“Oh, Mrs. Marble,” she said, “I ’ave just been talking to your ’usband about all your nice furniture. It is too lovely. You are a lucky woman to ’ave such nice things.”
Mrs. Marble was as startled as her husband had been ten minutes ago. She glanced quaveringly at him, and took from him her cue of agreeableness.
“I’m glad you like them,” she said.
Mr. Marble took his chance.
“Won’t you come in?” he said. “Then you could see them in the rooms. My wife could give you a cup of tea, too.”
“Thank you so much,” said Madame Collins, and she passed the threshold, in more senses than one. They passed into the dining-room. It was crammed unbearably with gilt chairs and the abominable mosaic table, whose tawdriness was accentuated by the faded flowered wallpaper and what was left of the dingy old furniture. With its glitter and glare the room looked like a cheap-jack jeweller’s stall. Madame Collins looked grimly round, but she was very charming about it, and praised the effect so delicately that even pale little Mrs. Marble flushed with pleasure. And she introduced herself in such a ladylike fashion that everybody felt happy instead of uncomfortable as they expected to feel.
They had tea with the silver tea-set on the gilt and mosaic table—a combination that annoyed Madame Collins’ really sensitive eye extremely—and when she rose to take her leave Mrs. Marble was almost sorry, tired though she was, and she eagerly accepted Madame Collins’ invitation to call whenever she felt like it.
Madame Collins had been very tactful and had let them know all about her past and present circumstances, without being too obvious about it. They had gathered that she was French, of a very old and distinguished family ruined by the war—her father was actually a Normandy peasant—and she had married an English officer of vast talent but no money. Now they were struggling to make both ends meet, she with her dressmaking and he with his music. She admitted with a shy laugh that he really tuned pianos, but that was not at all the work he was fitted for. He had great ideas about what he could do, and—so she said—she believed in them, too. To Mrs. Marble she conveyed the impression of a devoted couple with a great future before them; to Mr. Marble it did not seem as if the devotion were so pronounced. That goes to show what a clever woman Madame Collins was, even allowing for the fact that Mrs. Marble was very tired, and so preoccupied with being ladylike and pouring out the tea that she missed the one or two flashing glances with which Madame Collins favoured Mr. Marble from her warm, brown eyes.
And when she had gone, Mr. Marble, with his money scorching a hole in his pocket, was so excited and pleased with his inner thoughts that for the time he had no care about anything else. His riotous imagination had, for the nonce, something to riot over other than the possibilities of detection, and he made the most of it. He dreamed away the evening very pleasantly. He was not even disturbed by the fact that John and Winnie found it difficult to do homework on the mosaic table in consequence of the raised gilt border; he had no care for Mrs. Marble, who was patiently clearing up the confusion left by the men when they had brought the furniture, and who was toiling putting mattresses and sheets on the cupid-encumbered Empire bed in the front bedroom.
But he paid for this slight relaxation. He had to pay for it sooner or later of course, and as it happened this came about the next evening.
Mr. Marble was sitting smoking in the glittering dining-room. He was still happy and peaceful; he ignored the discomfort of the Empire armchair in which he sat; in the hall stood a crate of books he had ordered that morning—crime books, mystery books, all the books he had seen advertised at the back of the limited selection available at the Public Library, and had coveted during his poverty—and when he felt like it he would leisurely unpack them and would arrange them in the drawing-room so that he could browse in them when he would. But he was rudely disturbed. Mrs. Marble had come into the room and had sat down, and was fidgeting with her sewing in a nervous fashion. If Mr. Marble had given the matter a thought he would have known that she was nerving herself to ask something of him, but he had been too preoccupied in thinking about Madame Collins and her brown eyes—the money in his pocket had something to do with it as well—and the natural result was that her request took him unawares.
“Will,” said Mrs. Marble, “don’t you think we could have Mrs. Summers back here again now that we can afford it? This house means a lot of work for me, and now that we’ve got all this new furniture—”
Mr. Marble sat very still. His mind had raced away to all the books about crimes that he had read. He had impressed it upon himself so very often that he could
