“Kiss me, then. I couldn’t go to sleep till you’d kissed me. Not to-night. It is all right, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes. It’s all right, bless you.”
“I don’t want to be a drag on you, Renny, dear. It is a blessing we’re not married, isn’t it?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“That’s what I say. If it’s right it can’t stop, can it? If it’s wrong, it must.”
He kissed her to stop her talking. She sighed contentedly, slid her arm into his and pressed her face against his shoulder.
“Good night. We have been happy.”
And in two minutes she was asleep. He too was glad of the happiness they had. He was a little infected with her fatalism. If there were to be calamities, there had been stores of frank pleasure and true delight to draw upon in defense against them.
By killing off an imaginary grandmother, Ann procured a half-day off from her work and spent the afternoon with Rita, who was weak and dispirited by the great heat which filled the mews with stale air and brought old fumes and stenches from the stables. There had been thunder and storms, and the two youngest children were down with colic. Joe had disappeared with Click and Billy, who, to Rita’s great distress, had begun to seek her husband’s company and to give him money—at least she supposed they did, for he had nowhere else to get it. All day long Rita talked about a bed her mother had bought for the best bedroom just before she married again, a beautiful bed with four big brass knobs and sixteen little brass knobs, and a bit of brass making a pattern at the head. And it had a real eiderdown, and the springs were not like ordinary springs, but spirals. When she had exhausted the wonder of the bed she began an endless story of the aspidistra and Mr. ’Awkins who undertook to water it and forgot for a whole week, when the leaves one by one went yellow and brown. Into this story was woven all the romance that had ever crept into Rita’s life, and as a good deal had crept in through the unlikeliest corners, it was a long story. She kept it going, as it were, by killing off the leaves of the aspidistra to mark the chapters. Mr. ’Awkins was a wonderful man, but he never quite said it, and Joe wouldn’t take no for an answer, and Joe really did seem to be fond of her, “and mother could be awful.” Besides Joe did promise to make a home for her, and they did go and look at furniture on Saturdays, but always after they had looked at furniture they used to go to music-halls, so they never had the money to buy it. And then they got married.
For hours Ann sat listening to the woman’s voice droning on. The elder children had been taken charge of by neighbors. The others needed constant attention. Joe came home in the evening, merrily drunk. Ann met him at the door and told him he could not come in. He swore at her and vowed he would. She struggled with him. He was fuddled and uncertain on his legs, and she very quickly had him slithering down the stairs. He sat at the bottom and roared: