Whom God Hath Sundered by Oliver Onions

Author:Oliver Onions [Onions, Oliver]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: British Literature, Omnibus, Classics, Fiction
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

"Florrie is Mrs Smithson?"

"Yes."

I was not pleased. I suppose that, like Charles Lamb, I am squeamish about my women and children, and I remembered Mrs Smithson's post cards. One of them had borne the legend, "Detained at office—very pressing business," and if you have seen these things you will not want it described. But I was loth to raise again the question I had formerly raised about Miss Levey and Aschael, and so I merely asked whether it was not possible for her to give Mrs Smithson tea without having Jackie there. She said, "Very well," though in a tone a little subdued. She knew what I meant.

It was ten minutes later that, returning of her own accord to the subject, she said a little poutingly: "I don't see much to make a fuss about. He doesn't know what it means."

"That doesn't improve matters very much," I said. "It seems to me to make them worse."

"Oh, very well," she answered.

But she returned to the subject yet again. She spoke defensively.

"I had to have him at Broadstairs with me. You couldn't have him in Scotland with you."

"Jackie, you mean?"

"Yes."

She gave a slightly marked shade of meaning to the words "in Scotland." To tell the truth, it was a little on my mind that I had had the more desirable summer of the two of us. I am no snob, but I do prefer some people to others, and if people do run in strata, well, nobody can tell me much I don't know about the clerk and cycle-agent class, and they don't charm me. I spoke with a little compunction.

"I wish it could have been helped, darling. Anyway, we sha'n't be separated again."

(I may say that I don't think Evie had thought it very remarkable that I should have had that accident at Aunt Angela's party. She had fainted herself, and knew little of the later events; and we have lived too long together for her not to be aware that, rugged as I may appear to the rest of the world, I am a sensitive man.)

After a moment's silence: "Mrs Smithson has asked me down to Broadstairs for a week," she said. "She—of course she hadn't met you."

"You mean she's asked you without me?"

"She hadn't met you," Evie excused Mrs Smithson.

"And—shall you go?"

She answered quite readily: "Of course not—not without you."

I got up and kissed her. I had expected no less of her.

But I knew that she would have liked to go to Broadstairs, and was only staying away out of her duty to me, it was not for me to deny her her sex's equivalent of a grumble—a sigh. Then we began to talk.

We talked quite equably: I never in my life wrangled with Evie. I said, quite gently, that I did not wish the boy to acquire precocious chatter about pressing business and pretty typists, and Evie made no opposition; indeed, she laughed when I suggested how unlikely it was that any pretty typist would have pressing business with myself.

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