So rapidly did Mr. Marble make his purchases, and so little did he confer with his wife, that in two hours the whole business was completed. Mr. Marble signed a cheque that gave him possession of enough debased Empire furniture to fill 53 Malcolm Road to overflowing, and was bowed out of the shop by an amazed and delighted staff.
On the pavement Mr. Marble consulted the gold octagon-shaped watch on his wrist and hailed a taxicab.
“Oh, Will,” murmured Mrs. Marble in deprecating tones, but she got in.
“Bond Street,” snapped Mr. Marble to the driver, and climbed in beside her.
Mrs. Marble clung desperately to her husband’s arm as they bowled along Oxford Street. She was half afraid lest he might suddenly disappear, as so frequently happens in fairy stories, and leave her alone in a taxicab—she had never been in one before—to find her way home and face the arrival of a houseful of Empire furniture without the support of his presence. Mr. Marble made no objection to this public display of affection. He even pressed the timid arm that lay between his own and his side, thereby sending Mrs. Marble into the seventh heaven of delight. She was vaguely reminded of their honeymoon.
They got down at Bond Street tube station, and began to walk slowly down, their eyes on the shop windows. Mrs. Marble began to wonder what was going to happen next. She soon found out.
“Go in there,” said Mr. Marble, stopping outside a shop.
Mrs. Marble glanced at the windows. The one or two articles displayed there proved without a doubt that it was a shop for women, and also that it was a shop for women with plenty of money. She clung to her husband’s arm more wildly than ever.
“Oh, I can’t, Will, I can’t. I—I don’t like to.”
Mr. Marble snorted with contempt.
“Get along with you,” he said. “Go and buy what you want. Nine women out of ten would give their ears for the chance.”
“Oh, but, Will, I don’t know what I want. Let’s—let’s go to Selfridge’s or somewhere.”
Mr. Marble announced his contempt for Selfridge’s to all Bond Street.
“Women never do know what they want when they go into a shop. You go in. Just leave it to them. They’ll do all the asking that’s necessary once you get inside and they find out how much money you’ve got. You got your fifty all right?”
“Yes, dear.” Mrs. Marble was sure of that. She had been clutching her handbag all the morning in terror lest she should lose it.
“Right. Here’s another twenty. Put it away. Now in you go.”
Mrs. Marble, in the grip of a blind terror that made her knees tremble, tottered into the shop. Mr. Marble wandered thirstily away in search of a drink.
When he returned his wife was still inside, and he had to wait dismally for some time before she emerged, pale but firm, and with a strange joy at her heart. She could tell him little of what had happened—Mrs. Marble was not clever at describing experiences—and it was hopeless for her to endeavour to enlighten him about the feeling of hopeless inferiority that she had felt when she saw the look on the assistant’s face when she had to confess miserably to an address in the unenlightened suburbs south of the river, and of the condescension of the whole staff towards her, and of the unmoved fashion in which they had kindly relieved her of all her money and further allowed her to order a great deal more than she had been able to pay for. And how she had realized as soon as she was inside the door that her clothes were dowdy and that her hat, even with the new wing that she had bought the day before, was not, in the eyes of those aristocratic assistants, a hat at all. In fact, none of her clothes were even clothes in their eyes. She had realized in a blinding flash that these people mentally divided the world into the clothed and the unclothed, and to them she was on no higher plane than a naked savage. But she had made up for it.
“I’m afraid I’ve spent an awful lot of money, Will,” she said apologetically.
“Quite right, too,” said Mr. Marble. “They’re sending the things, I suppose? Sure you gave ’em the right address? That’s all right, then. Let’s go home.”
And home they went, in a bus crowded with the Saturday morning rush, back to Malcolm Road. It was rather unfortunate that when they arrived there, at two o’clock, there was nothing ready for them to eat, and Mr. Marble had to wait while his wife, with her brain swimming in a delirium of chiffons and serges, prepared a hurried and indigestive meal. The best thing they could have done was to have had their lunch out, but Mr. Marble had hardly thought of that. His old obsession had gripped him again; he was moody while on the bus, without a word to spare for his wife; he had been very anxious to get home to see that no one was interfering with that precious garden of his. This panic fear was displaying a growing habit of suddenly developing.
VIII
Next week kept all Malcolm Road on tiptoe. Various rumours had been flying round about Mr. Marble’s suddenly acquired wealth, stating its amount and its manner of coming in twenty different ways. Yet there were still some sceptics, who refused to believe the evidence presented to them, and who scornfully declared that they would give credit to the rumours only when they were proved beyond all doubt. Why, only a few months back there had been similar rumours, when the Marbles started to pay off their bills and Mrs. Marble had bought some new clothes. But in a
