Payment Deferred

I

“Be quiet, children,” said Mrs. Marble. “Can’t you see that father’s busy?”

So he was. He propped his aching forehead on his hand, and tugged at his reddish moustache in an unhappy attempt at concentration. It was difficult to keep thinking about these wretched figures all the time, and it would have been even if Winnie did not try to poke John with a ruler in the intervals of squirming and muttering over her geometry homework. Mr. Marble worried at his moustache while he peered at the column of figures on the scrap of paper before him. They seemed to be dancing in a faint mist under his eyes. He had been nerving himself for this effort for weeks now, and the instant that he began it he wanted to leave off. He was sure that looking at these figures would do no good. Nothing could do any good now.

The column of figures was headed briefly, “Debts.” Rent was three weeks overdue, and that was the smallest item entered. He owed over four pounds each to the butcher and the baker, and the milk bill came to over five. How on earth had Annie managed to run up a five-pound milk bill? He owed Evans, the grocer, more than six pounds. Mr. Marble felt that he hated Evans, and had hated him ever since the time, a dozen years ago now, when they had arrived in Malcolm Road as a young couple, and Evans, apron, basket and whiskers complete, had called to solicit for their custom. Annie had just told him that Evans had threatened to put the brokers in if he were not paid. The Bank would sack him for certain if anything like that happened. To Mr. Marble’s strained eyes the shape of Mr. Evans suddenly seemed to loom over the paper he was regarding, with a flash of teeth and a leer in his eye like the devil he was. Mr. Marble bit deep into the end of his pencil in a sudden flood of hatred.

There were some other items in the column too. The names of some of the men at the Bank appeared on the sheet of paper, and against them were set the amounts that Mr. Marble owed them. Some of these men had even smaller incomes than his, and yet they managed nevertheless to keep out of debt—and even were sometimes able to lend money to poor devils like himself. But of course they weren’t married, or if they were they did not have extravagant wives like Annie. Not that Annie was extravagant, though. Not really. She was just careless. Rather like himself, thought Mr. Marble, with weary self-reproach, bending again to the figures. His debts amounted to no less than thirty pounds! On the asset side he had put nothing. He knew the amount of his assets too well to bother to do that. He was acutely aware of it. The balance in his account at the Bank was down to five shillings, and he had two florins in his pocket. There was no possibility of overdrawing. That would mean dismissal just the same.

It was his fault, he supposed weakly. He had seen this coming as long ago as last summer, and he had decided then that if they did without a holiday and spent nothing at Christmas they could get straight again. But they had had their holiday, and they had spent more than they should have done at Christmas. No, that had been Annie’s fault. She had said that people would think it funny if they did not go to Worthing as she had told them they were going to do. And she had said it so often that in the end they had gone. And of course she had really been the cause of all those figures that were set against the names of men in the Bank on Mr. Marble’s little list. A man had to have a drink occasionally, when he slipped out of the office at half-past eleven, and of course he had to stand his friends one too, if they were with him. He could have paid for them easily if Annie had not spent all his money for him. And he had to smoke too, and have a good lunch occasionally. Mr. Marble resolutely refused to think of how much he had spent on his hobby of photography. He knew that it was more than he should have done, and somewhere inside his conscience there was a nasty feeling that there was another bill, unreckoned in his list, due to the chemist at the end of the road for things he had bought for this purpose. The shelves in the bathroom upstairs were full of materials, and Mr. Marble did not like to think of this, for he had never used half of them, having lately found more amusement in contemplating his hobby and buying things for it than in actually doing anything.

