He bent down, and prepared his lips to kiss her. He smiled superiorly, indulgently. He was the stronger. She defeated him sometimes; she gravely defeated him in the general arrangement and colour of their joint existence; but he was the stronger. She had known it for over ten years. They had had two tremendous, critical, highly dangerous battles. He had won them both. Lois had wanted to be married in Paris. He had been ready to agree until suddenly it occurred to him that French legal formalities might necessitate an undue disclosure as to his parentage and the bigamy of which his mother had been a victim. He refused absolutely to be married in Paris. He said: "You're English and I'm English, and the proper place for us to be married is England." There were good counter-arguments, but he would not have them. Curiously, at this very period, news came from his stepfather of his father's death in America. He kept it to himself. Again, on the night itself of their marriage, he had said to her: " Now give me that revolver you've got ." At her protesting refusal he had said: "My wife is not going about with any revolver. Not if I know it!" He was playful but determined. He startled her, for the altercation lasted two hours. On the other hand he had never said a word about the photograph of Jules Defourcambault, and had never seen it. Somewhere, in some mysterious fastness, the mysterious woman kept it.
His lips were close to hers, and his eyes to her eyes. Most
persons called her eyes golden, but to him they were just yellow. They had an infinitesimal cast, to which nobody ever referred. They were voluptuous eyes. He examined her face. She was still young; but the fine impressive imprint of existence was upon her features, and the insipid freshness had departed. She blinked, acquiescent. Her eyes changed, melting. He could almost see into her brain, and watch there the impulse of repentance for an unreasonable caprice, and the intense resolve to think in the future only of her husband's welfare. She was like that.... She could be an angel.... He knew that he was hard. He guessed that he might be inordinately hard He would bear people down. Why had he not been touched by her helpless condition? She was indeed touching as she lay. She wanted to keep him near her and she could not. She wanted acutely to go to the north, and she was imprisoned. She would have to pass the night alone, and the next night alone. Danger and great suffering lay in front of her. And she was she; she was herself, with all her terrific instincts. She could not alter herself. Did she not merit compassion? Still, he must go to his club .
He kissed her tenderly. She half lifted her head, and kissed him exactly as she kissed his children, like a giantess, and as though she was the ark of wisdom from everlasting, and he a callow boy whose safety depended upon her sagacious, loving direction.
From the top of the flight of stairs leading from the ground floor, George, waiting till it was over, witnessed the departure of his family for the afternoon promenade. A prodigious affair! The parlourmaid (a delightful creature who was, unfortunately, soon to make an excellent match above her station) amiably helped the nursemaid to get the perambulator down the steps. The parlourmaid wore her immutable uniform, and the nursemaid wore her immutable uniform. Various things had to be packed into the perambulator, and then little Lois had to be packed into it—not because she could not walk, but because it was not desirable for her to arrive at the playground tired. Nursey's sunshade was undiscoverable, and little Laurencine's little sunshade had to be retrieved from underneath little Lois in the depths of the perambulator. Nursey's book had fallen on the steps. Then the tiny but elaborate perambulator of Laurencine's doll had to go down the steps, and the doll had to be therein ensconced under Laurencine's own direction, and Laurencine's sunshade had to be opened, and Laurencine had to prove to the maids
that she could hold the sunshade in one hand and push the doll's perambulator with the other. Finally, the procession of human beings and vehicles moved, munitioned, provisioned, like a caravan setting forth into the desert, the parlourmaid amiably waving adieux.
George thought: "I support all that. It all depends on me. I have brought it all into existence." And his reflections embraced Lois upstairs, and the two colleagues of the parlourmaid in the kitchen, and the endless apparatus of the house, and the people at his office and the apparatus there, and the experiences that awaited him on the morrow, and all his responsibilities, and all his apprehensions for the future. And he was amazed and dismayed by the burden which almost unwittingly he bore night and day. But he felt too that it was rather fine. He felt that he was in the midst of life.
As he was cranking his car, which he had left unattended at the kerb, Mrs. Buckingham Smith's magnificent car driven by her magnificent chauffeur, swept in silence up to the door and sweetly stopped. George's car was a very little one, and he was his own chauffeur, and had to walk home from the garage when he had done with it. The contemplation of Buck Smith's career showed George that there are degrees of success. Buck Smith received a thousand pounds for a portrait (in the French manner of painting)—and refused commissions at that. Buck Smith had a kind of palace in Melbury Road. By the side of Buck Smith. George was a struggling semi-failure. Mrs. Buck Smith, the lady whom George had first glimpsed in the foyer of a theatre, was a superb Jewess whom Buck had enticed from the stage. George did not like her because she was apt, in ecstasy, to froth at the mouth, and for other reasons; but she was one of his wife's most intimate friends. Lois, usually taciturn, would chatter with Adah for hours.
"I thought I'd come and see Lois," said Mrs. Buck, effulgently smiling, as George handed her out of the car. "How is the dear thing? You just flying off?"
"You'll do her all the good in the world," George replied. "I can't stop. I have to leave town to-night, and I'm full up."