Chapter 21

HOME-COMING

Osborn Kerr was coming home with the happy sense of expectancy which is common to the wanderer. He had prepared for departure with a high heart and a holiday feeling running through everything, like champagne, but he packed for his return with a very warm pleasure in looking forward to the welcome waiting for him, right across all that space, in the flat an which he had established home.

Looking back as well as forward, only the pleasant and sweet things of his marriage remained impressed on his mind. The cosiness of the home and not the worry of paying for it instalment by instalment; the good dinners Marie cooked, not the grudge of giving out that housekeeping allowance which paid for them; the prettiness and sunniness of his wife rather than the faded looks and uncertain temper of the last few years; the three fine kids he'd got, not the nuisance and noise and expense which he had so often declared them.

The rosy cloud of time and distance had rolled between Osborn and all that was his at No. 30 Welham Mansions. Before his year of adventure was up he found himself thinking of them sentimentally; he found that they were embedded pretty deep in his heart. They were real; other things were--

Looking about for a definition, he stigmatised other things: "They're trash."

He added therefore a postscript to his letter to his wife, an addition written in a sudden thrust of pathos, a want of her almost like the old want:

"I wonder if you've missed me, old girl."

In the trash he felt, though he had not given the idea the form of a thought, that Roselle Dates was included. She had never bored, being too clever in her stupid, instinctive way for that; but sometimes she had sickened him. She had wanted so much. She seemed always wanting something. At first her pallid and raven beauty and her clever silliness had been sheer stimulation, but when you grew used to her....

She had nothing behind. And she was mean with the sex meanness, the cold prudence of the sex-trafficker. She would never have given; she would only have sold, and that at a price far beyond Osborn Kerr's pocket-book even at its recent splendour. But she did not want to sell either; she wanted to take and take, to squeeze and squeeze. Once--that was in San Francisco, where she had beaten together a concert party and shone as its brightest star--when he had been disappointed of a big deal and had come to her with the story....

_She had refused to listen_.

She had said: "Look here, boy! What do you mean by asking me out to lunch and moping? I don't want to hear your troubles. There are plenty of people here who'll amuse me without pulling long faces over dropping a little cash."

She looked at him very coldly. In that moment he had suddenly thought of another woman, a young bride, who, with tears of consternation and sympathy in her eyes, had brought out an account-book and pencil and said: "I'll get the gas out of the thirty shillings, too."

That was the kind of reception a man expected for his troubles. But after Roselle had let him pay for their expensive lunch, she had needed other things--perfume and candy. And she "borrowed" the rent of her rooms from him for several weeks.

She went back to London two months ahead of him, having written for and secured a moderately good engagement.

During the two months he missed her a little in the Runaway, where her presence had secured for him an extra mark of distinction; but he had rather the feeling of a man surfeited. He put it to himself in modern slang: "I was fed up," he said. "She only wanted me to get the tickets and look after her luggage, and turn up when I was wanted, and be a kind of unpaid courier, while she travelled about getting experiences and hunting for bigger fools than me. I'm about fed up."

Osborn was to stop in Paris for a week on his way back; it was a week to which he had looked forward throughout the year. Paris and expenses practically unlimited! How gay it sounded! What visions it conjured up! But the week was a failure as far as pleasure went, though business was brisk. For Osborn over all the pleasures of Paris there was a frost. It was restless and light and bright, and all this living in hotels and cafes wasn't worth while. He wanted at last, very badly, to be at home again.

He half thought of wiring to Marie to join him. How surprised and delighted and excited she'd be! But how would she arrange about the kids? She couldn't come, of course.

Besides, there was an inimitable pleasure in picturing oneself entering the flat and finding her there just the same as ever.

Home was essentially the place to look for one's wife.

Osborn did not know Paris with any intimacy. A week-end had been his limit hitherto. So he went to the Bon Marché to look for a gift for Marie, not knowing where else to look, and he bought her any trifle that he could imagine--Roselle's teaching was useful here,--little chiffon collars, and a glittering hair-band ornament that he thought looked very French, and handkerchiefs, and a pair of silk stockings, and garters with great big fluffy pompoms on them. She had had to be rather a mouse during her married life, after the trousseau was worn out and since her children came, anyway. How pleased she would be to have these pretty things!

