THE BRITISH HOUSEKEEPER. HOW MRS. ELDRIDGE CAME INSTEAD OF TO-MORROW. HER ADVICE. TELEGRAPH GIRLS. A FRENCHWOMAN'S IDEAS. HOW THE CAT GOT NO SLEEP. HOW MARIANNE POSTED A CIVIL SORT OF LETTER IN THE PILLAR-BOX, AND WAS SORRY

In the absence of Master Bob at Rugby, and of his father with those Royd people in the country, Mrs. Challis had a quiet time in the Hermitage. She was able to keep housekeeping at bay by ordering in a joint for the family to prey on slowly for three days or thereabouts; after which Mrs. Steptoe had to help her to think of what to have in. Marianne sat still and bit a pen-stick, while Mrs. Steptoe remarked at intervals, "You see, as I say, ma'am, it isn't as if there was anything in the house."

When Aunt Stingy had done this two or three times, her mistress indicated the nature of the problem to be dealt with; saying, as a contented giraffe might have done, "I don't want another neck."

Mrs. Steptoe advanced a cautious suggestion: "You don't take to liver, ma'am?" Mrs. Challis did not; that was flat! But a piece for the kitchen was a different thing. Just as you liked! Mrs. Steptoe said in a soothing manner, "A nice little bit of liver!" and that was settled.

Should anyone not accustomed to these islands ask why the question of one day's rations should be approached as though it had been raised for the first time in the history of mankind, no answer can be given in the present state of human knowledge. All that can be said is that an equivalent interview is going on in most households of the natives every other morning, or thereabouts.

In time stimulated perspicuity saw a light. Shrewd discriminative subtlety was on Aunt Stingy's face as she said, "Why not the fowl to-day, ma'am, and stand the joint over for a day or two? Because in this briling weather it is that liable to smell faint!" Marianne cogitated deeply, turning the pencil in her mouth; then said, "If we were to have Mrs. Eldridge to-day instead of to-morrow.... It doesn't matter which, because Mr. Eldridge won't be back till Wednesday." This will not bear close analysis; but Marianne was not pricking pins at a tissue, and all purposes were answered. When the children went out for their walk, they brought back word that Mrs. Eldridge would "come instead of to-morrow." And that is how on this particular Monday evening these two ladies are agreeing that this coffee is too strong, and there's no hot water, and the more florid one of the two is saying that she must speak to Steptoe about it.

The heat of the weather tells differently on them, which has to do with our epithet for Marianne's complexion. Charlotte's look is rather sallower than usual, as she leans back fanning the full lids of her half-closed eyes. She is not bad-looking, certainly—must have been very graceful when she was a girl.

The coffee-incident must have interrupted a conversation, for the sound of resumption is in Charlotte's remark as she sips it. "I should write" is what she says.

"Which to? Him or her?"

"Her. No!—him. I should write to him."

"Which do you mean?"

"Him."

"I don't know what to say."

"What you've been saying to me just now."

"Nonsense, Charlotte! How can you talk such stuff?"

"Well!—I should." After which neither lady spoke for awhile, but seemed to be thinking over points raised. Marianne uneasily, and even with an occasional impatient jerk, resented as selfish by a cat asleep on her knees; Charlotte introspectively, but as one enjoying some internal satisfaction.

Presently Marianne spoke, looking curiously at her friend, as though she suspected this concealed something. "I wish you would say plainly what you mean, Charlotte," she said.

Charlotte answered evasively. "It doesn't the least follow that what I should do you ought to do." She had on Marianne the sort of effect the ringed snake is said to have on the oriole—was sure her victim would jump down her throat if she bided her time. And if Marianne did this of her own accord, she herself would clearly be free from all complicities. For there was nothing Charlotte was so clear about in theory as that she did not wish to mix herself up in the affair; or any affair, for that matter. It was curious how frequently she found herself abstaining from getting mixed up. In this case, even when Marianne said point-blank, "But what would you do?" she still replied, "Never mind, dear! What can it matter what I should or shouldn't do?" "Charlotte, you're unkind! At least, you're not friendly. You go in and out. First it's one thing, and then it's another. Suppose you were me, what would you do? Write to this girl, and just refuse the invitation?"

