She woke that day to her landlady’s rap more resentfully than usual. The world was disgustingly mismanaged. Why couldn’t she love Dubby, who was free? She couldn’t, but she hated Sam for being married, he had no right to be married. “Damn Mrs. Sam! Damn her!” she said heartily, by way of a morning prayer, as she ran hairpins viciously into her glorious hair. “But I’ll cure him of mud,” she added, as she raced downstairs to swallow the tea and toast which she took almost in the same rush that carried her from her bedroom to the tram.
She reached the office and walked into Sam’s room to find him already in possession. His obvious briskness at that hour struck her as almost indecent; it was, at any rate, another cause for resentment, and one of which he was himself quite blandly unaware.
He was not stealing a march upon her any more than he habitually stole marches on the rest of the world. He knew that early morning suited him, and used it to advantage. They were certain in town that Branstone had luck rather than brains because he was lazy; but if a man arrives at his office at eight a.m., and puts in two hours of solid work by ten o’clock, he is well ahead of his fellows of the employing class who go down to offices on the 9.21 from home. He can afford to appear lazy.
He liked that uninterrupted hour with the books, opened the letters himself, and had them annotated before the men came, whose business it was to deal with their contents. He planned out the day’s work, and saw it in hand before his earliest caller came. After ten, which is the first hour when it is etiquette for a salesman to call, Sam was never too busy to talk of matters which were not strictly business—with the right, the gainful caller. It was known that one could kill time pleasantly with Branstone. Branstone was a lazy fellow, and his office a good place to sit in on a wet afternoon, when there was no point in going to Old Trafford.
He came this morning even earlier than usual, to be ready for Effie when she came at nine. He had slept off his embarrassment, and was ready in his early morning ebullience to pooh-pooh it. It was stupid to be so extraordinarily sensitive about an aitch. Accent had always troubled him, but he need not overrate its importance, and especially now that he wore the political badge of a democrat, and had acknowledged publicly that his mother was a charwoman.
So he was here, installed in his chair with the back of his morning’s work broken, waiting for her when she came.
No, she decided, not at all humorous to-day: formidable, in fact. He had all the advantages; he was seated; he was first upon the ground, and that ground his own, and he was abominably awake. He might have run away yesterday, but this was the morning of retrieval.
“Good morning,” he said, assuming an attitude of leisure.
“Good morning,” she said, then saw that he was looking quizzically at the parcel she carried, as if, she thought, he mistook it for her lunch. “I took the novel home to finish,” she explained nervously, and called herself a fool for giving him this readymade chance to open the subject which of all things she wanted to delay until her suaver hour had come. She might be able to cure him of mud, but a doctor should have a bedside manner, and she distrusted her manners until the landlady’s knock had ceased ringing in her ears.
If she had not given him the chance, he would have made it. He gave no quarter to bad starters. Had he known of her weakness, he might have spared her. He might, because she was Effie; but it wasn’t his habit to indulge the weaknesses of others, especially a weakness which he did not share, did not understand, and denied to be anything but sloth.