The evening he arrived, after dinner, they would sit down by the fire and he would tell her all his business news--how well he'd done; all about his hopes and prospects, and he would give her some of his firm's letters to him to read. He would be sure of her sympathy and appreciation.

He had made more than a thousand pounds in commissions that year, and it was waiting for him, in a lump. He drew a long breath at the thought of it.

A thousand pounds! And there would be more to follow, for poor Woodall had died, and he was holding down the job.

He crossed to Dover on a still, cold day; it was an excellent crossing for the time of year. He stood on deck, smoking, watching the white cliffs approach, looking back over the last year and forward to those that lay before him. The last year--how mad and jolly it had been for the greater part! It had been a great piece of folly and a great piece of fun, travelling about with a lovely woman like Roselle Dates; it was a situation which half the men he knew would have envied him. Coming as it did after a humdrum period of domesticity, where a man could not afford either folly or fun, the danger signals had been flying all the time.

He could recall fifty occasions on which he could, or would, gladly have lost his head; but now, retrospecting, he was inclined to give himself the credit rather than Roselle, that their relations had been so innocuous. And at the moment, although every second the boat brought him nearer to her, he felt strangely indifferent as to whether they met again or not. He supposed that he might, perhaps, go to see her in this new play, and perhaps take her out to supper.

At four o'clock in the afternoon he was home.

He ran up the grey stone stairs like a boy and attained that dear old door, the portal of home. Having mislaid his latchkey, he had listened eagerly, anticipating the sound of Marie's feet flying down the hall. Feet came with a sort of drilled haste, but no eagerness.

A smart maid-servant of superior type opened his door to him.

He stepped past her, staring somewhat, and the hall porter followed into the hall with the luggage. The sitting-room door opened and Marie came out.

As she came towards her husband she motioned the hall porter to put the bags in the dressing-room. There was about her an assurance and authority, very quiet, but undeniable.

"Here you are, Osborn," she said.

"Hallo, dear!" he answered, rather stammeringly. "How are you? How are the--"

The maid took from him the overcoat which he was shedding, and his wife retreated into the sitting-room, he following.

When the door was shut, she turned, lifted her face, and murmured: "How are you, Osborn?"

He kissed her and, loth to relinquish her, kept his arm about her waist; she was unresponsive, but he did not notice that; they went together to the chesterfield drawn up before the fire and sat down. She took a corner, turning herself to face him a little, so that he had to withdraw his arm from her, and she pushed a billowing cushion which he did not remember into a comfortable position for her back.

She spoke very kindly and sympathetically, but it was with the kindness and sympathy which someone who was a stranger might show. "How well you look! I'm longing to hear all about your doings; your letters did not say very much. I should have met you at Victoria, only there's always a crush, and it's easy to miss people, so I thought I'd stay here."

"I didn't suppose you could leave the children to meet me."

"Oh, I can leave them quite well with Ann."

One of those silences which fall between people who have been estranged fell between them, during which he looked from her to the room, and all about him, and back to her, while she regarded him with that disinterested kindness.

"How nice everything looks!" he said, breaking the silence in a voice which sounded crude to himself. "What a lot of flowers you have, and all these cushions! I don't remember things, as a woman would do, but surely there's something new."

"Only the cushions. I stuffed a lot with one of mother's feather beds. She left me everything, you know."

"Yes. You didn't say much about it."

"No. The flowers _are_ nice, aren't they? I love flowers."

"So you do," he exclaimed suddenly. "I wish I'd brought you some; there are such lovely ones at Victoria."

His wife smiled.

"But I've brought you something I hope you'll like as well."

"Have you, you dear kind person?"

He took her hand and drew nearer. "Marie, darling, it's awf'ly good to see you again. This last week in Paris seemed such waste of time, with you so near."

She looked at him with her eyes widening, a trick he found vivid in his memory. A little more colour rose into her cheeks.

"Don't you want to see the children?" she asked, "or do you want tea first?"

