After this followed a savage onslaught, some two hours in duration, on "Strange Bedfellows," which infuriated its creator so much that at luncheon his wife was afforded a more than usually numerous series of opportunities for "making allowances."
In the afternoon there was a slight lull, for Montagu betook himself and his temperament for an airing on the Heath. He returned sheer drunk with the glories of an autumn sunset, to make a heavy and unwholesome tea. But in an evil moment he asked for his daughter, and it was discovered that she was not in the house. A hurricane sprang up in a moment, increasing to a typhoon when Miss Peggy arrived with a stained frock and a bruised knee.
She was despatched incontinently to bed, where cook and the housemaid and (later) her mother combined to tend her wounds and supply her with abundant, if surreptitious, refreshment.
After dinner Montagu Falconer found himself in possession of a fresh grievance. His wife had deserted him. As a rule she sat placidly upon the other side of the fire and listened while her husband derided the British Philistine and consigned the Members of the Royal Academy, seriatim, to perdition. But to-night even these simple pleasures were denied him. His wife's chair stood empty. Probably she was upstairs, coddling that insubordinate brat, Peggy. Her own husband, of course, might shift for himself; he had no claim upon her consideration. He was at liberty to slave day and night to keep a roof over their heads; but when, shattered by the magnitude of his exertions, he returned to his own fireside for a few words of wifely recognition and encouragement, what did he find? An empty chair!
He laughed bitterly.
"I wonder," he said, "how high I might not have climbed if I had been properly understood!"
He was so engrossed with this gratifying speculation that he failed to hear seven portentous thumps upon the floor of the passage leading to the studio.
After another half-hour his sense of grievance took a still more pathetic turn. He was now the willing, patient, overdriven breadwinner, struggling to keep an impoverished household together. His part was to work, work, work, with none to say him nay. Happy thought! He would go and work now. Possibly if his wife found him, half-blind with fatigue, toiling at his easel at midnight, she might feel sorry. Anyhow, he would try it.
Feeling comparatively cheerful, and ignoring the fact that one does not usually paint by artificial light, the downtrodden breadwinner proceeded to the studio. He stepped softly, for he did not want his wife to hear him at present. She was to discover him later, when his stage effects had been properly worked up.
To his surprise he noted a light under the studio door. Who could it be? The servants were strictly forbidden to enter the sacred apartment at all. It seemed too much to hope that it might be cook. His eyes gleamed, and he turned the handle softly.