After all, Charlotte was not so very clear about what she would write. "N—no, dear!" she said. "I don't think I should write to her. I should send her a message, through him. All civility, don't you know? Couldn't leave home at present. Hope some other time. So nice of her to ask you! Best thanks. Kindest regards. That sort of thing. But writing to my husband, you know—the rule mightn't hold good for yours; I quite see that—I shouldn't mince matters."

"What does 'not mincing matters' mean? I think you might speak plain, Charlotte. Can't you say what you mean?" She puts her hand up to her head restlessly, causing her friend to ask, "Headache?" To which she replies impatiently, "Not headache!" and takes it down. Charlotte then resumes, with much implication that the use of her husband as a lay-figure franks her of responsibility.

"I should tell him plainly that if he wanted to make love to fashionable young women he might go his own way, and I could do without him perfectly well. I should let him know he's not the treasure he fancies he is."

Marianne looked unconvinced, incredulous. "Suppose he took you at your word, Charlotte!" said she.

Charlotte laughed out scornfully. "My dear woman," she said, "John's a born fool, I know. But he's not such a fool as that! He knows what he's like well enough to know that this sort of young woman is not the sort to give me a case."

"Give you a case?"

"Stupid girl!—don't you see? A case for divorce. It's plain enough to anyone who isn't a downright fool. A telegraph-girl would be quite another pair of shoes."

"I suppose I don't understand these things."

"Now, my dear Marianne, do you mean to say that if you heard that your Titus had been lunching at Jules's with Lady Thingammy What's-her-name, it wouldn't be quite different from a telegraph-girl and an ABC?" Marianne said she couldn't see any difference. But this was only her obstinacy. Charlotte continued: "Well, I should! And so would the jury. Why, I know by this—that if it was Jules's I shouldn't lose a wink of sleep about it; but if it was a telegraph-girl, I wouldn't go to Clacton-on-Sea in August and leave John alone in London. Not with my ideas, which are rather strict. Of course, one isn't a Frenchwoman or an Italian."

"What are their ideas? How should I know anything about them?"

"Do you want me to tell you anything about them, or not? That's the question.... Well, of course, one knows what a Frenchwoman's ideas are, and I suppose Italians are exactly the same." Strange to say, this shadowy suggestion in a dropped voice, to fend off the dangers of empty space, seems to convey a distinct impression to its hearer, for she says, "Suppose they are, what then?" and the reply is, "Well—I suppose you wouldn't want us to do as they do! Would you?"

Mrs. John Eldridge possessed in the very highest degree the faculty of making it understood, by slight inflections and modulations of voice, by pauses in the right place, by gestures the shrewdest eyesight could not swear to, though the dullest could never remain in ignorance of them, that a lady and gentleman were engaging her attention. She had manipulated the subject in hand by a dexterous introduction of the Latin races, who are notoriously immoral, until a halo of profligacy had encircled her friend's husband and his aristocratic acquaintance. Marianne kicked in her soul against all suggestions of the kind, but with a misgiving that her friend knew more about "this sort of thing" than she herself did. This, too, she strove to keep under, not to allow Titus, whom she believed incapable of the part Charlotte's management would have assigned to him, to be attired for it in the cast-off garments of some reprobate of the Parisian stage.

"I can't see what the ways of French people have to do with the matter. When I said what I did just now I wasn't thinking of that sort of thing."

"Then, dear, perhaps you'll tell me what you were thinking of. Because I can't make out, for the life of me." This came rather coldly from Charlotte.

