It was about a fortnight after this Sunday at Richmond that the list of Birthday honours came out, and it was a surprise to nobody that Mr. Brereton's name appeared as the recipient of a peerage. For respectability and cash are things that in themselves confer such nobility on their fortunate possessor that it is only right and proper to stamp him with a coronet like writing-paper. Respectability no doubt has been, and will again be, dispensed with, but cash cannot be replaced except by exceptional achievements of some kind, of which Andrew was hopelessly incapable. And as it would clearly be absurd to bar a man from his birth from the possibility of attaining to the ranks of hereditary legislators, custom, slowly broadening down, has brought it about that since achievement in great deeds is within the reach but of the few, plenty of good gold, bestowed on plenty of good or party institutions, pavesthe way, so to speak, to what has been called by politicians who wrangle hotly in another place "the upper snows."
Marie Alston, who had known of the impending honours some days before, was talking it over with Jim Spencer.
"I don't say I like the principle," she was saying; "but, things being as they are, I think it a most suitable thing. Oh, my dear Jim, you know me sufficiently well to know that I think such a system all wrong from top to bottom. But, after all, it is in a piece with the rest. Plutocracy, not the King nor the Houses of Parliament, rules us, and naturally plutocracy says, 'I will have all that is within reach.' Why not? And peerages are certainly within reach. Of course the list is rather pronounced. Mr. Maxwell, I see, has been made a Baronet. But, after all, who else is there? Can you think of any eminent men whom one would wish to see peers? I can't. And there are few people richer than the Maxwells, I believe. It is no use screaming."
Jim shrugged his shoulders.
"At that rate, I could be made a peer," he said.
"Are you rich enough? How nice foryou! Andvice versâ, perhaps, Jack should be made a commoner. No doubt that reform will follow next. At least, perhaps Jack shouldn't because he really has the makings of an eminent man, but half the House of Peers, anyhow, should be made commoners. No doubt they would be if it were not for the innate snobbishness of the average Englishman. The average Englishman knows quite well that there is nothing whatever remarkable or admirable about quantities of peers except their peerages; yet, because they are peers, he loves and reverences them, and reserves them compartments, and incidentally takes toll off them as well."
Jim Spencer raised his eyebrows.
"Of course you are right," he said, "but you say these things, and don't take them seriously. You used to be serious, Marie."
"Ah, you do me an injustice," she said quickly. "I am just as serious as ever I was, but I realize that it is no use being serious in public. People have no time to spare from their amusements nowadays for anything serious. But in private I am serious. I was serious in private to-day, for instance."
"Well, be serious now, and tell me what you were serious about."
"Oh, nothing. I beg your pardon, this is not in public. Indeed, it was something—something big, as it seems to me. I am not sure that I shall tell you about it."
They were both silent a moment—he unwilling to ask a question on a subject where she hesitated, she weighing in her mind whether or not she should tell him. At last she spoke.
"It is about Maud Brereton," she said, "She came to me yesterday, calm as a summer sea, to ask my advice as to whether she should marry Anthony Maxwell, just as I might ask your advice as to whether I should have a picture framed in gold or white. I did not ask her any questions as to whether she loved him, because I believe that there are many girls who have no idea what that means, and I think Maud is one of them."
Jim got up and began to walk up and down the room. He heard Marie with his ear speaking of Maud, but his inward ear translated, so it seemed to him, all she said of Maud into things she was saying about herself.
"Now, I am sufficiently modern," she went on, "not to wish all girls who do not feel passion to abstain from marrying. I believethat quite happy marriages often take place without it. Either the man or the woman may not feel it, yet by marrying they are both happier than they would have been if they had remained single. The ultimate sum of happiness is a large factor, Jim. Do you not think so?"
Again she seemed to be talking of herself, but now he could not decide whether she was speaking with complete sincerity. Her opinions, at any rate, appeared to him monstrous.
"Finish the exposition first," he said. "After all, whether I agree with you or not is a small matter. Maud Brereton asked your advice, not mine."
Something in his tone startled her for a moment, and instinctively that afternoon walk they had taken down by the river a fortnight ago came into her mind; but she went on without a pause.
"I seem cold-blooded to you," she said; "and I dare say I am—it is highly probable, in fact. Then, there is a further thing to be considered: many girls, I feel sure, have their passion awakened by marriage. Now, that constitutes a great danger, I admit, in passionless marriages. Who can tell—well, thatneed not be discussed. But it remains certain, I am afraid, that there are many women to whom the becoming as one flesh with their husbands has not meant anything before they married them."
"And less afterwards," remarked Jim.
"And less afterwards. Their physical nature is awakened, and— But, and here I am less modern than you at present are inclined to give me credit for."
"Credit for?" asked Jim.
"Yes, because you are not modern at all. Oh, Jim, it is a great puzzle! Supposing every girl had to feel that there was absolutely only one man in the world for her, and supposing every man had to feel that here, and here alone was his destiny, before he married, do you think we should have an increase of the marriage returns? I am afraid not. And people being what they are, do you think that this celibacy would have a good effect on morals? It is no use advocating counsels of perfection when you are dealing with the human race and its obvious imperfections. At least, that, I suppose, may eventually come; but for practical purposes the highest motive does not always secure such good results as a lower one."
"So you advised her to marry him," said Jim slowly.
