I'm for ever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air.
They fly so high, nearly reach the sky....
She had a gramophone and she taught him to dance, and then he had to
take her to the best dancing place he could afford and they danced a
long evening through. He bought her a wonderful little woollen frock at
one of the small French shops in Shaftesbury Avenue, and she looked
exactly what she was in it; and he knew she was the most wonderful
thing in the world. When he propounded the frock question to her one
morning when they woke up, saying: "I would like to see you in a dress
I'd bought, Kitty," she did not tell him it was wrong to consider
themselves, and she would have her old black turned. She put a dear fat
little arm round his neck, laid a soft selfish cheek to his, and
muttered cosily, "It shall buy her a frock then. It shall."
She was sporting enough not to protest when she knew where his weekly
pay went. "Three kids must be fed," she said. In fact, according to her
own codes, she was not ungenerous towards the other woman.
All the while he knew: £160 can't last. What will happen when...?
Charlie's wife thought she was sure of what must happen pretty soon. So
did her Uncle Henry and Aunt, for whom she had sent a day or two after
the blow had fallen.
They found her cutting down Maud's oldest dress for the second child in
her tidy house.
"Charlie has left me for an immoral woman," she said, after preparing
them with preliminaries.
"What!" said Uncle Henry. He was a churchwarden at the church to which
Charlie, in a bowler hat, had had to take the critical Maud on Sundays.
"Fancy leaving _that_!" said Aunt, when they had digested and credited
the news. She pointed at her niece sewing diligently even through this
painful conversation. "Look at her scraping and economising and
contriving. And he leaves her!"
"He must be naturally wild and bad," said Uncle Henry. "Shall I speak
to the Vicar for you?"
"Have you written to his firm?" asked Aunt.
Charlie's wife spoke wisely, gently, and with perfection as ever. "No,"
she said. "I have thought it over, and I think the best thing, for the
children's sake, is to say nothing. We ought not to consider ourselves.
Besides, I dare say it's my duty to forgive him."
"Always thinking of your duty!" murmured Aunt admiringly.
"If I wrote to his firm about it," said Charlie's wife, "they would
dismiss him."
"Ah! and he sends you his pay, you say?" said Uncle Henry, seizing the
point like a business man.
"What a position for a conscientious woman like you!" mourned Aunt.
"You are quite right, my dear," said Uncle Henry. "You have three
children and no other means of sustenance, and you cannot afford to do
as I should otherwise advise you."
"Besides, he will come back," said Charlie's wife gently. "Men are soon
sickened of these women."
"Of course," agreed Aunt.
"Well! Well!" said Uncle Henry, "you are very magnanimous, my dear, and
one day Charles will fully appreciate it. And I hope he will be duly
thankful to you for your great goodness. Yes! You will soon have Master
Charles creeping back, very ashamed of himself, and when he comes, I
for one, intend to give him the biggest talking to he has ever had in
his life. But I really think the Vicar too, should be told, in
confidence, so that he may decide upon the right course of action for
himself."
"Because he could not allow your husband to communicate, my love," said
Aunt, "without being sure of his genuine repentance."
"I have been thinking of that too," said Charlie's wife. "It would not
be right."
"I wonder what he feels about himself, when he remembers his dear
little children," said Aunt. "Maud nearly old enough to understand, and
all!"
So they lay for Charlie, while he basked and thrived in the abyss of
the lotus-flower; and the £160 dwindled.
It was towards the end of the second month that Charlie sensed a new
element in his precarious dream. All day when he was out, thinking of
Kitty through the routine of his work, he had no idea of what she was
doing. Sometimes he was afraid to think of what she might be doing, and
for fear of shattering the dream, he never dared to ask. Always she was
sweet and joyful towards him--save for petulant quarrels she raised as
if to make the ensuing sweetness and joyfulness the dearer--until
towards the close of the second month. Then one evening she was
distrait; one evening, critical; one night, cold; then she had a dinner
and dance engagement at the Savoy. Then he knew that his time had come.
He waited up for her. He had the gas fire lighted in the tiny
sitting-room, and little sugary cakes and wine on the table; and the
gas fire lighted in the bedroom to warm it for her, and the bed turned
down, and her nightgown and slippers, so frail, warming before the
fire.