"It's very simple. I meant that if Titus is tired of me, I had just as soon that he should go away to someone else. And so I would—just as soon. S-s-sooner!" If Marianne had stopped on the penultimate word, there might have been no breakdown. But it came, with the intensification of her courageous little falsehood; came in the stereotyped course one knows so well—first, the failure of the lips to be still, then the quickened breath, and then the final irrepressible tears. Then the beseeching to be left alone—only just for one minute!... all will be right in a minute, only don't speak to me, please! Go on talking! "There!—I've been a fool, and I'm sorry." As she said this, Mrs. Challis returned to her pocket a handkerchief that had dried her tears, certainly, but had finished by taking a very unpoetical part in the transaction. The cat, bored by her demonstrativeness, had left her lap for a short stretch on the rug, and now returned with returning quiet.

Mrs. Eldridge took a base advantage. "No, dear!—you're very, very brave about it. I know just what I should feel myself. Any woman would feel exactly as you do.... Oh no, dear!—of course we both thoroughly understand. There's nothing really wrong, and nobody is to be suspected of anything."

"You don't see what—I—mean!" said Marianne. "You never have, Charlotte. But it ought to be simple enough. You don't suppose I think Titus isn't to be trusted away from my apron-strings after all the years I've known him."

"I don't know, dear. Don't ask me! Men are men. However, if you can trust him, I don't see what you want."

"I can want a great deal, and I do. I want him not to care about other people more than his own home."

"You want him not to care so much about this girl? Isn't that it?"

"In a certain sense, yes!"

"Very well, dear. Perhaps if there are more senses than one in the business, you'll tell me what they are. According to me, a man either cares for a girl, or he doesn't. I can't see any half-way."

"I can see heaps of half-ways. What I mean is, when he takes more pleasure in her society than he does in...."

"In his wife's? I don't see that we don't mean the same thing, so far."

"Then I don't mean that at all, but something else. What is the use of talking if you always twist what I say round?" Marianne is like a witness in the hands of a clever counsel, but with an advantage. If the witness resorts to the use of a bludgeon against the legal rapier, the Court interposes to protect his assailant. There was no Court in Marianne's case.

Charlotte retreated into the entrenchments of forbearance. "I don't want to quarrel, dear!" she said. "Suppose you write the letter!"

"To her?"

"To him. Do it now! You may just as well." None the less, Charlotte was surprised—only she didn't show it—when Marianne shook off the re-established cat, and rose to go to the writing-table. The cat, this time disgusted beyond words, stretched herself, and weighed the comforts of divers corners available. Mrs. Eldridge could have afforded one, but decided that cats were too hot in this weather. So Pussy had to be content with an angle in sofa-cushions.

The long-expiring light of the summer evening had been good to talk by, but enough of it was not left for letter-writing. Nevertheless, Mrs. Challis wouldn't ring for the lamp. Candles would do, she said. And having lighted them, she sat down to write.

A fly had perished in the ink since it was last used, and had to be coaxed out gradually, legs having got left behind by the first drags employed. Also, the pens—so described—consisted of a single example, which was a very long pen with diabolical corrugations at its shoulder, and a terrible sharp point. It refused to write on any terms, and on examination was proved to consist of one widowed nib, a source of despair to the scribe. There were no other pens; at least, Harmood had put them somewhere. Never mind!—there was a fountain-pen that did perfectly if you dipped it in the ink. It was really a lot better that way, because then you didn't inky your fingers all over. The experience of many among us is that escritoires are strewn with writing materials of these sorts, especially the last.

However, there was no doubt of the fountain-pen, once its haughty spirit could be curbed and induced to submit to the position of a mere agent. And the sounds of writing come presently from the writing-table, mixed with the curses of its occupant, who presently discovers that she has been writing on a sheet with a "limerick" on the back.

"Never mind. Let's see how far you've written." Mrs. Eldridge stretches her fingers out to receive the letter without taking her eyes off a paragraph she is reading in a Daily Mail. She holds the letter till she has finished, then reads it, and gives an immediate verdict. "You can't send that," she says.

