddenly realized what she had done. The truth was, however,

that Edna was confused, not because she had spent another ninepence,

but because the money was still in her possession, for she had gone to

the pictures as the guest of one Harry Gibson, Minnie Watson’s friend’s

friend, who, in his turn, was supposed, by his parents in their

turn, to have been attending an evening class in accountancy on this

particular night.

Mr. Smeeth nodded grimly and tightened his lips. “There’ll have to be

something said about this, Edna. When I agreed to let you go and learn

this millinery business, I didn’t agree to let you go to the pictures

every night in the week, too.”

“I don’t go every night, and you know very well I don’t, Dad. Some

weeks I only go once.”

“It’s a funny thing I never seem to notice those weeks,” said Mr.

Smeeth with fine irony. It would have been still finer irony if he

had stopped to consider that it really was not funny at all but quite

natural. “But apart from the waste of money, I don’t like all this

picture-going. Doing you no good at all. Doing you harm. I don’t object

to a girl having her amusement,” he continued, dropping into that

noble, broad-minded tone of voice that all parents, schoolmasters,

clergymen, and other public moralists have at their command. “I go

to the pictures now and again myself. But going to the pictures now

and again’s one thing, and _living_ for pictures is another thing

altogether. Teaches you nothing but silliness. Get false ideas into

your head. Why don’t you settle down with a book?” He held out his own

book. “Do a bit of quiet reading. Amuse yourself and learn something

about the world at the same time. Take this book I’m reading,

f’r’instance--_My Singing Years_ by Madame Regina Sarisbury--this is a

book that tells you something worth knowing, all about the--er--musical

career.”

“I read a book last week,” Edna announced.

“Yes, and been to the pictures three times since then,” said her

father, who was determined to have his grievance. “Too much going out

and amusing yourself altogether, my girl. Why, you’re worse than George

was at your age. It’s my belief you girls are worse than the boys

nowadays, more set on having amusement, pictures and dances and what

not. I walked from the tram to-night with Mr. Gibson, who lives in the

corner house at the bottom of the next street, and he was telling me

that his son--I forget his name, but he’s about your age, perhaps a

year or so older----”

“Do you mean Harry Gibson?” asked Edna.

“Is it Harry? Yes, I think it is. Well, Mr. Gibson was telling me that

this boy of his is attending three evening classes a week--accountancy,

book-keeping, and something else--three evening classes. That boy means

to get on and be somebody in the world. He’s not wasting all his time,

he’s using it to some purpose. I’m not saying that you ought to go to

evening classes----”

Here he broke off because he noticed that a mysterious smile that had

been hovering for the last minute now seemed to have definitely settled

on Edna’s face. This smile made him angry, or rather gave him an

excuse for exploding the anger that had been waiting inside him. “And

for goodness’ sake, Edna, take that silly grin off your face when I’m

trying to talk sense to you,” he shouted, making her jump. “You’re not

at the pictures now. You’re nothing but a great silly baby.”

“What have I done now?” she began indignantly.

“Any more of that impudence from you,” Mr. Smeeth shouted at her,

glaring. But there was no more of that impudence, which suddenly melted

to tears. Edna, not a strong character at any time and now completely

taken aback by her father’s sudden rage, hastily left the room,

whimpering.

Mr. Smeeth spent the next few minutes telling himself all the things

that were wrong with his daughter and that justified any man getting

angry with her now and then. He worked hard, but he did not succeed

in convincing himself. He put away _My Singing Years_ and turned the

wireless on again. At half-past ten, George came in, got a grunt or two

from his father (who was, in truth, afraid of talking), retired to the

kitchen in search of food and then went to bed. At eleven Mrs. Smeeth

returned.

“Have you had anything to eat?” she asked. Sometimes he had a little

snack just before going to bed.

He shook his head.

“Can I get you something?” she enquired politely.

He knew now that he was in for a serious quarrel. Mrs. Smeeth easily

lost her temper and squabbled, but she recovered it with equal

swiftness and ease. If she had marched in and called him a few names

and looked as if she was about to throw something at him, he would have

known that the whole thing could have been settled before they went to

sleep. But when Mrs. Smeeth was quietly polite to him, it meant that

for once she had really hardened her heart. She would now turn herself

into a very efficient housewife. Nothing would be allowed to go wrong;

every meal would be on the table at the proper time and every dish done

to a turn; he would not be given the slightest chance to grumble. But

as a wife, a real wife, she would cease to exist. Not a smile, not a

friendly glance, would come his way; and they would be estranged for

days, perhaps weeks.

“No, thanks. I don’t want anything. Don’t feel like it.” Which was true

enough, but he hoped it would suggest that he was not very well. She

remained quite stony, however.

“Both the children in?” she asked.

“Look here, Edie,” he began desperately, “don’t be silly.”

“I’m not silly. I’m going to bed now.” And off she went.

He was in for it now, days of it, perhaps weeks of it; and in order to

get out of it, not only would he have to apologize at great length,

but he would probably have to buy something as well, in short to spend

more money. Yet the root of the whole trouble was that too much money

was being spent already. He wished he had never set eyes on Sorley’s

miserable bill. He wished he had gone out and paid it without a word.

He wished--“Oh, damn and blast!” he cried, and in his sudden spasm of

fury he screwed up his face so hard and shook his head so violently

that his eyeglasses fell off and he spent several minutes groping about

the black wool rug before he could find them. Oh--a miserable evening!