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Page 4
A hot wave of unease, almost of remorse, swept over Bunting. Ellen
would never have spent that penny on herself--he knew that well
enough--and if it hadn't been so cold, so foggy, so--so drizzly,
he would have gone out again through the gate and stood under the
street lamp to take his pleasure. He dreaded with a nervous dread
the glance of Ellen's cold, reproving light-blue eye. That glance
would tell him that he had had no business to waste a penny on a
paper, and that well he knew it!
Suddenly the door in front of him opened, and he beard a familiar
voice saying crossly, yet anxiously, "What on earth are you doing
out there, Bunting? Come in--do! You'll catch your death of cold!
I don't want to have you ill on my hands as well as everything else!"
Mrs. Bunting rarely uttered so many words at once nowadays.
He walked in through the front door of his cheerless house. "I
went out to get a paper," he said sullenly.
After all, he was master. He had as much right to spend the money
as she had; for the matter of that the money on which they were now
both living had been lent, nay, pressed on him--not on Ellen--by
that decent young chap, Joe Chandler. And he, Bunting, had done
all he could; he had pawned everything he could pawn, while Ellen,
so he resentfully noticed, still wore her wedding ring.
He stepped past her heavily, and though she said nothing, he knew
she grudged him his coming joy. Then, full of rage with her and
contempt for himself, and giving himself the luxury of a mild, a
very mild, oath--Ellen had very early made it clear she would
have no swearing in her presence--he lit the hall gas full-flare.
"How can we hope to get lodgers if they can't even see the card?"
he shouted angrily.
And there was truth in what he said, for now that he had lit the
gas, the oblong card, though not the word "Apartments" printed on
it, could be plainly seen out-lined against the old-fashioned
fanlight above the front door.
Bunting went into the sitting-room, silently followed by his wife,
and then, sitting down in his nice arm-chair, he poked the little
banked-up fire. It was the first time Bunting had poked the fire
for many a long day, and this exertion of marital authority made
him feel better. A man has to assert himself sometimes, and he,
Bunting, had not asserted himself enough lately.
A little colour came into Mrs. Bunting's pale face. She was not
used to be flouted in this way. For Bunting, when not thoroughly
upset, was the mildest of men.
She began moving about the room, flicking off an imperceptible
touch of dust here, straightening a piece of furniture there.
But her hands trembled--they trembled with excitement, with
self-pity, with anger. A penny? It was dreadful--dreadful to
have to worry about a penny! But they had come to the point when
one has to worry about pennies. Strange that her husband didn't
realise that.
Bunting looked round once or twice; he would have liked to ask Ellen
to leave off fidgeting, but he was fond of peace, and perhaps, by
now, a little bit ashamed of himself, so he refrained from remark,
and she soon gave over what irritated him of her own accord.
But Mrs. Bunting did not come and sit down as her husband would have
liked her to do. The sight of him, absorbed in his paper as he was,
irritated her, and made her long to get away from him. Opening the
door which separated the sitting-room from the bedroom behind, and
--shutting out the aggravating vision of Bunting sitting comfortably
by the now brightly burning fire, with the Evening Standard spread
out before him--she sat down in the cold darkness, and pressed her
hands against her temples.
Never, never had she felt so hopeless, so--so broken as now. Where
was the good of having been an upright, conscientious, self-respecting
woman all her life long, if it only led to this utter, degrading
poverty and wretchedness? She and Bunting were just past the age
which gentlefolk think proper in a married couple seeking to enter
service together, unless, that is, the wife happens to be a professed
cook. A cook and a butler can always get a nice situation. But Mrs.
Bunting was no cook. She could do all right the simple things any
lodger she might get would require, but that was all.
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