she said. It made him start jabbing the tablecloth with a fork. "Like somebody's bleedin' mother!" He dug holes in the tablecloth, till the young lady began to look their way. "Didn't your mother speak like that?" "She died when I was young," said Ruth. "But there was my dad. He brought us up strict, I will admit. I loved him. That was why I came away." "Because you loved him?" "It is wrong to love a person too much. Sinful in a way." "Sinful!" Contempt made him blow down his nose, at which, at times, she could not bear to look, at the nostrils-they were beautiful-but she would again. And his contempt was very quickly spent. He knew the cause of it was that which most attracted him to her: the unshakable-which at the same time he was tempted to assault. After their exchange, he paid the bill at the desk, and they went out. They began to walk along the beach, avoiding in the dark certain darker shapes, making through the heavy, stupefying sand, towards the firmer path beside the sea. "We're going to get our shoes wet," she warned, "if we are not careful." Although the bubbly sea was casting its nets always farther afield, she did not intend to allow herself to be hypnotized by its action, however lovely. She could only see the imprudence of such behaviour. For a moment it was almost as though she were guiding those others, her brothers and sisters, or own unborn children. He did not much care now, and even allowed her to take his arm. They walked sober for a time, in the indifferent grip of friendship, along the unrecognizable sand. Until, finally, exhaustion made them lag. Their legs could have been trembling wires. Such frailty was satisfying, but dangerous, so that when he said they should sit down, she remained standing. Then, suddenly, Tom was down upon his knees. He had put his arms around her thighs. For the first time, against her body, she experienced the desperate bobbing of a human being who had abandoned himself to the current. If she herself had not been pitching in the darkness, his usually masterful head might have appeared less a cork. But in the circumstances, she would not have presumed to look for rescue to what her weight might have dragged under, just as she resisted the desire to touch that wiry hair, in case it should wind about her fingers, and assist in her destruction. Instead, she began to cry out softly in protest. Her mouth had grown distorted and fleshy. She was bearing the weight of them both on her revived legs. But for how much longer, she did not like to think. "Ah, no! Tom! Tom!" she breathed; her voice could have been coming from a shell. As the mouths of darkness sucked her down, some other strangled throat in the distance laughed out from its game of lust. In the spirals of her ears, she heard the waves folding and unfolding on their bed. Then the sand dealt her a blow in the back. It, too, was engaged apparently, beneath her, but with the passive indifference of thick sand. As the two people struggled and fought, the sand only just shifted its surface, grating coldly. The girl was holding the man's head away from her with all her strength, when she would have buried it, rather, in her breast. In the grip of her distress, she cried out with the vehemence of soft, flung sand. "I would marry you, Tom!" she panted. "That is news to me!" Tom Godbold grunted, rather angry. He had known it, though; he had known many women. But her announcement gave him an excuse to pause, without having to admit his lack of success. "You don't know what you would be taking on," he said as soon as he was able. "I would be willing to take it on," she insisted. Again he began to feel oppressed by that honesty which was one of her prevailing qualities, and now, as in later life, he tried to ensure that it would not threaten him. He reached out very gently, and tried by every dishonest strategy of skin to reach that core which he resented. Until at last she took his hand, and laid it against her burning cheek. She said, "But what is it, Tom? It is not as if I did not love you." By now, he realized, he was really very tired. He lay heavy on her. He rested his head against her neck. He was too exhausted, it seemed, for further bitterness. It was only then that she allowed him to make love, which was at best tentative, at worst ashamed, beside her riper one. Her lover allowed her to hold him on her breast. She buoyed him up on that dark sea. He floated in it, a human body, soothed by a mystery which was more than he could attempt to solve. Afterwards as he lay, pushing the wet hair back from her temples, he said to her, "Perhaps you won, Ruth. I dunno how." She did not move, as he continued to stroke her moist skin with the dry, rough skin of his hand. "I hadn't thoughta gettin' married, but, for that matter, we could," he said. "It'll be tough, though, for both of us." She began to kiss the back of his hand, so that he had to pull it away. "Make you a honest woman!" He laughed. "Because, I suppose, by you, it is a sin, eh?" "Both of us has sinned," she said, with a dreamy tenderness which at the same time filled her with horror. She sat up, and the little pearls of sweat ran down between her skin and her chemise towards the pit of her conscience. She sat up straight, and the darkness could have been a board at her back, of the hard pew. Hard words came up out of her memory, of condemnation, in the voices of old men assured of their own salvation. "Both of us! Both of us!" she repeated with shapeless mouth. But he could not have troubled less. "Not me!" He laughed. Again he touched her thigh, and the terrible and lovely part was