"No, I advised her not to. All the excellent reasons which I have given you why she should marry him were present in my mind; I even told them her. But at the back of my mind—mind or soul, call it what you will—there was a great 'but.' I dare say it was unreasonable; it was certainly not clear to me what it was. But whatever it was, it said 'No.' It wanted me not to impose what I called my experience of the world on a girl. After all, what does one's experience amount to? The recollection of one's mistakes."
She spoke the last words more to herself than him as she leaned back in her low chair, her violet-coloured eyes looking "out and beyond," focused, not by the limit of her vision, but that of her thoughts. Quick, uneven breaths disturbed the slow rise and fall of her bosom, and the rose she had fastened in her dress shed half its fragrant petals on her lap. And because he was a man, he looked at her with kindled eye; and because he was a man who loved her, his blood also was kindled. More than ever before he knew how idle had been his flight from her; thecælum non animumsuddenly leaped in his mind fromthe dingy ranks of truisms to the austere array of the things that are true. He drew his chair a little closer to hers and laid his hand on its arm.
"Your mistakes, Marie?" he said.
It took her an appreciable fraction of time to recall herself, and realize what was meant by his burning look; but it took her no time at all, when once she had realized that, to answer him.
"Yes, one's mistakes," she said—"all the occasions on which one has failed to grasp the true import of what one was doing, and, in particular, all the mistakes one has seen other people making and their consequences. I always think that one's experience means much more what one has observed in other people than what one has done one's self. Of course, all observation passes through the crucible of one's personality, whether one observes things in one's self or other people, and that certainly transforms it, crystallizes it, what you will. But if one has a grain of imagination, other people's experiences are as vivid to one's self as one's own, and as potentially profitable. Don't you think so?"
She rose as she spoke, trembling slightly, and brushed the fallen petals from her dress.She was just enough not to blame him for what he had said; she was, indeed, just enough to commend him for his reticence, since her words had necessarily for him such a significance, and the need to stop him saying more was imperative. She could see what inward excitement moved him, and in her soul she thanked him for the love he bore her; but that any word of it should pass between them was impossible—merely, it could not be. This being so, she desired with a fervency of desire that she had not known for years not to lose her friend, and words of such a kind as she knew were rising to his lips would have meant this loss. Indeed, at this moment the world seemed to hold for her nothing so desired as that friendship, which a word might rob her of.
To him, her reply was both sobering and bracing. It showed him how close he had been walking to the edge of a precipice. As Marie had just told him, he was old-fashioned; he believed that "good" and "bad," "noble" and "wicked," were not yet words of obsolete meaning, words like "arquebus," which had no significance in the vocabulary of the day. A temptation had come and gripped him by the throat—the temptation to suggestto her that she should say that her marriage with Jack was, among her experiences, a mistake. He knew also—and was honest enough to confess that his desire to hear her say this was due to the fact that her confession would necessarily open certain vistas—it would be the first step, at any rate, down a path that a certain part of him had during his past fortnight longed to tread with a fervour and a passion that shook his whole nature, as a wind shakes and tosses a curtain. He knew in what sort Jack had kept his marriage vow, and he had begun to ask himself whether such conduct did not give emancipation, so to speak, to the wife—had begun to tell himself that it was no use setting up exceptional codes of morality. One lived in the world, the world did this and that; but this douche of cold water was bracing. It recalled him to sanity, to his better and his normal self, and he replied in a voice still shaken with his own overwhelming though momentary tumult.
"So you advised her not to marry him?" he asked. "Do you think she will take your advice?"
"Yes; because it showed her clearly what her own bias really was. One often does notknow what one really thinks till some one expresses a strong opinion on one side or the other. Then one hears it with strong repugnance or strong sympathy, which reveals to one's self what one's true opinion is."
Jim smiled, a regurgitation of bitterness swelling up in his breast.
"Have you ever formulated to yourself what your own strongest passion is?" he asked.
"No, never. It is the most difficult thing in the world to say what one likes best until one is forty or thereabouts. All one's youth—which, I take it, extends to about forty—is passed experimentally in determining what one likes best, and one does not know till it is crystallized. By then also it is probably unattainable."
Jim laughed again bitterly.
"Oh, you need not be afraid," he said, his rebuff now beginning to sting. "I tell you that your chief passion is analysis. You do not care so much what people do, as why they do it. If a Hooligan knocked you down and began stamping on you, I can imagine you saying, 'Stop just a moment to tell me why you are doing this. Does giving pain to me give pleasure to you, or do you personallyfeel a grudge against me?' Then, when he had told you, you would say, 'Thank you very much. Go on stamping again.'"
Marie had detached the unpetalled rose from her dress, and had taken another from the vase in her hand. But she did not pin it in, but, after listening open-mouthed, sat down again with it in her fingers.
"I am egotistical, no doubt," she said, "and that must account for my burning desire to know why you think that. I suppose you do think that, Jim, or are you irritated with me for any cause?"
The question was unpremeditated, but as soon as she had spoken she could have bitten out her tongue for having said it. Almost certainly, she thought, in the moment's pause that ensued, he would tell her why he was irritated with her. That she knew already, and, of all things in the world, that was the one which she did not wish him to tell her. But his answer came almost immediately.