"I have an idea I want you. But--where are they?"

"In the dining-room. George will be back from school directly."

"School?"

"Yes, school."

"Things have been happening!" he exclaimed, getting up. He pulled caressingly at the hand he held. "You're coming, too?"

"Go in and see them by yourself. See if they remember you. Dispense with my introductions."

She laughed, pulling her hand from his, and he moved away. At the door he looked back, puzzled. An element which he was unprepared for, could not understand, seemed with them in the room. She leaned back among the fat cushions, pretty and leisured as he had been used to seeing her before their marriage, only now she had something else about her which he could not define. She was not looking at him, but down at her hands lying in her lap, and the curling sweep of her eyelashes, the bend of her head, the white nape of her neck, the colour and contour of her cheek--all these he found newly adorable. He almost came back, with a rush of tenderness, longing for a real embrace, but something, that element which he only sensed, restrained him.

He went into the dining-room, where a four-year-old girl nursed a doll and played with a robust baby by turns. They were merry, healthy children, and their chubby prettiness swelled his heart with pride. These were his; he had fathered them. And just through that partitioning wall was a woman who was all his, too; one of the prettiest of women, and his wife.

"Hallo, kids!" he smiled at them from the door-way, "here's Daddy come back. Come and see if you remember him. What a great girl Minna's grown, and is that the baby Dadda left behind him?"

He picked up the baby and danced and dandled her, but the four-year-old Minna came more sagely, more slowly; she had to be won over by bribe and strategy, and her aloofness made him a trifle sore. In a moment or two he heard the maid go down the corridor and let in a boisterous boy, who ran into the dining-room swinging a satchel of books and pulled up short at seeing the stranger among them.

But his memory, older and longer than Minna's, served him.

"Daddy!" said George, shy and very nervous.

Osborn wondered why this boy was nervous of him. Forgetting his previous sharpness and irritation with the children, he now suddenly wanted George's confidence.

"Daddy's back!" he said, "with lots of stories to tell you about great big ships and trains and wonderful birds which _you_ never saw."

"How splendid!" said the boy, still very shy. He had a guilty feeling about his boisterous entry.

"I was afraid you would be cross with me for making a noise when I came in," he explained.

"Like you used to be," Minna added.

"I'm not cross, old son," Osborn said slowly.

"We're going to have tea now, Daddy," Minna continued, as the maid entered with a cloth and a tray.

Osborn stayed talking to the children while the tea things were set upon the table. He supposed that they would all have tea together in the way which he had once so heartily deplored, and which at this moment seemed so dear and homely, until he saw the maid standing respectfully behind her chair waiting for his departure.

He spoke genially, but ill at ease.

"You give them their tea, do you?"

"Yes, sir," she answered, "and I have taken tea into the sitting-room."

The baby was now sitting in a high chair, bland and fat and greedy, a bib about her neck. George and Minna, after a propitiatory smile at him, had climbed into their places.

"You don't mind if we begin, Daddy, do you?" George asked.

"Go on, old son," said Osborn hastily.

There was no more use there for the father who had been cross, so he returned to his wife.

She was still sitting in the corner of the chesterfield, but she had picked up some knitting, with which her hands were busy. As he entered she looked up and gave him a contemplative regard such as he had given her as he went out, only that it was colder, more detached. She saw him big and splendid, handsome and virile, and the eagerness in his eyes fell into her heart like a cold weight. Her hands became cold and trembled.

She did not want him.

Beside her the tea table was drawn up. Its equipment seemed to him very dainty. It was a picture he liked, this pretty woman by the fire, with the environment suited to her charms.

Through the wall came faintly the jolly sound of their children's voices.

He hurried forward, sat down close to her, and laid a hand over hers which held the knitting.

"What's that?" he asked.

"George's winter stockings; they're to have turn-down tops like grown-up ones."

He took the knitting and pretended to examine the pattern, though he was not thinking of anything save her.

The year's parting had been a miracle. Love had slyly redecorated his house throughout.

"Jolly nice," he commented on the stockings, "but, please, give me my tea now."