"And why not?" asks Marianne, a little nettled at this rather cavalier treatment of her effort. But she knows she has not the courage to rebel, not having a particle of faith in her powers of composition.

"You can't say, 'Your Miss Arkroyd has written to me, and I won't come, and you know perfectly well why.'"

"Why not?"

"My dear!... However, do if you like."

"Well, then—I shall." This was mere bluster, of which Charlotte took no notice.

"And you can't say: 'You know I am not wanted, and both of you will be wishing me somewhere else all the while.' Simply impossible!"

"I cannot see the impossibility. Titus would be in a panic about what I should say next. I hate their rooms, full of people. They always make me nervous."

Charlotte sees that interpretation down to her companion's level is necessary. "Rooms-full have nothing to do with it," she says. "He will think you meant you would be de trop."

"Well, and what does that mean?"

Charlotte coughed explanatorily. "It is only used under circumstances of three," she says, not without obscurity. And then adds, as a full light on the subject: "One has to go."

"Same as 'two's company and three's none,' I suppose? But why French?"

"It means more. There are niceties." And this lady seems to keep back a suggestion that these niceties are beyond her friend's range of French. She goes on with a roused attention, having glanced farther on as she spoke last, absently. "And, my dear, look here! You can't possibly send this: 'Why can't we agree each to go our own way? Lots of people don't go about everywhere in couples.' You can't send that!"

"Well, Charlotte, I shall send that, and I think you're ridiculous. Why shouldn't I send it when I mean it? If Titus would only not worry about, and think it his duty to say things, these people wouldn't want me. Why should they? And then perhaps we should have an end of complaining about Steptoe's gravy. I'm simply sick of it all." And Mrs. Challis taps with her foot, and shows a feverish irritability.

Charlotte keeps well on her higher level. "My dear Marianne, you are the most unworldly baby! Don't you see the interpretation that might be put—I don't say your Titus would put it, but he might—on 'Why can't we agree, et cetera?' If I were to say such a thing to John, it would be a telegraph-girl directly."

Marianne flushes angrily. "Charlotte! How often have I said to you that I hate you when you draw comparisons between Titus and your John! It might be fifty telegraph-girls with him, but I know Titus well enough to know...."

"Oh!" A slight interjection, but it checks Marianne half-way.

"At any rate, he has never deceived me about anything of this sort." The flush is vanishing.

"Not exactly of this sort—no!" Now, Charlotte had been watching her opportunity to say this, having noted that the effect produced by Mrs. Steptoe's story had been falling into abeyance, owing to the subsidence of a policy of pin-pricks between Mr. and Mrs. Challis, in view of his pending visit to Royd, and still more in consequence of a sufficiently affectionate farewell at his departure. Marianne had in fact been gradually minimising the incident, and was on her way towards asking Titus straightforwardly for an explanation, as, of course, she ought to have done at first.

It is quite possible Mrs. Eldridge might have kept this card up her sleeve if Marianne had not nettled her by the way she spoke of her John. She may have provoked it; but did that matter? She was not going to let anyone else pelt him. Anyhow, she played the card, and, glancing up at Marianne, had reason to be satisfied with the effect it had produced.

Marianne may have known she looked white, and wished for darkness to hide it, for she blew both candles out, and returned to her seat with her back to the window. The cat sighed, as lamenting the selfishness of mortals, and resumed her old place, now again available, with a pretence of magnanimity.

"I shall copy that letter on a clean sheet, and send it." The darkness seemed to give the speaker fortitude.

"Go your own way, dear! I've done my best." Mrs. Eldridge claimed freedom from responsibility.

"You know, I suppose, that I spoke to mamma about that Steptoe nonsense—the photograph?"

"No, I didn't. What did she say?"

