Patrick White - Riders in the Chariot

On arriving in Sydney, Ruth Joyner discovered that her friend Chrissie Watkins had married, and gone to live in another state. So there was no one. But she found work easy enough, first in some refreshment room, where for a while she carried trays with the thick white cups and the fingers of fruit cake or madeira. She would set the orders carefully down, and return to the urns, which smelled perpetually of dregs. All was going well, it seemed-customers often smiled, sometimes even read her passages from letters, and once she was asked to examine a varicose vein-when the lady supervisor called Ruth, and said, "Look, love, I will tell you something. You will never make good as a waitress. You are too slow. I am only telling you, mind." Because, really, the lady supervisor was kind. She had only been standing a long time, and the heat had eaten the seams of her black satin. Ruth Joyner then turned to domestic service. She took a situation as kitchen-maid in the house of a retired grazier. She would sit cutting the vegetables into shapes. Or, standing at the full sink, she would sing the hymns she remembered from Home. Until the cook objected, who was bringing out her own niece, from Cork, and had never been accustomed to associate with any but Catholic girls. Ruth had worked in several large houses before she came to that of Mrs Chalmers-Robinson, which was, in fact, her final situation, and which remained with her in memory as the most significant phase of her independent life. Though why, it was difficult to say. Certainly she met her husband. Certainly the house was large, and white, and solid, with a magnolia tree standing at the door. But Mrs Chalmers-Robinson herself was the flimsiest of women, and her servant Ruth Joyner received nothing of material advantage from her mistress, beyond her wages, and a few cast-off dresses she would have been too embarrassed to wear. But the house of the Chalmers-Robinsons (for there was a Mister, too) remained important in Ruth Joyner's mind. She had been advised by an employment agency to apply for the situation, which was described as that of house-parlourmaid. "But I have had no experience," the girl suggested. "It does not matter," said the woman. Ruth had discovered a great deal did not matter, but at each fresh piece of evidence her brow would grow corrugated, and her eyes wear an expression of distress. Even Mrs Chalmers-Robinson, who was on her way to a luncheon engagement, and who had just recovered a very pretty sapphire brooch on which she had recently claimed the insurance, did not seem to think it mattered greatly. "We shall give you a trial," she said, "Ruth-isn't it? How amusing! I have never had a maid called Ruth. I think I shall like you. And I am quite easy. There is a cook, too, and my personal maid. The gardener and chauffeur need not concern you. Both the men live out." Ruth looked at Mrs Chalmers-Robinson. She had never met anyone quite so dazzling, or so fragmentary. "Oh, and my husband, I forgot to say, he is in business," the brilliant lady thought to add. "He is away a good deal." Mrs Chalmers-Robinson looked at Ruth, and decided the face was about as flat as a marble tombstone. But one that was waiting to be inscribed. (She would make an effort to remember that, and work it up as a remark for luncheon.) But she did so hope she had discovered in this girl something truly dependable and solid. (If she contemplated Ruth Joyner literally as some _thing__, it was because she did long for marble, or some substance that would not give way beneath her weight and needs, like the elastic souls of human beings.) Then Mrs Chalmers-Robinson got up, in mock haste, protesting mock-hungrily, "Now I must fly to this wretched lunch!" And gashed her new maid with a smile. Ruth said, "Yes, madam. I hope you will enjoy yourself." To the mistress, it sounded quaint. But touching. "Oh, we shall see!" She laughed. "One never can tell!" She allowed herself to feel sad for a little in the car, but turned it into an agreeable sensation. Ruth had soon accustomed herself to life at the Chalmers-Robinsons'. She was quite perfect, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson remarked to her husband-not that perfection does not always have its faults-and it had to be admitted Ruth was slow, that she breathed too hard when handing the vegetables, and preferred not to hear the telephone. Then, sometimes, she would stand at the front door, particularly at evening, as if looking out on a village street. Her mistress intended to mention that, but failed to do so, perhaps even out of delicacy, or affection. So the massive girl continued to stand in the doorway, in the porch, beside the magnolia tree, and as the details of her dress and body, from the points of her starched cap to the toes of her Blancoed shoes, dissolved in evening, she might have been some species of moth, or guardian spirit, poised on magnolia wings before huge, flapping flight. For one so laborious, she moved very quietly, and succeeded in a way in permeating a house which, until then, had worn rather a deserted air. If the flour which dusts a big yellow cottage loaf had fallen on the marquetry table, where the visiting cards were left in a salver, it would have appeared less unnatural after the new maid's arrival. Once Mr Chalmers-Robinson, on returning from a club at dusk, had brushed against her in the entrance. "I beg your pardon, sir," she said. "I was listening to the locusts." "Oh!" he jerked back. "The what? Yes! Damn pests are enough to burst anybody's eardrums!" What did one say, he wondered, to maids? "I am glad you came, sir, tonight. There is something good," she announced. "There is crumb cutlets and diplomatic pudding." So that he began to feel guilty, and realized he was a stranger in his own house. Mr Chalmers-Robinson preferred clubs, where he could come and go as he pleased, without becoming involved in intimate relationships, or irritated by insubstantial furniture. He liked men better than women, not as human beings, but in the context of their achievement and public lives. Women were too apt to reduce everything to a personal level, at