Short Fiction by H. G. Wells (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

away from him, and then, having eaten a slice of bread and butter, admitted himself in the wrong by resuming the egg.

“Sid,” said Minnie, as he stood up to go into the shop again, “you’re not well.”

“I’m well enough.” He looked at her as though he hated her.

“Then there’s something else the matter. You aren’t angry with me, Sid, are you, about that braid? Do tell me what’s the matter. You were just like this at tea yesterday, and at suppertime. It wasn’t the braid then.”

“And I’m likely to be.”

She looked interrogation. “Oh, what is the matter?” she said.

It was too good a chance to miss, and he brought the evil news out with dramatic force. “Matter?” he said. “I done my best, and here we are. That’s the matter! If I can’t pay Helter, Skelter & Grab eighty pounds, this day three week”⁠—Pause. “We shall be sold up! Sold up! That’s the matter, Min! Sold up!”

“Oh, Sid!” began Minnie.

He slammed the door. For the moment he felt relieved of at least half his misery. He began dusting boxes that did not require dusting, and then reblocked a cretonne already faultlessly blocked. He was in a state of grim wretchedness; a martyr under the harrow of fate. At any rate, it should not be said he failed for want of industry. And how he had planned and contrived and worked! All to this end! He felt horrible doubts. Providence and Bandersnatch⁠—surely they were incompatible! Perhaps he was being “tried”? That sent him off upon a new tack, a very comforting one. That martyr pose, the gold-in-the-furnace attitude, lasted all the morning.

At dinner⁠—“potato pie”⁠—he looked up suddenly, and saw Minnie’s face regarding him. Pale she looked, and a little red about the eyes. Something caught him suddenly with a queer effect upon his throat. All his thoughts seemed to wheel round into quite a new direction.

He pushed back his plate and stared at her blankly. Then he got up, went round the table to her⁠—she staring at him. He dropped on his knees beside her without a word. “Oh, Minnie!” he said, and suddenly she knew it was peace, and put her arms about him, as he began to sob and weep.

He cried like a little boy, slobbering on her shoulder that he was a knave to have married her and brought her to this, that he hadn’t the wits to be trusted with a penny, that it was all his fault, that he “had hoped so”⁠—ending in a howl. And she, crying gently herself, patting his shoulders, said “Ssh!” softly to his noisy weeping, and so soothed the outbreak. Then suddenly the crazy little bell upon the shop door began, and Winslow had to jump to his feet, and be a man again.

After that scene they “talked it over” at tea, at supper, in bed, at every possible interval in between, solemnly⁠—quite inconclusively⁠—with set faces and eyes for the most part staring in front of them⁠—and yet with a certain mutual comfort. “What to do I don’t know,” was Winslow’s main proposition. Minnie tried to take a cheerful view of service⁠—with a probable baby. But she found she needed all her courage. And her uncle would help her again, perhaps, just at the critical time. It didn’t do for folks to be too proud. Besides, “something might happen,” a favourite formula with her.

One hopeful line was to anticipate a sudden afflux of customers. “Perhaps,” said Minnie, “you might get together fifty. They know you well enough to trust you a bit.” They debated that point. Once the possibility of Helter, Skelter & Grab giving credit was admitted, it was pleasant to begin sweating the acceptable minimum. For some half-hour over tea the second day after Winslow’s discoveries they were quite cheerful again, laughing even at their terrific fears. Even twenty pounds to go on with might be considered enough. Then in some mysterious way the pleasant prospect of Messrs. Helter, Skelter & Grab tempering the wind to the shorn retailer vanished⁠—vanished absolutely, and Winslow found himself again in the pit of despair.

He began looking about at the furniture, and wondering idly what it would fetch. The chiffonier was good, anyhow, and there were Minnie’s old plates that her mother used to have. Then he began to think of desperate expedients for putting off the evil day. He had heard somewhere of Bills of Sale⁠—there was to his ears something comfortingly substantial in the phrase. Then, why not “Go to the Moneylenders”?

One cheering thing happened on Thursday afternoon; a little girl came in with a pattern of “print,” and he was able to match it. He had not been able to match anything out of his meagre stock before. He went in and told Minnie. The incident is mentioned lest the reader should imagine it was uniform despair with him.

The next morning, and the next, after the discovery, Winslow opened shop late. When one has been awake most of the night, and has no hope, what is the good of getting up punctually? But as he went into the dark shop on Friday he saw something lying on the floor, something lit by the bright light that came under the ill-fitting door⁠—a black oblong. He stooped and picked up an envelope with a deep mourning edge. It was addressed to his wife. Clearly a death in her family⁠—perhaps her uncle. He knew the man too well to have expectations. And they would have to get mourning and go to the funeral. The brutal cruelty of people dying! He saw it all in a flash⁠—he always visualised his thoughts. Black trousers to get, black crape, black gloves⁠—none in stock⁠—the railway fares, the shop closed for the day.

“I’m afraid there’s bad news, Minnie,” he said.

She was kneeling before the fireplace, blowing the fire. She had her housemaid’s gloves on and the old country sunbonnet she wore of a morning, to keep the dust out of her hair. She turned, saw the envelope, gave a gasp, and