Just as the voyager at sea, after delighting in an utterly clear, soft sky and going below, may come on deck again to find the whole firmament from rim to rim hidden by dark, menacing clouds created inexplicably out of nothing, so did Henry find the sky of his marital existence terribly transformed in an instant. All had been well; all was ill. The bread-and-margarine stuck in his throat. Violet’s features were completely altered as she gazed glassily at her plate. Henry saw in them the face of the unreasonable schoolgirl that Violet long ago must have been. He understood for the first time that her vivacity and energy had another and a sinister side. He felt himself to be amid formidable dangers; he was a very courageous man, and like nearly all courageous men in danger he was frightened.
“A nice way I’m treated!” Violet continued grimly. “All I think of is you. All I want is your happiness, and look at me! I’m always snubbed, always! So long as you do everything you want, and I do everything you want, it’s all right. But if I suggest anything—look at you! I have to have my meals in my mantle because you grudge me a bit of fire! It isn’t as if I didn’t pay my share of everything. I pay my share right enough, and more—you see to that, trust you! But I have to catch my death of cold every day, because we’re so poor, I suppose! Oh, yes! We haven’t a penny in the world to bless ourselves with!”
Henry felt in his pockets, and then left the room in silence. Alone, Violet busily fed her angry resentment. She was in a rage, and knew she was in a rage, and her rage was dear to her. She cared for nothing but her rage, and she was ready to pay for it with all her possible future happiness and the future happiness of her husband. Henry returned with a matchbox and lit the gas-fire.
Still no word. No sound but the plop of igniting gas. Violet sprang up in fury, rushed to the stove and extinguished it with a vehement, vicious gesture.
“No! I couldn’t have it before, and I won’t have it now!” She pulled off her mantle and threw it to the floor. “If I’m to be cold I’ll be cold. Here I’ve been in the shop all day, shivering. Why? How many wives would do it? There isn’t another in this dreadful Clerkenwell that you’re so fond of, I swear! You’re the stingiest man in London, and don’t you make any mistake. You think I can’t see through you and your excuses! Ha!” She began to walk up and down the room now. “I’m a slave, same as Elsie is a slave. More than Elsie. She does get an afternoon off. But me? When? Night and day! Night and day! Love? A lot you know about it! Cold by day and cold by night! And so now you know! I’ve often wanted to tell you, but I wouldn’t, because I thought it was my duty to struggle on. Besides, I didn’t want to upset you. Well, now I do want to upset you! … And why wouldn’t you eat the steak? I’ll tell you. Because I asked you to eat it.”
“You know that’s rather unfair,” Henry muttered.
“ ‘Unfair,’ is it? ‘Unfair’? A nice word for you to use. So I know it’s unfair, do I? I’m being ‘unfair,’ am I?” She looked straight at him. Her eyes blazed at him, and she added solemnly: “Henry, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, the way you go on. What do you think Elsie thinks? The marvel is that she stays here. Supposing she left us and started to talk! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
She dropped back into her chair and sobbed loudly. If Elsie heard her, what matter? In her rage she had put facts into words, and thereby given them life, devastating life. In two minutes she had transformed the domestic interior from heaven into hell. She had done something which could never be undone. Words had created that which no words could destroy. And he had driven her to it. She gazed at him once more, across the ruins of their primitive and austere bliss.
“You’re shortening your life. That’s what you’re doing,” she said, with chill ferocity. “Not to speak of mine. What’s mine? What did you have for your dinner out today? You daren’t tell me because you starved yourself. I defy you to tell me.”
She laid her head on the table just like a schoolgirl abandoning herself utterly to some girlish grief, and went on crying, but not angrily and rebelliously now—mournfully, self-pityingly, tragically. And then she sat up straight again, with suddenness, and shot new fire from her wet eyes at the tyrannic monster.
“Yes, and you needn’t think I’ve been spending money on servant’s caps, either! Because I haven’t. I know no more about that cap of Elsie’s than you do. God alone knows where she’s got it from, and why she’s wearing it. But I give servants up.” (Here Henry had an absurd wild glimmer of hope that she meant to give Elsie up, do without a servant, and so save wages and food. But he saw the next instant that he had misunderstood her words.) “They’re past me, servants are! Only, of course, you think it’s me been buying caps for the girl!”
This was the last flaring of her furious resentment. Instead of replying to it, Henry softly left the room. Violet’s sobs died down, and her compassion for herself grew silent, since there was no longer need for its expression. She tried hard to concentrate on the hardships of her lot, but she could not. Another idea insisted on occupying her mind, and compared to this idea the hardships of her lot were trifles.
“I’ve lost my power over