that she now allowed him. She rested her head against him, and even her tears were a sensation of voluptuous fulfilment. "But I would bear all your sins, Tom, if it was necessary. Oh, I would bear them," she said, "and more." That made him leave off. He was almost frightened by what he meant to her. "I don't see," he complained, "why you gotta take on so, not when you got the conditions you wanted." But he, of course, was not to know what she had forfeited. "No," she said. "I won't take on. We must go now, though. Give me your hand up." Very early she had sensed that her love was on two planes, one of which he might never reach. They began to walk back. Once or twice she had to stifle something rising in her full throat, once or twice she dared to look up, half expecting sentence to be passed in letters of stars. Soon after, the parlourmaid mentioned to the cook-it could not be avoided forever-that she was going to get married. "To Tom Godbold, the iceman," she had to admit. "Well," said Ethel, "you _will__ be finding out!" Contrary to the cook's expectations, the iceman himself referred frequently to the promise he was supposed to have made. "And will he be keeping both of you out of the ice-delivery wages?" she asked of the prospective bride, hoping that she might receive an answer to colour her visions of a pitiful existence. "Oh, no," Ruth replied. "He is giving that up. We are going to live at a place called Sarsaparilla. It is on the outskirts. Tom is going in with a mate of his who is a carrier." "These mates!" Ethel said. But it all seemed to be settled, and it became necessary to tell the mistress. Who knew already, of course. Recently Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had been enjoying every opportunity to exercise her intuition on what might be happening to her friends. Since her husband had got into financial difficulties, there were few who did not respect her feelings by avoiding her. It was as if it had been agreed amongst her acquaintance that she was far too ill to receive visits. Certainly some gift, if not sincerity, is required to transpose the witty tunes of light friendship into a key appropriate to crisis, and lacking that gift, or virtue, the ladies would glance into shop windows, or cross the street, on observing the object of their embarrassment approach. Jinny Chalmers painted on a redder mouth, and studied Science. Once or twice she was also seen dining with her husband at expensive restaurants, but everybody of experience knew how to interpret that. The Chalmers-Robinsons were convening a meeting, as it were, in a public place, where each would be protected to some extent from the accusations of the other, while considering what next. For the most part, however, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson was to be found alone, in her depleted décor, in the house which had survived by legal sleight of hand. It had been very complicated, and exhausting. Now that it was more or less over, she lay on the sofa a good deal, and rested, and in time learned how to enter the lives of her friends from a distance. She found that she knew much more than she had ever suspected. If she had been capable of loving, compassion might have compensated her for that insight by which, as it happened, she was mostly disgusted or alarmed. Except in the case of her maid, Ruth Joyner. Here the mistress was chastened by what intuition taught her. To a certain extent affection made her suffer with the girl, or it could have been she was appeased by a sensuality she had experienced at second hand. When the maid told her mistress of her approaching marriage, the latter replied, "I hope you will be terribly happy, Ruth." Because what else would she have said? Even though her words were dead, the shape and colour of their sentiments were irreproachable, like those green hydrangeas of the last phase, less a flower than a semblance, which such ladies dote on, and arrange in bowls. "I have been happy here," Ruth replied, and honestly. "I would like to think you have," her mistress said. "At least, nobody has been unkind to you." Yet she could not resist the thought that nobody is unkind to turnips unless to skin them when the proper moment arrives. So she had to venture on. "Your husband, will he be unkind to you, I wonder?" She positively tingled as the blade went in. Ruth hesitated. When she spoke, it sounded rather hoarse. "I know that he will," she said slowly. "I do not expect the easy way." Mrs Chalmers-Robinson was almost gratified. It related her to this great, white, porous-skinned girl as she could not have been related otherwise. Then her loneliness returned. Because she could not have been gathered into the bosom of anything so comic, or so common, as her starched maid. She began to buy herself off then. "I shall have to give you something," she said. "I must try to think what." "Oh, no, m'mm!" Ruth protested, and blushed. "I was not expecting gifts." For, as she understood it, poverty was never a theory, only a fact. The mistress smiled. The girl's goodness made her feel magnanimous. "We shall see," she said, taking up her book to put an end to a situation that was becoming tedious. As she closed the door, Ruth Joyner suspected that what she had done in innocence was bringing out the worst in people. If she had seen her way to explain how she had surrendered up the woundable part of her by certain acts, everybody might have striven less. But to convey this, she was, she knew, incompetent. So the house continued to bristle with daggers looking for a target. The cook said, "One day, Ruth, I will tell