Short Fiction

branch, with its mate dead at the foot of the tree. The picture saddened him. He felt unhappy for no reason. She was standing now, the ugly hat crammed over her face, the scarf pulled anyhow on her shoulder.

He caught at her hand.

“I don’t want you to go,” he said. She smiled and made her way to the door.

“I must catch my train at Paddington, John and the children expect me. It made me so happy coming to see you. I shall sit in the train tonight and go through it all over again. It’s been a great excitement in my quiet, uneventful life, you know. God bless you, and take care of yourself, You don’t know how young you’ve made me feel.”

He looked at her white hair and the bronzed, weather-beaten face.

“You’re taking something away with you that belongs to me,” he said. “It’s something that has no name, but it means a great deal to me. I wish I knew what it was.”

But this time she laughed and would not believe what he was saying. “Now you’re just acting,” she told him.

“No,” he said. “No, that’s what you don’t understand.”

---

She went from him down the passage and out of the stage door. He heard her footsteps pass along the alley outside his window. He looked at himself in the mirror above the fireplace. He felt tired and listless.

“Monkton?” he called. “Monkton?”

When he had cleaned away his grease paint and washed, his face seemed thin and pale. There were little lines beneath his eyes. His hair was streaked with grey.

Somebody knocked at the door. It was the girl ready dressed, carrying her beret in her hand.

“Who on earth was that old lady with the white hair and the large bosom?” she asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said, “as a matter of fact I haven’t the vaguest idea even now.”

“Did she keep you ages, poor darling? What a bore for you.”

He made no answer. She followed him to the car waiting in the street. When they came to a block in Piccadilly she looked at him, wondering what he was thinking about.

He was singing absently to himself, his thoughts miles away⁠—

Why are you so mean to me?
Why are you⁠ ⁠… ?

He broke off in the middle of a bar. “Tell me,” he said suddenly, “that woman⁠—did she seem old to you, really old?”

Frustration

After he had been engaged to her for seven years he felt that it was impossible to wait for her any longer.

Human endurance had been tested to the limit. For seven years he had held her hand by the stile in the field, and it was beginning to pall at last.

It seemed to him that there must be more in life than these things.

He admitted that time had been when the simple fact of looking at her from a distance had ensured him weeks of fever and excitement, when the mere process of brushing against her on a tennis court had caused a state of nervous prostration.

Such follies belonged to the distant past. He was twenty-four now instead of eighteen. In the irony of his soul he wondered what Napoleon would have done if someone had offered him a box of tin soldiers; it occurred to him that Suzanne Lenglen in her day would have protested had she been compelled to play battledore and shuttlecock.

He was earnest, he was desperate, he was very much in love.

Saying good night to her at half-past nine in the evening was a modern equivalent to the appalling tortures of the Spanish Inquisition. At these moments his legs twisted themselves inside out, his fingers clutched at the air, and his tongue got caught up his uvula.

A low moaning noise rose in his throat, and he wanted to creep up a wall. Marriage seemed to be the one solution.⁠ ⁠… Scarlet in the face, his hands clenched and his jaw set, he made his declaration to her father.

“Sir,” he began, “I can’t stand this any longer; I must get married.”

The father looked him up and down.

“I can well believe it,” he said; “but it has got nothing to do with me. Personally, for a boy of your type, I put my faith in long engagements. You’ve been engaged for seven years. Why not draw up a contract for another seven?”

“Sir⁠—we can’t wait any longer. When we look at each other, we feel⁠—”

The older man interrupted him brutally.

“I’m not at all interested in what you feel. Can you support a wife?”

“No⁠—yes⁠—at least. I will find a job.”

“Is there anything you can do?”

“I can tinker about with cars.”

“I see. Is that enough to make her happy?”

“I sort of.⁠ ⁠…”

“You expect to make a girl happy when you’ve no money, no job, no qualifications, and the only thing know how to handle is a spanner.”

“Sir, I⁠—”

“Splendid. I’ll say no more. My daughter is twenty-four; she can do as she likes. I’ll pay for your wedding, but neither of you get a penny from me afterwards. You can work. I have a feeling your marriage will be a success.”

“Sir, may I⁠—can I⁠—I.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, you can clear out.”

---

The wedding was good, as weddings go. There were church bells, white dresses, veils, orange blossom, and the “Voice That Breathed O’er Eden.”

The bridegroom tripped over his feet, fumbled with the ring, forgot his lines, and looked at his bride as though she were a lump of chocolate and he were a Pekingese.

There were champagne, speeches and tears; the afternoon ended up with a cloud of confetti and somebody’s old shoe. The bride and bridegroom left with nothing but five pounds, a couple of suitcases and a borrowed Austin Seven.

Their one stick of furniture was a tent.

“My darling,” he told her, “I cannot afford to take you to a seaside hotel, not even for a weekend. We must sleep under the stars.”

His bride was more practical than he.

“We will motor to London in a borrowed car,” she said, “and there we will find rooms and a job. But I must