Just for a brief space Mr Marble regained full control over himself, and he made a brief and unavailing struggle against the inevitable which a stronger power within him was forcing upon him. He began to talk again on the subject of Medland’s money – the subject on which his lack of decent reticence had already annoyed his guest.
‘So you’re quite a well-off young man now, it seems?’ he said, with exasperating joviality.
‘I suppose so,’ was the curt reply.
‘A good bit to spare for investments, I suppose?’
It was a blundering way of putting it, and it failed. Even on the voyage over more than one man had come to Medland with get-rich-quick schemes, and he had contrived to see through them. And so many people had borrowed money from him that the process was both familiar and annoying to him. Medland determined to stop this attempt once and for all. It might be awkward for a bit, but it would save endless trouble in the future. He looked straight into Marble’s eyes.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t any to invest. I’m quite satisfied with the arrangements that my father made before he died. I’ve got just enough, and no more. And I put up with it.’
That settled the matter definitely enough for anyone, but, to Medland’s surprise, Marble showed no sign of discomfiture. Medland did not know it, but at a bound the lurking power within his uncle had regained possession of him, and had at once begun to smooth the way for the inevitable.
‘A good thing too,’ said Marble, and his manner of saying it left Medland seriously in doubt as to whether his former question had really been a feeler for a loan. ‘The market’s in a rotten state at present. I shouldn’t like to buy at all just now, not gilt-edged. Sit tight and hang on to what you’ve got, that’s my motto all the time nowadays.’
He said it in all sincerity, and Medland actually felt himself warming towards him. At that time Medland was in serious danger of falling into the delusion that so often attacks men of wealth who have had their wealth from boyhood and have been ‘stung’ too often by the unscrupulous – he was in danger of imagining that everyone with whom he came into contact was seeking profit at his expense. The surest way to his heart was to convince him of the contrary, and that Mr Marble, in those few instants, had nearly succeeded in doing.
The conversation swung easily into discussion of the investment market, and that without the personal note that Medland so much resented. Somewhere within him Marble possessed a clever turn for finance, which hitherto he had been unable, as well as too lazy, to exert. Medland, with a hard head for business inherited from his shipbroking father, recognized a surprisingly kindred spirit. For the first time that evening he really began to enjoy himself. He drained his glass almost without thinking of it – enthusiasm succeeded in overcoming his juvenile distaste for whisky even though he had never been able to make himself like it.
Marble was watching him with fierce intentness through narrowed eyes. Medland hardly noticed it, and attached no importance to it if he did. Then Marble pulled himself out of his chair, glass in hand, and addressed himself to the decanter. That foolish heart of his was thumping again, thumping heavily, but it did not affect his actions. They were quite under control – the control of that inward force which had taken charge of him and which recognized the inevitable.
Marble reached across and drew Medland’s glass from his hand. ‘There’s only one more drink apiece,’ said Marble. ‘I’m sorry, but we weren’t expecting visitors to-night, you know.’
He said it in such a matter-of-fact way that Medland had no chance even of trying to refuse the second drink. Idly Medland watched Marble pour out the whisky from the decanter with the painful care that had characterized his action before. The liquid stood level in the two tumblers. Marble was apparently about to splash in the rest of the soda-water from the siphon when he paused as though listening.
‘Just a minute,’ he said, ‘I think one of the kids is calling out.’
Medland had heard nothing, but he was unused to the noises of the house and made no question. Mr Marble had heard nothing, either. He had said what he did as an excuse to withdraw from the room and go upstairs. It was the most natural action in the world for him to creep out of the room to listen to hear if either of his children was frightened, and it was most natural too, that he should be carrying in his hand the tumbler that he had held at the moment his attention was distracted. Medland watched him go; everything was so natural that he did not give a second thought to it.
Hardly more than a minute later Marble came tiptoeing back down the stairs and into the room, the glass still in his hand.
‘False alarm,’ he said. ‘One gets used to these things when one is the father of a family.’
He turned again to the siphon, and it hissed into the tumblers. Then he passed Medland’s across to him. As he took it the wind outside howled again louder than ever; the windows rattled and they heard the rain pelting against the glass.
‘What a night,’ said Medland.
‘Drink up,’ replied Marble, very, very calmly.
2
When Annie Marble woke in the early morning she was oppressed with a headache – a real headache, this time. She had had a restless night, although, true to his word, astonishingly enough, her husband had not disturbed her when he came up. At this very moment he was sleeping heavily at her side. She turned in the bed and looked at him in the half light that was straying through the untidy blinds. He lay on his back, his sparse hair standing on end, his eyes closed and his mouth open, his bristling red moustache reinforced now by a coarse but scanty growth of beard. His hands clutched the sheets, and his breath passed in and out of his mouth with a stertorous sound. To most people he would have been an unpleasing picture, but Annie Marble did not think so. She was used to it in any case, and his present helpless attitude and appearance always roused the mother spirit within her which was almost her sole ordinary characteristic now. She would have liked to have taken him into her arms and hugged him a little, but she would not do so for fear of disturbing him.
