"Can't afford it, Hugh?" she repeated, with a vague sense of being accused. "Why, do I cost so much? Do I cost more than Ruth?"

He had not looked for anything quite as direct as that. He had blurted it out and now, as often, felt ashamed. He laughed and said in a much kinder tone:

"Don't you worry your dear head about things like that. We shall be all right. You won't find the man in possession by our fireside yet, when you come home from market!"

Now it was her turn not to be amused. "No, but tell me," she said.

"I'd much rather know. Are we honestly hard up?"

"What a practical little thing it's getting," he said, patting her on the back as they strode onward, always heralded by the long white dog with its straight tail, as proud as a drum-major. "Well, if you really want to know," he went on, "we are and have been, but we shan't be.

Listen!" He turned about and about, his finger to his mouth, upon the empty s.p.a.ces, clearly once more in the best of spirits. "Never tell a soul--and least of all the High-Art Alison--but I am doing a pot-boiler!"

"What, something worse than you need?" she blurted out in her astonishment.

He laughed at that. "Yes, if you put it so! Anyhow, something to make money."

"But won't the critics hate that?" she asked seriously.

Hubert Brett, for a man who had been almost too kindly reviewed, was always very hard on critics.

"Now listen," he said, "and I'll tell you something. The public has a natural suspicion of literary criticism. It only reads the stuff to see what to avoid. If it sees some book is called sincere, painstaking, artistic, a masterpiece, or anything like that, it pa.s.ses on until it comes to something labelled crude and elementary. Then it gets out its library list. Think of the two best-selling novelists to-day, and then think what the critics say of them! They are a journalistic joke. Yes, the more the dear critics hurl abuse, the more the darling public rushes out to Boot's. I'm sick of good reviews and rotten sales. I'm not doing it because I married you, not I; but I want columns of abuse and half a million copies!"

She loathed it, always, when he talked like this. She never knew quite what he meant. She hoped he was not really writing a pot-boiler.

"No, but honestly," she said, "why are things worse than in the old days? Your books sell just as well. Do tell me or I shall ask Ruth."

"Well," he said, but this time without rancour, merely telling her what she had asked, "you see a house, even a hen-run like ours, always costs ever so much more than rooms--rates and things like servants, don't you see--and then Ruth used to make a bit with curious bazaar stuff all gummed on to tins."

It was a mere backwash of his thought, as he drew the question out to a solution--nothing more. He never thought of a comparison. Why, if the thing had ever come to that, Helena had her allowance....

But it went home to her, whose early days had bred a diffidence to die only with the years. Ruth had helped him, then!

"I wish _I_ could do something," she said. "I feel so useless!" She had forgotten her bold attack with which this dialogue had started, and her whole mind was filled now with its self-reproach.

Hubert felt a sudden shame. The words threw back his memory to those first hours in London when the vast City crowd had made her say; "It makes me feel so useless!" Dear little girl, what happy, jolly days she had brought to his life since then! And yet she thought that she was useless....

She seemed so upset. His one idea was consolation. She must not think he longed for Ruth again, in even one respect!

Perhaps at a less fl.u.s.tered time he might have thought of all that she did in the house; those charming little meals, hot always at however variable times; the pretty bowls of flowers; everything so dainty--green and white--so different from the grimy lodgings.

But now he did not think of that. He took her arm instinctively in his and spoke what came into his mind.

"Dear little girlie," he said kindly, "I love you to be useless."

But she was not consoled.

CHAPTER VIII

A SCENE IN THE HOME

Hubert Brett could never quite escape from business; he a.n.a.lysed himself too much. His action sprung from impulse, education, ancestry, whatever source philosophers may choose to say, but it was followed by a sequel due to his own introspection. He tended in this way to set up something like a chain--a sequence of states which might almost be expected after any given act.

