The Judgment of Eve | Page 9

anxious glance at Aggie in her evening blouse. His
mind was not set so high but what he liked to see his pretty wife
wearing pretty gowns. And some of the money that was to have gone to
the buying of books had passed over to the gay drapers of Camden
Town and Holloway.
"You know what it means, dear? We shall have to live more carefully."
"Oh yes, of course I know that."
"Do you mind?"
"Mind?" She didn't know what he was talking about, but she gave a sad,
foreboding glance at the well-appointed supper-table, where coffee and
mutton-chops had succeeded cocoa. For Arthur had had a rise of salary
that year; and if Aggie had a weakness, it was that she loved to get him
plenty of nice, nourishing things to eat.
"We sha'n't be able to have quite so many nice things for supper. Shall
you mind?"
"Of course I sha'n't. Do you take me for a pig?" said Arthur, gayly. He

hadn't thought of it in that light. Wasn't he always saying that it was the
immaterial that mattered? But it had just come over him that pretty
Aggie wouldn't have so many pretty clothes to wear, because, of course,
whatever money they could save must go to the buying of books and
the maintenance of the intellectual life. For the home atmosphere was
to be part of the children's education.
"We will have lots of nice things," said Aggie, "won't we, when
Daddy's ship comes home?"

VI
Daddy's ship never did come home.
"Quack, quack!" said Aggie, and three shrill voices echoed her.
Aggie had to be the duck herself now; for Daddy had long ago given up
his part in the spirited drama.
They had been married six years, and Aggie had had six children.
There was Arty and Catty and Willie and Dick and Emmy (the baby of
the year); and a memory like a sword in her mother's heart, which was
all that was left of little Barbara, who had come after Catty.
It seemed as if there was not much left of Aggie, either. Her delicate
individuality had shown signs of perishing as the babies came, and the
faster it perished the faster they took its place. At each coming there
went some part of pretty Aggie's prettiness; first the rose from her
cheeks, then the gold from her hair, till none of her radiance was left
but the blue light of her eyes, and that was fainter. Then, after Barbara's
death, her strength went, too; and now, at the end of the day she was
too tired to do anything but lie on the sofa and let the children crawl all
over her, moaning sometimes when they trampled deep. Then Arthur
would stir in his arm-chair and look irritably at her. He still loved
Aggie and the children, but not their noises.
The evenings, once prolonged by gas-light and enthusiasm to a glorious

life, had shrank to a two hours' sitting after supper. They never went
anywhere now. Picture-galleries and concert-halls knew them no more.
The Debating Society at Hampstead had long ago missed the faithful,
inseparable pair--the pair who never spoke, who sat in the background
listening with shy, earnest faces, with innocence that yearned,
wide-eyed, after wisdom, while it followed, with passionate
subservience, the inane. Arthur had proved himself powerless to keep it
up. If an archangel's trump had announced a lecture for that evening, it
would not have roused him from his apathy.
And as they never went to see anybody, nobody ever came to see them.
The Hampstead ladies found Aggie dull and her conversation
monotonous. It was all about Arthur and the babies; and those ladies
cared little for Arthur, and for the babies less. Of Aggie's past
enthusiasm they said that it was nothing but a pose. Time had revealed
her, the sunken soul of patience and of pathos, the beast of burden, the
sad-eyed, slow, and gray.
The spirit of the place, too, had departed, leaving a decomposing and
discolored shell. The beloved yellow villa had disclosed the worst side
of its nature. The brown wall-paper had peeled and blistered, like an
unwholesome skin. The art serge had faded; the drugget was dropping
to pieces, worn with many feet; the wood-work had shrunk more than
ever, and draughts, keen as knives, cut through the rooms and passages.
The "Hope" and the "Love Leading Life" and the "Love Triumphant,"
like imperishable frescos in a decaying sanctuary, were pitiful survivals,
testifying to the death of dreams.
Saddest of all, the bookshelves, that were to have shot up to the ceiling,
had remained three feet from the floor, showing the abrupt arrest of the
intellectual life.
It was evident that they hadn't kept it up.
If