But he knew.
In the early dawn her key clicked in the lock, and she came in,
followed by a man. He was pale, sensual, moneyed, fashionable. Charlie
got up stoutly; but he was already beaten.
The Jew looked at him, and turned to Kitty.
"I told you," she said, stammering a little, "I told you how it was. By
to-morrow ... I told you...."
"I'll come again, to-morrow, then," said the man very meaningly, "fetch
you out----"
"At eight," she nodded firmly.
He kissed her on the mouth, while Charlie stood looking at them with
eyes that seemed to stare themselves out of his head, turned and went
out.
"Nighty-night!" Kitty called after him.
After the front door clicked again there was a moment's silence. Kitty
advanced, shook off her cloak, took up one of the sugary cakes, and
began to munch it. She looked beautiful and careless and sorry and hard
all at once.
"What are you sitting up for, Charlie?" she asked. "I didn't expect to
see you. I brought that fellow in to talk."
"What about?" said Charlie in a hoarse desolate voice.
"Charlie," said Kitty, hurriedly, "you know this arrangement of ours
can't last, now, can it, dear? You haven't the cash for one thing,
dear. Now, have you? And I've got to think of myself a little; a girl's
got to provide. You've been awf'ly good to me. Let's part friends."
"'Part!'" he repeated.
His eyes seemed to start from his head.
"Let's part friends," wheedled Kitty. "Shall us?"
The night passed in a kind of evil vision of desolation, and Kitty was
asleep long before he had stopped his futile whisperings into her ear.
Before he went to the office in the morning, he asked her from a
breaking heart: "You mean it?"
"I've got to," she explained. She cried easily. "Dearie, you'll leave
peaceably? You won't make a row? Now, for my sake! To oblige me! While
you're out to-day I'll pack your suit-case and give it to the
hall-porter for you to call for. Shall I, Charlie? Kiss me, dear. Don't
take your latch-key. Good-bye. You've been awfully decent to me. We'll
part friends, shall us?"
He kissed her, and went out to work, speaking no more. He had said all
the things in his heart during the hours of that sleepless dawn. She
knew how he loved her ... though possibly she didn't quite believe. He
realised her position acutely, perhaps more acutely than his own. She
had to live. And yet....
He had taken his latch-key the same as usual, and he found himself at
the end of the day, going the same as usual to the tiny flat that was
home if ever there was any place called home. He let himself in
noiselessly. The little hall was dark. He stood in a corner against the
coat cupboard. The flat was silent. He stood there a long while
without moving and a clock chimed seven. He heard her singing--
"I'm for ever blowing bubbles....
Lal-la! la! la!... la! la! la!..."
She would be in her bedroom, sitting before the mirror in her
diaphanous underwear, touching up her face. The pauses in the song made
him see her.... Now she was using the eyebrow pencil.... The song went
on and broke again; now she would be half turning from the mirror,
curved on the gilt chair as he had so often seen her, hand-glass in
hand, looking at the back of her head, and her eyelashes, and her
profile, fining away all hard edges of rouge and lipstick. He felt
quite peaceful as he imaged her.
Peace was shattered at a blast by the ringing of the front door bell.
Then light streamed from the opened bedroom door, was switched off, and
Kitty ran into the darkish hall. She clicked on the light by the front
door, opened the door, and the big man came in.
He kissed her on the mouth.
Then Charlie stepped from beside the coat cupboard, suddenly as though
some strong spring which held him there had been released, and the
strong spring was in his tense body alone. For the first time in his
life he felt all steel and wire and whipcord, and many fires. He threw
himself on the intruder and fought for his woman.
Kitty did not scream. She knew better.
"Oh Charlie!" she panted. "For ---- sake go! Go! I can't have a row
here. Oh, Charlie, be a good boy, do."
"He _shall_ go," said the other man.
He was a big man; and still young and lithe. Kitty opened the front
door, whispering: "Oh, Charlie! Oh! Charlie!" and the man pushed
Charlie out. The lift was not working at the moment, the landing was
quiet, there was not a soul on the stairway beside the liftshaft when
the man flung Charlie headlong down the first flight and broke him on
the unyielding stone.
