You know we have relatives in the country, and they would be almost
certain, the Mallings, at any rate, to give hints.' Darnell saw the force of the argument and gave way. But he was bitterly
disappointed. 'It would have been very nice, wouldn't it?' he said with a sigh. 'Never mind, dear,' said Mary, who saw that he was a good deal cast
down. 'We must think of some other plan that will be nice and useful
too.' She often spoke to him in that tone of a kind mother, though she was by
three years the younger. 'And now,' she said, 'I must get ready for church. Are you coming?' Darnell said that he thought not. He usually accompanied his wife to
morning service, but that day he felt some bitterness in his heart, and
preferred to lounge under the shade of the big mulberry tree that stood
in the middle of their patch of garden--relic of the spacious lawns that
had once lain smooth and green and sweet, where the dismal streets now
swarmed in a hopeless labyrinth. So Mary went quietly and alone to church. St. Paul's stood in a
neighbouring street, and its Gothic design would have interested a
curious inquirer into the history of a strange revival. Obviously,
mechanically, there was nothing amiss. The style chosen was 'geometrical
decorated,' and the tracery of the windows seemed correct. The nave, the
aisles, the spacious chancel, were reasonably proportioned; and, to be
quite serious, the only feature obviously wrong was the substitution of
a low 'chancel wall' with iron gates for the rood screen with the loft
and rood. But this, it might plausibly be contended, was merely an
adaptation of the old idea to modern requirements, and it would have
been quite difficult to explain why the whole building, from the mere
mortar setting between the stones to the Gothic gas standards, was a
mysterious and elaborate blasphemy. The canticles were sung to Joll in B
flat, the chants were 'Anglican,' and the sermon was the gospel for the
day, amplified and rendered into the more modern and graceful English of
the preacher. And Mary came away. After their dinner (an excellent piece of Australian mutton, bought in
the 'World Wide' Stores, in Hammersmith), they sat for some time in the
garden, partly sheltered by the big mulberry tree from the observation
of their neighbours. Edward smoked his honeydew, and Mary looked at him
with placid affection. 'You never tell me about the men in your office,' she said at length. 'Some of them are nice fellows, aren't they?' 'Oh, yes, they're very decent. I must bring some of them round, one of
these days.' He remembered with a pang that it would be necessary to provide whisky. One couldn't ask the guest to drink table beer at tenpence the gallon. 'Who are they, though?' said Mary. 'I think they might have given you a
wedding present.' 'Well, I don't know. We never have gone in for that sort of thing. But
they're very decent chaps. Well, there's Harvey; "Sauce" they call him
behind his back. He's mad on bicycling. He went in last year for the
Two Miles Amateur Record. He'd have made it, too, if he could have got
into better training. 'Then there's James, a sporting man. You wouldn't care for him. I always
think he smells of the stable.' 'How horrid!' said Mrs. Darnell, finding her husband a little frank,
lowering her eyes as she spoke. 'Dickenson might amuse you,' Darnell went on. 'He's always got a joke. A
terrible liar, though. When he tells a tale we never know how much to
believe. He swore the other day he'd seen one of the governors buying
cockles off a barrow near London Bridge, and Jones, who's just come,
believed every word of it.' Darnell laughed at the humorous recollection of the jest. 'And that wasn't a bad yarn about Salter's wife,' he went on. 'Salter is
the manager, you know. Dickenson lives close by, in Notting Hill, and he
said one morning that he had seen Mrs. Salter, in the Portobello Road,
in red stockings, dancing to a piano organ.' 'He's a little coarse, isn't he?' said Mrs. Darnell. 'I don't see much
fun in that.' 'Well, you know, amongst men it's different. You might like Wallis; he's
a tremendous photographer. He often shows us photos he's taken of his
children--one, a little girl of three, in her bath. I asked him how he
thought she'd like it when she was twenty-three.' Mrs. Darnell looked down and made no answer. There was silence for some minutes while Darnell smoked his pipe. 'I
say, Mary,' he said at length, 'what do you say to our taking a paying
guest?' 'A paying guest! I never thought of it. Where should we put him?' 'Why, I was thinking of the spare room. The plan would obviate your
objection, wouldn't it? Lots of men in the City take them, and make
money of it too. I dare say it would add ten pounds a year to our
income. Redgrave, the cashier, finds it worth his while to take a large
house on purpose. They have a regular lawn for tennis and a
billiard-room.' Mary considered gravely, always with the dream in her eyes. 'I don't
think we could manage it, Edward,' she said; 'it would be inconvenient
in many ways.' She hesitated for a moment. 'And I don't think I should
care to have a young man in the house. It is so very small, and our
accommodation, as you know, is so limited.' She blushed slightly, and Edward, a little disappointed as he was,
looked at her with a singular longing, as if he were a scholar
confronted with a doubtful hieroglyph, either wholly wonderful or
altogether commonplace. Next door children were playing in the garden,
playing shrilly, laughing, crying, quarrelling, racing to and fro. Suddenly a clear, pleasant voice sounded from an upper window. 'Enid! Charles! Come up to my room at once!' There was an instant sudden hush. The children's voices died away. 'Mrs. Parker is supposed to keep her children in great order,' said
Mary. 'Alice was telling me about it the other day. She had been talking
to Mrs. Parker's servant. I listened to her without any remark, as I
don't think it right to encourage servants' gossip; they always
exaggerate everything. And I dare say children often require to be
corrected.' The children were struck silent as if some ghastly terror had seized
them. Darnell fancied that he heard a queer sort of cry from the house, but
could not be quite sure. He turned to the other side, where an elderly,
ordinary man with a grey moustache was strolling up and down on the
further side of his garden. He caught Darnell's eye, and Mrs. Darnell
looking towards him at the same moment, he very politely raised his
tweed cap. Darnell was surprised to see his wife blushing fiercely. 'Sayce and I often go into the City by the same 'bus,' he said, 'and as
it happens we've sat next to each other two or three times lately. I
believe he's a traveller for a leather firm in Bermondsey. He struck me
as a pleasant man. Haven't they got rather a good-looking servant?' 'Alice has spoken to me about her--and the Sayces,' said Mrs. Darnell. 'I understand that they are not very well thought of in the
neighbourhood.