CHAPTER II

STANDING in the railway carriage he constituted what a catholic taste
might term a fine figure of a man—big and burly in his big overcoat,
with plenty of colour in his dark, rather fleshy cheeks. His large nose
was a little hooked; his thick lips were red and mobile; his dark eyes
were intelligent but sly. The force of his personality was indubitable,
he was clearly a man of energy and courage. But no cautious man would
say it was an honest face; there was shiftiness to be read there,
unscrupulousness, perhaps, and there was in no way any indication of
intellect. And at the moment, as it had been when young Reddy had been
so impressed, it was marked by every sign of violent bad temper. Nor was
that bad temper soothed by the crowded state of the train, nor by the
delays caused by the fog. Morris was stimulated to viciousness by the
time he reached his station.

He elbowed his way out of the carriage, showing small regard for other
people’s toes and other people’s ribs; he forced his way along the
crawling queue which was passing through the ticket collector’s gate,
and then he crossed the main road and strode in a fury of bad-tempered
haste up the tremendously steep hill to his house. It was an incline
which would have tested the lungs of a man in good training when taken,
as Morris did it, at five and a half miles an hour; Morris, a little too
fat and quite out of condition, was gasping by the time he reached the
top. That was nothing unusual, however. Morris was nearly always
bad-tempered when he was going home, and he usually took that hill too
fast in consequence.

At the top he was in the heart of the New Estate, as every one about
called it, despite the fact that it was already five years old. From the
point of vantage at the top of the hill one could look round and down at
hundreds of little houses of white stucco, red roofed, pitiful little
places, terraces and crescents and squares; pitiful because they
represented an attempt on the part of the County Council to build houses
(which could be rented at prices not much too expensive for artisans,
without imposing too great a burden on the rates) bearing the hallmarks
of advanced civilization at a cost which utterly precluded them. They
were semi-detached houses, each couple standing proudly in its own plot
of land, but pathetic because if the houses had been big enough to be
really habitable they would have filled their particular plots to
overflowing. They had casement windows, which were quite pretty, save
for the objection that to clean the outside of the hinged window one
needed to climb up to it with a ladder from without, for to do it from
within called for the services of some one with an arm nine feet long.
The boilers were scientifically arranged so that the sitting-room fire
heated the water, but by the time three people and their furniture were
established in the house there was not an atom of space left in which to
store this coal for the sitting-room fire.

Morris had meditated on these facts often enough before, and they had
ceased actively to annoy him, but perhaps they contributed to the
feeling of irritation which so often urged him up the hill faster than
he ought to go. To-night, perhaps, faced with the prospect of dismissal
and starvation, he was not so much affected by them. He looked neither
to the right nor to the left as he strode up the hill; he swung round at
the very summit, for the corner house here, looking out across the
Estate and the valley of the Mead clear to London, twelve miles away,
was where he lived; had been his home for four years now.

A stride from the front door took him into the middle of the hall. He
hung up his hat and coat and another stride took him into the
sitting-room.

“Isn’t that kid in bed yet?” was Morris’s way of saying good evening to
his wife. “It’s seven o’clock.”

“She’s company for when you come back late like this,” retorted Mrs.
Morris. There never was a speech yet to which Mrs. Morris had not a
ready and devastating answer. That was one of the reasons of the
quarrels between the two.

“Late?” demanded Morris. “Call this late? Only luck I wasn’t a dam’
sight later. Kept at the office, fog on the line, it might have been ten
by the time I got here. What’ve you got for my tea?”

“Nice bit of haddock,” said Mrs. Morris, cautiously defensive. Food was
a matter of so much interest to her husband that she had always to be
ready to defend herself from his charges of feeding him insufficiently
or unsuitably.

“Haddock? I’ll have it now. No, put that kid to bed first.”

Molly, his daughter, was kneeling on a chair at the table scribbling on
a piece of paper with a pencil. At any moment she might come and ask him
to draw a horse for her, or a cat, or an engine. Molly had never learnt
that her father had no desire whatever to draw horses for her.