which his self-importance began to appear dubious. He resented and avoided such a state of affairs, except when the sexual impulse caused him to run the risk. Then the personal did add somewhat to the pleasurable, and he could always write off his better judgment as the victim of feminine dishonesty. He was certainly attractive to women, in his well-cut English suits, smelling of brilliantine and cigars, and he accepted the favours of a few. If he ceased to find his wife attractive after he had bought her, he continued to admire her ability for getting out of tight corners, and eschewed divorce perhaps for that very reason. E. K. Chalmers-Robinson (Bags to those who claimed to be his friends) was himself an expert at tight corners, though admittedly there had been one or two at which he had failed to make the turn. One such minor crash carried off a yacht, a promising colt, a Sèvres dinner service, and the personal maid, soon after Ruth Joyner appeared. "My husband is a business genius, but no genius is infallible," Mrs Chalmers-Robinson explained. "And Sèvres, one has to face it, is just a little bit-well, blue." "I suppose so, madam," Ruth agreed. She liked genuinely to please, for which, all her life, she remained the friend of children. Her mistress continued. "Between ourselves, Washbourne has always been something of a trial. I used to hope it was only gallstones, but was forced gradually to the conclusion that she is a selfish old creature. You, Ruth, I am going to ask to take on a very few of her duties. No doubt it will be amusing for you to lay out my clothes, and hand me one or two things when I dress." "Of course, madam," Ruth said. And was soon initiated into mysteries she had never suspected. Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had reached the stage of social evolution where appearance is not an end, but a martyrdom. Never for a moment must she cease tempering the instrument of her self-torture. She was forever trying on and putting off, patting and smoothing, forcing and easing, peering into mirrors with hope, and retreating in disgust. She would hate herself bitterly, bitterly, at moments, but often at the eleventh hour, when she had worn herself to a frazzle, she would achieve an unexpected triumph by dint of a few slashes and a judicious diamond. Then she would look at herself in the glass, biting her still doubtful mouth-a Minerva in a beige cloche. She would breathe, "Quickly! Quickly! The side pieces." And Ruth would hand the little whisks of hair which the goddess used to wire beneath her helmet, for motoring, or luncheon. But Mrs Chalmers-Robinson was not all on the surface. Not by any means. Once she confided in her maid, "I am going to let you into a secret, Ruth, because you at least have shown me loyalty and affection. I am thinking of taking up Christian Science. I feel it will be so good for me." "If it is what a person needs," hesitated the slow maid. Once her mistress had dispatched her to the bay with a toy bucket to fetch sea-water for her pearls, because that was what the pearls needed. "Oh, what I _need__!" Mrs Chalmers-Robinson sighed. "I did at one time seriously consider going over to Rome. Because, as you realize, I have such an insatiable craving for beauty, splendour. But I had to give up all thought of it in the end. Quite frankly, I could not have faced my friends." "I believe," Ruth began. But Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had already left to keep an appointment, so she did not hear what her maid believed, and the latter was glad, because her struggling tongue could not have conveyed that infinite simplicity. Alone in the house-for the cook would retire into livery indolence, and the gardener had a down on somebody, and the chauffeur was almost never there, for driving the mistress about the town-the maid would attempt to express her belief, not in words, nor in the attitudes of orthodox worship, but in the surrender of herself to a state of passive adoration, in which she would allow her substantial body to dissolve into a loveliness of air and light, magnolia scent, and dove psalmody. Or, in the performance of her duties, polishing plate, scrubbing floors, mending the abandoned stockings, gathering the slithery dresses from where they had fallen, searching carpets for silverfish, and furs for moth, she could have been offering up the active essence of her being in unstinted praise. And had some left over for a further expression of faith to which she had not been led. Whenever the doorbell rang, she would search the faces of strangers to discover whether she would be required to testify. Always it seemed that some of her strength would be left over to give, for, willing though she was to sacrifice herself in any way to her mistress, the latter would never emerge from her own distraction to receive. So the intentions of the maid haunted the house. They lay rejected on the carpets of the empty rooms. Not always empty, of course. There were the luncheons, and the dinners, but preferably the luncheons, for there the wives were without their husbands, and their minds could move more nimbly divested of the weight: wives who had stupid husbands were in a position to be as clever as they wished, whereas stupid wives might now put their stupidity to its fullest, its most profitable use. It was the period when hostesses were discovering _cuisine__, and introducing to their tables _vol-au-vent__, _sole Véronique__, _beignets au fromage__ and _tournédos Lulu Wattier__, forcing their husbands into clubs, hotels, even railway stations, in their longing for the stench of corned beef. Mrs Chalmers-Robinson, in particular, was famous for her amusing luncheons, at which she would receive the wives of graziers-so safe-barristers, solicitors, bankers, doctors, the Navy-but never the Army-and, with discretion, the wives of storekeepers, some of whom, by that time, had become rich, useful, and therefore tolerable. Many of the ladies she entertained, the hostess hardly knew, and these she liked best of all. How she would glitter for the ones who had not yet dared venture on the Christian name. Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had been christened Madge, but developed into Jinny in the course of things. Those who were really in the know, those whom she _simply adored__, or with whom she shared some of the secrets, would refer to her as "Jinny Chalmers," while those whom she chose to hold at bay would see her in their mind's eye as "that old Ginny Robinson." And it was not true. Of course she would not deny that she took a drop of something if she happened to be feeling tired, but would drink it down quickly because she so loathed the taste, and later on, when her nerves demanded assistance, and Christian Science would not always work, she did cultivate the habit of standing a glass behind a vase. But before a luncheon, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson would invariably dazzle. She would come into the dining-room, to move the cutlery about on the table, and add two or three little Murano bowls filled with different brands of cigarettes. Even if she felt like frowning, she would not let herself. She might say, "How I wish I could sit down on my own to a nice, quiet grill, with you to wait on me, and tell me something interesting. But I must congratulate you, Ruth. You have everything looking perfect." Although it was at her own reflection that she looked, and touched just once-she would not allow herself more-touched her inexorable skin. Then, quickly, she would moisten her mouth until it shone, and widen her eyes as if she had just woken. Her eyes had remained so lovely, they were terrifying in the face. Such a blaze of blue. They should have given pleasure. Just then the bell would start ringing, and Ruth running, to admit the ladies who were arriving. The ladies would be exhausted, from all the committees they had sat on, charity balls at which they had danced, race meetings to which they had worn their most controversial clothes. They had been working so hard at everything they had barely strength left to hold a brandy cruster. The year Ruth Joyner started work at the Chalmers-Robinsons', the ladies were wearing monkey fur. When the girl first encountered that insinuating stuff, it made her go cold. The idea of monkeys! Then she heard it was amusing, and perhaps it was, the live fur of dead monkeys, that strayed down from hats, and into conversation, until forcibly ejected. In the drawing-room, the talk would be all of fur and people. Ladies sat stroking their dreamy wisps, while the smoke reached out and fingered, like the hands of monkeys. Before one lunch, which Ruth foyner had cause to remember, a lady told the company of some acquaintance common to them all who was dying of cancer. It seemed ill-timed. Several of the ladies withdrew inside their sad fur, others began knotting the fringes. One spilled her brandy cruster, and at least her immediate neighbours were able to assist in the mopping. Until the conversation could resume its trajectory of smoke, violet-scented, where for a moment there had been the stench of sick, drooping monkeys. Everyone felt far better in the dining-room, where Ruth, and an elderly woman called May, who came in when help was needed, were soon moving in their creaking white behind the chairs of monkey-ladies. Mrs Chalmers-Robinson kept her eye on everyone, while giving the impression she was eating. She could knit any sort of party together. She heard everything, and rumbles too. She whispered, "Another of the little soles, Ruth, for Mrs du Plessy. Ah, yes, Marion, they are too innocent to refuse!" Or, very, very soft: "Surely you have not forgotten, May, which is the left side?" But the wine had contented everyone. And already, again, there was a smoke, blurry, and blue, of released violets, it could have been. At the end, when a big swan in spun sugar was fetched in, the ladies clapped their rings together. It was so successful. Ruth herself was delighted with the cook's triumphant swan. She could not resist remarking to a lady as she passed behind, "It was the devil to make, you know. And has got a bomb inside of it." Which the visitor considered inexperienced, though comical. Dressed in polka dots, and altogether devoid of fur, the lady was of some importance, if no fashion. She was the daughter of an English lord, a fact which roused the respect of elegant women who might otherwise have neglected. Beside her sat a barrister's wife. They called her Magda. Magda was amusing, it seemed, though there were nicer souls who considered her coarse. It was certainly daring of the hostess to seat the barrister's wife beside the Honourable, but daring Jinny Chalmers had always been. After lunch Magda visibly eased some elastic part of her clothing, and began to light one of her cigars. A few of the ladies were thrilled to see. "These weeds have on many occasions almost led to my divorce," Magda confessed to her Honourable neighbour. "I hope you will decide, like my husband, to stick it out." She spoke in a decidedly deep voice, which vibrated through several of the ladies present, and thrilled almost as much as the cigar. But the Honourable threw up her head, and laughed. Early in life, in the absence of other distinguishing qualities, she had decided on good nature. The other ladies glanced at her skin, which was white and almost unprotected, whereas they themselves had shaded their faces, with orange, with mauve, even with green, not so much to impress one another, as to give them the courage to confront themselves. Now Magda, who had tossed off the dregs of her wine, and planted her elbows in the table, remarked, perhaps to the ash of her cigar, "Who's for stinking out the rabbits?" But very quickly turned to her Honourable neighbour, drawing her into a confidence, of which the latter humbly hoped she might be worthy. "Or should we say: monkeys?" Magda asked. But her strings so muted that the other ladies, however they strained, failed to hear. "Did you ever see,"-the barrister's wife was frowning now-"a bottomful of monkeys? That is to say, a cageful of blooming monkey bottoms?" Magda could not spit it out too hard. "In fur pants?" It was provoking that everyone but the distinguished visitor had missed it, especially when the latter threw back her head, in her most