Payment Deferred · Chapter 9 (2/2)

And the packing, and the preparation! Winnie helped her mother sort out her astonishing wardrobe. In the tiny cupboards of the bedroom upstairs, where the gilt cupids climbed eternally about the big bed, there were heaps of the most assorted clothes it was possible to conceive. Mingled with the frightfully expensive costumes, there were old rags dating back from the dark ages before the rise of the franc. Mrs. Marble, apparently, wore indifferently the pastel shade silk underclothes bought in Bond Street and the wool and cotton mixture garments, neither decorative nor useful, which she had had before the arrival of these others. The explanation was really simple. Never in her life before had Mrs. Marble had any clothes to give away; they were all worn to rags long before she could spare them. She could not get into the habit of disposing of her older wardrobe. In fact, it is much to be doubted whether she had ever contemplated giving away garments in which there still remained six months’ wear, according to earlier standards of economy. And all the clothes, worn and unworn, were badly looked after, unbrushed and hung on hooks without hangers.

Even one term at a boarding-school had taught Winnie to do better than this, and for two hectic days she took her mother’s clothes in hand, sorting and folding, ruthlessly relegating some to the rag-basket, wondering over others. It was beyond her powers to imagine her mother in underclothing of orange silk or eau de nile; it was almost beyond it to imagine her well dressed at all, but Winnie contrived to arrange that her mother looked more like the mothers whom she had seen at the school occasionally. Mrs. Marble was almost tearfully grateful.

“I don’t seem to have time to do all this,” she said. “And⁠—and⁠—it doesn’t seem worth it, sometimes. Your father is a very busy man, you know, dear.”

The cupids that climbed about the big Empire bed had climbed in vain for months now, that was what Mrs. Marble implied, although she would never have dreamed of hinting as much to her daughter.

And in all this rush to put Mrs. Marble’s wardrobe in order Winnie herself was not forgotten. She had to have new frocks as well, for her stay at the Grand Pavilion Hotel, and Winnie’s taste, which was allowed almost complete freedom, was at its best a little juvenile. Mrs. Marble was a shade frightened when she saw some of the things Winnie had chosen, but it was beyond her to protest. She had only the haziest idea as to what was the correct wear for a girl of fifteen at the Grand Pavilion Hotel.

“There’s a lot in being bobbed,” said Winnie to herself in the glass, attentively studying her features while her mother was safely out of the way. “No one can ever really tell how old you are. If I weren’t bobbed, I wouldn’t have my hair up, and then anyone could tell. But as it is, with my new frocks and everything, I think I’ll have rather a nice time this holiday. And there’ll be something to tell them about when I get back to school.”

Winnie and her mother were pleasantly excited when the cab came to take them to Victoria. John was not with them. He had decided to go on alone on the Giant Twin, despite Winnie’s faint protest that a motor-bicycle was highly vulgar.

Mr. Marble, too, was pleasantly excited when he waved goodbye to them. For reasons of his own he was glad to know that his daughter was out of the way. He had felt uncomfortable in her presence. That three months, three months of good food and of close intimacy with people who never had the slightest difficulty with their aitches, had caused her to grow away from her family at a surprising rate. Mr. Marble was not even comfortable with his daughter when he was drunk. And every moment he feared lest she should demand that they should move to a bigger and better house, or failing that, that they should have the present house redecorated and arranged as nearly as possible like the houses of the girls she had known at school. It was not the expense that Mr. Marble feared. Instead, he was thrown into agonies of terror at the thought of workmen nosing around his house, and of piles of ladders and boards heaped up in his backyard. The foot of a ladder might easily dig some inches deep into the soft soil of the barren flowerbed.

When he was sober, Mr. Marble had his suspicions, too, that his children were neither grateful for nor impressed by the benefit he had heaped upon them. He even suspected them of not admiring the mosaic table as much as they should have done. In a ferment of self-pity he realized that he was not getting full return for all his outlay. When he could blame it on to circumstances he did not mind so much; but there were a few aching moments, when the whisky had failed to bite as it should, when it was forced home on him that it was his fault. There were times when he could not visualize himself, as he usually could, as the triumphant criminal, surmounting all difficulties, overriding all obstacles, tearing success out of the very teeth of failure. Instead, there came moments when he saw himself in his true colours, as the cornered rat he was, struggling with the courage of desperation against the fate that would inevitably close upon him sooner or later. When these black periods came he would clutch hurriedly at his glass and drain it thirstily. Thank God, there was always whisky in exchange for his money⁠—and Marguerite Collins.