He saw that his wife was summing up against his
scheme, and though he had set his heart on it, he could not resist her
arguments. 'It would be nearer twelve pounds than ten,' she said. 'The floor would have to be stained round the carpet (nine by nine, you
said? ), and we should want a piece of linoleum to go under the
washstand. And the walls would look very bare without any pictures.' 'I thought about the pictures,' said Darnell; and he spoke quite
eagerly. He felt that here, at least, he was unassailable. 'You know
there's the "Derby Day" and the "Railway Station," ready framed,
standing in the corner of the box-room already. They're a bit
old-fashioned, perhaps, but that doesn't matter in a bedroom. And
couldn't we use some photographs? I saw a very neat frame in natural oak
in the City, to hold half a dozen, for one and six. We might put in your
father, and your brother James, and Aunt Marian, and your grandmother,
in her widow's cap--and any of the others in the album. And then there's
that old family picture in the hair-trunk--that might do over the
mantelpiece.' 'You mean your great-grandfather in the gilt frame? But that's _very_
old-fashioned, isn't it? He looks so queer in his wig. I don't think it
would quite go with the room, somehow.' Darnell thought a moment. The portrait was a 'kitcat' of a young
gentleman, bravely dressed in the fashion of 1750, and he very faintly
remembered some old tales that his father had told him about this
ancestor--tales of the woods and fields, of the deep sunken lanes, and
the forgotten country in the west. 'No,' he said, 'I suppose it is rather out of date. But I saw some very
nice prints in the City, framed and quite cheap.' 'Yes, but everything counts. Well, we will talk it over, as you say. You
know we must be careful.' The servant came in with the supper, a tin of biscuits, a glass of milk
for the mistress, and a modest pint of beer for the master, with a
little cheese and butter. Afterwards Edward smoked two pipes of
honeydew, and they went quietly to bed; Mary going first, and her
husband following a quarter of an hour later, according to the ritual
established from the first days of their marriage. Front and back doors
were locked, the gas was turned off at the meter, and when Darnell got
upstairs he found his wife already in bed, her face turned round on the
pillow. She spoke softly to him as he came into the room. 'It would be impossible to buy a presentable bed at anything under one
pound eleven, and good sheets are dear, anywhere.' He slipped off his clothes and slid gently into bed, putting out the
candle on the table. The blinds were all evenly and duly drawn, but it
was a June night, and beyond the walls, beyond that desolate world and
wilderness of grey Shepherd's Bush, a great golden moon had floated up
through magic films of cloud, above the hill, and the earth was filled
with a wonderful light between red sunset lingering over the mountain
and that marvellous glory that shone into the woods from the summit of
the hill. Darnell seemed to see some reflection of that wizard
brightness in the room; the pale walls and the white bed and his wife's
face lying amidst brown hair upon the pillow were illuminated, and
listening he could almost hear the corncrake in the fields, the fern-owl
sounding his strange note from the quiet of the rugged place where the
bracken grew, and, like the echo of a magic song, the melody of the
nightingale that sang all night in the alder by the little brook. There
was nothing that he could say, but he slowly stole his arm under his
wife's neck, and played with the ringlets of brown hair. She never
moved, she lay there gently breathing, looking up to the blank ceiling
of the room with her beautiful eyes, thinking also, no doubt, thoughts
that she could not utter, kissing her husband obediently when he asked
her to do so, and he stammered and hesitated as he spoke. They were nearly asleep, indeed Darnell was on the very eve of dreaming,
when she said very softly--

'I am afraid, darling, that we could never afford it.' And he heard her
words through the murmur of the water, dripping from the grey rock, and
falling into the clear pool beneath. Sunday morning was always an occasion of idleness. Indeed, they would
never have got breakfast if Mrs. Darnell, who had the instincts of the
housewife, had not awoke and seen the bright sunshine, and felt that the
house was too still. She lay quiet for five minutes, while her husband
slept beside her, and listened intently, waiting for the sound of Alice
stirring down below. A golden tube of sunlight shone through some
opening in the Venetian blinds, and it shone on the brown hair that lay
about her head on the pillow, and she looked steadily into the room at
the 'duchesse' toilet-table, the coloured ware of the washstand, and the
two photogravures in oak frames, 'The Meeting' and 'The Parting,' that
hung upon the wall. She was half dreaming as she listened for the
servant's footsteps, and the faint shadow of a shade of a thought came
over her, and she imagined dimly, for the quick moment of a dream,
another world where rapture was wine, where one wandered in a deep and
happy valley, and the moon was always rising red above the trees. She
was thinking of Hampstead, which represented to her the vision of the
world beyond the walls, and the thought of the heath led her away to
Bank Holidays, and then to Alice. There was not a sound in the house; it
might have been midnight for the stillness if the drawling cry of the
Sunday paper had not suddenly echoed round the corner of Edna Road, and
with it came the warning clank and shriek of the milkman with his pails. Mrs. Darnell sat up, and wide awake, listened more intently. The girl
was evidently fast asleep, and must be roused, or all the work of the
day would be out of joint, and she remembered how Edward hated any fuss
or discussion about household matters, more especially on a Sunday,
after his long week's work in the City. She gave her husband an
affectionate glance as he slept on, for she was very fond of him, and so
she gently rose from the bed and went in her nightgown to call the maid. The servant's room was small and stuffy, the night had been very hot,
and Mrs. Darnell paused for a moment at the door, wondering whether the
girl on the bed was really the dusty-faced servant who bustled day by
day about the house, or even the strangely bedizened creature, dressed
in purple, with a shiny face, who would appear on the Sunday afternoon,
bringing in an early tea, because it was her 'evening out.' Alice's hair
was black and her skin was pale, almost of the olive tinge, and she lay
asleep, her head resting on one arm, reminding Mrs. Darnell of a queer
print of a 'Tired Bacchante' that she had seen long ago in a shop window
in Upper Street, Islington. And a cracked bell was ringing; that meant
five minutes to eight, and nothing done.