The Old Wives' Tale - Arnold Bennett [161]
"Oh!" he said; "you're there, are you?"
She offered no reply.
"Won't speak, eh?" he said. "Agreeable sort of wife! Well, have you made up your mind to do what I told you? I've come back especially to know."
She still did not speak.
He sat down, with his hat on, and stuck out his feet, wagging them to and fro on the heels.
"I'm quite without money," he went on. "And I'm sure your people will be glad to lend us a bit till I get some. Especially as it's a question of you starving as well as me. If I had enough to pay your fares to Bursley I'd pack you off. But I haven't."
She could only hear his exasperating voice. The end of the bed was between her eyes and his.
"Liar!" she said, with uncompromising distinctness. The word reached him barbed with all the poison of her contempt and disgust.
There was a pause.
"Oh! I'm a liar, am I? Thanks. I lied enough to get you, I'll admit. But you never complained of that. I remember be-ginning the New Year well with a thumping lie just to have a sight of you, my vixen. But you didn't complain then. I took you with only the clothes on your back. And I've spent every cent I had on you. And now I'm spun, you call me a liar."
She said nothing.
"However," he went on, "this is going to come to an end, this is!"
He rose, changed the position of the candle, putting it on a chest of drawers, and then drew his trunk from the wall, and knelt in front of it.
She gathered that he was packing his clothes. At first she did not comprehend his reference to beginning the New Year. Then his meaning revealed itself. That story to her mother about having been attacked by ruffians at the bottom of King Street had been an invention, a ruse to account plausibly for his presence on her mother's doorstep! And she had never suspected that the story was not true. In spite of her experience of his lying, she had never suspected that that particular statement was a lie. What a simpleton she was!
There was a continual movement in the room for about a quarter of an hour. Then a key turned in the lock of the trunk.
His head popped up over the foot of the bed. "This isn't a joke, you know," he said.
She kept silence.
"I give you one more chance. Will you write to your mother—or
Constance if you like—or won't you?"
She scorned to reply in any way.
"I'm your husband," he said. "And it's your duty to obey me, particularly in an affair like this. I order you to write to your mother."
The corners of her lips turned downwards.
Angered by her mute obstinacy, he broke away from the bed with a sudden gesture.
"You do as you like," he cried, putting on his overcoat, "and I shall do as I like. You can't say I haven't warned you. It's your own deliberate choice, mind you! Whatever happens to you you've brought on yourself." He lifted and shrugged his shoulders to get the overcoat exactly into place on his shoulders.
She would not speak a word, not even to insist that she was indisposed.
He pushed his trunk outside the door, and returned to the bed.
"You understand," he said menacingly; "I'm off."
She looked up at the foul ceiling.
"Hm!" he sniffed, bringing his reserves of pride to combat the persistent silence that was damaging his dignity. And he went off, sticking his head forward like a pugilist.
"Here!" she muttered. "You're forgetting this."
He turned.
She stretched her hand to the night-table and held up a red circlet.
"What is it?"
"It's the bit of paper off the cigar you bought in the Rue Montmartre this afternoon," she answered, in a significant tone.
He hesitated, then swore violently, and bounced out of the room. He had made her suffer, but she was almost repaid for everything by that moment of cruel triumph. She exulted in it, and never forgot it.
Five minutes later, the gloomy menial in felt slippers and alpaca jacket, who seemed to pass the whole of his life flitting in and out of bedrooms like a rabbit in a warren, carried Gerald's trunk downstairs. She recognized the peculiar tread of his slippers.
Then there was a knock at the door. The landlady entered, actuated by a legitimate curiosity.