"But," he began slowly.
"I am not the kind of woman who leaves her house and children in the
evenings," she said gently, but finally.
Charlie took his hat. He turned it round and round in his hands,
pinching the crown in, and punching it out. He had a curious, almost
uncontrollable wish to cry. For a moment it was terrible. Before it was
over, she was speaking again.
"You ought not to mess your hats about like that; they don't last half
as long."
Charlie went out.
He knew other men who were as puzzled about life as himself, but mostly
they were of cruder stuff, and if things at home went beyond their
bearing they flung out of their houses, swearing, and went to play a
hundred up at the local club. Then they were philosophers again. But
for Charlie this evening there was no philosophy big enough, for he was
looking, though he did not know it, over the edge of that awful, but
enchanting abyss. Its depths were obscured by rolling clouds of mist,
and it was only this mist which he now saw, terrifying and confusing
him. He was a little man, and knew it. He was a poor man, and knew it.
He was a weary man, and knew it. He hated his wife, and knew it. He
hated his children--whom she had made like herself, prim, peeking and
childishly censorious--and knew it.
He had not meant it to be like this at all.
When he got married she was the starched daughter of starched parents
from a starched small house--like the one he came from--but she was
young, and her figure was pliant, and her hair curled rather sweetly.
He had dreamed of happy days, cosy days with laughter; little treats
together--Soho restaurants, Richmond Park, something colourful,
something for which he had vaguely and secretly longed all the dingy,
narrow, church-parading, humbugging days of his good little boyhood.
But he soon woke up to find he had married another hard holy woman like
his mother.
He walked along, thinking mistily and hotly. Supposing he had a baby
who roared with joy and stole the sugar ... but she wouldn't have
babies like that. The first coherent thing her babies learned to say
was a text.
Babies.... He hadn't wanted three, because they couldn't afford them.
He tried to talk to her about it. She made him ashamed of himself,
though he didn't know why; and showed him how wicked he was, though he
didn't know why; and how good she was, though he didn't know why--then.
But he knew now that there are still many women who are gluttons for
martyrdom, who long to exalt themselves by a parrot righteousness, and
who are only happy when destroying natural joy in others. And he knew
there were many men like himself, married and done for; tied up to
these pettifogging saints; goaded under their stupid yoke; belittled
through their narrow eyes.
He thought all this mistily and hotly.
He had come to the end of the road; and the end of another road more
populous; and the end of another road, more populous.
At a corner of this road stood Kitty.
She was soft and colourful, painted to a perfect peachiness,
young--twenty-four and looking less; old as the world and wise. She was
gay. She did not much care if it snowed; she knew enough to wriggle in
somewhere, somehow, out of it. The years had not yet scared her. She
was joy.
Charlie paused before he knew why. She looked at him. Then the mists
rolled away from the abyss below the tottering edge on which he had
been balanced for longer time than he guessed, and he saw the garden
far below; lotus flowers dreaming in the sun. He launched himself
simply into space towards them.
Kitty helped him. She knew how.
Charlie had, as it happened, his next week's personal allowance of
seven and sixpence in his pocket--for to-day had been pay day; and his
season ticket. The rest he had handed over to his wife at supper time.
He had also, however, the moral support of knowing that he had in the
savings bank the exact amount of his sickness and life insurance
premiums due that very week. So it did not embarrass him to take Kitty
straight away up to town--she, making a shrewd summary of him, did not
object to third-class travelling--and to stand her coffee and a
sandwich at the Monico.
"I don't happen to have much change on me, and my bank's closed," was
the explanation he offered, and she tactfully accepted of this modest
entertainment.
It was ten-thirty when she took him to see her tiny flat a stone's
throw away. She was looking for another supporter for that flat, and
explained her reason for being in Charlie's suburb that evening. She'd
been trying to find the house of a man friend--a rich friend--who lived
there, and might have helped her over a temporary difficulty, but when
she found the house the servants told her he was away. She confided
these things, leaning in Charlie's arms on a little striped divan by a
gas fire. She made him a drink, and showed him the cunning and
luxurious little contrivances for comfort about the flat. He loved it.
She didn't try to conceal from him her real vocation, for that would
have been too silly. Even Charlie might not have been such a fool as to
believe her. But she invested it with glamour; she made of it romance.
Once more as in boyhood he saw the world full of allurement.
So he went home, having promised her that to-morrow he would come
again.
And going in quietly, so as not to disturb the baby, he undressed
quietly so as not to disturb his wife, and he crept cautiously into the
double bed that she decreed they must share for ever and ever, whatever
their feelings towards one another, because they were married; and he
hoped to fall asleep with enchantment unbroken. But she was awake, and
waiting patiently to speak. "Where have you been, Charlie?"
"At the club," he whispered back. "Watching two fellows play a billiard
match."
She sighed.
"Charlie," she said, "you ought to have more consideration for me.
Maudie said to me when I went in to look at them before I came to bed:
'Is daddy still out?' she said. 'I do think he ought not to go out and
leave you alone, mamma.' She's such a sweet child, Charlie, and I do
think you ought to think more of her. Children often say little things
in the innocence of their hearts that do even us grown-up people good
sometimes."
So the next morning Charlie left home with a suit-case--alleged to
contain the one suit for turning, but really crammed to bursting. His
wife being busy with the baby, Maud saw him off with her usual air of
smug reproof; and that evening he did not come back. He had written a
letter to his wife, on the journey to town, telling her his decision,
which she would receive by the afternoon post. But he gave her no
address.
He drew out the whole amount in the savings bank, surrendered his life
insurance, realising £160; and he went home after the day's work to
Kitty.
Little Kitty was looking for any kind of mug, pending better
developments, and she certainly had found one; but what a happy mug he
was! Life was warm and light, gay and uncritical. He spent even less on
his own lunches--he retained his seven and sixpence weekly personal
allowance, though of course he posted the rest of his salary home--so
that he might have an extra half-crown or so to buy chocolates for
Kitty. It was nice to buy chocolates instead of subscribing to the
Vicar's Fund. And little Kitty, who was wise, guessed he hadn't much
and couldn't afford her long, so pending better things, like a sensible
person, she eked him out.