the men towards action, with:
‘All very fine, but what do we do first? You can’t sit with your hands folded and expect a judge to come to you.’
Mr Brodribb involuntarily consulted Arthur with his eyes.
‘Restitution of conjugal rights,’ said Arthur, responding. ‘That’s the first step.’ Mr Brodribb cleared his throat.
‘No question of that, old man. Restitution, I mean. She’s never been deprived.’
‘Well, you’ve got to deprive her,’ said Arthur.
Mr Brodribb looked helplessly about the comfortable room; at the ferns he had tended all the winter long; at the black marble clock, shaped like a tomb, that the firm had given him on his marriage; finally, at his wife.
‘You don’t have to do it for long. You go to some nice boarding-house—there’s a little place in north London I could give you the address of, a private hotel—well, you go off, and you write Cissie a letter, saying you’re gone for good. Then off she goes to a solicitor and shows him the letter, and he sues you.’
‘What for?’
‘Restitution. You don’t answer him. He sues you two or three times more—’
‘Who’s going to pay for all this?’
Arthur waved the question from him.
‘And that’s all, as far as that goes.’ He coughed, and went on delicately: ‘There’s one or two other things. But you’d better get a solicitor to put you up to all the dodges.’
Mrs Brodribb, with healthy feminine contempt of delicacy, said:
‘Yes, the infidelity; what about that? I don’t know that I like the idea of Henry going off with goodness knows who.’
‘I think you’ll find,’ Mr Brodribb ventured at last, ‘that it’s only a form.’
‘That’s it,’ Arthur agreed, relieved; ‘that’s all. A form.’
Mrs Brodribb, with feminine bad taste, laughed.
‘Fancy, Henry!’ said she.
They separated, and Mr Brodribb, making his way to the spare bedroom, felt that he had taken that night another step towards freedom. Next morning, at breakfast, it was arranged that he should leave home on the following Monday.
‘It’s always nicer,’ said Mrs Brodribb, ‘to start the week clear.’
The intervening days went smoothly by. Mr Brodribb secured a room in the little place in north London at a reasonable figure. During the Friday lunch hour he was measured for a new suit. At home Mrs Brodribb passed his underclothing in review, darned, packed, and began to look younger. With the near prospect of escape, home became tolerable to both. They were considerate and friendly.
On Sunday night, as he knelt by his suitcase, affixing the label, Mrs Brodribb entered the spare room. In her right hand was a brown paper parcel. She held it out timidly and said:
‘Got any room in your case?’
‘Plenty,’ said Mr Brodribb. ‘Hello, what’s this?’
‘Hot water bottle,’ his wife answered. ‘Extra strong, guaranteed. You know what your feet are, and I thought, perhaps now—’
Mr Brodribb unwrapped the parcel, revealing the gift, whose outer cover appeared to be made of tiger skin. His wife went on, justifying her display of sentiment:
‘If it leaks any time in the next six months, Prosser’s’ll give you a new one. Only don’t let them fill it with boiling, whatever you do. If you fill it with boiling, they won’t guarantee.’
‘Right,’ said Mr Brodribb. ‘I’ll tell them. Thanks, Cis.’
He was touched, and uneasy. Still on his knees, he wrapped the bottle again in its paper and stowed it with care in a corner of the suitcase. When he lifted his head his wife was at the door.
‘All aboard,’ said Mr Brodribb, to lighten the tension. ‘You be off.’
He made a threatening gesture, in play. His wife lingered.
‘Is that place comfortable you’re going to?’ she asked.
‘Seems all right,’ said Mr Brodribb, ‘there’s a nice bit of garden at the back.’
‘Oh,’ said his wife. ‘Well, good-night.’
‘Good-night, Cis,’ Mr Brodribb responded. ‘I won’t forget about that hot bottle.’
Nor did he. On Monday evening in the boarding-house bedroom, his belongings strewn about him ready to be absorbed into drawers and cupboards as yet uncharted, Mr Brodribb paused to hand on his wife’s instructions to the housemaid, who, regarding the disorder with that sympathetic mockery which is the everyday attitude of woman to man, replied:
‘I know all about that. You leave it to me. I was filling bottles before you were born.’
Mr Brodribb, who had guessed her age at about twenty-five, was flattered. He handed over the bottle, and felt in his pocket for a coin which should ensure her continued interest in him. He found two, and bestowed them. Instantly the housemaid informed him that her name was Ivy and that she never could bear to see a gentleman trying to do things for himself. On this Mr Brodribb thankfully abandoned the struggle with his belongings and went for a stroll with a cigar; retiring, he found order, and the temperature of the bottle judged to perfection.
In the kitchen Ivy sketched his portrait for the benefit of Queenie and the cook.
‘That’s a nice little feller in number four,’ said Ivy. ‘Good clothes, and not pernickety, I should say. No scent or brilliantine.’
‘Married?’ Gladys inquired.
‘Ought to be,’ Ivy responded. ‘A bit shy, though. And no photographs. No, single, I should say. But a nice little feller. The sort you can soon learn their ways.’
This prophecy was fulfilled. In a week such ways as Mr Brodribb had were learned, and the routine of ‘Melrose’ began to fit him like his waistcoat. His life appeared to the other boarders to be entirely uneventful.
They could not know, nor could the servants know, the significance of certain letters in blue envelopes which arrived for him from time to time and were immediately destroyed. These letters, which denounced Mr Brodribb as a vagabond and wife-betrayer, called upon him to return without delay to his duty, and stated in clear type what steps, in the event of non-compliance, would be taken. Each letter troubled him, not by its black and white accusations of guilt but by its wordless reminder that these were, as yet, unfounded. He knew that the step must be taken. He knew that Cissie, and Arthur, and two impeccable forms of solicitors expected it of him, and he was resigned; but, also he was afraid. He procrastinated. Time went by.
It was a chance word from Ivy that in the end, strangely, gave him courage. She appeared one evening unusually early to turn down his bed, announcing that she had the evening off.
‘Oh,’