"I don't think there is anything you could do which would irritate me," he said, "and I do think what I have said. I think you are bloodless, Marie; I think you are like what you imagine Maud Brereton to be. And bloodless people are disconcerting. Onedoes not know how to make them hear, how to make them feel the things that the majority of the race feel."
Suddenly there rose in her mind a long, far-off, dusty memory. She had been skating one day on a thinly frozen pond, and suddenly felt the ice bend and sway under her, and had said to herself, "The ice is thinner here." On that occasion she had put both feet down and gone straight for the bank. On this occasion she did exactly the same.
"You are probably right," she said. "The things which many women do, and find absorption in doing, I think stupid, and, what is worse, vulgar, and what is worst, wicked. I ambourgeoise, I ambonne femme—that is what you really mean, Jim. It is quite true; it is quite, quite true. And, no doubt, if one is not in the habit of spending all one's energies on—on matters of emotion, one disposes of them in other ways. If one does not give one's self up to feeling, one probably has more time for thinking, because one must do something if one has nerves and brains at all. But the Hooligan business you describe is beyond me, I am afraid."
He got up abruptly.
"I must go," he said. "There are a hundredthings I must—not do. I must go and not do them."
At this moment, and for the first time during this interview, he had touched and moved her. His struggle suddenly became pathetic to her—a thing to pity and praise. Like a weir, he spouted at joints in the strong doors of his determination not to speak, but the flood was restrained. She rose also.
"That excuse has the charm of absolute sincerity," she said. "When people say they have a hundred things to do, it seems to me a very bad reason. Yours is better. When shall I see you again?"
"I don't know," said he, and for a moment left her awkwardly placed. But his manliness once more came to his aid—for there could be but one conclusion if he said no more—and he added: "I am away next Sunday; I come back on Wednesday. That night I dine with the Ardinglys."
"I also. Till Wednesday, then, Jim—go and not do all these things you spoke of! Not doing things takes longer than doing them. It takes all the time, in fact. Good-bye!"
It was never denied, even by the stupidest of her enemies, that Mildred Brereton was a woman of the world, and her mode of procedure, when she learned from Maud of her first rejection of Anthony's hand, was perfectly correct from the standpoint of wisdom. She made no fuss or scene of any kind, and only said:
"Dear Maud, I am very, very sorry. But you know, dear, how I trust you."
Maud pondered this remark, in her silent, uncomfortable way, for a moment.
"Do you mean you trust me eventually to accept him?" she asked.
Mrs. Brereton wondered in her own mind where Maudcouldhave got her tactlessness from. Aloud she said:
"I trust you in every way, dear—every way. And it shows your good sense that you did not definitely refuse him. I do not wish to force you at all or hurry your decision."
This was all that was said on the subject at the time, but Mildred, after careful thought, was convinced she had done right. This impeccable attitude was completed by her looking rather sad whenever her daughter was observing her, sighing, and constantly calling her "dear child" in well-modulated tones of chastened and uncomplaining affection. This policy—if it is possible to use so cold and calculating a word for a process so tender—had its desired effect, and Maud felt herself touched with a sense of vague contrition. Eventually, not feeling sure of herself, she had decided to confide her difficulty to Marie Alston, for whom she cherished a shy and secret adoration. This interview, however, had not been productive of a result which harmonized with her mother's tender processes; indeed, had Mildred known that her gentle dropping of water on a stone (the tender process) would have led her daughter to ask advice of Marie, she would have adopted quite different methods. Maud told her about the interview the same afternoon. She was not called "dear child," or words to that effect, on this occasion.
Now, there is a sort of anger which, though it is often seen in combination with irritationand ill-temper, is something very different from either. It is not a quick-burning emotion; it is in no hurry to strike and to hurt, but is quite deliberate, very patient, and at the end, when a favourable opportunity presents itself, strikes hard. It was this quality of anger that entered into Mildred's mind when Maud told her of this interview. Had she been simply irritated with Marie or angry with an anger of the less dangerous and quicker sort, she would probably have rushed round to Park Lane, used the language of a cook to Marie, burst into tears, and probably made it up a day or two later. But she had not the slightest impulse to do any of those things. She was irritated with Maud, called her a fool, and sent her away. Then she sat down and thought about Marie.
There occurred to her, of course, at once a very obvious method of injuring Marie. All London—every one, that is to say, who mattered at all—except Marie herself, knew that she and Jack had been great friends for a very long time. What would be the effect on Marie if she let her know quietly, drop by drop, as one lets absinthe cloud and embitter water, what had been going on so long, what she had been blind to so long! Mildred knewher to be a woman of a pride and fastidiousness quite beyond not only her own reach, but her own comprehension. This she had never either resented or envied; if people chose to behave in what she called a Holy Land manner, it was nothing to her, but she was not jealous of their unattainable Oriental longitudes. It was all very well to sit on a pedestal, but if you did, you had no idea what games went on in the jostling world below. Marie's habitual attitude was to put her nose in the air and draw her skirts away from the crowd; it would really be very humiliating for her to get to learn by degrees what had been going on all these years, to upset the pedestal, in fact, and let her struggle to her feet as best she could, to let her, who always professed to find scandal and gossip of all sorts so uninteresting, know for the first time a bit of it which she could scarcely consider dull.
