XXII
In December, our balance at the Bank was overdrawn.
Walter came in with his face all white and tense. He threw the pass-book on the table in front of me.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Overdrawn at last. I have been expecting this.’
I felt as though he had hit me, his voice was hostile; he looked as though he hated me.
I said:
‘Walter, I am sorry; I have done my best.’
‘I can’t understand it. Other women manage, why can’t you? Other women on smaller incomes than ours; my mother did.’
I said:
‘I know they do.’
He said:
‘I must earn more, I suppose. I must do examining or something of that sort in the evenings; I must give up my book—that was the last thing that kept me alive!’
I said:
‘Don’t do that, Walter. I will try again; perhaps we could manage better without a cook.’
He said:
‘You couldn’t cook; you can’t manage as it is; and your grandmother keeps telling me you are overworked.’
I did not know that Grandmother had said so. I did not know that she had noticed it at all.
I said:
‘I could learn to cook. I would rather do that than housework.’
He said:
‘Don’t talk nonsense!’
He clasped his head in his hands, and leaned across the table.
‘It has never happened before,’ he said, ‘to be overdrawn. It is a disgrace.’
I said:
Cousin John was overdrawn quite often; I don’t think it mattered much.’
He said:
‘Damn your Cousin John! They have capital behind them. We have not.’
I said:
‘I have a little, Walter; couldn’t we use that?’
He said:
‘I won’t use your capital, and I won’t be helped by your relations. Do you know,’ he asked suddenly, ‘your grandmother offered to pay for a nurse for the children?’
I said:
‘I did not know.’
‘Yes,’ he said very bitterly. ‘She did, and I refused. I told her that you could manage without, as my mother had managed. I think I was rude to her. She was displeased with me.’
I wondered vaguely when all this had happened.
I thought:
‘How dear of Grandmother.’
We had stopped having lunch with her on Sundays. I had not seen her often since Rachel was born.
He got up again, abruptly, and left the room. I stayed alone and cried, and wished that I were dead.
Afterwards Walter was sorry.
He said he was sorry; he said he hardly knew what he had said.
He said:
‘I had such a headache, and the pass-book was the last straw. I was awfully upset. I was a beast.’
‘Dear, dear Helen,’ he said suddenly, ‘you must forgive me. You don’t know what you are to me.’
I said, of course, that it did not matter. I said again that I was sorry; but I felt him still unkind.
I thought:
‘He does not love me for what I am. He wants me different all the time. What I have and could give him is of no use to him.’
That winter wore through somehow, as the last had done, and on January 31st came the announcement of ‘Unrestricted Submarine Warfare.’
Walter looked grim.
He said:
‘We shall begin to feel it in earnest now.’
Prices were rising still, but gradually. There was no visible difference after this for some time.
Then the Russian Revolution came. That made me think of Sophia Lane Watson. I wondered where she was. I remembered her old enthusiasm for Russian Revolutionists. Would she be pleased at this, I wondered?
And then America came into the War.