characteristic attitude of defence, and let out a noise so surprising that she herself was startled, by what, in fact, had issued out of memory, where as a little girl on a cold morning, she heard a gamekeeper deride his own performance over an easy bird. On intercepting that animal sound, some of the ladies looked at their hands, kinder ones thought to gibber. But the parlourmaid offered the important guest a dish of chocolates, seeing that she had begun to enjoy herself at last amongst the monkey-ladies. The Honourable Polka Dots accepted a chocolate with trembling fingers, and after rejecting the noisy foil, plunged the chocolate into her mouth, from which there trickled a trace of unsuspected liqueur, at one corner, over the srnear of lip-salve with which she had dared anoint herself. The daughter of the lord remained with Ruth Joyner, not because the guest at table was in any way connected with what came after in the drawing-room, rather as some inconsequential, yet in some way fateful, presence in a dream-Ruth did, indeed, dream about her once or twice-a stone figure, featureless, anonymous, stationed at a still unopened door. Mrs Chalmers-Robinson could not have been altogether pleased with the incident which occurred right at the end of her otherwise successful monkey-luncheon. Or she could have sensed the approach of some more detrimental episode. For she suddenly pushed back her chair, obliquely, and her throat turned stringy to announce, "Let us go into the drawing-room. I dare say some of you would like to make up a table for bridge after we have had our coffee." Magda was soon apologizing to her hostess, it sounded to the maid, as she managed that heavy silver tray, so could not give all her attention. But caught the drift afterwards, and it was something different. "But I am most terribly sorry, darling. Would not have mentioned in the circumstances. Multiple Projects certainly down the drain. Such a noise, practically everyone else has heard. Then, bang on top, comes Interstate Incorporated," The maid bore her tray in the dance of service, surging steadily, sometimes reversing. Her starch no longer crackled, but the tinkling coffee crystals scattered on the chased silver as the ladies helped themselves from an overflowing spoon. Under her complexion, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had turned noticeably pale. "Bags did not mention any of this," she said, "simply because he has not been here." Her confession was a doubtful weapon of defence. "Abandoned as well? But darling, I shall bring my nightie. To say nothing of my toothbrush. I have made shift in so many similar situations, I am almost the professional proxy." Sincerity made Magda blink, or else it was the brandy weighting her eyelids. Her skin was livery as toads. "Nothing is settled in a night!" Mrs Chalmers-Robinson bitterly laughed. "Some things are!" Magda blinked. The maid wove her dance. In her efforts to hear better, she forgot one or two of the steps, and bumped a lady in the small of her monkey fur. But was, in fact, hearing better. "Then we are ruined!" laughed Mrs Chalmers-Robinson. She made it sound like a picnic from which the Thermos had been forgotten. Magda swore she could kick herself. "Darling," she said, "you know I adore you. I shall pawn the cabuchon rubies that Harry gave. They have always sat on me, anyway, like bloody boils." "Coffee, madam?" asked Ruth Joyner of her mistress. But Mrs Chalmers-Robinson's attention was only half diverted. For the first time the maid realized the truth of what she had already known in theory: that a human being can hate a human being; and even though her mistress was looking through her, as if she had been a window, it began to break her. "No, thank you," Mrs Chalmers-Robinson answered whitely. Before she wilted from the waist downward, and was lying, washed-out, on her own ordinarily colourless carpet. In the natural confusion a Wedgwood coffee cup got broken. There was such a bashing and scratching of jewellery, tangling of sympathy and fur fringes, bumping and recoiling, bending and straightening, that even one or two of the guests felt faint and had to help themselves to something. After much advice and a hard slap, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson began to stir. She was actually smiling, but from a distance, it could have been the bottom of the sea. She sat up, holding the ruins of her hair. She continued smiling-she could run to a dimple in one corner-as though she had forgotten the season of enjoyment was over. She was saying, "I am so sorry. I have disgraced." But stopped as she realized the presence of the undertow that must prevent her returning to the surface. "Where," she asked, "where is Ruth?" Feeling the carpet, as if afraid her one hope of rescue was floating away from her. "I shall have to ask you all to go. So maddening." Her laughter was letting her down into a snigger. "But Ruth, where is _Ruth__?" After pushing a good deal, the maid reached her mistress, and began to pull her upright. It was not an elegant operation, but succeeded, finally, in a rush. The hostess was supported, and up the stairs, on the white pillar of her parlourmaid. At the top she would have liked to take something of a Napoleonic farewell of the dispersing guests, but the truth suddenly overcame her, and she was bending, and coughing against it, and stifling it with her handkerchief as the devoted servant bore her away. It was a terrible evening that Ruth had to remember. Never before had she seen her mistress stark naked, and the latter's flesh was grey. Anyone less compassionate might have recoiled from the sac of a slack, sick spider, slithering out of its disguise of silk. But the girl proceeded to pick up what had fallen, and afterwards, when it was Mrs Chalmers-Robinson propped in bed, could look full at her again. A good stiff brandy, and the prospect of a pity she considered her due, even if she paid it herself, had restored the mistress to the pink. She was dressed in pink, too. Pale. A very touching, classic gown, which stopped before it showed how much she had shrivelled. Nor had she forgotten to frizz out the sides of her hair beneath a