For he did not mean to take up the option. The ecstasy was cooled now, and he saw clearly that London and theatrical enterprises therein would not be suited to his genius. In the Five Towns he was on his own ground; he was a figure; he was sure of himself. In London he would be a provincial, with the diffidence and the uncertainty of a provincial. Nevertheless, London seemed to be summoning him from afar off, and he dreamt agreeably of London as one dreams of the impossible East.
As soon as he opened the gate in the wall of his property, he saw that the drawing-room was illuminated and all the other front rooms in darkness. Either his wife or his mother, then, was sitting up in the drawing-room. He inserted a cautious latch-key into the door, and entered the silent home like a sinner. The dim light in the hall gravely reproached him. All his movements were modest and restrained; no noisy rattling of his stick now.
The drawing-room door was slightly ajar. He hesitated, and then, nerving himself, pushed against it.
Nellie, with lowered head, was seated at a table, mending, the image of tranquillity and soft resignation. A pile of children's garments lay by her side, but the article in her busy hands appeared to be an undershirt of his own. None but she ever reinforced the buttons on his linen. Such was her wifely rule, and he considered that there was no sense in it. She was working by the light of a single lamp on the table, the splendid chandelier being out of action. Her economy in the use of electricity was incurable, and he considered that there was no sense in that either.
She glanced up with a guarded expression that might have meant anything.
"It's quite all right. He did nothing but cover up the place with a bit of cyanide gauze."
Instantly, in his own esteem, he regained perfection as a father. Of course the bite was nothing! Had he not said so from the first? Had he not been quite sure throughout that the bite was nothing?
"Then why did you sit up?" he asked, and there was a faint righteous challenge in his tone.
"I was anxious about you. I was afraid--"
"Didn't Stirling tell you I had some business?"
"I told him to, anyhow--important business."
"It must have been," said Nellie in an inscrutable voice.