Mildred got up from the sofa where she was lying in her sitting-room, and, lighting a cigarette, took a turn up and down. At first sight it seemed an excellent plan, diabolical, which suited her mood, and simple as all good plans are; but on second thoughts there were objections. In her present anger she did notvalue Marie's friendship a straw, while as for her own reputation, she was well aware that for all practical purposes she had none. People, she knew, did not talk about Jack and her any longer, simply because the facts were so stale, "and that," she thought to herself with grim cynicism, "is what one calls living a thing down." No, the danger lay elsewhere. Supposing Marie cut up very rough indeed, supposing in her horror and disgust at Jack she did not hesitate to punish herself as well, and bring the matter if she could into the crude and convincing light of the Divorce Court, it would be both unpleasant for Mildred herself, for she felt that cross-examination was not likely to be amusing, and it would also spell ruin for Jack's career, a thing which now, in the present state of her affections, she cared about perhaps more than Jack. Of course, the matter might be conveyed to Marie in so gradual and vague a manner that such proceedings on her part would be without chance of success as far as getting a divorce was concerned—to possess her mind with suspicions that gradually became moral certainties was the point—but Mildred knew well that in the mind of the great middle class to be mentioned in connectionwith the Divorce Court is the mischief, not to lose or win your case there. In any case, if she decided on this she would have to think it very carefully over; it must be managed so that Marie could not possibly go to the courts. Besides, ridiculous as Marie would appear even if she adopted the least aggressive attitude of self-defence, yet Mildred felt she must not underrate the strength of her position in society. Perhaps another plan might be found as simple and without these objections. She wanted, in fact, to think of something which would hurt Marie as much as possible, and yet give her no chance of retaliation. Where was Marie vulnerable? Where was she most vulnerable?
For a moment her irritation and exasperation got the upper hand, and she flung off the sofa with clenched and trembling hands. "How dare she—how dare she persuade Maud not to marry him!" she said to herself. It frankly appeared to her the most outrageous thing to have done. Marie must have known what her own desires for her daughter were—in fact, she had before now told her of them—yet she had done this. Mildred felt a qualm of almost physical sicknessfrom the violence of her rage, and sat down again to recover herself. It soon passed, leaving her again quiet, patient, and implacable, searching about for a weapon. Suddenly she got up, and stood quite still a moment.
"Most extraordinary that I should not have thought of that before," she said aloud. Then she washed her face and bathed her eyes with some rose-water, examining them a little anxiously as she dried them on her silk face-napkin. They were as red as if she had been crying—red, she must suppose, from anger, just as a mongoose's eyes get red when it sees a cobra. Certainly she had been angry enough to account for the colour. But on the whole she did not like emotions, except pleasant ones—they were exhausting; and she lay down again on her sofa for half an hour to recover herself, and told her maid to bring her a tablespoonful of brandy with an egg beaten up into it. Then she dressed and went out to a small private concert, where Saltsi was going to sing two little French songs, exceedingly hard to understand, but simply screaming when you did so. For herself, she was certain that she would understand quite enough.
She had just come down-stairs when a note was brought her, which proved to be from Marie.
"Maud has just consulted me," it ran, "about the question of her marriage. Although I knew your views, I could not but advise her in opposition to them. This looks as if I set her against you—as far as that goes, I regret it extremely. But I could not do differently; I wanted to, but could not. I tell you this in case she does not."
"Maud has just consulted me," it ran, "about the question of her marriage. Although I knew your views, I could not but advise her in opposition to them. This looks as if I set her against you—as far as that goes, I regret it extremely. But I could not do differently; I wanted to, but could not. I tell you this in case she does not."
Mildred read it and tore it up, not even troubling to question its sincerity. Then, being told the carriage was waiting, she went out.
She was to call on her way to the concert for the person usually known as Silly Billy, who in reality was an ignoble Earl. He was called Silly Billy partly because his name was William, partly because he was exceedingly sharp. His Countess was kept in the country, and was supposed to go to church a great deal. The world was not particularly interested in her, nor was her husband. Once she had had money, but she no longer had any.
Silly Billy himself was now getting on forforty, and looked anything between twenty-five and thirty. Probably he was naturally depraved, for a career of vice seemed to suit him, and he thrived on it as other people thrive on the ordinary rules of health. He had charming manners, a slim attractive appearance, and no morals of any kind whatever. His passion just now was Bridge, which he played regularly from sunset to sunrise; the remaining hours of the twenty-four were occupied in consuming large quantities of food, owing large sums of money, and talking. He was supposed not to stand in need of sleep, which he declared was a sheer waste of time. He was often to be seen in other people's victorias; to-day he was in Lady Brereton's.
"Yes, we'll just stop for Saltsi's two songs," said she, as they drove from his flat in Berkeley Mansions, "and then I'll set you down where you like. How has the world been treating you, Silly Billy?"
He considered a moment.
"The world always treats me as I treat it," he said. "Lately I have not had much to say to it; in fact, I have done nothing, and so I have heard nothing. Tell me news. Anybody fresh about?"
"Only Jim Spencer, and he's rather a disappointment. As rich as Crœsus, you know?"
"That's always an advantage for him and his friends," remarked Silly Billy candidly. "I should like to meet him. Does he play Bridge, or bet, or anything?"
She laughed.
"You are always refreshing," she said, "because you are so very frank. Does it pay?"
"Well, you must do one of two things," said he. "You must be absolutely enigmatical or quite transparent. I am quite transparent. I want other people's money."
