She hesitated.

"And what am I to do with three children in a London hotel?"

"Take nurse, naturally."

"Take nurse?" she cried.

He imitated her, with a grotesque exaggeration, yelling loudly, "Take nurse?" Then he planted a soap-sud on her fresh cheek.

She wiped it off carefully, and smacked his arm. The next moment she was gone, having left the door open.

"He _wants_ me to go to London to-morrow," he could hear her saying to his mother on the landing.

"Confound it!" he thought. "Didn't she know that at dinner-time?"

"Bless us!" His mother's voice.

"And take the children--and nurse!" His wife continued, in a tone to convey the fact that she was just as much disturbed as her mother-in-law could possibly be by the eccentricities of the male.

"He's his father all over, that lad is!" said his mother, strangely.

And Edward Henry was impressed by these words, for not once in seven years did his mother mention his father.

Tea was an exciting meal.

"You'd better come too mother," said Edward Henry, audaciously. "We'll shut the house up."

"I come to no London," said she.

"Well, then, you can use the motor as much as you like while we're away."

"I go about gallivanting in no motor," said his mother. "It'll take me all my time to get this house straight against you come back."

"I haven't a _thing_ to go in!" said Nellie, with a martyr's sigh.

After all (he reflected), though domesticated, she was a woman.

He went to bed early. It seemed to him that his wife, his mother and the nurse were active and whispering up and down the house till the very middle of the night. He arose not late; but they were all three afoot before him, active and whispering.

IX

He found out, on the morning after the highly complex transaction of getting his family from Bursley to London, that London held more problems for him than ever. He was now not merely the proprietor of a theatre approaching completion, but really a theatrical manager with a play to produce, artistes to engage, and the public to attract. He had made two appointments for that morning at the Majestic--(he was not at the Grand Babylon, because his wife had once stayed with him at the Majestic, and he did not want to add to his anxieties the business of accustoming her to a new and costlier luxury)--one appointment at nine with Marrier, and the other at ten with Nellie, family and nurse. He had expected to get rid of Marrier before ten.

Among the exciting mail which Marrier had collected for him from the Grand Babylon and elsewhere, was the following letter:

"BUCKINGHAM PALACE HOTEL.

"DEAR FRIEND,--We are all so proud of you. I should like some time to finish our interrupted conversation. Will you come and have lunch with me one day here at 1.30? You needn't write. I know how busy you are.

Just telephone you are coming. But don't telephone between 12 and 1, because at that time I _always_ take my const.i.tutional in St. James's Park.--Yours sincerely, E.A."

"Well," he thought, "that's a bit thick, that is! She's stuck me up with a dramatist I don't believe in, and a play I don't believe in, and an actress I don't believe in--and now she--"

Nevertheless, to a certain extent he was bluffing himself. For, as he pretended to put Elsie April back into her place, he had disturbing and delightful visions of her. A clever creature! Uncannily clever!

Wealthy! Under thirty! Broad-minded! No provincial prejudices!... Her voice, that always affected his spine! Her delicious flattery!... She was no mean actress either! And the multifariousness of her seductive charm! In fact, she was a regular woman of the world, such as you would read about--if you did read!... He was sitting with her again in the obscurity of the discussion-room at the Azure Society's establishment. His heart was beating again.

Pooh!...

A single wrench and he ripped up the letter, and cast it into one of the red-lined waste-paper baskets with which the immense and rather shabby writing-room of the Majestic was dotted.

Before he had finished dealing with Mr. Marrier's queries and suggestions--some ten thousand in all--the clock struck, and Nellie tripped into the room. She was in black silk, with hints here and there of gold chains. As she had explained, she had nothing to wear, and was therefore obliged to fall back on the final resource of every woman in her state. For in this connection "nothing to wear" signified "nothing except my black silk"--at any rate in the Five Towns.

"Mr. Marrier--my wife. Nellie, this is Mr. Marrier."

Mr. Marrier was profuse: no other word would describe his demeanour.

Nellie had the timidity of a young girl. Indeed she looked quite youthful, despite the ageing influences of black silk.

"So that's your Mr. Marrier! I understood from you he was a clerk!"

said Nellie, tartly, suddenly retransformed into the shrewd matron, as soon as Mr. Marrier had profusely gone. She had conceived Marrier as a sort of Penkethman! Edward Henry had hoped to avoid this interview.

He shrugged his shoulders in answer to his wife's remark.

"Well," he said, "where are the kids?"

"Waiting in the lounge with nurse, as you said to be." Her mien delicately informed him that while in London his caprices would be her law, which she would obey without seeking to comprehend.

"Well," he went on, "I expect they'd like the parks as well as anything. Suppose we take 'em and show 'em one of the parks? Shall we?

Besides, they must have fresh air."

"All right," Nellie agreed. "But how far will it be?"

"Oh!" said Edward Henry, "we'll crowd into a taxi."

They crowded into a taxi, and the children found their father in high spirits. Maisie mentioned the doll.... In a minute the taxi had stopped in front of a toy-shop surpa.s.sing dreams, and they invaded the toy-shop like an army. When they emerged, after a considerable interval, nurse was carrying an enormous doll, and Nellie was carrying Maisie, and Ralph was lovingly stroking the doll's real shoes. Robert kept a profound silence--a silence which had begun in the train.

"You haven't got much to say, Robert," his father remarked, when the taxi set off again.

"I know," said Robert, gruffly. Among other things, he resented his best clothes on a week-day.

"What do you think of London?"

"I don't know," said Robert.

His eyes never left the window of the taxi.

Then they visited the theatre--a very fatiguing enterprise, and also, for Edward Henry, a very nervous one. He was as awkward in displaying that inchoate theatre as a newly-made father with his first-born.