Charlie heard his own spine crack; but as the other, scared and pale,
reached him, he heard something else also; the voice of Kitty, who
stood above them, looking down, sobbing: "I c-c-can't have a row here.
It'd break me. Oh! Charlie! Oh Charlie! If you love me, go away!"
Charlie loved Kitty very much. "My back's broken," he whispered to the
enemy bending over him. "But if you get me under the armpits, lift me
down the stairs, and put me into the street, and if the hall-porter
sees us go out tell him I'm dead drunk----"
The man lifted him as instructed, an arm round him, just under the
shoulder-blades and armpits. Below he could feel the crumpled weight
sway and sag. He tried to be merciful in his handling. "D-d-do you no
g-g-good," he faltered as he lifted Charlie downstairs, "t-to get me
into a mess. I'm sorry. D-d-didn't mean.... But I've got a wife and
don't want hell raised.... You asked for it.... I'm sorry. I'm
sorry...." When they reached the ground floor the single-handed porter
was just carrying a passenger in the lift to the floor above, so they
got unobserved into the street, a quietish street, a cul-de-sac.
"Take me a f-f-few d-d-doors off, and put me down," said Charlie, and
the sweat of pain ran down his face, but when the man had put him down
against some area railings, and laid him straight, he was comfortable.
The other man simply vanished.
A taxi-driver found Charlie by-and-by, and the police fetched an
ambulance and took him to the hospital, and in a white bed he lay
sleepily, revealing nothing, all that night. But they found, searching
for an address in his pockets, the address of his family, and they sent
a message to his wife.
His wife received it early the next morning, and first she sent Maud
for Uncle Henry and Aunt, who found that all was turning out as they
prophesied, save for the slight deviation of Charlie's accident.
"They don't say exactly how bad he is?" said Uncle Henry. "Ah! but he
was well enough to send for you! He knows which side his bread's
buttered. Yes! we shall have Master Charles creeping back again, very
thankful to be in his home with every comfort, nursed by you; and I
will give him the worse talking to be has ever had in his life!"
"And if he's ill he can't prevent the Vicar visiting him too," said
Aunt.
So Charlie's wife set out to do her duty.
But still earlier that morning, instructed by the tremendous peace
which was stealing over him that time was short, Charlie was making his
first request. Would they please ring up _Shaftesbury_ 84 to ask for
"Kitty" and tell her "Charlie" just wanted to see her very urgently for
a few minutes at once, but not to be frightened, for everything would
be perfectly all right?
Pending her arrival, which in a faltering voice over the phone she
promised as soon as possible, Charlie asked the kindly Sister who was
hovering near to help him die:
"Sister, when a friend of mine comes in, a young lady who isn't used
to--to seeing--things, if I go off suddenly as it were-what I'm afraid
of is, she may be afraid if there's any kind of struggle--I saw a
fellow die once and he gave a sort of rattle--well, will you just pull
the bed-clothes up over me, so that she doesn't see?"
Kitty came in, wearing, perhaps incidentally, perhaps by some grace of
kindness, the woollen frock, and she crept, shaking, round the screen,
and stood beside Charlie, and said, "Oh Charlie! Oh Charlie!" opening
his closing eyes.
"Kitty!" he smiled, "sing 'Bubbles.'"
The look Sister--who had taken her right in--gave her, pried Kitty's
trembling mouth open like a crowbar, and leaning against Charlie's cot
she sang--
"When shadows creep,
When I'm asleep,
To lands of hope I stray,
Then at daybreak, when I awake...."
The Sister drew the bed-clothes shadily round Charlie's face.
"... My blue bird flutters away,
I'm forever blowing bubbles....
Pretty bubbles in the air...."
Just then the good woman was brought into the ward, bearing with her
messages from Maud worthy of Little Eva herself; and full of holy
forgiveness; and at edge of the screen Sister met her.
"His wife?" said Sister. "A moment too late. I am sorry." The good
woman was looking at the bad woman by the bed, so Sister made a vague
explanation.
"He just wanted a song," she said.