"Said it was all sheer impossibility. Said Steptoe had been turning the cupboards over when we were away at Easter, and cooked it all up."

"That won't do us any good. How did Steptoe know the name of the coal-merchant?"

"Saw it on the back of the photo, mamma says."

"And how did she know the name Verrall?"

"Because it's Bob's second name. Besides, it's on a brass plate on Kate's old portmanteau in the trunk-room."

"I can't say I think that accounts for anything." Mrs. Eldridge pointed out two or three weak points in Mrs. Craik's explanation, and condemned it as worthless. She was wrong. The explanation was a good one per se, but, like so many explanations, taxed human powers of belief more than the thing it explained. However, no one who has the faculty of selecting his creeds ever stickles about the trouble one will give him. He only thinks of the advantages it will bring with it.

"Perhaps it doesn't explain. That's what mamma said, anyhow." Thus Marianne, as if it didn't matter much, either way. Then, more convincedly: "I don't believe Steptoe is lying, because I can't see what she has to gain by it. Besides, I pulled the photo out of the passe-partout, and it was gummed in, and the name on the back."

"Did you say so to your mother?"

"Yes, and she said I must have been mistaken, because, if not, the story would have been true."

"I can't see"—Mrs. Eldridge is talking reflectively, introspectively—"I cannot see why your husband did not tell you all about it! Suppose your sister was married to this man first, I don't see that it was any such hanging matter. Unless...."

"Unless what?"

"Well!—nothing, dear. That is, perhaps I oughtn't to say...."

"Charlotte!—that's you all over! You know you're wanting to say all the time. Do speak out and have done with it!" Marianne got up uneasily, and walked from place to place in the room. The cat went back to the sofa cushion, and resumed her task of getting a little sleep.

Charlotte means to say, in time. Trust her! "You know, dear Marianne, that all this is the merest speculation. We really know nothing! And ten to one, when you do speak of it to Titus, he'll be able to clear it all up. Besides, after all, it could only be the sort of thing that's always happening, and one says nothing about it as long as the parties get married afterwards...."

Marianne interrupts stormily. "Will you have the goodness, Charlotte, to tell me what you mean, and not beat about the bush? You can't mean that poor Kate...."

"I can't tell you anything, dear, if you get so excited (Your hair's coming undone. A pin?—here's one.) Remember, I'm only mentioning this as one of the possibilities, and I don't suppose it's true. But if it were ever so true, I don't see that it would be anything to fly out about. After all these years!... Will I tell you what I mean? Yes, dear, if you'll be quiet and listen."

"Will you go on?"

Mrs. Eldridge braces herself up to consecutive narrative, as in response to unreasonable impatience. "There was a marriage. That's understood—I mean your sister's with her first husband. And it was kept dark...."

"I wish you wouldn't talk as if it was the Criminal Classes. Go on!"

"I can't if you interrupt. Well!—Mr. Challis was quite a young man then, and a friend of the first husband's, and she was young. You see?"

"I see their youngness would make it all the worse, instead of better. If it was true! But it isn't." At this point Marianne gives up the attempt to engineer the hairpin. "Can't you stop stopping, Charlotte, and go on?"

Charlotte deserts the extreme of deliberation for irritating rapidity and conciseness. "The first husband may have been anything, for anything we know of him. Only, there must have been a reason for their parting, if you think of it. Within a few months! Now suppose—don't be in a rage, Marianne dear, it doesn't do any good!—suppose your husband was the reason! Of course, he would never tell you, if Kate never did...."

"I was a child!"

"I don't think anything of that. Children are easier to tell than half-grown-up people. Remember, too, as time went on, how much harder it would get to tell. Fancy his beginning to speak of it! How would he? Come, Marianne!" And Marianne's silence admitted that she felt the difficulty her husband would have had in publishing for private circulation an early transgression of his own—and Bob's mother, please! It may all have been, and yet Titus may have done rightly to let bygones be bygones. That was her thought at the moment, but it jumped gladly at leave to go when further speech of Charlotte's brought a respite: "Of course, the obstacle to accounting for it this way is the divorce. It seems impossible there should have been a divorce, and your mother never heard of it!"