"Shall I draw you a small cheque?"
"No, thanks; small cheques would be no good. By the way, I have heard something about Jim Spencer.... Isn't he a friend of Marie Alston?"
Lady Brereton could not help smiling, and her inward anger licked its lips.
"Ah! you have heard that too," she said. "But who cares?"
"Any one may do precisely what they please, so far as I am concerned," said Silly Billy, "so long as it doesn't personally annoy me. So it's true, is it?"
"Dear Marie!" observed Mildred. "You see, they were engaged years and years ago. Marie told me so herself."
Silly Billy considered a moment.
"What have you quarrelled with her about?" he asked after a short pause.
Mildred turned round.
"Now, how on earth did you guess that?" she asked.
"Pretty simple. You said 'Dear Marie!' in—well, in a tone. So the Snowflake is melting, you think! I'm sure I tried to melt her often enough. But I never had the very slightest success."
Mildred laughed.
"How funny!" she said. "I never knew that. What did Marie do?"
"Looked bored. Merely bored; not shocked, but bored. But Jim Spencer doesn't bore her, you think? I suppose you are telling everybody about it?"
"I haven't told a soul. It seems there is no need."
"Well, thank God, I'm no prude," said Silly Billy, as they stopped at the house.
"Dear Marie!" said Mildred again. "Perhaps I ought never to have discussedit with you. You are such a gossip, Silly Billy."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Surely that is what you want," he said, and Mildred did not contradict him. Nor did she feel that she had been wasting time.
So Saltsi sang her little French songs, and the very distinguished company all shrieked with laughter. Some of them did not understand what they meant: those shrieked most, in order that it should appear that they did; the rest shrieked because they did understand. Royalty was there in a quiet little broughamish kind of way, and everything, in fact, went just exactly as it should, and when Mildred stole quietly away to avoid a string quartette and talk to Lady Maxwell, both to congratulate her on her husband's honour and advocate the virtues of patience and perseverance for Anthony, she felt braced and invigorated for the duties that lay before her. She had already wound the clock up, and it pleased her to think that its ticking would soon be audible all over London. For herself, she did not care the slightest how loudly people talked about her. She knew, on the other hand, that Marie would care very much indeed. And the audiblenessof the ticking was destined to be heard more quickly than even she had hoped or expected.
It was two afternoons after this that Silly Billy was gently threading his way down Piccadilly. The day was heavenly, a flood of yellow sunshine invaded the streets, and a plum-like bloom hung over the distances. It being so divine out of doors, he was proposing to spend the hours till dinner at a select little club called the Black Deuce, which had been lately founded with the sole and simple aim of Bridge-playing. Just as he was about to cross the street, his way was stopped for a moment by a policeman letting out the pent-up carriages which stood waiting for their turn in Bond Street, just as a lock is opened to let the water out. Among this shining stream of black lacquer and silver harness there passed him a victoria with Marie Alston in it. By her side sat Jim Spencer. And Silly Billy smiled gently to himself all the rest of the way to the club.
There were three men only, all friends and respecters of his, in the card-room, for it was yet early, and he making the fourth, they sat down at once. Silly Billy, having, as usual, won the deal and the seats, establishedhimself with his back to the window. At the angle of the wall, close to the window, was the door, which by reason of the heat was left open. Then the holy silence fell.
He and his partner went out in the first deal, and Billy cut the cards to his left in great good-humour.
"Met the Snowflake just now," he said, "driving along with her melter."
A paper rustled in the window-seat, and though the deal was not yet finished, silence more awful than the silence of the game itself again fell. Billy gave half a glance round, not to see who it was, for he instinctively felt quite sure, but merely in confirmation of his knowledge.
"Hullo, Jack!" he said. "That you? Didn't see you come in."
"I supposed you hadn't," said Jack.
"Damned good answer!" observed Billy. "What trumps did you say, Martyn?"
It is to be set down to the credit of Billy's nerves, that not only did he not revoke during that hand, but played with quite his usual brilliance. He had often claimed that the game had the advantage of enabling one to forget everything else in the world for the time being, and in this instance he was certainlyjustified. What was coming afterwards he had not the slightest idea, but for the present it did not concern him.
In turn his partner dealt, passed, and Billy, after a little consideration, gave him no-trumps. The first card was led, Billy's hand exposed on the table, and at that moment, Billy being unoccupied, Jack rose.
"Can you speak to me a minute without interrupting the game?" he asked.
Silly Billy rose, looking exceedingly small and young.
"Rather. Next room, I should think," he said.
The two passed out, and Martyn spoke.
"Well, I'm damned!" he said, and nobody contradicted him.
The door of the next room shut behind the others, and Jack and Silly Billy found themselves simultaneously taking out their cigarette-cases. In the box on the table there was only one match, which Jack lit, and handed first to the other. Then he spoke.
"I saw whom she was with," he remarked.
"Glad you haven't got to ask me, then," said Silly Billy; "because I couldn't have told you."
Jack threw the match into the fireplace.
"Ah! you did mean my wife, then?" he said.
Silly Billy, figuratively speaking, threw up his hand.
"Very neatly done," he said. "You had me there. Now, what do you mean to do?"
"Ask you a question or two first. Now, was that lie of your own invention, or did you get it passed on from another liar?"
