The scent of the cooking of bacon filled the house. Siegmund heard his
second daughter, Marjory, aged nine, talking to Vera, who occupied the
same room with her. The child was evidently questioning, and the elder
girl answered briefly. There was a lull in the household noises, broken
suddenly by Marjory, shouting from the top of the stairs: 'Mam!' She wailed. 'Mam!' Still Beatrice did not hear her. 'Mam! Mamma!'
Beatrice was in the scullery. 'Mamma-a!' The child was getting
impatient. She lifted her voice and shouted: 'Mam? Mamma!' Still no
answer. 'Mam-mee-e!' she squealed.
Siegmund could hardly contain himself.
'Why don't you go down and ask?' Vera called crossly from the bedroom.
And at the same moment Beatrice answered, also crossly: 'What do you
want?' 'Where's my stockings?' cried the child at the top of her voice.
'Why do you ask me? Are they down here?' replied her mother. 'What are
you shouting for?' The child plodded downstairs. Directly she returned, and as she passed
into Vera's room, she grumbled: 'And now they're not mended.' Siegmund heard a sound that made his heart beat. It was the crackling of
the sides of the crib, as Gwen, his little girl of five, climbed out.
She was silent for a space. He imagined her sitting on the white rug and
pulling on her stockings. Then there came the quick little thud of her
feet as she went downstairs.
'Mam,' Siegmund heard her say as she went down the hall, 'has dad come?' The answer and the child's further talk were lost in the distance of the
kitchen. The small, anxious question, and the quick thudding of Gwen's
feet, made Siegmund lie still with torture. He wanted to hear no more.
He lay shrinking within himself. It seemed that his soul was sensitive
to madness. He felt that he could not, come what might, get up and
meet them all.
The front door banged, and he heard Frank's hasty call: 'Good-bye!'
Evidently the lad was in an ill-humour. Siegmund listened for the sound
of the train; it seemed an age; the boy would catch it. Then the water
from the wash-hand bowl in the bathroom ran loudly out. That, he
suggested, was Vera, who was evidently not going up to town. At the
thought of this, Siegmund almost hated her. He listened for her to go
downstairs. It was nine o'clock.
The footsteps of Beatrice came upstairs. She put something down in the
bathroom--his hot water. Siegmund listened intently for her to come to
his door. Would she speak? She approached hurriedly, knocked, and
waited. Siegmund, startled, for the moment, could not answer. She
knocked loudly.