He smiled at her a lazy, autocratic smile. All this flat and the people in it were his, and he would not have changed it for a throne. He thought again, though in a more mature fashion, much as he used to do in the first married year, how good it was to come in and shut your own door upon a snubbed world.

She answered the smile by one faint and chilly and reposeful. Leaning forward she began to busy herself with the tea things. The sugar tongs poised: "Let's see," she cogitated, "it _was_ two lumps, wasn't it?"

He assented, surprised. "Time I came home," he said, affecting to grumble lightly.

"What do you think of the children?" she asked. "I suppose you find them grown? Did they remember you?"

"Yes, of course. I should think they did!"

"Muffin, Osborn?"

"Thank you, darling. I say," he smiled with gratification, "you look as though you'd all done yourselves pretty well while I've been away. This is cosy."

He indicated the tea table.

"Of course, after mother's death--"

"I was awf'ly sorry, Marie. I'm afraid I wrote rather a brief letter about it; life was rather a rush, you know."

"It didn't matter. I was going to say, that after her death, I found myself quite well off, comparatively."

"You didn't tell me much."

"No. Well, you didn't ask much. Surely, I answered all your questions?"

He remembered uncomfortably the many months of his abstraction with Roselle; she had occupied his thoughts for a while almost to the exclusion of everything else.

"I expect you did, dearest."

"However, I'm going into accounts with you presently, and then you'll know everything."

"Overspent yourself?" he smiled complacently, with the knowledge of that thousand pounds backing him. "Want money to go on with?"

She shook her head.

"I don't want anything, thanks."

The thought was to her like a bulwark; it was a thought which thousands of wives would have loved to possess. It somehow completed her sense of detachment from him. She puzzled him.

"How long have you had a maid?" he asked. "I must say I was awf'ly surprised when what's--her--name--Ann--opened the door to me."

"Let's see," she considered, wrinkling her brows, "I've had her for six months. Before that I had a woman in to do the rough work."

"Well, if you could manage it--"

"I managed it, and kept quite within our income, thank you, Osborn."

"I must say it's very jolly to have you all to myself like this. We always used to talk of what we'd do when my ship came home, and now here she is!"

"Poor Osborn! You _must_ be glad."

"Aren't _you_?"

"Of course I am."

"We'll have a bigger flat; it's rather a crowd here, isn't it?"

"Yes, I'd like another room."

"You shall have what you like, darling."

He put an arm round her shoulders, drawing her face to his. "You know I'd like to give you the world!"

She was silent.

He kissed her cheek, holding her against him. "I must show you what I've brought as soon as I unpack. I got you some things in the Bon Marché--I think you'll like them."

"I'm sure to."

"Tell me what you've been doing. I want to hear all about you," he said persistently.

"There's very little to tell. I've been able to go out a great deal more lately; and I've been resting and reading while I had the opportunity. I took the children to the sea in the summer. Ann went with us, so I was very free and had long walks and swims. It was delightful."

"And you've missed me?" he asked quickly. "I don't hear anything about that."

"We have all missed you."

Her assurance left him vaguely unsatisfied. She drew away from him with a sidelong glance, half sad, half ribald, as if she knew and was regretfully amused at what he was thinking. She leaned over the table, cake knife in hand.

"Have some of this iced cake, Osborn? Bought specially for you."

For a while that pleased and appeased him. He asked more casually for news, and she told him of Rokeby's and Julia's surprise wedding.

He sat back, astonished, exclaiming:

"Good heavens! How unsuitably people marry!"

"They do, don't they?"

The noise in the next room had subsided; and presently the handle of the sitting-room door turned quietly, and three inquiring faces looked in, Minna holding the baby steady.

Over Marie's face there came a change. From its half-cold inconsequence and restraint, it warmed and lighted, as her hands went out eagerly.

"Come along, chicks," she said; and then, turning to her husband, she added quickly: "If you don't mind? I always read to them before bedtime. Do you mind?"

"Why should I, darling?" he said, surprised.

The three children, encouraged, came forward. George had the chosen book under his arm and, opening it at a favourite story, he laid it on his mother's knee. Nursing the baby and with Minna snuggled into her other arm, she prepared to read.

