_ Gerald returned to the bedroom which contained his wife and all
else that he owned in the world at about nine o'clock that
evening. Sophia was in bed. She had been driven to bed by
weariness. She would have preferred to sit up to receive her
husband, even if it had meant sitting up all night, but her body
was too heavy for her spirit. She lay in the dark. She had eaten
nothing. Gerald came straight into the room. He struck a match,
which burned blue, with a stench, for several seconds, and then
gave a clear, yellow flame. He lit a candle; and saw his wife.
"Oh!" he said; "you're there, are you?"
She offered no reply.
"Won't speak, eh?" he said. "Agreeable sort of wife! Well, have
you made up your mind to do what I told you? I've come back
especially to know."
She still did not speak.
He sat down, with his hat on, and stuck out his feet, wagging them
to and fro on the heels.
"I'm quite without money," he went on. "And I'm sure your people
will be glad to lend us a bit till I get some. Especially as it's
a question of you starving as well as me. If I had enough to pay
your fares to Bursley I'd pack you off. But I haven't."
She could only hear his exasperating voice. The end of the bed was
between her eyes and his.
"Liar!" she said, with uncompromising distinctness. The word
reached him barbed with all the poison of her contempt and
disgust.
There was a pause.
"Oh! I'm a liar, am I? Thanks. I lied enough to get you, I'll
admit. But you never complained of that. I remember be-ginning the
New Year well with a thumping lie just to have a sight of you, my
vixen. But you didn't complain then. I took you with only the
clothes on your back. And I've spent every cent I had on you. And
now I'm spun, you call me a liar."
She said nothing.
"However," he went on, "this is going to come to an end, this is!"
He rose, changed the position of the candle, putting it on a chest
of drawers, and then drew his trunk from the wall, and knelt in
front of it.
She gathered that he was packing his clothes. At first she did not
comprehend his reference to beginning the New Year. Then his
meaning revealed itself. That story to her mother about having
been attacked by ruffians at the bottom of King Street had been an
invention, a ruse to account plausibly for his presence on her
mother's doorstep! And she had never suspected that the story was
not true. In spite of her experience of his lying, she had never
suspected that that particular statement was a lie. What a
simpleton she was!
There was a continual movement in the room for about a quarter of
an hour. Then a key turned in the lock of the trunk.
His head popped up over the foot of the bed. "This isn't a joke,
you know," he said.
She kept silence.
"I give you one more chance. Will you write to your mother--or
Constance if you like--or won't you?"
She scorned to reply in any way.
"I'm your husband," he said. "And it's your duty to obey me,
particularly in an affair like this. I order you to write to your
mother."
The corners of her lips turned downwards.
Angered by her mute obstinacy, he broke away from the bed with a
sudden gesture.
"You do as you like," he cried, putting on his overcoat, "and I
shall do as I like. You can't say I haven't warned you. It's your
own deliberate choice, mind you! Whatever happens to you you've
brought on yourself." He lifted and shrugged his shoulders to get
the overcoat exactly into place on his shoulders.
She would not speak a word, not even to insist that she was
indisposed.
He pushed his trunk outside the door, and returned to the bed.
"You understand," he said menacingly; "I'm off."
She looked up at the foul ceiling.
"Hm!" he sniffed, bringing his reserves of pride to combat the
persistent silence that was damaging his dignity. And he went off,
sticking his head forward like a pugilist.
"Here!" she muttered. "You're forgetting this."
He turned.
She stretched her hand to the night-table and held up a red
circlet.
"What is it?"
"It's the bit of paper off the cigar you bought in the Rue
Montmartre this afternoon," she answered, in a significant tone.
He hesitated, then swore violently, and bounced out of the room.
He had made her suffer, but she was almost repaid for everything
by that moment of cruel triumph. She exulted in it, and never
forgot it.
Five minutes later, the gloomy menial in felt slippers and alpaca
jacket, who seemed to pass the whole of his life flitting in and
out of bedrooms like a rabbit in a warren, carried Gerald's trunk
downstairs. She recognized the peculiar tread of his slippers.
Then there was a knock at the door. The landlady entered, actuated
by a legitimate curiosity.
"Madame is suffering?" the landlady began.
Sophia refused offers of food and nursing.
"Madame knows without doubt that monsieur has gone away?"
"Has he paid the bill?" Sophia asked bluntly.
"But yes, madame, till to-morrow. Then madame has want of
nothing?"
"If you will extinguish the candle," said Sophia.
He had deserted her, then!
"All this," she reflected, listening in the dark to the ceaseless
rattle of the street, "because mother and Constance wanted to see
the elephant, and I had to go into father's room! I should never
have caught sight of him from the drawing-room window!" _