you all about the man I did not marry." And: "It is the children that carry the load. It is the children." "My children will be lovely," Ruth Joyner dared to claim. "My children will not fear nothing in the world. I will see to that." Looking at the girl, the cook was afraid it might come to pass. Then, a couple of evenings later, the bell rang from Mrs Chalmers-Robinson's room. She had gone to bed early, after a poached egg. So Ruth climbed towards the mistress from whom, she realized, she had become separated. "Ruth," Mrs Chalmers-Robinson began, "quite frankly I am unhappy. I have something-no, that is underestimating-I have every, everything on my mind. Why do you suppose I was picked on? Upon? On! You know I am the last person who should be forced to carry weights." And she would have eased hers from off her hair, but encountered only the parting, which needed attending to. It was obvious Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had had a couple. "Sit down, won't you?" she invited, because that was what one said. But Ruth remained standing. She had never faced the better-class people except on her two legs. "Ruth," said the mistress, "Science, I find-though this is in strictest confidence, mind you-Science is, well, something of a disappointment. It does not speak to _me__, me _personally__, if you know what I mean." Here she beat her chest with her remaining rings. By that light the skin appeared as though it had been dusted with the finest grey dust. "I must have something personal. All this religion! Something I can touch. But nothing they can take away. Not pearls. Oh dear, no! Pearls get snapped up amongst the first. Or men. Men, Ruth, do not like to be touched. Men must touch. That is not even a secret. Give me your hand, dear." "You would do better with an aspro and a cup of strong black coffee," advised the maid, almost stern. "I should be sick. I am already sick enough." Mrs Chalmers-Robinson shuddered. Her mouth had wilted and faded to a pale, wrinkled thing. "What do you believe, Ruth?" she asked. Though she did not want to hear. Only to know. "Oh dear, madam," cried the girl, "a person cannot tell what she believes!" And much as she regretted, she was forced to wrench her hand away. Then, it was realized by the woman on the bed, who would have given anything for a peep-she was all goggly for it-this white tower, too, was locked against her. So she began to bare her teeth, and cry. Although rooted firmly in the carpet, the white maid appeared to be swaying. The light was streaming from her shiny cuffs. But it no longer soothed; it slashed and blinded. "If I was to tell," the creature attempted, "it doesn't follow that you would see. Everybody sees different. You must only see it for yourself," she cried, tearing it out helplessly at last. "Tell, Ruth, tell!" begged the mistress. She was now quite soppy with necessity, and ready to mortify herself through somebody else. "Tell!" she coaxed with her wet mouth. One of her breasts had sidled out. "Oh, dear!" cried the girl. "We are tormenting ourselves!" "I like that!" shouted the woman in sudden fury. "What do you know of torments?" The girl swallowed her surprise. "Why, to see you suffer in this way, and nothing to be done about it!" So obvious. "My God! If even the patent saints fail us!" There were times when her teeth could look very ugly. "I am ignorant all right," admitted the maid, "and helpless when I cannot use my hands. Only when it comes to your other suggestion, then I feel ashamed. For both of us." Indeed, she streamed with a steady fire, which illuminated more clearly the contents of her face. When the woman saw that she had failed both to rob and to humiliate, she fell back, and blubbered shapelessly. She was screwing up her eyes tight, tight, as if she had taken medicine, but her words issued with only a slack, spasmodic distaste, which could have been caused by anything, if not herself. "Go on!" she said. "Get out!" she said. "I am not fit. Oh God, I am going round!" And was hitting her head against the hot pillow. She could not quite succeed in running down. "Take it easy, m'mm," said Ruth Joyner, who was preparing to obey orders. "I dare say you won't remember half. Then there will be no reason for us not to stay friends. "See?" her starch breathed. "After you have had a sleep." She had to touch once, for pity's sake, before going. In the short interval between this scene with her employer and her marriage to Tom Godbold, Ruth Joyner was engaged by Mrs Chalmers-Robinson in noticeably formal conversation. For the most part the mistress limited herself to orders such as: "Fetch me the _grey__ gloves, Ruth. Don't tell me you forgot to mend the grey! Sometimes I wonder what you girls spend your time thinking about." Or: "Here I am, all in yellow. Looking the purest fright. Well, nothing can be done about it now. Call the taxi." On the latter occasion, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson was bound for a meeting of some new company formed round about the time her husband got into trouble, and of which she had been made managing director. But Ruth, of course, did not understand anything of that. Only once since the débâcle had the maid encountered her employer's husband. Standing in a public place, he was engaged in eating from a bag of peanuts. His clothes were less impressive than before, though obviously attended to. He had developed a kind of funny twitch. He did not recognize the maid, in spite of the fact that she approached so close he could have seen the words she was preparing on her lips. He was comparatively relaxed. He s