Roy had no relatives to approve or disapprove of what he did, and he was a good-looking, smart fellow in his trim uniform, whereas John, slouching about the back-yard with a couple of buckets, or serving in the bar with his shirtsleeves rolled up, was not nearly as inspiring a spectacle. Lastly, there was the question of the name. Mrs. John Spratt was not exactly a name to aspire to, but then, was Mrs. Ham Roy much better? Roy was good; but Ham! John was permissible; but Spratt!
It was a pity, thought Susie, that she couldn’t take a fancy to the parson’s boy, young Mr. Greenacre. Eric… Mrs. Eric Greenacre… even Mrs. Tom Green-acre… even Mrs. Eric Roy. Any of them, and she would have made her choice without difficulty. But as edibles, let alone nomenclature, both Ham and Spratt made her feel slightly bilious. It was too bad that a girl should be bothered, thought Susie. Besides, you could not even refer to your husband by his surname of Roy. It was countrified, and therefore common, to speak of your husband except by his given name; so much she had learned in London. And to talk about Ham!… really, it gave her the Willies, really it did. Besides, the parents of John Spratt might die. Then there would be the pub and her own motor-car. That would be better than having stolen rides in Roy’s employer’s automobile…
So, in the end, she plumped for John. Spratt was not such a bad name if one did not visualize it in terms of fish. “And after all,” thought Susie, “people do die. I mean, it’s the kind of thing that might happen to anyone;…” Fortified by this consideration, she accepted an engagement ring from John, and, suffered by his parents and suffering them in her turn, she used to go to tea and have her weekly bath at the public-house every Sunday, and accompany John to Evensong afterwards. They shared a hymn-book and a prayer-book, held hands during the sermon, walked slowly homewards in the summer gloaming, and for the space of about five months conducted themselves as became two persons who were proposing to spend the rest of their lives in one another’s company. John was proud and happy, but Susie was not altogether convinced that she had chosen the right young man.
His parents had nothing to say to John about his choice of a sweetheart. They had learned the futility of attempting to influence his taste. From the age of four onwards, John’s likes had been his likes and his dislikes had been his dislikes, and there had been no persuading him into altering his opinion. The father thought that he recognized the mother’s characteristic determination coming out in the boy; Dora affected to consider her son’s obstinacy a youthful trait which would disappear “as the lad learned sense.”
As though recognizing his right to choose a mate, however, neither Malachi nor Dora, by word or gesture, gave the slightest indication to John that they disapproved of Susie. Susie knew that they did. She, too, did not mention it to John. She knew that if John thought his parents did not like her, he would leave his home and throw away all his prospects. As she was only prepared to marry John for what she could get, his quarrelling with his people would not have suited her at all, so, like the sleek and secretive cat, she made no sign that she observed anything untoward in Dora’s manner or in Malachi’s silences, and spent a surprising amount of concentrated thought upon the problem of how to make the best of John, Dora, Malachi and the “Swinging Sign.” Meanwhile she herself was earning a little money for the new home in a new, exciting and very simple way. She was blackmailing a murderer.
One Sunday afternoon at the end of the winter, the weather turned damp and foggy. By half-past two, when Susie and her mother had just finished their Sunday dinner, it was dark. Susie would have decided to forego her customary walk of just over a mile and a half to the inn had she not quarrelled with her mother while they were cooking the dinner.
Mrs. Cozens should have been a warning to John—had he been the kind of person to give heed to a warning— of what to expect of Susie at fifty, for she was whining, spiteful and ill-tempered, a disappointed, nagging woman. She had hoped great things of her husband, but when nothing better than the village stores-cum-post-office turned out to be her portion, and when her child turned out to be a girl instead of the son she had set her heart on, and when her husband became paralysed at the age of thirty, and Susie took herself up to London as soon as she got herself the sack from a most suitable local situation, Mrs. Cozens had grown more and more disagreeable, self-pitying and antagonistic.
She suspected that Susie had only come home to live because she had got herself into some sort of trouble in London. Susie could have confirmed this opinion, had she cared to do so, for she had been taken up for shoplifting in a big London store, and was lucky to have had the case dismissed. Not for one moment had the mother ever believed that her daughter had returned home solely on account of the death of Cozens.
Susie knew her mother well enough to realize that if she stayed at home on this particular Sunday, she would have to prepare herself for a most unpleasant afternoon, so, in spite of the weather, she dressed herself in her best and prepared to set out on her usual Sunday afternoon walk to the “Swinging Sign.” Usually she left the shop at approximately half-past three. By walking briskly she could thus expect to reach the inn round about ten minutes past four. Tea was at five, which gave John roughly thirty minutes, after she had had the promised bath, to sit beside her on the sofa, while Malachi was having his Sunday afternoon sleep and Dora was washing up the dinner-things and changing into her Sunday dress and getting the tea ready in the kitchen.
On this particular Sunday, however, Susie was delayed. She was up in her bedroom putting the finishing touches to her hair, and wondering whether to tell John about Helm and the funny way he had offered her a sea-water bath, when a car drew up. A minute later her mother was calling her downstairs. Roy had come with a message from the squire to request that Mrs. Cozens and Susie would return with Roy to the big house, as the cook had fallen downstairs, and the squire was expecting visitors to dinner.
“You can go, but I shan’t,” said Susie decidedly.
As an engaged girl, she felt independent of the squire, whom she disliked. If he had been a little less mean over the question of Roy’s wages, she had decided some six days previously, she might not have allowed herself to become engaged to young John Spratt. Privately she considered that her charms were being wasted on John. On the previous Sunday, for instance, he had not even sat beside her on the sofa. He had taken the wireless set to pieces and made her hold small spare parts while he corrected some defect. It had taken him the best part of two hours. She had been intending to tell him about Mr. Helm then but was so bored and angry that she had not done so.
“Might as well be married already,” Susie had thought. She had become sufficiently exasperated to drop a small nut between two gaping boards in the sitting-room floor.
John had been annoyed and quite unreasonably profane about it. She was going over to make her peace with him as much as for any other reason. Besides, Helm had frightened her.