“I don’t know anything perfectly well, Mr. Danby; and I mistrust those who say they do.”

“Well, let us put it that there are rules of the game which must be observed, if society is to function at all.”

Desert smiled, too: “Oh! hang rules! Do it as a favour to me. I wrote the rotten book.”

No trace of struggle showed in Mr. Danby’s face; but his deep-set, close-together eyes shone a little.

“I should be only too glad, but it’s a matter—well, of conscience, if you like. I’m not prosecuting the man. He must leave—that’s all.”

Desert shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, good-bye!” and he went out.

On the mat was Michael in two minds.

“Well?”

“No go. The old blighter’s too just.”

Michael stivered his hair.

“Wait in my room five minutes while I let the poor beggar know, then I’ll come along.”

“No,” said Desert, “I’m going the other way.”

Not the fact that Wilfrid was going the other way—he almost always was—but something in the tone of his voice and the look on his face obsessed Michael’s imagination while he went downstairs to seek Bicket. Wilfrid was a rum chap—he went “dark” so suddenly!

In the nether regions he asked:

“Bicket gone?”

“No, sir, there he is.”

There he was, in his shabby overcoat, with his pale narrow face, and his disproportionately large eyes, and his sloping shoulders.

“Sorry, Bicket, Mr. Desert has been in, but it’s no go.”

“No, sir?”

“Keep your pecker up, you’ll get something.”

“I’m afryde not, sir. Well, I thank you very ‘eartily; and I thank Mr. Desert. Good-night, sir; and good-bye!”

Michael watched him down the corridor, saw him waver into the dusky street.

“Jolly!” he said, and laughed…

The natural suspicions of Michael and his senior partner that a tale was being pitched were not in fact justified. Neither the wife nor the pneumonia had been exaggerated; and wavering away in the direction of Blackfriars Bridge, Bicket thought not of his turpitude nor of how just Mr. Danby had been, but of what he should say to her. He should not, of course, tell her that he had been detected in stealing; he must say he had ‘got the sack for cheeking the foreman’; but what would she think of him for doing that, when everything as it were depended on his not cheeking the foreman? This was one of those melancholy cases of such affection that he had been coming to his work day after day feeling as if he had ‘left half his guts’ behind him in the room where she lay, and when at last the doctor said to him:

“She’ll get on now, but it’s left her very run down—you must feed her up,” his anxiety had hardened into a resolution to have no more. In the next three weeks he had ‘pinched’ eighteen ‘Copper Coins,’ including the five found in his overcoat. He had only ‘pitched on’ Mr. Desert’s book because it was ‘easy sold,’ and he was sorry now that he hadn’t pitched on some one else’s. Mr. Desert had been very decent. He stopped at the corner of the Strand, and went over his money. With the two pounds given him by Michael and his wages he had seventy-five shillings in the world, and going into the Stores he bought a meat jelly and a tin of Benger’s food that could be made with water. With pockets bulging he took a ‘bus, which dropped him at the corner of his little street on the Surrey side. His wife and he occupied the two ground floor rooms, at eight shillings a week, and he owed for three weeks. ‘Py that!’ he thought, ‘and have a roof until she’s well.’ It would help him over the news, too, to show her a receipt for the rent and some good food. How lucky they had been careful to have no baby! He sought the basement. His landlady was doing the week’s washing. She paused, in sheer surprise at such full and voluntary payment, and inquired after his wife.

“Doing nicely, thank you.”

“Well, I’m glad of that, it must be a relief to your mind.”

“It is,” said Bicket.

The landlady thought: ‘He’s a thread-paper—reminds me of a shrimp before you bile it, with those eyes.’

“Here’s your receipt, and thank you. Sorry to ‘ave seemed nervous about it, but times are ‘ard.”

“They are,” said Bicket. “So long!”

With the receipt and the meat jelly in his left hand, he opened the door of his front room.

His wife was sitting before a very little fire. Her bobbed black hair, crinkly towards the ends, had grown during her illness; it shook when she turned her head and smiled. To Bicket—not for the first time—that smile seemed queer, ‘pathetic-like,’ mysterious—as if she saw things that one didn’t see oneself. Her name was Victorine, and he said: “Well, Vic.? This jelly’s a bit of all right, and I’ve pyde the rent.” He sat on the arm of the chair and she put her hand on his knee—her thin arm emerging blue-white from the dark dressing-gown.

“Well, Tony?”

Her face—thin and pale with those large dark eyes and beautifully formed eyebrows—was one that “looked at you from somewhere; and when it looked at you—well! it got you right inside!”

It got him now and he said: “How’ve you been breathin’?”

“All right—much better. I’ll soon be out now.”

Bicket twisted himself round and joined his lips to hers. The kiss lasted some time, because all the feelings which he had not been able to express during the past three weeks to her or to anybody, got into it. He sat up again, “sort of exhausted,” staring at the fire, and said: “News isn’t bright—lost my job, Vic.”

“Oh! Tony! Why?”

Bicket swallowed.

“Fact is, things are slack, and they’re reducin’.”

There had surged into his mind the certainty that sooner than tell her the truth he would put his head under the gas!

“Oh! dear! What shall we do, then?”

Bicket’s voice hardened.

“Don’t you worry—I’ll get something”; and he whistled.

“But you liked that job.”

“Did I? I liked some o’ the fellers; but as for the job—why, what was it? Wrappin’ books up in a bysement all dy long. Let’s have something to eat and get to bed early—I feel as if I could sleep for a week, now I’m shut of it.”

Getting their supper ready with her help, he carefully did not look at her face for fear it might “get him agyne inside!” They had only been married a year, having made acquaintance on a tram, and Bicket often wondered what had made her take to him, eight years her senior and C3 during the war! And yet she must be fond of him, or she’d never look at him as she did.

“Sit down and try this jelly.”

He himself ate bread and margarine and drank cocoa, he seldom had any particular appetite.

“Shall I tell you what I’d like?” he said; “I’d like Central Austrylia. We had a book in there about it; they sy there’s quite a movement. I’d like some sun. I believe if we ‘ad sun we’d both be twice the size we are. I’d like to see colour in your cheeks, Vic.”

“How much does it cost to get out there?”

“A lot more than we can ly hands on, that’s the trouble. But I’ve been thinkin’. England’s about done. There’s too many like me.”

“No,” said Victorine; “there aren’t enough.”

Bicket looked at her face, then quickly at his plate.

“What myde you take a fancy to me?”

“Because you don’t think first of yourself, that’s why.”

“Used to before I knew you. But I’d do anything for you, Vic.”

“Have some of this jelly, then, it’s awful good.”

Bicket shook his head.

“If we could wyke up in Central Austrylia,” he said. “But there’s only one thing certain, we’ll wyke up in this blighted little room. Never mind, I’ll get a job and earn the money yet.”

“Could we win it on a race?”

“Well, I’ve only got forty-seven bob all told, and if we lose it, where’ll you be? You’ve got to feed up, you know. No, I must get a job.”

“They’ll give you a good recommend, won’t they?”

Bicket rose and stacked his plate and cup.

“They would, but that job’s off—overstocked.”