It was all very annoying and exasperating. How his head ached, and how tired he felt! His mind was numb. The grim feeling of blank despair was swamped by complete lassitude of soul. He realized vaguely that his oft-repeated threat of sending the children to bed without any supper would soon be carried into effect despite himself. He would be sacked from the Bank, and he would never get another job. He knew that well enough. He supposed it would end like the cases one read about in the paper, with his children’s throats cut and himself and his wife dead of gas-poisoning. But at present he hardly cared. He wanted to relax. When those blessed kids had been packed off to bed he would drag the armchair up to the fire and put his feet up on the coalbox and read the paper and be comfortable for a bit. In the decanter in the sideboard there was a little drop of whisky left. Not much of course; three drinks perhaps, or maybe four. Mr. Marble hoped it was four. With a drink and a paper and the fire he could forget his troubles for a little, for he couldn’t do anything towards remedying them this evening. Mr. Marble hardly realized that he had said the same thing to himself every evening for months now. The prospect seemed ineffably alluring. He yearned towards the decanter in the sideboard. And the wind was shrieking outside, sending the rain spattering against the windows. That would make it seem even more comfortable when he was beside the fire.

But the children must be disposed of first. For some obscure reason Mr. Marble had an objection to drinking whisky in front of his children. His wife did not matter so much, although he would have preferred to have her out of the way too. A glance at the clock disappointed him a little. It was only half-past seven, and the children would not be going to bed for another half-hour at the earliest. He felt suddenly irritable. He peered surreptitiously from under his eyebrows to see if he could catch them misbehaving so as to send them off at once. The whisky would taste all the better if he could come to it fresh from a parental triumph and an autocratic exertion of authority.

“Stop that noise, John,” he ordered, with queer, feeble savageness.

John looked round from his chair by the fire a little startled. Five seconds ago he had been mazed in the pages of How England Saved Europe, and had been leading the Fusilier Brigade over heaps of dead up the bloodstained hill of Albuera. He gazed vacantly at his father.

“Don’t look at me like a fool,” spluttered Mr. Marble. “Do what you’re told and stop that noise.” The two orders were synonymous, but John did not realize that.

“What did you tell me?” he asked vaguely.

“No impertinence, now. I said stop that noise.”

“What noise, father?” asked John, more to gain time to collect his thoughts than for any other reason. But the question was fatal.

“Don’t try to deny it,” said Mr. Marble.

“Now, you were making a noise, you know, Johnny,” said Mrs. Marble.

“You were kicking with your feet,” chimed in Winnie.

“I didn’t deny it,” protested John.

“You did,” said Mrs. Marble.

“You did,” said Winnie.

“Be quiet, Winnie,” snapped Mr. Marble, rounding on his usual favourite in unusual fashion. “You’re as bad as he is, and you know it. Have you done your homework yet? I send you to a good school, and this is all the return I get for it.”

“Why, I got a scholarship,” replied Winnie, with a jerk of her head.

“Are you being impertinent too?” demanded Mr. Marble. “I don’t know what you children are coming to. It’s time for bed when you start being rude to your parents.”

The fatal words were said, and the children looked at each other in dismay. Mrs. Marble made a typical fainthearted effort on their behalf.

“Oh, not just yet, father,” she said.

That was all the opposition that Mr. Marble needed to make him quite decided on the matter.

“At once,” he said. “John, go to bed—and leave that book down here too. Winnie, pack your things neatly ready for the morning and go along too. Let this be a lesson to you.”

“But I haven’t done my homework,” wailed Winnie, “and there’ll be such a row if I haven’t done it tomorrow.”

John did not answer. He was wondering how the Fusiliers would get on without him for the rest of their advance. Even Mrs. Marble was moved to further protest at this drastic action, but her halfhearted entreaties were ignored by both sides.

“Be quick, I am waiting,” said Mr. Marble.

It was inevitable. Sullenly Winnie began to stack her books together. John stood up and put How England Saved Europe on the table. It was then, at the eleventh hour, that diversion came. It came in the form of a loud knocking at the street door. For a second everyone looked at each other startled, for visitors were a rarity in Malcolm Road, especially at the extraordinary hour of half-past seven. Winnie recovered first.

“I’ll go,” she said, and slipped through into the hall.

The others heard her tugging at the latch, and then the gas suddenly flickered as a gust of wind came rushing in with the opening of the street door. A strange, loud, masculine voice made itself heard asking for Mr. Marble. He was about to go out too when Winnie reappeared.