bandeau embroidered with metal beads. "Whatever happens, Ruth," she said, "and I cannot tell you, cannot even guess, myself, the details of the situation, I cannot, _cannot__ give you up. That is, if you will stand by me in my trouble." The girl was very awkward, opening cupboards, and putting away. "Oh, madam, I am not the one to let anybody down!" She remembered the dead weight of her brother. Mrs Chalmers-Robinson was agreeably racked. She would have given anything to be able to stuff a chocolate into her mouth. Instead, she looked at the open wardrobe. Such light as succeeded in disentangling itself from the bead fringes of the lampshade made the empty dresses look tragic. "All my pretty things!" She began to blubber. Ruth Joyner was breathing hard. But could bear worse blows, if it would help any. "Freshen up my glass, will you?" the mistress begged. "With just a dash of brandy. What will you think of me? Oh, dear, but I am not like this! It is the prospect of losing just the little personal things. Because, when it comes to breaking point, men are quite, quite merciless." This was the first time Ruth had experienced the breath of bankruptcy. She was not to know that Mrs Chalmers-Robinson would always discover some "pretty thing" to help her make an appearance in those of the approved places where she would still be allowed to sign. There are always ways and means of circumventing a reality which has ceased to be real. Jinny Chalmers was something like the mistress of a dog who salts away biscuits for her pet against a rainy day, down loose covers, and in the least expected corners, except that in the case of Jinny Chalmers she was both the mistress and the dog. Her maid was to come across something at a future date, in the toe of an old pink satin slipper. A dutiful girl, she would have to tell. "Oh, yes," Mrs Chalmers-Robinson would answer, but very slowly, thoughtfully. "That is a diamond. Rather a good one, too." And she would take it, and put it somewhere else, almost as if it did not exist. But for the moment, Ruth Joyner remained unaware that tragedy can be stuffed with sawdust. She said, "Hold hard on the brandy, m'mm, and I will bring you a nice hot drink." She even said, "Every cloud has a silver lining." She would have loved an old, burst-open sofa, because that happened to be her nature. She was running upstairs and down, with hot-water bottles and things. Until she heard the key. Mr Chalmers-Robinson let himself in round about ten o'clock. Ruth said, "She is taking it very badly, sir." He laughed. She noticed on this occasion the network of little veins on either cheek. He laughed. He said, "I bet she is!" But walked tired. He was still very well pressed, though. His cuff links glittered on the half-lit stairs. "Something has given me a stomach-ache," he said. Forgetful of the fact that he was addressing a maid. He could have been drunk, she thought. She wondered what they might have talked about if they had been walking together along the gritty paths of the Botanical Gardens, under banana leaves. Coming and going as she had to be-it occurred to her, for instance, that he might decide to stay the night, and went to turn down the bed he used in the dressing-room-she could not help but overhear a certain amount on landings. She was also, to tell the truth, a little bit inquisitive. Though she did not listen, exactly. It simply came out from behind doors which made a halfhearted attempt at discretion. Bags Chalmers-Robinson was telling his wife what had happened, or as much of it as was fit to share. Ruth Joyner imagined how her mistress's brows had darkened under the bead-embroidered flesh bandeau. Could you wonder? "It was after the merger," he was saying. Oh, she said, sarcastic, she had always thought one sat back and breathed after a merger, she who was no financial genius. He replied that she was just about the sourest thing he knew. "But the merger!" she insisted. "Let us keep to the painful point!" How he laughed. He said she was the most unholy bitch. "I was always gentle as a girl," she said, "but simply made the mistake of marriage." "With all its perks!" he suggested. He was helping himself, it sounded, from a bottle. "Which disappear overnight," she said. The mattress was groaning on which she lay, or threw herself into another position. The maid knew how her mistress could whip the sheets around her at a certain stage in a discussion. "Look, Jinny," he said, "if only you give me your assistance, we can manage this situation as we have the others." "I!" She laughed. "Well! It positively staggers me to hear there are uses to which I can be put!" "You are an intelligent woman." She was laughing very short laughs. "If you hate your husband, no doubt it is because he is a stupid beggar who doesn't deserve much more." There was a pause then, in which there was no means of telling who was playing the next card. The maid did not hear her mistress's husband go, because she began to yawn, and sag, and crept away finally. Somewhere in her sleep she heard, perhaps, the front-door knocker clap, and in the morning she found that Mr Chalmers-Robinson was no longer there; nor had he slept in the bed she had prepared for him. Mrs Chalmers-Robinson was particularly funny and dreamy over a cup of early tea. She had frizzed out her hair in some different way, too. She said, "You will not understand, Ruth-you are too good-how other people are forced to behave contrary to their natures." "I don't know about that," the maid agreed, but wondered. Then the mistress suddenly stroked the girl's hand, almost imperceptibly, almost unconsciously, it seemed, until the latter pulled it away. Both were momentarily embarrassed, but forgot that it had happened. On a later occasion, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson did remark, "I think I am only happy, Ruth, with you." But the girl was busy with something. Not long afterwards, a new man brought the ice. He clattered down the back steps, on a morning washed by early rain, though not so clean that it did not smell of lantana and midnight cats. "Good day there!" said the new man. "Where's a bloke expected to put it?" Ethel, who was always