THE BEGINNING

      I

       Table of Contents

      THE BEGINNING

      CONVENTIONALLY our life-story ended in a shower of rice at the church door, amid the scent of white flowers, with a flutter of white favors all about us. We left behind us those relatives whose presence had been so little desired by us during our brief courtship, and a high-heeled white satin slipper struck the back of the brougham as we drove off. It was like a parting slap on the shoulder from our old life—the old life which we left so gayly, eager to fulfil the destiny set as the end of our wooing's fairy story, and to “live happy ever after.”

      And now all that was six months ago; and instead of attending to that destiny, the fairy princess and her unworthy prince were plunged over head and ears in their first quarrel—their first serious quarrel—about the real and earnest things of life; for the other little quarrels about matters of sentiment and the affections really did not count. They were only play and make-believe; still, they had got our hands in, so that when we really differed seriously we both knew exactly how to behave—we had played at quarrels so often. This quarrel was very serious, because it was about my shaving-brush and Chloe's handkerchief-case. There was a cupboard with a window—Chloe called it my dressing-room, and, at first, I humored her pretty fancy about it, and pretended that I could really see to shave in a glass that faced the window, although my shoulders, as I stood, cut off all light. But even then I used really to shave at Chloe's mirror after she had gone down to make the tea and boil the eggs—only I kept my shaving things in the embroidered vestments which my wife's affection provided and her fingers worked, and these lived in the “dressing-room.” But the subterfuge presently seemed unworthy, and I found myself, in the ardor of a truthful nature, leaving my soapy brush on her toilet-table. Chloe called this untidiness, and worse, and urged that I had a dressing-room. Then I put the brush away. This had happened more than once.

      On this memorable morning I had set up the pretty ivory shaving-brush, clean and pleasant with its white crown of lather, among her hair-brushes. Chloe came up just then to ask me whether I would have two or three eggs. Her entrance startled me. I cut myself slightly, but infuriatingly, and knocked the brush down. It fell on Chloe's handkerchief-case—pink satin, painted with rose and cupids, a present. Chloe snatched it up.

      “You are horrid,” she said. “Why don't you shave in your own dressing-room?”

      “Whatever does it matter?” said I.

      “My sachet's ruined,” she said, dabbing at it with her pocket-handkerchief.

      My chin was still bleeding.

      “It's no use,” she went on. “I spend all my time trying to keep the house nice, and you're always putting things down on things. You put your hateful fountain-pen down on the new drawn-linen table-centre only yesterday, and it's made a great ink mark. Yes, you did—when you were writing the check for the butcher.”

      I was ill-advised enough to murmur something about trifles.

      “But they're not trifles,” said Chloe. “They're just the little things that make all the difference between a home and—”

      “And?”

      “And other places. Breakfast will be quite spoiled. You're frightfully late. And I don't think this girl means to stay; she's been quite rude about the haddock already.”

      Now that I knew what my wife was so cross about, I might, perhaps—but I didn't. My chin was still bleeding.

      I said, “Please don't wait breakfast for me, and began to brush my hair with a dignified aloofness. Chloe went out, and I own that she banged the door.

      When I was ready I went down to breakfast. Chloe was reading the paper—a thing she never does. She poured out my tea and gave it to me without a glance. Thanking her coldly, I helped myself to haddock and opened my letters.

      It was with the second letter that the shock came. I read the letter twice. And I looked round our little dining-room—it was about ten feet by nine—and I sighed. For I knew—surely if inexplicably—that the dove of peace which had folded its wings there had spread them on a flight from which it would, perhaps, never return. I had quarrelled with my wife—about a shaving-brush; but that episode had now shrunk to less than nothing in the presence of the new, the wonderful danger that threatened our home.

      I looked at the neat breakfast-table, bright with our wedding-presents—cruet-stands, butter-dishes, and silver-plated teaspoons. I looked at the row of shelves over the mantel-piece, where the more attractive of our crockery stood displayed; at the corner cupboard, picked up for a song in Great Portland Street, and fitted with a lock inexorably guarding the marmalade, the loaf sugar, the sardines, the bottled beer, and such like costly items. I looked at Chloe, mutinously reading the paper—in a white muslin blouse which had been green, with white flowers on it, when we bought it together in the Lewisham High Street for twopence three farthings the yard, and which to my mind was all the prettier for the theft, by soap and water, of its original hue and design. I looked at the remains of the haddock on the dish, the two eggs in the eggstand—another wedding-present. And again I sighed.

      Chloe laid down the paper irresolutely and looked towards, but not at, me.

      I sighed again and stirred my tea. I could see that Chloe was making a heroic resolve to overcome her pride and end the quarrel. She did it.

      “Are you sorry you were so cross?” she asked, severely.

      “Frightfully sorry.” I spoke from the heart.

      “Then so am I!” she cried. And suddenly the first quarrel found itself over. Presently we went on with the breakfast. To be more accurate, we began. But my thoughts refused to bury themselves