"Come and sit on my knee, old chap," Osborn whispered to George.

The child came dutifully, but his attention was for his mother. She began to read in her light, clear voice, and for some while that was the only sound in the room; the man and the three children listened, as if entranced. During the progress of the reading Ann came in without interrupting and took the baby away to bed.

A quarter of an hour later it was Minna's turn, and only George remained; he was eager to tell his mother of the day's experiences at school; clambering down from his father's lap he went to her, and, with an arm flung about her neck, began an involved account.

She listened with interest and comprehension. And Osborn looked at George's rapt face and her loving one, and drew a sharp comparison between what mattered and trash.

At last George went, and the husband and wife were alone again.

He started to the door on a sudden impulse.

"I'll unpack and get those things," he said over his shoulder.

"Yes, do," she nodded, "before George goes to sleep. Your things are in the dressing-room, and he will be there."

"We've simply got to have another flat," he replied, with a pleasant sensation of the power to pay for it.

For a few minutes Marie Kerr sat quiet, staring at the fire. The home-coming, so stimulating to Osborn, had for her been inexpressibly stale. She was not thrilled; she was left cold as the November night outside. The new and pretty habits of her life were in peril of being broken, and her reluctance that it should be so was keen. She got up and mended the fire and patted the cushions absently. She could hear Osborn talking to his son, and Ann busy in the kitchen.

A man in the house was once more going to set the clock of life.

Before Osborn had found what he sought she went to her bedroom. The baby and Minna were sleeping side by side in their cots, a screen drawn round them to shade them from the light. Deep in the perfect slumber of childhood, they did not awake at her careful entry. She switched up the electric light over her dressing-table, and began to change her blouse and skirt for the black frock in which she dined. While she was standing thus, half dressed, Osborn came in.

She swung round upon him, hands raised in the act of smoothing her hair, and there was something in her face which made him halt. He looked at her uncertainly.

She could not have helped saying if she would:

"You startled me. I didn't hear you knock."

He had not knocked. The puzzle in his head increased. Why should he knock? His mouth opened and shut again. He came forward hesitatingly.

"I--I--what do you mean, darling?" he began. "I wanted to bring you these."

His coming thus was to her symbolic of legal intrusion upon all her future privacy. In that year, privacy had been one of the things she enjoyed most, after the edge was off the first loneliness. She found it hard to relinquish her right to it. She stepped into the frock quickly, and drew it upwards before he reached her. His hands were full of little things, which he cast in a hurry upon the dressing-table. She knew that he wanted to touch, to fondle her. She slipped her arms swiftly into the sleeves and fastened the first hook across her breast; in her eyes a shrinking antagonism unveiled itself.

She uttered hurriedly: "We have to be very quiet; the children are asleep."

He cast a cursory glance towards the screened corner.

"They're all right; they can't see or hear or anything else. Come here and let me put this hair-band thing on."

She stood a dressing-table length away, fumbling with the hooks, her eyes fixed on him.

"I have lots of things to say to you," she began suddenly.

"Say them to-morrow," he replied in his old way.

"No," she said, "they have to be said to-night--not this minute, perhaps, but presently."

She was in Osborn's arms again, and he was touching her throat, her hair, and the velvet texture of her cheek.

"You've got fatter again," he was saying delightedly; "you look just like the little girl I married, only there's something bigger about you; firmer. There's no doubt marriage stiffens a woman up. That's it, isn't it? You're sure of yourself."

She gazed full into his eyes. "Yes. I'm sure of myself; absolutely sure."

"You always had ripping hair; but I think it's got thicker, hasn't it? It's springy, sort of electric."

"It used to be thick; and then it was thin; and now it's thick again, I think."

"You do it differently."

"One changes with the styles."

"_You_ would, you up-to-date thing. Now, you're going to look at these souvenirs of Paris, aren't you?"

He held her close to his side, while he showed her what he had chosen; the pale-pink collars--"You were always gone on pink, weren't you?" he asked--the silk stockings and the vanity garters. With clumsy fingers he tried to adjust the hair-band.

"Let me do it," she protested, "if you really want me to wear it."

