Then Bagshaw, rising sulkily, “Well, you’d
better come up and have a look round.”
And Mabel, animatedly, “I’d like to”;
and to Sabre, “You won’t care to come,
Mark.”
Sabre said, “No, I won’t.”
Throughout dinner—Mabel returned only just
in time to get ready for dinner—Sabre examined
with dispassionate interest the exercise of trying
to say certain words and being unable to say them.
They conversed desultorily; in their usual habit.
He told himself that he was speaking several hundred
“other” words; but the intractable words
that he desired to utter would not be framed.
He counted them on his fingers under the table.
Only seven: “Well, how was the Garden Home
looking?” Only seven. He could not say
them. The incident they brought up rankled.
He had come home to take a day off with her.
She knew he was there at the luncheon table to take
a day off with her. It had interested her so little,
she had been so entirely indifferent to it, that she
had not even expressed a wish he should so much as
attend her on the inspection with Bagshaw. The
more he thought of it the worse it rankled. She
knew he was at home to be with her and she had deliberately
walked off and left him.... “Well, how
was the Garden Home looking?” No. Not much.
He couldn’t. He visualised the impossible
seven written on the tablecloth. He saw them
in script; he saw them in print; he imagined them written
by a finger on the wall. Say them—no.
Mabel left him sitting at the table with a cigarette.
There came suddenly to his assistance in the fight
with the stubborn seven, abreast of the thoughts in
the office that had brought him home, a realisation
of her situation such as he had had that first night
together in the house, eight years before; there she
was in the morning room, alone. She had given
up her father’s home for his home—and
there she was: a happy afternoon behind her and
no one to discuss it with. Just because he could
not say, “Well, how was the Garden Home looking?”
He thought, “I’m hateful.”
He got up vigorously and strode into the morning room:
“Well, how was the Garden Home looking?”
His voice was bright and interested.
She was reading a magazine. She did not raise
her eyes front the page. “Eh? Oh,
very nice. Delightful.”
“Tell us about it.”
“What? Oh ... yes.” Her mind
was in the magazine. She read on a moment.
Then she laid the magazine on her lap and looked up.
“The Garden Home? Yes—oh, yes.
It was charming. It’s simply springing up.
You ought to have come.”
He stretched himself in a big chair opposite her.
He laughed. “Well, dash it, I like that.
You didn’t exactly implore me to.”
She yawned. “Oh, well. I knew you
wouldn’t care about it.” She yawned
again, “Oh dear. I’m tired. We
must have walked miles, to and fro.” She
put down her hands to take up her magazine again.
She clearly was not interested by his interest.
But he thought, “Well, of course she’s
not. For her it’s like eating something
after it’s got cold. Dinner was the time.”
