In the darkened bedroom Violet leaned over from her side of the bed and placed her lips on Henry’s in a long, anxious, loving kiss, and felt the responsive upward pressure of his rich, indolent lips. They were happy together, these two, so far as the dreadful risks of human existence would allow. Never a cross word! Never a difference!
“How are you?” she murmured.
“I’m all right, Vi.”
“You’ve got a heavy day in front of you.”
“Yes. Fairly. I’m all right.”
“Darling, I want you to do something for me, to please me. I know you will.”
“I expect I shall.”
“I want you to eat a good breakfast before you start. I don’t like the idea of you—”
“Oh! That!” he interrupted her negligently. “I always eat as much as I want. Nothing much the matter with me.”
“No. Of course there isn’t. But I don’t like—”
“I say,” he interrupted her again. “I tore the seat of my grey trousers on Saturday. I wish you’d just mend it—now. It won’t show, anyhow. You can do it in a minute or two.”
“You never told me.”
The fact was he seldom did tell her anything until he had to tell her. And his extraordinary gift for letting things slide was quite unimpaired by the influence of marriage. Her face was still close to his.
“You never told me,” she repeated. Then she rose and slipped an old mantle over her nightdress.
“Oh, Harry,” she cried, near the window, examining the trousers, “I can’t possibly mend this now. It will take me half the morning. You must put on your blue trousers.”
“To go to an auction? No. I can’t do that. You’ll manage it well enough.”
“But you’ve got seven pairs of them, and six quite new!”
Years ago he had bought a job lot of blue suits, which fitted him admirably, for a song. Yes, for a song! At the present rate of usage of suits some of them would go down unworn to his heirs. He had had similar luck with a parcel of flannel shirts. On the other hand, the expensiveness and the mortality of socks worried him considerably.
“I don’t think I’ll wear the blue,” he insisted blandly. “They’re too good, those blue ones are.”
“Well, I shall mend it in bed,” said Violet, brightly yielding. “There must have been a frost in the night.”
She got back into bed with the trousers and her stitching gear, and lit the candle which saved the fantastic cost of electric light. As soon as she had done so Mr. Earlforward arose and drew up the blind.
“I think you won’t want that,” said he, indicating the candle.
“No, I shan’t,” she agreed, and extinguished the candle.
“You’re a fine seamstress,” observed Mr. Earlforward with affectionate enthusiasm, “and I like to see you at it.”
Violet laughed, pleased and flattered. Simple souls, somehow living very near the roots of happiness—though precariously!
II
After Breakfast
By chance Violet went down into the shop just after the first-post delivery and just before Henry came. She was always later in the shop on Monday mornings than on other mornings because on that day she prepared the breakfast herself and also attended personally to other “little matters,” as she called them. Henry had already been into the shop, for such blinds as there were had been drawn up, and he had replenished the bookstand, but too soon for the letters. She noticed the accumulation of dirt in the shop, very gradual, but resistless. Although the two women cleaned the shop, and, indeed, the whole establishment, section by section, with a most regular periodicity, they could not get over the surface fast enough to cope with the unceasing deposit of dirt. And they could not cope at all with, for instance, the grime on the ceiling; to brush the ceiling made it worse. In Henry’s eyes, however, the shop was as clean as on the wedding night, and he was as content with it as then; he deprecated his wife’s lamentations about its condition. Certainly no one could deny that it still was cleaner than before her advent, and anyhow he could never again have tolerated another vacuum-cleaning, with its absurd costliness; he knew the limits of his capacity for suffering.
Violet unlocked the door and let in the morn, and shivered at the tonic. This act of opening the shop-door, though having picked up the milk she at once closed the door again, seemed to mark another stage in the process which Elsie had begun more than two hours earlier; it broke the spell of night by letting in not only the morn but dailiness. She gathered the envelopes together from the floor, and noticed one with a halfpenny stamp, which she immediately opened—furtively. Yes, it was the gas bill for the September quarter, the quarter which ought to be the lightest of the year. And was not! She deciphered the dread total; it affected her like an accusation of crime, like an impeachment for treason. She felt guilty, yet she had done her utmost to “keep the gas down.” What would Henry say? She dared not let him see it. … And the electricity bill to follow it in a few days! … Unquestionably Elsie was wasteful. They were all alike, servants were, and even Elsie was not an exception.
At that moment Henry limped down the stairs. Violet hid the bill and envelope in the pocket of her pinafore-apron.
“Here are the letters,” she said, seizing the little milk-can and moving forward to meet him. “Just put a match to the stove, will you? I’m late.”
She went on towards the stairs.
“We surely shan’t want the stove today,” he stopped her. “We haven’t needed it yet. It’s going to be a beautiful day.”
She had had the fire laid in the stove more than
