The same phrase was repeated, and by many people, when Rita and Richard
Lambourne came home again, three years later. The great rubber slump
had come, and Richard had lost his job. He said that he hoped to find
something to do in England.
“Professional men of all classes are hoping exactly the same thing at
the present moment, all over the country,” said Sir Charles Clyde.
The Lambournes stayed with the Clydes for a little while, then they and
their baby and their nurse moved into a tiny house on the outskirts of
a large neighbouring town, and then it was that such a number of people
took to making use of the apt descriptive phrase first employed when
Rita married.
Many of them had known her in her girlhood, the spoilt and favoured
child of Lady Clyde, at home in her stepfather’s house.
They could fully appreciate the contrast with her present position.
Richard could not find any work, although he answered advertisements
and wrote to influential friends. He was not a strong man, and very
soon showed signs of great discouragement and anxiety.
Rita, on the contrary, was always cheerful, and discussed the situation
very frankly, laughing merrily at her own struggle with unaccustomed
privations.
“It’s so lucky I’ve got a little money that my own father left me.
By managing very, very carefully, we’re living on that. Poor Richard
hadn’t a penny beyond his salary, and now of course that’s all
gone--poor darling!”
She was drolly confidential with her numerous friends.
“It’s so funny to have to think before I take a second helping of
pudding, even, and yet I suppose I really ought to. But I don’t think
I’ve got a very large appetite, have I, Richard?”
“No, you haven’t.”
“What a good thing!” She laughed as she spoke, but Richard remained
unsmiling and miserable, and gradually it became evident to Rita’s
friends that one of Rita’s trials was her husband’s inability to face
their position with a gallant laugh, as she did.
As time went on, and there appeared to be no hope of a salary for
Richard, she sent away the little girl’s nurse.
“I think I ought to be able to manage. Lots of poor women have to, only
it’s a great pity I was brought up to play the piano, and dance, and
play tennis, instead of learning to cook. One somehow never thought of
it’s being necessary.”
“It oughtn’t to be necessary now,” said Richard violently, “if you’d
married a fellow with money, or brains enough to make some.”
“Why, I might have been a millionairess, if I’d married the first man
that ever proposed to me,” she said brightly. “Doesn’t it seem odd?”
He made no answer.
“D’you know, darling, I saw a really lovely jumper in Colson’s window
to-day. It was real old rose, the colour that suits me. It was one of
the sale things and marked down to half a guinea. I had a frightful
struggle--it is such ages since I had anything new. I wouldn’t even
let myself go into the shop, though I had to get some things for baby.
I went somewhere else. I felt I couldn’t bear to come out of Colson’s
without that jumper. It was so lovely--and really marvellously cheap.
It’s been haunting me ever since.”
“Surely we can find half a guinea,” said Richard, his face flushing.
“Richard!” She gave a little laughing scream. “Why, I work out every
penny of my income on paper before I spend it, and do you know what’s
left over for my clothes, when I’ve paid the wages and the rent, and
rates and taxes, and the housekeeping books? Just--exactly--five pounds
a year!”
She held up five fingers, laughing.
“I know.”
“I can’t believe that I once spent five pounds a year, or thereabouts,
on gloves, but I suppose I did. I don’t really know how I could manage
now, if mummie didn’t still give me so many presents.”
She looked at him with her head on one side, rather like a very pretty
squirrel.
“I do manage rather well, don’t I, dear? I have to work pretty hard,
you know.”
“Of course you manage well,” he said ungraciously. He hardly ever
encouraged her with praise nowadays, although she was doing wonders.
He only gave way to violent outbreaks of despair and self-reproach,
when she assured him that she could do without things that she had had
all her life, and that she wasn’t really so _very_ tired after two bad
nights with the baby.
“Isn’t it lucky I’m so strong?” she sometimes asked her friends. “I do
a lot of the housework myself, you know, because we can only afford one
servant, of course, and she’s a rough sort of girl. It was so funny at
first, I couldn’t understand that class of servant at all. At home,
of course, the maids were all quite different. Ellen means very well,
really, though I’ve had to learn cooking, so as to do a certain amount
myself. Will you forgive me now, if I run to see that Richard’s supper
is all right--not burning?”
She tripped away, still laughing, in spite of the tired lines that were
beginning to show beneath her sparkling dark eyes.
“Rita is too wonderful, poor darling!” said Lady Clyde. “As she says
herself, she’s never in her life been used to poverty. And look at the
way she makes the best of things! You know they’re living on her tiny
little income, that she manages too wonderfully for words. You can’t
say _now_, Charles, as I remember you once did, that Rita, of all
people, wasn’t fitted to take the risk of poverty.”
Whether Sir Charles could, or could not, have repeated his axiom, was
not destined to be made clear, for he said nothing at all.
He did, however, make many attempts to find a job for Richard, and
went to see the originator of the phrase that described Richard’s
wife so well--“a gallant little lady”--who was connected with some
highly-remunerative business.
The old man shook his head.
“I’m on the point of retiring, Sir Charles. Times are bad, though I’ve
made my pile, but it was done by hard work at one job all my life. I’ll
see if there’s anything for your--stepson, is it?”
“He is no relation of mine,” said Sir Charles very distinctly. “He
married my wife’s only daughter by her first husband. He is now obliged
to live upon her--very small--fortune.”
“I’ve heard something of that. Poor little lady--she’s doing wonders, I
hear. Well, well, I’ll see if they’ve anything to offer the lad, but we
don’t want men without experience these days, you know. But I’d like to
do something, for the sake of that gallant little lady.”