"You are using offensive language to me," observed Silly Billy.
"I am. If you prefer to come back to the other room, I will use it there."
Silly Billy smiled. The situation was becoming clearer to him.
"As regards your question," he said, "what you call that lie was not of my own invention. I should also advise you for your own sake not to press me to tell who told me. I warn you that if you are offensive again, I shall. At present, I do not tell you by way ofamendefor a speech which was indiscreet on my part. I ought to have looked round to see that you were not in the room. And that's how we stand."
Jack knew perfectly well that Billy wasno fool, and he weighed this speech for a moment in silence.
"I don't understand," he said. "I think you are too crooked for me to follow. Perhaps it will be best and simplest if we go back to the other room. I can then box your ears in the presence of witnesses."
At this Billy laughed outright.
"I shall then bring an action for assault," he said, "for I suppose you are notvieux jeuenough to imagine I shall challenge you to fight. What will happen? The reasons for the quarrel will come out in open court. Will you like that? Will you like to pose as the defender of your wife's honour? Are you"—and Billy grew more animated—"are you so dense as not to know that the surest way of dragging it in the dust is to defend it, oh, successfully, I grant you, in the court? We live in an age, my dear Jack, in which violence has altogether ceased, and law, which is meant to take its place, defeats its own object. However successful your defence of both your action and of your wife's honour may be, surely you know that, if such a thing is made public at all, every one instantly says that there must have been something in it."
He paused a moment, Jack saying nothing.
"You are thinking that I am a cur and a coward," continued Billy. "You have also used offensive language to me. Take this, then. Do you consider yourself a good defender of your wife's honour? It is easy for you to box my ears, as you suggest, and think you have done a fine and manly action, but is all your conduct to her of a piece with that? Do you think that no one will say that it was the most arrant piece of humbug? If you had been beyond reproach in your married life, I do not say that I might not even have consented to shoot at you and let you shoot at me. But now, good God!"
Jack started up, black and angry, and stood towering over the other.
"Do you think you can speak to me like that?" he said, very quietly.
For the moment Silly Billy expected to find himself on the floor, but not an eyelash quivered. He lounged against the chimney-piece, and flickered his cigarette-ash into the grate.
"If you touch me, you will be sorry for it," he said. "If you say another offensive word to me, you will be sorry for it. I amnot in the slightest degree afraid of you. If you had been faithful to your wife, I should say your behaviour was admirable. As it is, it is merely childish. We are rotten folk, you and I; but I have the pull over you because I am not a hypocrite about it. Well, I don't want to call you names. I had better get back, had I not? The hand must be over, and they will be waiting for me."
Jack sat down.
"Wait a minute," he said.
"Certainly, if you have anything agreeable to say," remarked Billy. "For myself, I have done. And it was rather a weak no-trump. Wonder what my partner had?"
"Oh, damn your game!" said Jack.
"I probably shall, when I get back," conceded Silly Billy. "What do you want to say?"
"This only: We are rotten people, and I have got to think it all over."
Silly Billy moved towards the door.
"Oh, yes; that's all right enough," he said. "Not coming back, I suppose, are you?"
He sauntered back into the card-room, where the hand was only just over.
"Well, what luck?" he asked. "Whisky-and-soda, waiter."
"Yes, my lord—large or small?"
"Enormous. Two tricks did you say, partner? Thanks. Game, and twenty-four to nothing. How were aces? I only had one."
Jack heard the door of the card-room shut behind Silly Billy, and went slowly down-stairs and out into the hot, crowded thoroughfare. He was still almost powerless to believe in his own impotency, which had been so trenchantly put before him by that gentleman. Half a dozen times he wished himself back in the card-room, or in the other room where their interview had taken place, in order to have the opportunity again of knocking him down or throwing the cards in his face. Yet, so he told himself, that which seemed reasonable to him before would seem reasonable to him again. There was no flaw, so far as he could see, in the deductions which had been put before him, and he was utterly at a loss as to what he should do. The story, he knew well, would be all over London by to-morrow, for when a thing is talked about at a club, as quite assuredly this would be, there is no more stopping itthan there is stopping the flight of Time by holding back the hands of a clock. It would assume protean and monstrous forms; but whatever form it assumed, his imagination could not picture one in which his own part could be construed as creditable. What account would Silly Billy give of the interview? A true one, probably, because, from his point of view, it could not be bettered. "Oh, he was violent at first; but I put before him the exact consequences of further violence, and he saw it at once." That would be quite sufficient, and he could almost hear Silly Billy saying it. But paramount in his mind was anger against Marie, for to that class of mind to which Jack's belonged a wife cannot conceivably do anything more awful than get herself talked about. He would have been perfectly indulgent, so he very kindly told himself, to anything she might do but that. That Mildred had been, and probably now was, talked about in connection with him did not concern him, for he was not her husband. To Jack's way of thinking, a flawless reputation was the monopoly of one person, namely, his wife.
He walked slowly westward through a blur of unrecognised faces, his mind turningaimlessly through what had happened, like a squirrel in a cage, without getting anywhere. He ought to have said nothing at all, he told himself, or, having said something, he should at least have had the temporary satisfaction of insulting Silly Billy. Yet that would not have done; he still saw the force of that reasoning. In fact, nothing would have done. The blame of the whole terribly irritating affair was to be laid on Marie. She had behaved in some foolish manner, and had got talked about. He remembered now that weeks ago he had warned her of this. That made it the more annoying.