There had once been a time, earlier in their married life, when symptoms
of bad temper on her husband’s part had had a subduing effect on his
wife, spurring her to haste in obeying his wishes, causing her to walk
on tiptoe about the room, to give him soft answers, to be in evident awe
of him. But that had passed now. Mary Morris had learnt to “stand up”
for herself, as she put it: to counter commands with refusals, anger
with defiance. Perhaps this had been partly because she did not love her
husband so much now; certainly one cause was that she did not respect
him so much now that she knew him better; but the main reason, perhaps,
was that a quarrel did at least import some spice of variety into an
otherwise drab life.

“No,” said Mary, “let her stay up. She isn’t doing any harm.”

“Seven o’clock is late enough for a kid her age. Bedtime, Molly.”

Molly looked round at him and then went on scribbling. As far back as
her memory went there had been no need for instant obedience to one
parent when the other was in opposition, and that was the usual state of
affairs.

“Did you hear me, Molly?” thundered Morris.

This was a little more serious. Molly looked up to judge her mother’s
attitude before she went on scribbling again.

“God bless my soul!” said Morris, turning towards her.

But before he reached her her mother had darted in between them.

“Don’t you touch her,” she said, drawing up her skinny figure undismayed
before his overbearing bulk. “Don’t you dare touch her. She’s to go to
bed when I say. I’m her mother.”

“Yes, you’re her mother, you——”

The quarrel was well started now, on a familiar opening gambit. It
developed on familiar lines; it ended half an hour later in a familiar
stalemate, long after Molly had grown tired of scribbling. She had
merely climbed down from her chair to play her usual obscure game of
houses beneath the table, wherein the footstool represented nor merely
the entire household furniture, but visitors and tradesmen and, when
necessary, the mistress of the house as well. The quarrel which raged
over her head meant entirely nothing to her; it was as familiar a part
of her world as was the hearthrug or the sideboard. The quarrel eddied
round the sitting-room; it continued with long range indirect fire
through the open door when Mrs. Morris went into the kitchen and Morris
flung himself into the armchair; it died away when Mrs. Morris’s
dropping shots only called forth grunts and wordless noises of disgust
from her husband; it seemed over when Mrs. Morris reached below the
table, brought Molly out, and started her up the stairs. Thereupon it
promptly flared up again when Morris called some jeering remark after
her. Mrs. Morris could not possibly leave her husband the last word; she
bounced down the stairs again and flung open the sitting-room door.
Molly played on the stairs for five minutes before her mother returned
and bustled her up to bed.

When Mrs. Morris finally descended she found her husband sitting at the
fireside silent and morose. She cooked his supper for him, put it on the
table, and said, “It’s ready.” He heaved himself up to the table, ate
and drank without a word, and went back in silence to his armchair. He
was so subdued and depressed, in fact, that Mrs. Morris credited herself
with a victory unusually decisive in the recent argument, and felt a
little pleased glow of achievement in consequence, which lasted her all
the rest of the evening while she washed up and while she sat mending
beside the fire.

Morris sat opposite her, chin in hand. He did not feel any urge that
evening to listen to the wireless; he did not want to look again through
the morning paper, nor even to put the advertisements in the latter
through his usual critical examination. His sanguine temperament had led
him to forget his troubles during his argument with his wife, but they
returned with new force while she was upstairs putting Molly to bed.
When, over his cup of coffee, he had described to Oldroyd so
rhetorically the certainty and the unpleasantness of unemployment, he
himself had not been so much affected by the prospect he was describing.
Fear had been overlain by the irritation caused by the failure of his
scheme for raising secret commissions. But fear came into its own now.
Morris had no illusions regarding the fate of a city clerk dismissed
with disgrace. His throat shut up a little, he felt a difficulty in
breathing, as he realized in all its horror the imminence of dismissal,
of tramping streets looking for work, of standing elbow to elbow with
seedy out of works scanning the “Situations Vacant” columns of the
newspapers in the Free Library. He had tasted cold and hunger before,
and he shrank with terror, even he, big burly Charlie Morris, from
encountering them again. He felt suddenly positively sick with fear.
Terror rippled down his skin even while he hunched himself closer to the
fire’s comfortable warmth. All men have their secret fear; Morris had
discovered his only now that it was too late to save himself by mending
his ways. He cursed himself for a fool even while he blanched with fear.

