Payment Deferred

“Be quiet, children,” said Mrs. Marble. “Can’t you see that father’s busy?”

So he was. He propped his aching forehead on his hand, and tugged at his reddish moustache in an unhappy attempt at concentration. It was difficult to keep thinking about these wretched figures all the time, and it would have been even if Winnie did not try to poke John with a ruler in the intervals of squirming and muttering over her geometry homework. Mr. Marble worried at his moustache while he peered at the column of figures on the scrap of paper before him. They seemed to be dancing in a faint mist under his eyes. He had been nerving himself for this effort for weeks now, and the instant that he began it he wanted to leave off. He was sure that looking at these figures would do no good. Nothing could do any good now.

“Be quick, I am waiting,” said Mr. Marble.

It was inevitable. Sullenly Winnie began to stack her books together. John stood up and put How England Saved Europe on the table. It was then, at the eleventh hour, that diversion came. It came in the form of a loud knocking at the street door. For a second everyone looked at each other startled, for visitors were a rarity in Malcolm Road, especially at the extraordinary hour of half-past seven. Winnie recovered first.

“I’ll go,” she said, and slipped through into the hall.

The others heard her tugging at the latch, and then the gas suddenly flickered as a gust of wind came rushing in with the opening of the street door. A strange, loud, masculine voice made itself heard asking for Mr. Marble. He was about to go out too when Winnie reappeared.

“Somebody for you, father,” she said, and even as she spoke the owner of the strange voice came in behind her.

He was tall, and young, and seemed to be a study in browns, for he wore a brown trench coat and muffler, a brown tweed suit underneath, with brown shoes and socks. His face, too, was brown, although the shrieking wind outside had whipped it to a warm flush. He was young and debonair and handsome, and the sparkle of the raindrops on his muffler and the flash of his dark eyes and the gust of cold wind that entered the room at the same time as himself all combined to make his unexpected appearance as dramatic as even John, standing amazed by the fire, could wish for.

The stranger paused for a moment at the doorway.

“It’s funny to think of,” he said, striving to keep the conversation going, “but besides you there isn’t a soul in England who knows anything about me. I don’t think I was in the hotel more than an hour, and I only left my hand luggage there. The rest of my stuff is at Euston. What with going to the Bank and so on I simply didn’t have time to collect it, even if it had got there. I was thinking to myself as I came here that if I got lost and never found my way back no one would mind at all⁠—except you, of course.”

“H’m!” said Mr. Marble, and another train of thought came to him on the instant, and he shuddered again.

Medland’s shyness was turning to boyish talkativeness. He looked round to the two children.

“Well, what’s mummie going to have?” continued Winnie.

Mr. Marble turned to his wife, who had sat behind his shoulder, suddenly, when she heard this surprising conversation begin. Mr. Marble looked at his wife, and she began to think, confusedly, as always.

“Anything I want at all?” she asked, more to gain time than from any other motive.

“Anything you want at all,” repeated Mr. Marble.

Mrs. Marble let her mind travel free, without hindrance from the strait limits of expense which had hedged it in all her life. And her thoughts flew straight, as they often did, to green fields and the sunlight in the hedgerows. With the clearness of mental vision so often granted to those of stumbling intellect a picture rose before her mind’s eye of a sunny, hyacinth-scented lawn, full of the murmuring of bees, sleepy little hills, half-wooded, in the distance, and Mr. Marble beside her, kind and a little attentive and loverlike.

“Oh, do be quick, mummie,” said Winnie.

Mrs. Marble translated her thoughts to the best of her ability.

“I want a new house and a nice garden,” said Mrs. Marble.

Mr. Marble made no comment. He was so silent that in time they all turned and looked at him. He had shrunk back in his chair, literally shrunk, so that he only seemed to be half the bulk he had been when he came in. His face was blank, and his lips moved without uttering a sound. He rallied in the end.

“You won’t have that,” he said. “You’ll never have that.”

Then he guessed at the strangeness of his manner from their surprised expressions, and tried to mask it.

John came into the dining-room. There was no one there. But the sight of the room brought the first chill to his heart. The gilded furniture blazed tawdrily in the fading sunlight; the room was in an indescribable muddle: dirty dishes and empty bottles were littered about it, and cigarette ash and cigarette ends were strewn over the floor. And in the room there was a subtle and distasteful blend of scents. Overlying the stale tobacco smell and the fustiness of unopened windows was the smell of spilt drink, and permeating the whole there was yet another odour, slight yet penetrating⁠—a stale, unpleasant smell as of degraded hyacinths. John’s nose wrinkled in distaste as the vile reek assailed his nostrils. The drink, and the tobacco, and the fustiness, and the muddle he could account for, and he had been prepared for them on a smaller scale. But this other scent, irritating his clean boy’s palate, was different. It was more unclean even than the others.

He left the room hurriedly. He had already half decided that his father was not at present in the house. He set his foot on the stairs to go to his own room to open the windows, open them wide, so that the clean evening air would circulate there at any rate, but he withdrew it as a thought struck him. Most probably his father was in the back room⁠—it had been his habit for a long time now to sit there on most occasions.