cranky early, and particularly on days when she was expected to dish up something hot for lunch, did not look up, but said, "Show him, will you?" "Yes," said Ruth. "The kitchen chest is just through here. In the larder. Then there's a second one, along the passage, beside the pantry. You'll have to mind the step, though." The man was crossing the girls' hall, where Ethel sat with a cup of tea, studying the social page. From the man's hands hung steel claws, weighted with double blocks of ice. It looked like rain was frozen in it. Then he had to go and drop one of the big blocks. How it bumped on the brown lino, and lumps of ice shooting off, into corners. Ethel was ropeable, while Ruth tried to calm her down. "It's all right, Ethel. I'll get the pan, and clean it up in two shakes." The man was already groping after the bigger of the broken bits. His hands were rather pinched and green from handling so much ice. But he did not seem to worry about his clumsiness. "Good job we missed the cook's toe!" he joked. But Ethel did not take it good at all. "Oh, get on with it!" she said, hitting the paper she was reading, without looking up. Ruth was glad to lead the man to the pantry ice-chest. He had one of those long, tanned faces, too thin; it made her think of used pennies. He was rather tall and big, with hollow-looking eyes. He was wearing a greenish old digger coat, from which one of the buttons was hanging, and she would have liked to sew it on. "That is it," she said, closing the lid of the chest. "And double on Saturdays." "If I stay the course till Saturday," he said. "But you've only begun, haven't you?" "That don't mean I'm all that shook on the job," he said. "Ice!" "Oh," she said. "No." They were crossing the girls' dining-room, where already there were pools of water from all those pieces of half-melted ice. "No," she repeated. "But if it is you that comes." Then she thought she would have a look at his face, just once more, although it was a kind of face that made her shy. What it told her was so different from all she knew of herself; it was the difference between a knife and butter. But she would have gone on looking at the man's face, if he had not been in it. In her mind's eye, she saw him without his hat. She liked, she thought, black hair on men. "Gunna rain," said the iceman. "Yes," she said, "it looks like that." Looking at the sky as though she had just discovered it was there. Still, you had to show an interest. "Yes," he said. "It's a funny old weather." She agreed that it was. "You never know, do you?" she said. Then he jerked his head at her. She almost overbalanced from the step to watch the new iceman go, the rotten stitches giving in the seams of his old overcoat. "I thought you was going to do something about all this nasty mess," the cook complained. "Yes," said the parlourmaid. "I'll get the pan." "A cloth and a bucket," said the cook, "is what you'll need by now." That evening as she waited for the mistress to finish powdering herself, Ruth Joyner announced to the dressing-table mirror, "There was a new iceman called today." "But Ruth, when I expect to be _stimulated__!" Mrs Chalmers-Robinson protested. Because she could not have felt flatter. She had a headache, too. "I mean," she said, and frowned, "I should like to be taken out of myself." She would have liked to descend a flight of stairs, in some responsive model, of lamé, in the circumstances, and the faint play of ostrich feathers on her bare arms. Her legs were still exceptional; it was her arms that caused her anxiety. "Tell me something beautiful. Or extraordinary. Even disastrous." Mrs Chalmers-Robinson sighed. She did also hope suddenly that she had not hurt the feelings of her dull maid, for whom she had about as much affection as she would ever be capable of giving. Ruth thought she would not say any more. But smiled. She remembered as much as she had seen of the iceman's rather strong neck above the collar of the greenish overcoat. If she did not dwell on that image, it was because her upbringing suggested it might not be permissible. Though it continued to flicker forth. The following morning, as the mistress's spirits had not improved, the maid was sent to the chemist at the corner. When she returned, and had handed over the little packet, she could not resist looking in the pantry chest. The fresh ice was already in it, double for Saturday. So there she was, herself imprisoned in the mass of two solid days, from which no one would have heard her, even if she had been able to call. Once she went and stood for company beside the cook, who had been very quiet all these days, and was now stirring mysteriously at a bowl. "What is that?" the parlourmaid asked, though she did not particularly want to know. "That is what they call a _liayzong__," Ethel answered, with a cold pride that obviously would not explain further. On Sunday evening Ruth went to service, and felt sad, and got soggy in the nose and did not care to sing the hymns, and lost a glove, and came away. On Monday she clattered early downstairs, in fresh starch, because she had heard, she thought. "How are we?" the iceman called. "It's still you, then," she said. "How me?" "Thought you was fed up." He laughed. "I am always fed up." "Go on!" She was incredulous. Then she noticed. She said, "The button fell off that I saw was going to." "What odds!" he said. "A bloody button!" "I could of sewed it on, easy," she said. But he dumped the ice in the chest, and left. Most days now, she coincided with the iceman, and it was not all by trying; it seemed to happen naturally. Once he showed her a letter from a mate who was starting a carrying business between the city and the near country; and would he come in on it? The name, she discovered, was Mr T. Godbold, from the address on the envelope. Once he asked, "Got a free Sunday, eh? What about takin' a ride on the ferry?" She wore her new hat, a big, rather bulbous velour, of which she had been proud, but which was unfashionable, she realized almost at once. They bought some oranges, and sucked them in the sun, down to the skins, on a little stony promontory, above a green bay. Few houses had been built yet in that