Instead, she began to wonder whether he had been successful in his management of his interview with the strange nephew last night. She hoped so. She knew he had been worried about money lately; he had told her so on occasion. And he had cut down the money he was accustomed to give her. That didn’t matter much, as Mr Evans and the milkman and the others were all so obliging. But he had been bothered about it, she knew. So she hoped the nephew – she was sure she would never learn to call such a splendid young man plain ‘Jim’ – had done something for them. He ought to have done, for he had stayed long enough. She had heard them talking long after she had settled herself to sleep. The remembrance brought a new rush of dim recollections to her mind. Will had come upstairs then, just when she was nearly asleep. She remembered wondering what he came for. He had gone into the bathroom; she had heard his keys rattle as he unlocked, she supposed, his photographic cupboard. It was probably to get something he wanted to show Jim. There, she had got it quite natural that time. Jim must be interested in photography too.
For a space her muddled thoughts followed no settled line. Then she came back to last night. If Jim was interested in photography he must have done something for Will – to Annie’s mind everything was done for everybody by somebody else. And she must have been dreaming when she thought she heard that loud cry. She was awake just afterwards, she knew; she must have been dreaming that someone had called out loud, and had awakened still dreaming it. Yes, that must have been it, and she must have gone to sleep again and started dreaming again at once, for she had a hazy, muddled recollection of hearing a strange noise downstairs, as though something was being dragged along the linoleum of the passage downstairs, and one or two sharp taps as though some things were dropping sharply from one step to another on the little dark staircase just outside the kitchen door. What a silly thing to dream!
So Jim must have done something for Will. That was a g
ood thing. She hoped Will would tell her all about it when he had the chance, because generally he did not tell her anything, and she was not much good at guessing. It was a little bit of a pity that Will said so little, for he could talk so nicely when he was in the mood. But, there, you can’t have everything. And Will was such a dear all the time. And just now he looked such a baby, such a nice little baby. She did wish she could take him in her arms just for a moment or two, the way she used to hold John, and Winnie too, when they were little. They weren’t such babies now, and tried to get on without their mother, and she felt a little bit lonely sometimes. When Will wasn’t worried by things she could still love him like that, though. It was a pity that he was worried such a lot nowadays. But now that Jim had done something for him it would be all right perhaps. She would buy some new nightdresses, like those in the windows in Rye Lane, very warm and nice, but looking quite nice, too, with nearly real lace on the edges of the sleeves. Then perhaps – but here the alarum on the table at her side went off, and she had to stop thinking.
The sudden noise brought her husband to a sitting-up position in an instant. He was still grasping the sheets, and his erect hair made him look so like a frightened baby that Mrs Marble laughed. He glared and blinked at her uncomprehendingly for a while.
‘W – what is it?’ he demanded.
To Mrs Marble, mentally constituted as she was, no strange mood came amiss, or seemed strange to her.
‘It’s just the clock, dear,’ she said, ‘half-past seven.’
‘The clock?’ said Mr Marble. ‘I thought – I was dreaming. Just the clock?’
He still muttered to himself as he snuggled down into the bed again, with his face hidden by the pillows. Annie had never known him mutter to himself before, but he was still muttering and mumbling to himself as she began to dress. Then suddenly he stopped muttering, and sat upright again in the bed.
‘By God!’ he said. ‘I wasn’t dreaming.’
He threw off the bedclothes and climbed stiffly out of the bed. He looked like a pathetic little boy in his striped blue and white pyjamas as he hobbled across the room, to where his clothes were piled untidily on a chair. He tumbled some of these on the floor as he seized his coat, and he plunged his hand into the breast pocket. Annie could not see what he found there, but apparently it confirmed his suspicions. He stared vacantly across the room for several seconds, the coat dangling from his hands.
‘No,’ he repeated, ‘I wasn’t dreaming.’
He hobbled stiffly but feverishly back across the room and thrust his feet into his carpet slippers, and then hurried out of the room. Annie, amazed, heard him enter Winnie’s bedroom next door. Then she heard him pull up the blind there, while Winnie sleepily inquired what was the matter, unanswered. Annie simply did not understand it. It was the first time she could ever remember his getting out of bed before breakfast was ready. But she could not wait to reflect on the matter. She huddled on the rest of her clothes and hastened downstairs to look after breakfast.
There was no end to the surprises of that day. To begin with, Mr Marble came down in his Sunday clothes of neat blue serge, instead of the dilapidated suit which he usually wore to business, and he only replied to Annie’s innocent and inevitable remark on this strange phenomenon with a scowl. He had not come straight down into the dining-room, as was his wont, either. Instead, he had gone into the tiny and seldom entered sitting-room at the back, and Annie, hastening in duty bound to see what he wanted, found him staring out of the window at the little patch of muddy backyard beyond. It was the same view as he must have seen when he went so surprisingly into Winnie’s bedroom. He could see it at any time when he was home, and he must have seen it several hundred, but for all that he was peering through the window at the muddy bed, flowerless as ever, with an intentness that even Annie noticed. It was extraordinary. It was true that by getting up as soon as she had done he was a quarter of an hour ahead of his usual time, yet even that was no reason for his wasting a good five minutes after his breakfast out in the yard wandering aimlessly up and down as though he was looking for something. Yet even Annie could see that he was relieved not to find anything.
