“You can spare ten minutes, old girl,” he said; “and things are getting into such a hobble that we must pull up and make an alteration. If we don’t, another year or two will see us stony, so far as I am concerned.”
“Well, go on,” returned Sybil, putting her red lips to a cup of tea, “and do compress your lecture. At eleven Cecil Cloudesley will be here with a new pony we want to look at.”
Charlie’s brows knitted into a little frown. “Oh! hang Cecil Cloudesley and his ponies!” he exclaimed. “Three years ago when we married,” he went on, “we had sixteen hundred a year between us. You had seven hundred, I had nine hundred. Well, I’ve often told you we’ve been going the pace far too much—it’s been my fault, I admit, quite as much as yours—and now this is how we stand. I’ve had to break into my capital—four times in three years, as Jesson and Fosbery remind me—and now my income is reduced to something over four hundred. Your money, thank goodness, is tied up. Eleven hundred would do us passably well, living quietly in the country; and to that we shall have to make up our minds. I’ve given up my nags, as you know. After July we must sell off, give up the flat, and retrench seriously. I’ve had enough of this sort of thing, and I’m getting heartily sick of it. I’m getting soft and hipped, and I loathe this incessant keeping up appearances, and living beyond one’s means. And there’s the baby. Poor little chap, he sees precious little of us, living as we do. We must give him a chance. I’m sure he needs fresh air and a country life far more even than we do!”
This reference to her two-year-old child was rather a sore subject for Sybil. She knew that in the whirling life she led, she had really neglected the youngster. But her spirit rose instantly to combat the suggestion.
“Oh, Arthur’s all right,” she returned with some sharpness. “He was at the mater’s for a month at Christmas, and he’ll be there again in May or June. But we can’t live on a thousand a year, that’s certain. I suppose you can get something to do. I can’t—I really can’t—be buried alive in the country.”
“Well,” returned her husband, a little hot at the cool way in which she had met his advance. “I’ve been thinking over things. I shall sell out another thousand or so and go off to Rhodesia, and try and pick up some mining claims or town lots. You must live on 900 pounds a year somehow, and I’ll do the best I can to pick up some oof. Anyhow I’m tired of this sort of life. I see very little of you, and you can put up with my absence for a year, I suppose.”
“I might perhaps even exist for two years without the light of your countenance, Charlie, if I tried very hard!” retorted Sybil.
A little flush had risen to her cheeks, and a rebellious sparkle flashed in her dark eyes. She had not reckoned upon this proposition. Charlie was useful, nay, necessary to her in a hundred little ways, and she hated the idea of parting from him. She was angry with herself and with him.
“Well, that settles it,” rejoined her husband coolly. “I’ll try and make some coin in Mashonaland, and you stay at home and pull in a bit. We shall be better friends when I come back. Somehow this town life doesn’t suit either of us. We hit it off a thousand times better when we lived at the Grange.”
He rose and lit a cigarette.