I laughed, but I was near to tears.

"How long have we been engaged?" asked Mark.

"Twelve years. You know that as well as I do."

"Well, as far as I can see, we shall be still affianced in twenty years'

time. Aunt p.u.s.s.y will see us all out."

"We may toddle to the altar yet," I said hysterically, "when you are about eighty and I am seventy. And I shall give you a bath-chair, and you will present the bridesmaids, who must not be a day younger than myself, with rubber hot-water bottles. Rubber will be cheap again by then."

He came back, and sat down by me.

"It's d.a.m.nable!" he said.

"It is," I replied.

"And it isn't as if the little a.s.s couldn't afford it!" he broke out, after a moment. "She can't have less than thirty thousand a year, and she lives on one. And it will all come to you when she dies. And it's rolling up, and rolling up, and the years pa.s.s and pa.s.s. Our case is desperate. Janet, can't you say something to her? Can't you make a great appeal to her? Can't you get hold of someone who has an influence over her, and appeal to them?"

I did not think it necessary to answer. He knew I had tried everything years ago.

It had been thought a wonderful thing for me when Aunt p.u.s.s.y, my G.o.dmother, adopted me when I was fourteen. We were a large family, and I was the only delicate one, not fitted, so my parents thought, to "fend for myself" in this rough world. And I had always liked Aunt p.u.s.s.y, and she me. And she promised my father, on his impecunious death-bed, that she would take charge of me and educate me. She further gratuitously and solemnly promised that she would leave me all her money. Her all was not much, a few hundreds a year. But that was a great deal to people like ourselves. She was our one rich relation, and it was felt that I was provided for, which eventually caused an estrangement between me and my brothers and sisters, who had to work for their living; while I always had pretty clothes and a little--a very little--pocket-money, and did nothing in the way of work except arrange flowers, and write a few notes, and comb out Aunt p.u.s.s.y's Flossy, being careful to keep the parting even down the middle of his back.

My sisters became workers, and they also became ardent Suffragists, which would have shocked my father dreadfully if he had been alive, for he was of opinion that woman's proper sphere is the home, though, of course, if you have not got a home or any money it seems rather difficult for women to remain in their sphere.

I, being provided for, remained perfectly womanly, of the type that the Anti-Suffrage League, and the sterner s.e.x especially, admire. I took care of my appearance, I dressed charmingly on the very small allowance which Aunt p.u.s.s.y doled out to me, I was an adept at all the little details which make a home pleasant, I never wanted to do anything except to marry Mark.

For across the even tenor of our lives, in a little villa in Kensington, as even as the parting down Flossie's back, presently came two great events. Aunt p.u.s.s.y inherited an enormous fortune, and the following year, I being then twenty, fell in love with Mark and accepted him. I can't tell you whether he, poor dear, was quite disinterested at first.

It was, of course, known that I should inherit all my aunt's money. He was rather above me in the social scale. I have sometimes thought that his old painted, gambling Jezebel of a mother prodded him in my direction.

But if he was not disinterested at first, he became so. We were two perfectly ordinary young people. But we were meant for each other, and we both knew it.

We never for a moment thought there would be any real difficulty in the way of our marriage. Aunt p.u.s.s.y was, of course, exasperatingly n.i.g.g.ardly, but she was now very wealthy, and she approved of Mark, partly because he was not without means. He was an only child with a little of his own, and with expectations from his mother. He had had a sunstroke in Uganda, which had forced him to give up his profession, but he was independent of it. Aunt p.u.s.s.y, however, though she was most kind and sentimental about us, could not at first be induced to say anything definite about money.

When, after a few months, I began to grow pale and thin, she went so far as to say that she would give me an allowance equal to his income. I fancy even that concession cost her nights of agony. If he could make up five hundred a year she would make up the same.

Was this the moment, I ask you, for his wicked old mother to gamble herself into disgrace and bankruptcy? My poor Mark came, swearing horribly, to her a.s.sistance. But when he had done so, and had given her a pittance to live on, there was nothing left for himself.

Even then neither of us thought it mattered much. Aunt p.u.s.s.y would surely come round. But we had not reckoned on the effect that a large fortune can make on a miserly temperament. She clutched at the fact that Mark was penniless as a reason to withdraw her previous promise. She would not part with a penny. She did not want to part with me. She put us off with one pretext after another. After several years of irritation and anger and exasperation, we discovered what we ought to have known from the first, that nothing would induce her to give up anything in her life-time, though she was much too religious to break her promise to my father. She intended to leave me everything. But she was not going to part with sixpence as long as she could hold on to it.

We tried to move her, but she was not to be moved. On looking back I see now that she was more eccentric than we realised at the time. In the course of twelve years Mark and I went through all the vicissitudes that two commonplace people deeply in love do go through if they can't marry.