"Why, of course, Charlotte! What nonsense it all is!" Marianne is greatly relieved. But we must not halloa before we are out of the wood. Charlotte had a reservation:

"Only there's just one thing—I'm afraid I must shock you, Marianne; only, mind you, I don't believe for a moment that it's true—just one thing, and that is ... yes!—I'm going on ... that is, that there may have been no need for a divorce. You see?"

She doesn't, evidently. For, after a moment's consideration, she says: "If there was no need for a divorce, why drag Titus in? What nonsense, Charlotte!" She is breathing freely over it—too freely.

"No, dear—not that way! You don't understand." A pause to get a clear start. "Your sister Kate and this man were supposed to be lawfully married. At least, the coal-merchant and his wife must have thought so. But suppose they were not! Don't you see, dear"—this very gently, not to tax her hearer overmuch—"don't you see that then no divorce would have been necessary?" "You puzzle me so, Charlotte! Do stop and let me think. Say it again." She opened to the full a window partly raised for the heat, and found the sweet air from the Common grateful. For her head had become hot, and her lips were dry.

Charlotte followed her last instruction, by choice. "Try to imagine, dear, for instance, that your sister had been entrapped into a false marriage by this man, and that he discarded her because he was jealous of your husband. You know if he had grounds for his jealousy your husband might be bound in honour to keep silence—especially to her own sister. And then consider!—they were married afterwards."

It was beginning to dawn on Mrs. Challis that in the little drama her friend's imagination had constructed her husband figured as a licentious youth, a traitor to his friend; and a dissimulator, when he was posing at her mother's house as an honourable suitor to her sister, his only redeeming feature being his constancy to the girl of whose second betrayal he was the guilty author. While, as for that young woman herself!... Marianne's whole soul recoiled from the semblance of an indiscriminate liaison-monger with which Charlotte had not scrupled to clothe her. The intrinsic impossibility of associating such an image with her sister made her feel as though she really disposed of the whole question when she said, with perfect naÏvetÉ, "But this was Kate!"

How perfectly clear and exhaustive! That was Kate—or would have been had there been any truth in the tale—and Kate was her grown-up sister in the early days when her father was living, and they were a household. That was our Kate that was just thinking about being a young lady when she herself, Marianne, was just beginning to take intelligent notes of her surroundings—our Kate that knew how to play the piano and had a governess—our Kate that became one herself in a modest way when father died, and it turned out that Uncle Barker had invested her mother's settlement money in himself, contrary to the behests of the Lord Chancellor. How in Heaven's name could a thing one knew as a girl, unlengthened, become an immoral, unprincipled woman, like in books and newspaper-paragraphs! Absurd!

And yet—may not this be a question as hard for us to answer as poor, slow, middle-class, muddle-headed Marianne? Look at it from the other side! How many reprobates, dashing and otherwise, may there not be who began good and sweet, and kept so till they became bad and putrid—can even look back, from the gutter their last stage of decay is on the watch to defile, on a spell of blameless maturity? That ill-complexioned thing that thought it was singing as it reeled from the pothouse door but now, was once—maybe—a savoury little maid enough, with a sweetheart. What if he saw her at this moment?—saw the passers-by shrink from her and leave her a clear pavement?—heard the mock approval of London humour, seasoned to the shameful sight, and unashamed, "Go it, old Sairah"?

The story disclaims imputing all these thoughts to Marianne, or any of them. But the sum and gist of them came out—just as clearly, maybe more so—in those four words, "But this was Kate."

She turned from the window and looked her friend full in the face, in return for "What if it was?"—which was the answer she got. She felt angry with Charlotte, who, for all her profession of belief that her surmises were probably baseless, seemed to be always supporting the one that ascribed most lawlessness to her husband and sister.

