Men of Marlowe's

by Mrs. Henry Dudeney

That afternoon she did not change her dress, but went indoors and threw herself on the drawing-room sofa in her short, bicycling skirt. In front of the window she faced was a cherry tree, its boughs bent by the wind and its long, dry leaves floating yellow to the grass. She tried to form her plans. Would Dick turn her out that night? It was beginning to rain; inside, the fire was cheery. The room had never looked so nice. Her wild eyes roved over her little cherished gimcracks on the tables—the dainty rubbish that housekeepers accumulate and love. When she heard wheels outside she did not rise. She was afraid. Perhaps Kinsman had stopped the trap on the way from the station. But Dick came in and gave her the usual temperate kiss and asked in the usual hearty way how the youngsters were and whether dinner was going to be punctual. He sat sprawling in slippers and an old coat by the fire, saying comfortably what a rough night it was and how the wind had lashed into his eyes as he drove home.

She turned on her cushions and watched him. He was growing fat and bald—there were prosperous, uninteresting curves all over him. He had ripened into a flourishing business man who liked his dinner and a good cigar, who considered his wife as one of his comforts—and very little more. But she loved him. How she loved him! Would he send her away that night?

He was mumbling sleepily that it was not fit weather in which to turn a dog out. Would he turn her out? Would he let her take the baby?

She stared out at the autumn sky and tossing trees; in, at the firelight chasing round the warm, picture-loaded walls. Where would to-morrow find her? To-morrow she would be an outcast.

All the time her ears were pricking for the door bell and, when it clanged, she started to her feet, with a choking sound in her dry throat. Her face was clay above the severe line of her rigidly cut cloth bodice. The bell rang again. She got up and almost crawled toward that deep chair by the fire and kissed her husband—a kiss of relinquishment. He patted her hair and looked at her in lazy surprise. Then he said in a voice of mild irritation:

“That can’t be Crook” (he was the curate). “He said he’d look in one night for a game of chess. But I didn’t ask him to dinner, and he surely wouldn’t turn out in such weather. I hope it isn’t Crook. I want to do some work to-night.”

He glanced at his black bag, which was bloated with papers which he had brought from the City.

Mrs. Conifer looked at it too—resentfully. She was thinking, with her woman’s logic, that it was this ardent devotion to business on her husband’s part which had made her drift. If he had not, in the Russell Square days, brought home that bag so often, she would not be in such a pitiable plight to-night. There was a hurried opening of doors downstairs, voices in the hall, then a sharp report and another.

Mrs. Conifer shrieked. Her husband pulled himself out of the depths of the chair and rushed downstairs. Presently she stole after him, her legs like lead and her wild heart thumping in her throat.

The hall was brightly lighted with a red and yellow light, filtering through colored glass lanterns. Face downward on the tesselated floor was the body of a man, his prone head in a pool. The door was flung back. Black night outside and the sob of the wind!