During breakfast there was nothing unusual. Mr Marble ate little, but that was his way, and he said less, but no one ever said anything at breakfast at 53 Malcolm Road. John was deep in homework he had to prepare for school, and Winnie sewed a button on her glove in the interval of eating porridge. But after breakfast, while Mrs Marble was in the passage with her husband helping him on with his coat, he pulled from his pocket, loose, as though he had laid them there ready, a small roll of Treasury notes.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘take these, and for God’s sake go and pay Evans off this morning. And we aren’t going to deal with him any more. Get what you want from Richards’ in the future. There’s enough there for Evans’ bill and a bit over.’
Annie took the notes thankfully.
‘Oh, I am so glad, dear,’ she said. ‘So Jim did do something for you after all?’
‘Eh?’ said Mr Marble suddenly, and she shrank back as she caught sight of the expression on his face. ‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘Nothing, dear, except that. Why – what –?’
But Mr Marble had snatched open the door and was striding off. He was muttering again.
Truly, Annie had much to think about as she began her daily household duties, and even she felt what a pity it was that she could not think very clearly. There was Will’s stiffness, now. He was so stiff that he could hardly walk that morning, and she had never known that since before they were married and he used to play football. But Will couldn’t have been playing football last night, could he now? It made her anxious. Then upstairs a new surprise awaited her. Will’s other suit, his old everyday one, lay in a tumbled heap on the bedroom floor. She picked it up and put it away. It was sopping wet, and it was thick with mud. That must be why he did not wear it in the morning. How could he have got it so wet and muddy? The idea of football came to her mind again, but of course that was silly. Will did not play football now, and if he did it wouldn’t be late at night and in his ordinary clothes. With a sigh she left the problem alone and went on tidying the room. Then there were Winnie’s and John’s bedrooms to be done, and after that a look round just to see that everything was in order. In the bathroom an old memory recurred to her. Will had come in here last night. Perhaps she could see what he came for? But she could see nothing different from usual as she looked round. The locked, glass-fronted cupboard in which Will kept his chemicals hung on the wall beside her. She peered in, as she had done hundreds of times before. The manifold bottles meant nothing to her; but she liked to look at the labels and wonder what they were all about. Some of the bottles were of a mysterious brown, and some were white. They were all very neatly arranged. Except one, and that was a little out of its place on the shelf. (As it might be if a man had put it back there in the dark.) Annie glanced casually at the label. It conveyed nothing to her at all, but it happened that the queer name stuck in her mind – potassium cyanide. She turned away from the cupboard without further thought.
There was a pleasurable little excursion before her. She felt quite thrilled with imagining it as she put on her hat before her bedroom mirror. It was a long time since she had had a lot of money in her pocket as she had now. Not that it would stay there long, as she had to pay off Evans’ bill, but it made her feel very rich and great to go into Evans’ shop and ask, in quite a matter-of-fact way, for her bill, and then to open her bag and produce a roll of notes and hand over the amount asked as if she were accustomed to such transactions every minute of her life. That would be nice, and then she would go on to Richards’, and walk in there, and Mr Richards would be so nice to her because she was a new customer, and she would order what she wanted, and he would say ‘Yes, madam’, and ‘No, madam’, as if her every word was law. She was glad that Jim had done something for Will. Otherwise she woul
d not be having such a happy day. After all, by contrast with the ordinary day of a woman with a house to look after, it would be a happy day.
She was still feeling happy when Mr Marble returned from the office in the evening, just after the children had had their tea and were settling down to their homework. He looked very tired, poor soul, and he still walked stiffly, but Mrs Marble had a nice tea ready for him thanks to her visit to Mr Richards’ shop. There were nice scrambled eggs, good eggs, not the other kind, and three pieces of toast, and there was fresh tea in the pot. Mrs Marble was disappointed when he looked at the pleasant tea-table with evident distaste. He flung himself down in an armchair with a sigh.
‘Anybody been?’ he demanded.
‘No, dear, no one,’ replied Annie, surprised.
‘Sure?’
‘Of course I am, dear. Who is there to come? There was no one besides the milkman, and people selling things. It wasn’t Mr Brown’s day for the insurance.’
‘That’s all right then,’ said Mr Marble, and he began to unwrap the parcel he had brought in with him. The children looked up with interest, but they were disappointed. It was only a stupid old bottle of whisky. But Mr Marble looked at it very eagerly.
‘Aren’t you going to have your tea, dear?’ asked Mrs Marble.
Mr Marble looked, hesitated, and looked again.
‘Oh, all right, then,’ he said grudgingly.
He sat down before his tray and began to eat while his wife began her delightful duty of looking after him, pouring out his tea, refilling the teapot from the kettle on the fire, and seeing that he was comfortable. But Mr Marble had hardly begun when he rose from the table and hurried out of the room. Annie, hurt and mystified, heard him in the sitting-room next door – for the second time that day, and yet perhaps the second time for months. Almost mechanically she followed him, to find him peering through the window in the half light out into the backyard, where there was a small rain falling. He started as he heard her behind him.