“We’ll pop off as soon as I can sell the house,” he said.
“I can’t wait as long as that. I want to go now.”
“All right,” said William, amiably. “We’ll go next week.”
William’s forebodings were quickly fulfilled. Before he had been in the Metropolis ten days he realized that he was up against it as he had never been up against it before. He and Jane and little Braid Vardon had established themselves in what the house-agent described as an attractive bijou studio-apartment in the heart of the artistic quarter. There was a nice bedroom for Jane, a delightful cupboard for Braid Vardon, and a cosy corner behind a Japanese screen for William. Most compact. The rest of the place consisted of a room with a large skylight, handsomely furnished with cushions and samovars, where Jane gave parties to the intelligentsia.
It was these parties that afflicted William as much as anything else. He had not realized that Jane intended to run a salon. His idea of a pleasant social evening was to have a couple of old friends in for a rubber of bridge, and the almost nightly incursion of a horde of extraordinary birds in floppy ties stunned him. He was unequal to the situation from the first. While Jane sat enthroned on her cushion, exchanging gay badinage with rising young poets and laughing that silvery laugh of hers, William would have to stand squashed in a corner, trying to hold off some bobbed-haired female who wanted his opinion of Augustus John.
The strain was frightful, and, apart from the sheer discomfort of it, he found to his consternation that it was beginning to affect his golf. Whenever he struggled out from the artistic zone now to one of the suburban courses, his jangled nerves unfitted him for decent play. Bit by bit his game left him. First he found that he could not express himself with the putter. Then he began to fail to be himself with the mashie-niblick. And when at length he discovered that he was only fulfilling himself about every fifth shot off the tee he felt that this thing must stop.
The conscientious historian will always distinguish carefully between the events leading up to a war and the actual occurrence resulting in the outbreak of hostilities. The latter may be, and generally is, some almost trivial matter, whose only importance is that it fulfils the function of the last straw. In the case of Jane and William what caused the definite rift was Jane’s refusal to tie a can to Rodney Spelvin.
The author of The Purple Fan had been from the first a leading figure in Jane’s salon. Most of those who attended these functions were friends of his, introduced by him, and he had assumed almost from the beginning the demeanour of a master of the revels. William, squashed into his corner, had long gazed at the man with sullen dislike, yearning to gather him up by the slack of his trousers and heave him into outer darkness; but it is improbable that he would have overcome his native amiability sufficiently to make any active move, had it not been for the black mood caused by his rotten golf. But one evening, when, coming home after doing the Mossy Heath course in five strokes over the hundred, he found the studio congested with Rodney Spelvin and his friends, many of them playing ukeleles, he decided that flesh and blood could bear the strain no longer.
As soon as the last guest had gone he delivered his ultimatum.
“Listen, Jane,” he said. “Touching on this Spelvin bloke.”
“Well?” said Jane, coldly. She scented battle from afar.
“He gives me a pain in the neck.”
“Really?” said Jane, and laughed a silvery laugh.
“Don’t do it, old girl,” pleaded William, wincing.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘old girl.’ ”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t like it.”
“You used to like it.”
“Well, I don’t now.”
“Oh!” said William, and ruminated awhile. “Well, be that as it may,” he went on, “I want to tell you just one thing. Either you throw the bloke Spelvin out on his left ear and send for the police if he tries to get in again, or I push off. I mean it! I absolutely push off.”
There was a tense silence.
“Indeed?” said Jane at last.
“Positively push off,” repeated William, firmly. “I can stand a lot, but pie-faced Spelvin tries human endurance too high.”
“He is not pie-faced,” said Jane, warmly.
“He is pie-faced,” insisted William. “Come round to the Vienna Bon-Ton Bakery tomorrow and I will show you an individual custard-pie that might be his brother.”
“Well, I am certainly not going to be bullied into giving up an old friend just because—”
William stared.
“You mean you won’t hand him the mitten?”
“I will not.”
“Think what you are saying, Jane. You positively decline to give this false-alarm the quick exit?”
“I do.”
“Then,” said William, “all is over. I pop off.”
Jane stalked without a word into her bedroom. With a mist before his eyes William began to pack. After a few moments he tapped at her door.
“Jane.”
“Well?”
“I’m packing.”
“Indeed?”
“But I can’t find my spare mashie.”
“I don’t care.”
William returned to his packing. When it was finished, he stole to her door again. Already a faint stab of remorse was becoming blended with his just indignation.
“Jane.”
“Well?”
“I’ve packed.”
“Really?”
“And now I’m popping.”
There was silence behind the door.
“I’m popping, Jane,” said William. And in his voice, though he tried to make it cold and crisp, there was a note of wistfulness.
Through the door there came a sound. It was the sound of a silvery laugh. And as he heard it William’s face hardened. Without another word he picked up his suitcase and golf bag, and with set jaw strode out into the night.
One of the things that tend to keep the home together in these days of modern unrest is the fact that exalted moods of indignation