Soon he knew panic; he felt a positive impulse to get up from his chair
and run away from these perils which were menacing him. If running away
could have saved him he would have run all night through the darkened
streets. Morris hitched his chair nearer to the fire instead.

The wailing of his two-year-old son upstairs brought an interval of
distraction. John always cried for attention at ten o’clock; his parents
had come to look upon it as the signal for bedtime. Mrs. Morris put away
her mending and hastened upstairs to him. Morris sat on by the fire for
a moment, but habit came to his rescue. He got up from his chair, locked
the back door, turned out the gas, passed into the hall, locked the
front door, and made his way upstairs to bed.

This mechanical routine, and that following of undressing, had at least
the effect of saving him from mad panic. And the chill of the sheets
drove every thought from his mind for a time when he got into bed. So it
was almost with pleasure that he encountered it—usually his thick body
shrank from the cold welcome. He turned on his side; his wife came in
and pottered about the room, the shadow of her skinny, half naked figure
fell across his face as she passed by him, but he did not open his eyes.
Then the light went out and Mary climbed in beside him. The bed lost its
chill; Mary turned on her side away from him and lay quiet. He was
nearly asleep when the appalling realization of the future surged up
again in his mind, and he was instantly broad awake again. Never before
had worry kept him awake; the novelty of the experience redoubled its
effect. Almost at once the bed seemed to become far too hot. Mary’s body
through her nightdress felt positively feverish to his touch as he came
into contact with it when he turned in desperation to his other side.
Now it was irritation as well as fear which was disturbing him. Why had
he been such a cursed fool as to try that stunt for screwing money out
of the Adelphi Studio? He might have known that little rat, Cooper,
would go straight away and complain to Harrison. God, it was lucky that
Campbell hadn’t been there. He’d be on the street now in that case.
There was still to-morrow to do something about it.

Desperation now had its effect of driving him into considering action.
If only he could think of some way out of the mess! Pleading with
Harrison wouldn’t be any use. He knew Harrison. And Campbell too.
Campbell was a kindly old soul, but he would not forgive bribery. Every
one in the office knew that Campbell had refused a five-thousand-pound
agreement with the Elsinore Cork people because they had wanted him to
split the commission with them. Poor fool, Campbell. But Campbell was
all right. He owned the business. No one could give _him_ the sack, and
he drew eight hundred a year out of it. Harrison got six quid a
week—eight perhaps. Morris didn’t know. He had wanted Harrison’s job
himself—might have got it, later on, if this blasted business hadn’t
happened. God, if only something would happen to Harrison—to-morrow.
He’d be all right then. But what could happen to Harrison? He might be
ill—but he would come back sooner or later. If he were to die—be run
over in the Strand to-morrow morning—things would be different. Morris
would get his billet then, most likely. Ah, but Harrison wouldn’t be run
over. Morris turned irritably over to his other side again as he
realized how impossible was the thing he was longing for.

But perhaps it was at that moment that Morris took his first step on the
path that lay before him. With Morris to desire something urgently was
to start planning how to bring it about. Turning this way and that in
the fever-hot bed, his mind working faster and faster but more and more
inconclusively, Morris did not notice how often the idea of Harrison’s
death came into his mind. A seed of rapid germination was being planted
there.

Long after midnight his irritation and his anxiety turned to loneliness
and self-pity. He put his hand out to Mary’s thin body. She turned
towards him, later, in response to his caresses, and, half asleep,
returned with her thin lips the hot kisses Morris thrust upon her with
his thick ones. Their arms went about each other in the darkness.