At the corner of Devonshire House his step, more than half automatically, turned northwards. The season and the summer were both at their midmost, and from this side of the street to that the tide of carriages flowed full. Full, too, were the pavements, human life jostled in a race from wall to wall of the gray houses, and just outside the curbstones, like the scum and flotsam in some cross-movement of tides, moved rows of sandwichmen bearing a various burden of advertisement, from strictly private massage establishments to ballets, the more public the better. But Berkeley Street and the Squarefollowing were a back-water of the flooded river-way, and he went with his own volition, not with the dictation of the tides, through into Grosvenor Square. Still without purpose other than that born of habit, he rang the bell of that house he frequented on so many days, and at so many and different hours, and was admitted.
Mildred was not in the room when he entered, and he walked up and down with a step of caged violence. It was a room, one would have said, which was lived in by a woman of some individuality. The usual signed photographs, bearing royal and distinguished names, were there; but these, instead of being prominently displayed, were obscurely penned, thick as sheep, on a Louis Seize table in a very dark corner, while on the writing-table which was set in the window were only two—those of Jack and his wife—a highly daring and successful arrangement. Otherwise the room was ordered, one felt, in a certain manner, not that it might be like a hundred other rooms, but because the owner wished it so, and no other way. A huge engagement book lay open on the table, with some names written fully out, but here and there an initial only; half a dozen good printshung on the walls, but there was no attempt to drape anything, nor were there any books, the literature being limited to a heap of periodicals and a hardly lesser heap of letters. Two Dresden ormolu-mounted birds stood on the chimney-piece, two Tanagra figures in daring contrast, an Empire clock, and a programme of a forthcoming race-meeting.
He had not long been in the room when the door of her bedroom, which communicated with it, was opened, and she entered. At a glance she took in his mood, and guessed, too, with absolute certainty of its cause. The things that would make Jack look like that, she knew, could be numbered on the fingers, and of these none but one could have happened. Thus there was one only left, and for the moment she was afraid of what she had done. Outwardly she showed no sign.
"What is it?" she asked.
Jack did not at once answer, but paused in front of the writing-table where the two photographs stood. Then he took up that of Marie, threw it into the fireplace, and beat it to pieces with the poker.
"Four pounds for the frame," remarked Mildred. "Those Dresden parrots are at least a hundred. It is only right you shouldknow. Be violent, by all means, if it gives you any satisfaction. I want some new things. But would it not be better to explain first and smash afterwards?"
She had never seen Jack like this—she had never even dreamed he was capable of it—but she found it, though alarming, rather attractive.
"It is always said of women that they like brutality," she thought to herself; "and perhaps it is true."
Jack rose from the fireplace a little flushed.
"They are talking about Marie at the clubs," he said. "The Snowflake has melted, apparently. Jim Spencer is the melter."
"Do you mean you heard that said?" asked Mildred.
"Yes, by Silly Billy."
"Which hospital is he at?" asked she.
Jack sat down.
"Give me a whisky-and-soda," he said; "I'm as dry as dust. May I ring? Thanks. You mean I should have stamped on him? I did not. I talked about it quite quietly with him. He pointed out that I, as a defendant in an action for assault, would not be amused at cross-examination. He adduced reasons."
Mildred looked at him for a moment with a sort of quiet wonder.
"Do you mean he adduced me as a reason?" she asked.
"Not by name."
"How very forbearing of him! You let that pass, too?"
"Yes."
She reflected.
"You did right," she said at length. "I was at first so much surprised at your having behaved like that, that I could hardly believe it. But you did right. It was, however, quite unnecessary to smash Marie's photograph—or is that a dramatic climax to show your inalienable fidelity to me?"
She laughed.
"There, drink your whisky," she said. "How extraordinary men are! Whenever they have had some powerful and exhausting emotion, a little alcohol always puts them square again. One ought to measure everything by that. A wife talked about—large whisky-and-soda; a friend talked about—small whisky-and-soda; one's self talked about—well, that is a stimulus in itself: say a Lithia Varalette, something lowering, by way of adjustment."
Jack, angry as he was, answered to her voice, as a fretful horse answers to a hand it knows, perhaps from habit, perhaps from the sense of a master astride it.
"You take it like this?" he said. "You can have no idea what it means to me."
Mildred stood silent a moment, then laughed.
"Surely the English must have made a corner in hypocrisy," she said. "For sheer, genuine hypocrisy give me the frank English gentleman like—well, like you, Jack. You are annoyed that Marie has been, as you say, talked about; you are convinced that it is the chief, if not the only, duty of a wife not to be talked about. Now, what is the reason of that, may I ask you? Is it because you demand virtue of her, fidelity to you? Not a bit of it, and you know it. You do not care in the least what she does, provided only nothing is said about her. But, seriously, is it worth while keeping that sort of thing up with me? Cæsar's wife must be beyond suspicion! Oh, me, what ranting twaddle! But, oh, my poor Cæsar!"
Jack had not been very comfortable when he came in; he was not more comfortable now. The bogieman, who was capable ofpopping out as on a nervous old lady on a dark night, and frightening Cabinet Ministers with his horrible turnip-ghost of accurate figures and reliable statistics, was more terrified than terrifying here.
