The Song
By MAY EDGINTON
(From Lloyd's Story Magazine)
1922
Charlie had no true vice in him. All the same, a man may be overtaxed, over-harassed, over-routined, over-driven, over-pricked, over-preached and over-starved right up to the edge; and then the fascination of the big space below may easily pull him over.
But his wife's uncle's assertion that he must always, inwardly, have been naturally wild and bad, was as wrong as such assertions usually are, for he was no more truly vicious than his youngest baby was.
On the warm evening when he came home on that fateful autumn day, Charlie had been pushed, in the course of years, right up to the edge, and was looking into the abyss, though he was hardly aware of it, so well had he been disciplined. He emerged from a third-class carriage of the usual train without an evening paper because his wife had shown him the decency of cutting down small personal expenses, and next morning's papers would have the same news in anyway; he walked home up the suburban road for the four thousandth five hundredth and fiftieth time; entered quietly not to disturb the baby; rubbed his boots on the mat; answered his wife brightly and manfully; washed his hands in cold water--the hot water being saved for the baby's bath and the washing-up in the evenings--and sat down to about the four thousandth five hundredth and fiftieth cold supper.
His wife said she was tired and seemed proud of it.
"But never mind," she said, "one must expect to be tired." He went on eating without verbally questioning her; it was an assertion to which she always held firmly. But in his soul something stirred vaguely, as if mutinous currents fretted there.
"I have been thinking," she said, "that you really ought not to buy that new suit you were considering if Maud is to go to a better school next term. I have been looking over your pepper-and-salt, and there are those people who turn suits like new. You can have that done."
"But----" he murmured.
"We ought not to think of ourselves," she added.
"I never have," said Charlie in rather a low voice.
"We ought to give a little subscription to the Parish Magazine," she continued. "The Vicar is calling round for extra subscriptions."
Charlie nodded. He was wishing he knew the football results in the evening paper.
His wife served a rice shape. She doled out jam with a careful hand and a measuring eye. "We ought to see about the garden gate," she said.
"I'll mend it on Saturday," Charlie replied.
"I was thinking," she said presently, "that we ought to ask Uncle Henry and Aunt round soon. They will be expecting it."
Charlie put his spoon and fork together, hesitated and then replied slowly: "Life is nothing but 'ought.' 'Ought' to do this: 'Ought' to do that."
His wife looked at him, astonished. He could see that she was grieved--or rather, aggrieved--at his glimmer of anarchy.
"Of course," she explained at last. "People can't have what they like. There's one's duty to do. Life isn't for enjoyment, Charlie. It's given to us ... it is given to us...."
As she paused to crystallise an idea, Charlie cut in.
"Yes," he said, "it is given to us.... What for?"
He leaned his head on his hand. He was not looking at her. He was looking at the cloth, weaving patterns upon it. And with this question something of boyhood came upon him again, and he weaved visions upon the cloth.
"To do one's duty in," she replied gently, but rebukingly.
Charlie did not know the classic phrase, "Cui bono." He merely repeated: "What for?"
After supper he helped her to wash up, for the daily help left early in the afternoon; and then he asked her, idle as he knew the question to be, if she would like to come for a walk--just a short walk up the road.
She shook her head. "I ought not to leave the children."
"They're in bed," he argued, "and Maud's big enough to look after the others for half-an- hour. Maud's twelve."
She shook her head. "I ought not to leave the house."
"But," he began slowly.
"I am not the kind of woman who leaves her house and children in the evenings," she said gently, but finally.
Charlie took his hat. He turned it round and round in his hands, pinching the crown in, and punching it out. He had a curious, almost uncontrollable wish to cry. For a moment it was terrible. Before it was over, she was speaking again.
"You ought not to mess your hats about like that; they don't last half as long." Charlie went out.
He knew other men who were as puzzled about life as himself, but mostly they were of cruder stuff, and if things at home went beyond their bearing they flung out of their houses, swearing, and went to play a hundred up at the local club. Then they were philosophers again. But for Charlie this evening there was no philosophy big enough, for he was looking, though he did not know it, over the edge of that awful, but enchanting abyss. Its depths were obscured by rolling clouds of mist, and it was only this mist which he now saw, terrifying and confusing him. He was a little man, and knew it. He was a poor man, and knew it. He was a weary man, and knew it. He hated his wife, and knew it. He hated his children--whom she had made like herself, prim, peeking and childishly censorious--and knew it.
He had not meant it to be like this at all.
When he got married she was the starched daughter of starched parents from a starched small house--like the one he came from--but she was young, and her figure was pliant, and her hair curled rather sweetly.
He had dreamed of happy days, cosy days with laughter; little treats together--Soho restaurants, Richmond Park, something colourful, something for which he had vaguely and secretly longed