Very early in the morning she was tending the baby; he wished that he had been able to keep the nurse longer. He left her reluctantly after breakfast, to get through the baby's bath and toilet unaided, before the heavier work of the flat. Women who knew would have understood why Marie trembled and despaired at the tasks before her. When the baby cried as, with hands still weakened, she tried to hold up its slipping little body in the bath, she cried, too. As she cried, she thought how tears seemed to be always near her eyes during these married days. Was something wrong with marriage? Before, in her careless girl-days, she had never wept; she had never so suffered, so wearied and despaired.

While she questioned, she dressed the baby in the flannel and lawn things she had made for it a long while ago, and when she had dressed it, she fed it again, and again it slept.

It was astonishing how much heavier a month-old infant could grow during an hour's marketing.

That reminded her that they had something else to buy, a big thing that would swallow up nearly, or quite, a week of Osborn's pay, a perambulator. The baby had luxuries; his toilet set from Rokeby, his christening robe from Julia, his puffed and frilly baby-basket from Grannie Amber, were dreams to delight a mother's heart; but he had no carriage. For a little while she might carry him when she was not too tired; and when she was, he might sleep out on the balcony that jutted from the sitting-room window, and she could stay beside him; but ultimately the question of the perambulator must arise.

As Marie walked home with her baby and her basket, she said to herself: "I won't ask poor Osborn now; not when he's just paid that woman a whole six pounds; not till he's settled the doctor; and there'll be an extra bill for the baby's vaccination soon, and the next furniture instalment's due; but when all that's cleared off, I'll choose the right time and ask him. I shall give him an extra nice dinner, and tell him we'll have to buy one."

In a week, when the doctor called to vaccinate the baby, he ordered the mother to leave off nursing it herself; he put it upon a patent food, not a cheap food; and it formed a pertinacious habit of wearing out best rubber bottle teats quicker than any baby ever known. In the nights Marie did not now reach out in the darkness to her baby and, gathering it to herself, nourish it quietly, without the certainty of waking Osborn; but there had to be a nightlight, there had to be business with a little spirit stove and saucepan, the unlucky jingle of a spoon against the bottle, so that Osborn began to mutter drowsily: "Hang that row!" and she longed to scream at him, "It's _your_ baby, isn't it, as well as mine?"

Osborn was unused to and intolerant of domestic discomforts such as these; in the nights his nerves were frayed; at the breakfast-table he showed it: "You look tired to death, and I'm sure I am," he grumbled.

"If this is marriage, give me single blessedness every time. Worry and expense! Expense and worry! Such is life!"

In the evenings she was very subdued; she was losing her life and light; he did not know that during the day, after such display of his irritation, she cried herself sick. He asked her to come out to dinner one evening; he said:

"You and I are getting two old mopes. Look here, girlie, put on your best frock, and come and dine at Pagani's; I can't afford it, but we'll do it."

But she could not.

"Baby," she said, hesitating.

Osborn looked at her in silence. "Good heavens!" he exclaimed, after a while, "aren't we ever to have our evenings out, then? Shall you always be tied here now?"

"A baby ties one," she replied.

"So it does, doesn't it?" said Osborn despondently.

Marie looked at him steadily. Just as she wanted to scream at him in the night, so she now longed to cry: "It's harder on me than you! Do you think I don't _want_ ever to go out? Do you think I don't often long to go into the West End and look at the shops, or do a matinee with mother or Julia, and come back refreshed?"

But with the prudence of her mother's daughter she restrained herself.

"Day in, day out, are we always to live the life domestic pure and simple?" Osborn demanded.

For answer she shrugged her shoulders. Osborn thought her strangely nonchalant, almost contemptuous.

"Well, I, for one, damned well won't do it," he said, rising from the table.

"But I must," Marie replied in a level voice.

It was Osborn's turn to look at her; he wondered just what she meant by it.

"Well," he asked, "I can't help it, can I?"

"Neither can I," said Marie.

Osborn put on his coat and hat and went out. It was the first time he had ever gone out after dinner at home. For some while after he had left Marie remained alone at the table, staring before her. The small dining-room was still charming in the candlelight, but it took on a new aspect for her. The cream walls and golden-brown curtains enclosed her irrevocably. She would never get away from this place, the prison of home. Day in, day out, as Osborn said, it would be the same. The man might come and go at will, the woman had forged her fetters.

Didn't men ever understand anything? What crass vanity, what selfishness, what intolerance, kept them blind?

Marie was hardening. She did not cry. After a while she rose and cleared the table. As Osborn was not there, wishing for her company, she washed up. That would make it so much easier in the morning.

It left her, though, with an hour now in which to sit down and resume her thinking.

The flat was very quiet, very desolate. The man had gone out to seek amusement. How queer women's lives were!

She knew women whose husbands invariably went out at night, as soon as they had fed. What did these women really think of their men? What did these men really think of their women? How much did each know of the other? At what stage in these varied married lives did the wife become merely a servitor, to serve or order the serving of her husband's dinner, for which he came home before, again, he left her?

Married life!

At nine-thirty Marie prepared the baby's bottle and went to bed. She schooled herself to sleep, knowing that during the night the baby would make his demands, and she fell asleep quickly. She did not hear Osborn come in. He looked about the flat for her before going to his dressing-room, and, not finding her, said to himself wilfully: "Marie's sulking; she wouldn't wait up. Does she always expect a fellow to stay at home?"

By the glim of the nightlight, when he went into their room he saw her sleeping. The child slept, too. Osborn got resentfully into his bed, and thought of Rokeby, with whom he had just parted, and the end of a conversation they had had.

"You could afford to marry, Desmond."

"What's the standard?"

"Being able to keep servants," said Osborn harshly. "You marry the girl you love, a pretty girl you're proud to take about, and she can't come out to dine with you; she can't move from home; babies, they cry all night, burn 'em! And she gets ready to hate you. It's hell!"

CHAPTER X

RECRIMINATION

On a day of January, like spring, Julia went upon a sentimental errand, influenced by she did not know what; but she guessed it was the youth in the air. It made her think of the youngest thing she knew, and that was Marie's baby, and of what she could do for it; and all that she could do, as far as she saw, was to buy it a superfluous woolly lamb. So after her day's work was over, at half-past five, Julia put on her hat and coat with a purpose, and stepped into the toy department of her favourite stores.

Julia was not mean; from out the whole flock of lambs which she found awaiting her selection she chose a beauty. Its white fluffiness and its beady eyes affected her softly; her handsome face grew motherly as she insinuated the stranger into her muff, where her hands stroked it unconsciously. Julia was far more pleased with the lamb than the baby would be, as she boarded an omnibus and rode towards Hampstead.

It was six when she arrived at the door of No. 30 Welham Mansions, and Marie opened it to her with the baby in her arms, huddled up in a rather soiled shawl from which only his incredibly downy head emerged.

He looked solemnly at Julia and emitted an inquiring croak.

"You aren't still carrying that baby out, are you?" Julia asked suddenly.

They entered the sitting-room together.

"What else can I do? If I go out, he's got to go, too."

"You'll get a perambulator?"

"I'm going to ask Osborn soon."

"Why not ask him now?"

"He's had such a lot of expense, poor boy."