It was all very annoying and exasperating. How his head ached, and how tired he felt! His mind was numb. The grim feeling of blank despair was swamped by complete lassitude of soul. He realized vaguely that his oft-repeated threat of sending the children to bed without any supper would soon be carried into effect despite himself. He would be sacked from the Bank, and he would never get another job. He knew that well enough. He supposed it would end like the cases one read about in the paper, with his children’s throats cut and himself and his wife dead of gas-poisoning. But at present he hardly cared. He wanted to relax. When those blessed kids had been packed off to bed he would drag the armchair up to the fire and put his feet up on the coalbox and read the paper and be comfortable for a bit. In the decanter in the sideboard there was a little drop of whisky left. Not much of course; three drinks perhaps, or maybe four. Mr. Marble hoped it was four. With a drink and a paper and the fire he could forget his troubles for a little, for he couldn’t do anything towards remedying them this evening. Mr. Marble hardly realized that he had said the same thing to himself every evening for months now. The prospect seemed ineffably alluring. He yearned towards the decanter in the sideboard. And the wind was shrieking outside, sending the rain spattering against the windows. That would make it seem even more comfortable when he was beside the fire.
But the children must be disposed of first. For some obscure reason Mr. Marble had an objection to drinking whisky in front of his children. His wife did not matter so much, although he would have preferred to have her out of the way too. A glance at the clock disappointed him a little. It was only half-past seven, and the children would not be going to bed for another half-hour at the earliest. He felt suddenly irritable. He peered surreptitiously from under his eyebrows to see if he could catch them misbehaving so as to send them off at once. The whisky would taste all the better if he could come to it fresh from a parental triumph and an autocratic exertion of authority.
“Stop that noise, John,” he ordered, with queer, feeble savageness.
John looked round from his chair by the fire a little startled. Five seconds ago he had been mazed in the pages of How England Saved Europe, and had been leading the Fusilier Brigade over heaps of dead up the bloodstained hill of Albuera. He gazed vacantly at his father.
“Don’t look at me like a fool,” spluttered Mr. Marble. “Do what you’re told and stop that noise.” The two orders were synonymous, but John did not realize that.
“What did you tell me?” he asked vaguely.
“No impertinence, now. I said stop that noise.”
“What noise, father?” asked John, more to gain time to collect his thoughts than for any other reason. But the question was fatal.
“Don’t try to deny it,” said Mr. Marble.
“Now, you were making a noise, you know, Johnny,” said Mrs. Marble.
“You were kicking with your feet,” chimed in Winnie.
“I didn’t deny it,” protested John.
“You did,” said Mrs. Marble.
“You did,” said Winnie.
“Be quiet, Winnie,” snapped Mr. Marble, rounding on his usual favourite in unusual fashion. “You’re as bad as he is, and you know it. Have you done your homework yet? I send you to a good school, and this is all the return I get for it.”
“Why, I got a scholarship,” replied Winnie, with a jerk of her head.
“Are you being impertinent too?” demanded Mr. Marble. “I don’t know what you children are coming to. It’s time for bed when you start being rude to your parents.”
The fatal words were said, and the children looked at each other in dismay. Mrs. Marble made a typical fainthearted effort on their behalf.
“Oh, not just yet, father,” she said.
That was all the opposition that Mr. Marble needed to make him quite decided on the matter.
“At once,” he said. “John, go to bed—and leave that book down here too. Winnie, pack your things neatly ready for the morning and go along too. Let this be a lesson to you.”
“But I haven’t done my homework,” wailed Winnie, “and there’ll be such a row if I haven’t done it tomorrow.”
John did not answer. He was wondering how the Fusiliers would get on without him for the rest of their advance. Even Mrs. Marble was moved to further protest at this drastic action, but her halfhearted entreaties were ignored by both sides.
“Be quick, I am waiting,” said Mr. Marble.
It was inevitable. Sullenly Winnie began to stack her books together. John stood up and put How England Saved Europe on the table. It was then, at the eleventh hour, that diversion came. It came in the form of a loud knocking at the street door. For a second everyone looked at each other startled, for visitors were a rarity in Malcolm Road, especially at the extraordinary hour of half-past seven. Winnie recovered first.
“I’ll go,” she said, and slipped through into the hall.
The others heard her tugging at the latch, and then the gas suddenly flickered as a gust of wind came rushing in with the opening of the street door. A strange, loud, masculine voice made itself heard asking for Mr. Marble. He was about to go