quarter, and it seemed that she had never been farther from all else in her closeness to one person. It was not wrong, though; only natural. So she half closed her eyes to the sunlight, and allowed his presence to lap against her. In the course of conversation, when they had thrown aside the orange skins, of which the smell was going to persist for days, she realized he was saying, "I never had much to do with girls like you. You are not my type, you know." "What is your type?" she asked, looking in the mouth of her handbag, of which the plating had begun to reveal the true metal. "Something flasher," Tom Godbold admitted. "Perhaps I could become that," she said. How he laughed. And his arched throat hurt her. "I never had a girl like you!" he laughed. "I am not your girl," she corrected, looking heavy at the water. He thought he had cottoned on to her game. "You're a quiet one, Ruth," he said. Laying his hand, which she already knew intimately from looking at it, along her serge thigh. But she suddenly sat up, overwhelmed by the distance she was compelled to keep between herself and some human beings. "You are not religious?" he asked. Now she wished she had been alone also in fact. "I don't know what you would call religious," she said. "I don't know what other people are." Whereupon he was silent. Fortunately. She could not have borne his remarks touching that most secret part of her. He began throwing stones at the sea, but looking sideways, or so it felt, at her hot and prickly serge costume. Now, indeed, he did wonder why he had tagged along with this lump of a girl. Even had she been willing, it was never worth the risk of putting a loaf in some slow oven on a Sunday afternoon. So that he got resentful in the end. He remarked, "We're gunna miss that ferry." "Yes, " she agreed. He continued to sit, and frown. He put his arms round his knees, and was rocking himself on his behind, quite regardless of her, she saw. She waited, calmer. While the girl watched, it was the man who became the victim of those unspecified threats which the seconds can conjure out of their gulf. Although he was screwing up his eyes, ostensibly to resist fragmentation along with the brittle sunlight and the coruscating water, what he feared more was to melt in the darkness of his own skull, to drift like a green flare across the no-man's-land of memory. This suddenly shrivelled man gave the girl the courage to say, "You are a funny one. You was talking about missing the boat." Nor could she resist dusting his back. It was her most natural gesture. "Dirty old dust and needles!" she mumbled to herself. He shook her off then, and jumped up, though her touch remained. He had always shivered at what was gentlest. Many of his own thoughts made him wince, and it was the simplest of them that fingered most unmercifully: touching a scab, dusting down, pointing, with the bread-dough still caked round arthritic joints. But he became quite cheerful as they walked, and once or twice he took her by the arm, to show her something that attracted his attention, a yacht, or a bird, or the limbs of some tortured tree. Several times he looked into her face, or it could have been into his own more peaceful thoughts. In any case, the lines of his face had eased out. And in her pleasure, she confessed, "I could come out again, Tom. If you will ask me. Will you?" He was caught there. She was too simple. So he had to say yes. Even though he left her in no doubt how she must interpret it. Curiously, though, she did not feel unhappy. She was smiling at the sun, the strength of which had grown bearable by now. She could still smell the smell of oranges. It was the relentless procession of mornings that killed hope, and made for moodiness. And the slam of the lid on the ice-chest. For sometimes the girl would not go out to receive the iceman. "That iceman is a real beast," the cook had to comment once. The parlourmaid did not answer. "You are feeling off colour, Ruth," said the mistress. She was lying on a sofa, reading, and the maid had brought her her coffee as usual on the little Georgian salver. "I hope there is nothing really wrong?" The girl made a face. "I am no different, " she said. But had developed an ugly spot on her chin. "I can see you ought to take up Science," said the mistress. "It is wonderful; you don't know how consoling." The opinions and enthusiasms of those around her would slide off the girl's downcast eyelids. She liked people to have their ideas, though. She would smile gently, as if to encourage those necessities of their complicated minds. "I am not educated," she replied on this occasion. "Understanding is all that is necessary," Mrs Chalmers-Robinson replied. "And it does not always come with education. Quite the contrary, in fact." But Ruth continued listless. Then the mistress had to say, "I am going to give you something. You must not be offended." She took her into the bathroom, and gave her a little flask, in which, she explained, was a preparation of gin and camphor, excellent against pimples. "One simply rubs it into the place. Rather hard," she advised. "I find it infallible." Because, really, Ruth's ugly spot was getting on her nerves. "Of course, I know you will think, in my case, at least: Science should do it." Here Mrs Chalmers-Robinson sighed. "But when you have reached my age, you will have discovered that every little helps." Ruth took the bottle, but she did not think it helped. Although her mistress assured her it was having the desired result. Certainly, one morning very soon after, the girl's skin was suddenly clear and alive. She began to sing in that rather trembly mezzo which Mrs Chalmers-Robinson so deplored. She sang a hymn about redemption. "Do you feel happy when you sing those hymns?" her mistress was compelled to ask. "Oh, yes, I am _happy__!" Ruth replied, and was extra careful with the Brasso. She said that that Sunday she was going to the beach at Bondi with her friend. Mrs Chalmers-Robinson's bracelets rustled. "I am glad you have a friend," she said. "Is she also in domestic service?" The girl folded the rag with which she was polishing the door-knobs. "No," she said. "That is, I got