But this time the sceptics were confounded. At first the news had flown from lip to lip—“Number 53’s moving out.” It looked like it, indeed. An empty furniture van stood outside, and men were moving furniture into it from Number 53. Everywhere, from upper windows behind curtains, housewives were watching the process. Some, overwhelmed with curiosity, put on their hats and went thither on hurriedly-composed errands of borrowing or restoring in order to have a word with Mrs. Marble to find out what was really going on. But they retired baffled. Mrs. Marble was in too great a state of hurry and bewilderment to give them any satisfaction at all. And, having retired, they were doomed to further mystification. For more vans drew up outside Number 53, and from these men began to bring other furniture and take it inside.
Truly the neighbours were baffled. They had heard of people moving out before, and they had heard of people moving in. They knew of many cases where these two operations had been carried out as nearly simultaneously as might be. They had also heard, but more rarely, of people buying new furniture although they were not newly married. But the present process utterly confounded them. And the furniture that was arriving! Nothing half as splendid had ever been seen before in Malcolm Road. They saw the great Empire bed being carried in in sections, the gilding flaming in the daylight, and the Cupids, vapidly chubby, clustered upon it. The neighbours shook their heads sadly, and told each other that they thought that that bed could tell a tale or two if it wished. Then came chairs, and dressing-tables, and chests of drawers, all resplendent in gold, and covered thick with carving. There was little housework done in Malcolm Road that day. The housewives were too busy watching the new furniture being brought in to Number 53.
The work was still uncompleted late in the afternoon when Mr. Marble returned from the office. It was nearly done, but the task that remained was the hardest of all. The men were busy arranging to get the vast mosaic table into the house. Mr. Marble, with quite a pleasant bubble of excitement within him, flung down his hat and hastened out to superintend the handling of this, his chiefest treasure. He stood by the gate, hatless in the sunshine, giving useless and unheeded advice while the workmen toiled and sweated, handling the monstrosity. Mrs. Marble had sunk down on one of the uncomfortable gilt chairs, quite tired out.
As Mr. Marble stood on the pavement by his gate he felt a touch on his arm, and he looked round. She was a woman nearly of middle-age—no, hardly that, thought Mr. Marble, but at any rate she gave an impression of ripe and luscious maturity. And she was dressed—oh, simply to perfection. She was dressed as Mr. Marble sometimes vaguely wished his wife would dress. Despite her closely-fitting hat anyone could tell that she was auburn-haired, and her eyes were a rich brown and her complexion was splendid. She wore her clothes in a fashion only achieved by her countrywomen—she was French. The whole atmosphere her appearance conveyed was one of ripeness and perfection—overripeness, perhaps, but that was, if anything, an added attraction in Mr. Marble’s eyes.
“What lovely things you have got,” said this apparition. “I have been looking at them for ever so long. Those beautiful chairs and that lovely bed! They remind me of what I have seen in the Louvre.”
Mr. Marble was a little taken aback. He was unused to being addressed in the broad light of day by overripe and entirely delectable goddesses. But he was secretly pleased. It was a pleasant thing to have this long-coveted Empire furniture admired, especially by people of obvious good taste like this one. Mr. Marble realized that the difficulty that the newcomer displayed in tackling the aspirate was not the one usually met with in Malcolm Road. He noted her as French, with a pleased appreciation of his own perspicacity, and his head positively swam as he looked at her and strove to make some reply. The unknown noted his embarrassment, was pleased, and went swiftly on as though she had not.
“You do not mind my looking at your nice things? No? I am very rude, I know, and I should not, but I could not help it. And now I have confessed, and I ought to have pardon. You do pardon me, eh?”
Mr. Marble had not even yet recovered himself, and this charming little speech did nothing to assist in the process. He stammered out some banal phrase or other—the only intelligible word was “charmed”—but somehow the newcomer soon put him at his ease and they were chatting away as though they had been friends for years. She greeted the appearance of the mosaic table with little shrieks of delight.
“Oh, how lovely!” she said. “It is magnificent. You are a very lucky man, Mr.—?”
“Marble,” said Mr. Marble.
Upstairs, three doors off, one woman said to another:
“The French dressmaker woman, you know, Madame Collins, she calls herself, has just got off with Mr. Marble. Nice goings on, I call it, right in the street outside his front door, with beds and I-don’t-know-what being carried past them. I wonder what Mrs. Marble will have to say about that.”
“Nothing, I don’t expect. She doesn’t never have a word to say for herself. He treats her cruel, so I’ve heard.”
But Mr. Marble for the moment cared nothing for tittle-tattling neighbours. He was too busy thinking of something nice to say to this wonderful woman. He was still talking to her when the table had at last been manoeuvred through the narrow hall door and the workmen were gathering in the background with a furtive lust for tips in their eyes. He