He might have owned, found in a candid vein, that selfishness was his besetting fault. It had been so--this would be his excuse, if he indeed admitted what certainly he knew--it had been so from birth; at any rate since he recalled himself an only son and younger than his only sister, pampered and indulged so far as even a small child could wish. He always _had_ got what he wanted. Hence naturally sprang a sort of self-centredom, a tendency to think first of what _he_ desired, something which, well, hang it all, no, it wasn't selfishness, but merely that self-confidence which all men who meant to get things done must first of all possess....

None the less, every now and then (he noticed it more, since Helena had been with him), he did, he knew, do things no doubt quite justifiable if one were thinking only of success, efficiency, and so forth; but rather beastly from the other person's--from Helena's--standpoint. It was so easy, when defending your own interests (and otherwise you'd get no work done ever), to be thoughtless, irritable, mean.

About those lectures or whatever they were of the poor little girl's, for instance....

Ought he, came the doubt when he was back in his own den at one minute past five o'clock--ought he to have given in to her for once, if she was really so immensely keen to take him? After all there often were days when he had finished work easily by six o'clock; whole months, even, between books, when he did no work after tea; but there was such a thing as System, and though a married man, he was quite bachelor enough to love this time of solitude with pipe and books. Helena was sweet; no man could ever have been luckier about his wife; but he saw her for much more than one-half the day and all of it on Sundays.

Yes really, he could not see that she had any right to look for more.

Perhaps those City men took their wives to these precious causeries, but they were ever so much more away. Oh yes, he saw a lot of her and however much she might complain, he knew that she was really lucky....

All the same, as he never had and the dear child wanted it, perhaps----?

Whereat Hubert, having worked comfortably around his usual circle--Selfishness, Remorse, Ample Self-Excuse, and n.o.ble Expiation--got up, feeling very light of heart, and went back to the drawing-room.

Helena was startled. She never thought of tragedies, she had known none in her well-sheltered days, or she might easily have feared that there was something wrong. Never in these two years and more had he come back, once gone, till dinner-time. Many modern wives might have resented such a sudden entry. Luckily this specimen was in no more compromising a position than that of eating the last jam sandwich, a thing she never could resist before Lily came and took away the tea.

She waved it at him without shame.

"Hullo!" she said. "Why what's brought you back?"

He smiled indulgently. He liked her to be young.

"Look here, Helena," he said, "I've been feeling I was a bit of a brute about those causeries of yours. I could easily spare an evening some day, if you'd like me to. Let's see the list and then we'll fix on one."

Many modern wives, again, might have been tiresome about an amende honourable indeed but so obviously planned. Not Helena, however. She leapt to get the circular, all thrilled excitement and babbling grat.i.tude.

Hubert ran a proud finger down the list. "Hullo," he said in unflattering surprise. "They've got some quite good men."

He had always utterly ignored her ventures in self-education. He did not, for one thing, approve of them; and he had vaguely thought they were connected with the parish church, Pleasant Sunday Evenings, and everything like that.

"I'm so glad you're pleased," she put in, quite without irony.

"That's the one we'll do together," he said, and read out--"'January 29: Art as a Religion.--G. K. Shaw.' And only ten days off, too!"

It was the best, far, on the list; he would perhaps be called on, as a local author, to make some remarks; and he might meet the lecturer....

"Oh, but how splendid!" she cried, duly grateful. "Just the very one I wanted you to come to. You really _are_ a dear! And that's a late one too, at eight o'clock, because the lecturer objected, so your old work won't suffer after all!"

She talked of it for days to come, what great fun it would be, till Hubert felt even more guilty. He had never realised how much she felt the fact of his not coming. He had not ever heard, you see, dear Mrs.

Boyd say: "What! No husband again? I don't think you keep him in at _all_ good order; does she, Kenneth?"--as one who should say, "You have no power over him, at all!" He did not guess how lonely she had felt sometimes when Geoffrey Alison could not escort her. Still he saw her great keenness now and told himself he would have gone to these lectures before--if only he had known they were not University Extension.

He was distinctly flattered by the way she harped upon this small concession. Little things like that had a curious power of making Hubert Brett well satisfied with life.

She could see that afresh, six mornings later.