We became desperate. We decided to part. We urged each other to marry someone else. We conjured each other to feel perfectly free. We doubted each other. He swore. I wept. He tried to leave me and he couldn't. I did not try. I knew it was no use. We each had opportunities of marrying advantageously if we could only have disentangled ourselves from each other. I learned what jealousy can be of a woman, younger and better looking, and sweeter-tempered and with thicker hair than myself.

He a.s.severated with fury that he was never jealous of me. If that was so, his outrageous behaviour to his own cousin, a rich and blameless widower in search of a wife, was inexplicable. And now, after twelve years, we had reached a point where we could only laugh. There was nothing else to be done. He was growing stout, and I was growing lean.

If only middle-aged men could grow thin, and poor middle-aged women a little plump, life would be easier for them. But we reversed it. Aunt p.u.s.s.y alone seemed untouched by time. Even Mark's optimistic eye could never detect any sign of "breaking up" about her.

And throughout those dreary years we had one supreme consolation, and a very painful consolation it was. We loved each other.

"It's d.a.m.nable!" said Mark again. "Well, if I'm not to murder her, if you're going to thwart me in every little wish just as if we were married already, I don't see what there is to be done. I've inquired about a post obit."

"Oh, Mark!"

"It's no use saying 'Oh, Mark'! I tell you I've inquired about a post obit, and if you had a grain of affection for me you would have done the same yourself years ago. But it seems you can't raise money on a promise which may be broken. As I said before, there is no way out of it except by bloodshed. I shall have to murder her, and then you can marry me or not as you like. You will like, safe enough, if I am handy with the remains."

The door opened, and Aunt p.u.s.s.y hurried in. She was always in a hurry.

We did not start away from each other, but remained stolidly seated side by side on the horsehair dining-room sofa with anger in our hearts against her. She had never given me a sitting-room. I always had to interview Mark in the dining-room with a plate of oranges on the sideboard, like a heroine in "The Quiver."

Aunt p.u.s.s.y was a small, dried-up woman of between fifty and sixty, with a furtive eye and a perpetually moving mouth, who looked as if she had been pinched out of shape by someone with a false sense of humour and no reverence. She was dressed in every shade of old black--rusty black, green black, brown black, spotted black, figured black, plain black.

Mark got up slowly, and held out his hand.

"How do you do, Mark?" she said nervously. "I will own I'm somewhat surprised to see you here," ignoring his hand, and taking some figs out of a string bag, and placing them on an empty plate (the one that ought to have had oranges in it) on the sideboard. "I have brought you some figs, Janet; you said you liked them. I thought it was agreed that until Mark had some reasonable prospect of being able to support a wife his visits here had better cease."

"I never agreed," said Mark, "I was always for their continuing. I've been against a long engagement from the first."

"Well, in any case, you must have a cup of tea now you are here,"

continued Aunt p.u.s.s.y, taking off her worn gloves, which I had mended for her till the fingers were mere stumps. "Ring the bell, Janet. We will have tea in here as there isn't a fire in the drawing-room."

She put down more parcels on the table, and then her face changed.

"My bag!" she gasped, and collapsed into a chair like one felled by emotion. "My bag!"

We looked everywhere. Mark explored the hall and the umbrella-stand. No handbag was to be seen.

"I knew something would happen if the month began with a Friday!" moaned Aunt p.u.s.s.y.

"Had it a great deal in it?" I asked.

"Twenty pounds!" said Aunt p.u.s.s.y, as if it were the savings of a lifetime. "I had drawn twenty pounds to pay the monthly books." And she became the colour of lead.

I flew for her salts, and made tea quickly, and presently she recovered sufficiently to drink it. But her hand shook.

"Twenty pounds!" she repeated, below her breath.

We questioned her as to where she last remembered using the bag, and at length elicited the information that she had no recollection of its society after visiting Brown and Prodgers, the great shop in Baskaville Road, where she recalled eating a meat lozenge, drawn from its recesses.

Mark offered to go round there at once, and see if it had been found.

"I've never lost anything before," she said when he had gone, "but I felt this morning that some misfortune was going to happen. There was a black cat on the leads when I looked out. As sure as fate, if I see a black cat something goes wrong. Last time I saw one, two of my handkerchiefs were missing from the wash."

As Aunt p.u.s.s.y bought her handkerchiefs in the sales for less than sixpence each, I felt that the black cat made himself rather cheap.

Mark returned with the cheering news that a bag had been found at Brown and Prodgers, and one of the princ.i.p.al shopwalkers had taken charge of it. And if Aunt p.u.s.s.y would call in person to-morrow, and accurately describe its contents, it would be returned to her.

Aunt p.u.s.s.y was so much relieved that she actually smiled on him, and offered him a second cup of tea. But next morning at breakfast I saw at once that something was gravely amiss.

Had she slept?

Yes.