"What if it was?" said she. "Everything if it was." She couldn't argue to save her life. But she dealt with dialectical difficulties in a method of her own that was quite as effectual. This time it told forcibly.

"Don't blaze out at me like that, Marianne," said the enemy. "I can't help it. I suppose everyone was somebody's Kate once—even Jezebel and Judas Iscariot!" The selection sounded trenchant, and no Biblical critic was at hand. "Besides, as I said, it wasn't a hanging matter, at the worst."

"I thought you said you were strict, Charlotte."

"So I am. But this sort of thing does take place, and one knows it, and I don't see the use of going on nagging for ever." Marianne's religious feelings prompted her towards pointing out that the Almighty might not subscribe to this view, but she was not quick enough. Charlotte continued: "And how a girl who knows nothing can know if a ceremony's done correctly is more than I can tell. Look at vaccination—all the little ivories exactly alike! Why, you may be vaccinated from a mad bull and never be a penny the wiser!"

Any metaphor or analogy makes Marianne's head go round, and she still keeps silence. Charlotte ends with consolation: "And when you come to think of it, if they weren't correctly married, it was all to the good."

"What on earth you mean, Charlotte. I cannot imagine!"

"Well, dear!—I should have thought anyone would spot that at once. Even John saw that! Of course, if the first marriage was irregular, there was no breach of the Seventh Commandment." Marianne felt a distinct relief from one of the nightmare apprehensions about her husband's past that Charlotte's ingenious speculations had aroused. She and her friend shared with a large section of the respectable World, strict and otherwise, the idea that trespassers who jump over a wedding-ring fence should be prosecuted, while poachers on unenclosed property may escape with a caution.

But her mind was not capable of more than one idea at a time, and in dwelling on this remission of the imputations against him, she quite forgot that the theory of a victimization of Kate by her first husband, if it did not acquit him of any indiscretion towards her sister, at any rate altered all the circumstances under which the indictment was framed. If there was no divorce, why select a co-respondent? Marianne just missed the important point. Out of the chaotic cross-questionings of the mystery she emerged with one false fixed idea, that her husband's reason for concealing the story must have been his desire to draw a veil over that Brighton period before his pretended courtship and marriage. Mrs. Eldridge encouraged this idea.

"I hope you see now, dear, what I mean about the letter," said she, after some more talk, embodying the foregoing, more or less. She pulled the letter from under the cat, who had lain down on it, and read again: "'You know I am not wanted, and both of you will be wishing me somewhere else all the while.' I'm sure I'm right in saying you can't send that. If it was all innocence and Paul and Virginia and Jenny and Jessamy and Arcadian shepherds, I dare say! But, with that story not cleared up! My dear Marianne, do be a little a woman of the World.... Isn't that my cab?"

Marianne said drearily: "I think so. They'll tell us." Because, although Mrs. Eldridge made things worse for her every time she spoke, she clung to her as the only person in her confidence—for she restrained her communications to her mother—and as one for whose knowledge of the mysterious thing called "the World" she had always had a superstitious reverence. So, when Harmood announced the advent of the cab—in cypher, as it were; for she merely said, "Adcock, for Mrs. Eldridge, ma'am"—she was sorry.

"It is Adcock," said Mrs. Eldridge; and Harmood would bring her things down to save her going upstairs, and did so. During Harmood's absence the conversation could be rounded off and wound up. "Am I to send the letter or not?" said Marianne. This was concession, for had she not flounced her intention of sending it in Mrs. Eldridge's face half-an-hour ago?

"Do as you like, dear! But I hope you won't. That's all I can say. Now good-night!" Charlotte's lips are extended as towards a farewell kiss; her hands tell well, anticipating embrace, and all her suggestions are graceful—as a lady's may be, who terminates musically in skirts.