"Well, don't _you_ want to?" he asked, a little hurt.

"I'd love to, if I may put it on properly. It's sweet."

"It makes you look awf'ly French!"

"Does that improve me?"

"You don't want improving."

He sat down by the dressing-table, while she stood, fixing the glittering circle round her hair with clever fingers. He kept his hand on her waist and, leaning forward, looked at her in the glass. She had a lithe naturalness, a slim strength, which newly arrested his admiration. Struck by the charm of his own wife, he missed no detail of her appearance. She had dressed to please herself with a true woman's delight in _dessous_; and he was quick to notice the mauve gleam of ribbon shoulder straps under the filmy black of her bodice, which gave the sombre gown a charming colour-note; her sleeves, transparent, long, and braceleted round the wrists with black velvet bands, showed the whole length of her white arms; in her ears amethyst earrings repeated the note of the mauve ribbons. Her stockings were silk and her slippers of velvet.

She was as amazing to him as a beautiful stranger.

"It doesn't go with my earrings," she said carelessly when she had fixed the band, "but it's so pretty, and thank you ever so much."

She turned and showed him; and she showed him, too, the interest she took in herself, which had caused her to pull out those waves of fluffy hair over the tops of her ears, from under the hair-band, and the curls she had pulled from beneath to dance on her forehead.

"Give me a kiss for it," he said, drawing her down.

She kissed him lightly.

"Fancy you the mother of a family!" he remarked, with a look at the screened corner.

She smiled to herself, and began fingering the other things. "How nice they are! And silk stockings! They're always welcome."

"But you're wearing them already," he said, with rather a disappointed glance at her ankles.

"That doesn't matter. If there's one thing you can't glut a woman with, it's silk stockings."

"Thanks, Mrs. Kerr! I'll remember that when I come home in the small hours and have to provide a peace offering."

"Come home any time you like," she said goodhumouredly, "there will always be peace as far as I am concerned."

When he had entered the room, he had missed something in it; and now it occurred to him what it was.

"Where's my bed?" he demanded.

"In the dressing-room. I had it moved there, when you went; I thought I might as well give myself more space."

"Of course! I noticed something unusual about the dressing-room. You waited for me to move it back here, I suppose? It's rather a tough job for women."

"The hall-porter would have done it, you know."

"Never mind, pet. I'll do it ever so quietly after dinner."

She did not reply.

"Are you ready?" he asked. "Come back to the fire, and sit down. There's so much to tell each other about, isn't there?"

She moved to the door acquiescently and switched out the light, he following. A savoury smell crept through the chinks of the kitchen door, with the all-pervasiveness of cookery in flats. He sniffed it.

"How familiar! But you don't do the cooking now?"

"No; I only help, sometimes. Ann's a treasure."

"What do we pay her?"

"Thirty pounds a year."

"Whew!"

She cast a sidelong glance at him. "A domestic drudge is worth it, I assure you; women have been consistently underrated."

"But fool work like cleaning saucepans and helping with the kids--"

"Shutting oneself up with the sink; working early; working late; breathing ashes and dust and grease; keeping tolerably civil and cheerful over it ... that's the job we're speaking of. I ought to know all about it," she said in a low voice, as if to herself.

She sat in her corner of the chesterfield and took up her knitting. He sat down, too, by her, all at once alert, surveying the flying movements of her dear hands; hands as tender and white as ever he remembered them.

"Oh come!" he said in affectionate but uneasy remonstrance, "you don't look much as if you'd been shut up with the sink, working early and working late."

"You forget I've had a whole year's holiday." She kept her eyes on her work, as if re-casting that first year upon her busy needles. "At least," she reflected, almost as if to herself, "part of the time was only half-holiday; but the last six months have been wonderful."

Jealousy rose in Osborn; jealousy of he knew not what. Something or someone had brought colour and smiles to her, and it was not himself. As he began to suggest that fact to himself, before he could do more than begin: "How, do you mean--?" the door opened, and the maid announced: "Dinner is served, ma'am."

Marie sprang up and put her hand kindly in his arm.

"Come along," she said. "We have all your favourite things, so I hope you're hungry."