friendly, recently, with the man that brings the ice," she said. "Oh," said Mrs Chalmers-Robinson. She had composed her mouth into a line. On Sunday when her maid was all arrayed, the mistress appeared somewhat feverish, her eyes more brilliant than ever before. She had done her mouth. There it was, blooming like a big crimson flower, with a little, careful, mauve line, apparently to keep it within bounds. "Enjoy yourself, Ruth!" she called, brave and bright. Before she settled down to Science. "God is incorporeal," she read, "divine, supreme, infinite, Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love." Mrs Chalmers-Robinson read and studied, to transform "hard, unloving thoughts," and become a "new creature." Ruth waited on the corner near the park. She waited, and her sensible heels no longer gave her adequate support. On Sundays the few people in the street always belonged to someone. They were marching towards teas in homes similar to their own, or to join hands upon the sand. Whenever people passed her, the waiting girl would look at her watch, to show that she, too, was wanted. When Tom came at last-he had been held up by meeting a couple of blokes-it was quite late, but she was that glad; her face was immediately repaired by happiness. Oh, no, she had not had to wait all that long. By the time they reached the beach at Bondi, the light was already in its decline. They ate some sausages and chips in a refreshment room. Tom was a bit beery, she thought. "I near as anything didn't come this evening," he confessed. "I nearly stayed and got full. Those coves I met wanted me to. They'd stocked up with grog enough for a month of Sundays." "Then it was a pity you had asked me to come," she said, but flat, with no trace of bitterness or censure. "I sort of felt there was no way out." "It would have been better not to come." "Oh, I wanted to," he said. And again, softer, after a pause: "I wanted to." "I wish you would always tell me the truth," 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 spat out something that might have been a piece of peanut-shell, from out of the white mess on his tongue. And continued to look, through, and beyond strangers. So the girl had gone on her way, at first taking such precautions of compassion and respect as she might have adopted for sleepers or the dead. And then, suddenly, there was Ruth in her ugly hat, standing before her mistress in the drawing-room. Her box had been carried off that morning. The ceremony would take place early in the afternoon. It was evident that for the occasion of farewell Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had decided to appear exquisite, and to send her servant off, not, perhaps, with a handsome cheque, but at least with a charming memory. She was firm in her refusal to attend the service in the dreary little church. Weddings depressed her, even when done in satin. But she would lavish on the stolid bride a sentimental, though tasteful blessing, for which she had got herself up in rather a pretty informal dress. She had made herself smell lovely, Ruth would have to recall. As she received her maid from the Louis Quinze _fauteuil__, assurance, or was it indifference, seemed to have allowed her skin to fall back into place. Even by the frank light of noon, the parting in her hair was flawless-the whitest, the straightest, the most determined. And as for her eyes, people would try to describe that radiance of blue, long after they had forgotten the details of Jinny Chalmers's décor, her bankruptcy, divorce, and final illness. Now she said, trailing a white hand, "I expect you are the tiniest bit excited." And laughed with the lilt she had picked up early on from an English actress who had toured the country. Ruth giggled. She was grateful for so much attention, but embarrassed by some new stays, which were stiff and tight. "I won't be sorry when it is over," she had to answer, truthfully. "Oh, don't hurry it! Don't!" Mrs Chalmers-Robinson pleaded. "It will be over soon enough." Then she moistened her lips, and remarked, "You girls, the numbers of you who have been married from this house! Falling over one another! Still, it is supposed to be the natural thing to do." In certain circles, this would have been considered deli-ciously comic. Yet Ruth could not help but remember sad things. She remembered stepping back onto a border of mignonette, along the brick path in front of her father's house, while trying to disguise her misery, and how this had risen in her nose, sweeter, and more intolerable, as people said good-bye with handkerchiefs, to wave, and cry into. "Oh, madam," the words began to tumble clumsily, "I hope it will be all right. I hope this Violet will look after things." "She has an astigmatism," Mrs Chalmers-Robinson revealed with gloom. "The milk is on the ice. And bread in the bin. If Ethel is not back. And you want to cut yourself a sandwich." If, indeed. At last the nails were driven. Ruth realized she was biting on a mouthful of hair. It became untidy, always, without her cap. Mrs Chalmers-Robinson took the stiffly gloved hands in both her cajoling, softer ones. "Good-bye, Ruth," she said. "Do not let us prolong last moments; they can become ridiculous." For that reason, and because emotion disarranges the face, she did not kiss her departing maid. But might have, she felt, if circumstances had been a little different. "Yes," said Ruth. "They will be expecting me. Yes. I had better go now." Her smile was that stupid, she knew, but something at least to hang on to. So it stuck, at the cost of strain. She listened to her shoes squeak, one after the other, as she crossed the parquet. She had polished it the day before, till her thoughts, almost, were reflected in it. A fireworks of light, brocade and crystal cascaded at the last moment on her head, just before she closed the door in the way she had been taught to close it, on leaving drawing-rooms. So Ruth Joyner left, and was married that afternoon, and went to live in a shed, temporary like, at Sarsaparilla, and began to bear children, and take in washing. And praised God. For was not the simplest act explicit, unalterable, even glorious in the light of Him?