But Marianne wants a straight tip for that letter.

"What am I to say, then?" says she doggedly. "I must write."

"Say what I told you, dear! So sorry—too much wanted at home to be able to come away just now—hope to see Miss Arkroyd ... or Judith, if you call her Judith ... in town before she goes away for good. Just a civil-letter sort of business! Don't you see how much better it will be yourself?" Harmood has come again, and is tendering a shroud from behind. Two hands accept it gracefully over each shoulder, and it abets the music of the skirts.

"I suppose it will," says Marianne doubtfully, and they go out to where Mr. Adcock awaits them. And then either of them who desires to do so may study the relations to one another of a very civil man with a flavour you would pronounce beer if encouraged by an expert; a four-wheeler he has to bang the door of—you are no good!—or it wouldn't shut; a horse that wants to be at home, and a summer moon doing its level best to make some birch-trees down the road look like silver. It is overhead, and you have to crane your neck to look at it.

Mrs. Challis did so, but saw nothing in it to make her eyes and lips less dry and hot. She returned to the drawing-room, and told Harmood not to shut the shutters; she would herself ultimately. Whereupon Harmood asked whether she would like anything. And being told she would like nothing else, thank you! said good-night, and was soon after audible passing upstairs with the plate, and not being absolutely cordial with Mrs. Steptoe.

Did Charlotte know how miserable she was making her? So thought the poor lady to herself as she looked out at the persevering moon. She felt feverish—and revengeful. Not with Charlotte, of course; a little aggravated, perhaps—that was all! But this girl—this Judith, with her insolent beauty and her knowledge of its power! This anxiety that she should go to Royd—what was it worth? Was she asked because it was so clear the invitation would never be accepted, or because she was wanted to cover the position? One or the other, or something like it—no good or honourable motive!... Oh no!—nothing dishonourable, of course, in that sense—so Marianne reasoned with herself—but there were distinctions of honour and dishonour in higher strata of morality, above the gutter-ethics Charlotte would always be harping on. And yet!—suppose there had been any truth in that Steptoe legend, with the worst interpretations on it, might not Titus have concealed another self all along? He had concealed something: that she knew. Why not many things? Why not everything?

The condemned letter was not altogether judicious, but its very errors of judgment might have led to plain speech, recrimination, a storm, and a reconciliation. Anything would have been better, as the result showed, than an ill constructed epistle Marianne wrote in the end, a message for her husband to pass on to Miss Arkroyd much on the lines Charlotte had suggested. Too many words for a message, too few for a letter from any wife to a husband under circumstances where brevity might be ascribed to pique. In which, too, she could not bring herself to the point of saying she hoped to see Miss Arkroyd, either in town or elsewhere, because she didn't. She hated Judith, but would not confess the reason to herself. So the letter worked out as nothing but a cold and civil message, refusing a very cordially written invitation. And it was all the worse that it contained a few lines in answer to Titus's last—not an unaffectionate epistle, written promptly on the evening of his arrival. But Marianne was a truthful person when her back was up, and wasn't going to tell any lies when candour tasted sweet in her mouth. So she indulged in a word or two of postscript on the back of the letter, and didn't quite like it when re-read. But really the text was just as bad without it. Look at the chilly "My dear Alfred," and "yr: aff: wife"! She fought off her vacillation, helped by a glance at Judith's letter and an allusion to her "dear husband"; closed the envelope, directed and stamped it, feeling determined, while she knew under the skin that she was wrong, and showing a proper spirit.

Then, possessed by her evil genius, she must needs go downstairs, undo the front door and walk out in the sweet moonlight to the red pillar-box only a few paces off, that was so convenient. Then, when she had heard the letter fall to the bottom of the empty box, past hope, past help, past cure, she was sorry. Then she called herself a coward and went back to bed. But she felt like a criminal as she pushed open the door she had left unhasped.

What a many miscarriages proper spirits have to answer for!