“I? Oh, very well! And you —?”
“As you see,” he replied, turning his head on one side with a little gesture of irony.
“As I am very sorry to see,” I rejoined.
He sat forward with his elbows on his knees, tapping the back of his hand with one finger, in monotonous two-pulse like heart-beats.
“Aren’t you going to have breakfast?” I urged. The clock at that moment began to ring a sonorous twelve. He looked up at it with subdued irritation.
“Ay, I suppose so,” he answered me, when the clock had finished striking. He rose heavily and went to the table. As he poured out a cup of tea he spilled it on the cloth, and stood looking at the stain. It was still some time before he began to eat. He poured vinegar freely over the hot fish, and ate with an indifference that made eating ugly, pausing now and again to wipe the tea off his moustache, or to pick a bit of fish from off his knee.
“You are not married, I suppose?” he said in one of his pauses.
“No,” I replied. “I expect I shall have to be looking round.”
“You’re wiser not,” he replied, quiet and bitter.
A moment or two later the maid came in with a letter. “This came this morning,” she said, as she laid it on the table beside him. He looked at it, then he said:
“You didn’t give me a knife for the marmalade.”
“Didn’t I?” she replied. “I thought you wouldn’t want it. You don’t as a rule.”
“And do you know where my slippers are?” he asked.
“They ought to be in their usual place.” She went and looked in the corner. “I suppose Miss Gertie’s put them somewhere. I’ll get you another pair.”
As he waited for her he read the letter. He read it twice, then he put it back in the envelope, quietly, without any change of expression. But he ate no more breakfast, even after the maid had brought the knife and his slippers, and though he had had but a few mouthfuls.
At half-past twelve there was an imperious woman’s voice in the house. Meg came to the door. As she entered the room, and saw me, she stood still. She sniffed, glanced at the table, and exclaimed, coming forward effusively:
“Well I never, Cyril! Who’d a thought of seeing you here this morning! How are you?”
She waited for the last of my words, then immediately she turned to George, and said:
“I must say you’re in a nice state for Cyril to see you! Have you finished? — If you have, Kate can take that tray out. It smells quite sickly. Have you finished?”
He did not answer, but drained his cup of tea and pushed it away with the back of his hand. Meg rang the bell, and having taken off her gloves, began to put the things on the tray, tipping the fragments of fish and bones from the edge of his plate to the middle with short, disgusted jerks of the fork. Her attitude and expression were of resentment and disgust. The maid came in.
“Clear the table, Kate, and open the window. Have you opened the bedroom windows?”
“No’m — not yet”— she glanced at George as if to say he had only been down a few minutes.
“Then do it when you have taken the tray,” said Meg. “You don’t open this window,” said George churlishly. “It’s cold enough as it is.”
“You should put a coat on then if you’re starved,” replied Meg contemptuously. “It’s warm enough for those that have got any life in their blood. You do not find it cold, do you, Cyril?”
“It is fresh this morning,” I replied.
“Of course it is, not cold at all. And I’m sure this room needs airing.”
The maid, however, folded the cloth and went out without approaching the windows.
Meg had grown stouter, and there was a certain immovable confidence in her. She was authoritative, amiable, calm. She wore a handsome dress of dark green, and a toque with opulent ostrich feathers. As she moved about the room she seemed to dominate everything, particularly her husband, who sat ruffled and dejected, his waistcoat hanging loose over his shirt.
A girl entered. She was proud and mincing in her deportment. Her face was handsome, but too haughty for a child. She wore a white coat, with ermine tippet, muff, and hat. Her long brown hair hung twining down her back.
“Has Dad only just had his breakfast?” she exclaimed in high censorious tones as she came in.
“He has!” replied Meg.
The girl looked at her father in calm, childish censure.
“And we have been to church, and come home to dinner,” she said, as she drew off her little white gloves. George watched her with ironical amusement.
“Hello!” said Meg, glancing at the opened letter which lay near his elbow. “Who is that from?”
He glanced round, having forgotten it. He took the envelope, doubled it and pushed it in his waistcoat pocket.
“It’s from William Housley,” he replied.
“Oh! And what has he to say?” she asked.
George turned his dark eyes at her.
“Nothing!” he said.
“Hm-Hm!” sneered Meg. “Funny letter, about nothing!”
“I suppose,” said the child, with her insolent, high-pitched superiority, “it’s some money that he doesn’t want us to know about.”
“That’s about it!” said Meg, giving a small laugh at the child’s perspicuity.
“So’s he can keep it for himself, that’s what it is,” continued the child, nodding her head in rebuke at him.
“I’ve no right to any money, have I?” asked the father sarcastically.
“No, you haven’t,” the child nodded her head at him dictatorially, “you haven’t, because you only put it in the fire.”
“You’ve got it wrong,” he sneered. “You mean it’s like giving a child fire to play with.”
“Um! — and it is, isn’t it, Mam?”— the small woman turned to her mother for corroboration. Meg had flushed at his sneer, when he quoted for the child its mother’s dictum.
“And you’re very naughty!” preached Gertie, turning her back disdainfully on her father.
“Is that what the parson’s been telling you?” he asked, a grain of amusement still in his bitterness.
“No, it isn’t!” retorted the youngster. “If you want to know you should go and listen for yourself. Everybody that goes to church looks nice —” she glanced at her mother and at herself, pruning herself proudly, “— and God loves them,” she added. She assumed a sanctified expression, and continued after a little thought, “Because they look nice and are meek.”
“What!” exclaimed Meg, laughing, glancing with secret pride at me.
“Because they’re meek!” repeated Gertie, with a superior little smile of knowledge.
“You’re off the mark this time,” said George.
“No, I’m not, am I, Mam? Isn’t it right, Mam? ‘The meek shall inevit the erf’?”
Meg was too much amused to answer.
“The meek shall have herrings on earth,” mocked the father, also amused. His daughter looked dubiously at him. She smelled impropriety.
“It’s not, Mam, is it?” she asked, turning to her mother. Meg laughed.