"You are getting quite like Marie," he observed.
"Am I? It would be a singularly awkward position for you if I was, do you not think?"
Jack had no pertinent reply for a moment; then, "I do not know that the censorious attitude suits you very well," he said.
"Ah, the whole question turns on what one is censorious of. I am censorious of your hypocrisy, reasonably I think, because I have no weakness that way. But you as censor of Marie's morals! Oh, does it not make you laugh, simply for fear you should cry? Have more whisky, Jack; you really are not yourself yet. Tell me this, now—what did you come here for? You have said nothing yet which would not have been better left unsaid."
Jack got up.
"You appear to wish to quarrel with me," he said. "I think you had better do it alone."
Mildred made up her mind in a moment;the thing she had long been debating solved itself at this.
"If you go like a sulky child," she said, "it will be you who quarrel with me. Now, can you afford to quarrel with both me and Marie? Just consider that, and reckon up to yourself exactly what will be left of you if you do. You may do so if you choose, and you can say you have grounds, for it was I who put into Silly Billy's head the idea that made him say what he did about Marie. Dresden birds, a hundred pounds, and please don't touch the Tanagras," she added.
The caution was apparently unnecessary, for Jack did not show the slightest inclination to smash anything. He sat down as good as gold.
"You are a remarkably interesting woman," he said; "and as I never thought you a fool, I should really like to know why you did that."
"The immediate cause was a bad one," she said, "for it was that I was angry with Marie, and wanted to hurt her."
"Then, can you afford to quarrel with Marie—and me?" he asked.
Lady Brereton began to think that she was almost wasting her time. She wasaware, however, that her answer was critical, and gave it intense, though rapid, consideration.
"Easily," she said. "Why not?"
Jack raised his eyes to her face; she saw their frightened appeal, and knew that she had won.
"Ah, you are tired of it all," he said.
"You can make me wish I had never seen you if you behave obtusely," she said.
"What have I done?"
"You have been on the point of quarrelling with me as well as Marie. Surely that is obtuse enough. Quarrel with us one at a time, if you wish. To continue, she interfered unwarrantably in a thing that concerns me alone—I mean Maud's marriage."
Jack smiled faintly.
"I see what you mean," he said apologetically.
"It is sufficiently clear. She interfered, and has seriously embarrassed me. The marriage will not take place as soon as I wished; in anger, I struck at her blindly."
"Without considering me," said he.
"Of course, without considering you. You did not occur to me, and even if you had I should not have considered you, forwe settled just now that your attitude on that point was not—well, considerable. But I am glad now—I speak quite calmly—that I have done it. I do not like humbug; we have had a good deal of it. I shall before very long let Marie know what I have heard."
"Said," interrupted Jack.
"Heard. That will make a coolness between us, for she will be silently scornful of me. Oh, the truth is this, Jack—I am glad, yes, glad, that I am not going to pretend to be friends with Marie much longer. There are many good women who apparently do not mind hypocrisy, but there are many women who have no pretension whatever to be good who do not like being hypocrites. I am one. I shall not go to heaven when I die in any case, but I assure you that if I could by promising to talk about Sunday-schools to the saints I would refuse it. Now go away and have your row with Marie."
"You advise that?"
"I insist on it, else I should have wasted all my anger. Dear me, we are a sweet couple, you and I!"
There was a ring of sudden bitter sincerity in her tone, and he looked up surprised.
"What is the matter, Mildred?" he asked.
"Anything, everything, nothing. Perhaps your absurd conduct, Jack; perhaps the thunderstorm which is certainly coming; perhaps reaction from my anger. Perhaps that I have got my way: I have started a scandal about Marie—got it successfully launched. I have the sickness of success. Oh, decidedly the only way to be happy is to want things, not to get them."
"Want, then; it is easy enough."
"I am beginning to wonder whether it is," said she. "I rather think that the faculty of wanting is a faculty which belongs to youth. Dear me! I am getting philosophical, and I beg your pardon. Tell me the news. When is the dissolution?"
"Who knows? Not even the family, I believe, and I have not the honour of belonging to them. But, I imagine, not later than the end of July."
"Then the election will interfere with the grouse-shooting, will it not?"
Jack laughed.
"Yes, but apparently it is decided that Imperial affairs are to rank above grouse-shooting for once in a way!"
Mildred looked at the clock.
"I must go," she said. "I've got a hair-dresser and a dressmaker and a manicurist all waiting, and, for aught I know, a palmist and a dentist, and I'm dining at the Hungarian Embassy, an affair which demands, if not prayer, at any rate fasting. I never get used to that sort ofcorvée."
"Why do you do it, then?"
"Because it is only by doing that sort of thing with religious regularity that you get to the stage when you need no longer do it unless you choose. Besides, I purpose to say a word for you in an august ear. He is taking an interest, I am told, in the army. He also takes an interest in me. I amuse him. Come to lunch to-morrow, and tell me what has happened."
The thunderstorm predicted by Lady Brereton was already beginning to grumble in the west as Jack left the house, and before he got to Park Lane a few large, warm drops were splashing on the pavements. He asked the man who opened the door whether his wife was at home, and, learning that she was in, went up to her sitting-room. Marie was there, sitting in the balcony overlooking the park, her back turned to the room, so that she did not see Jack as he entered. By her wassitting another figure, whom he recognised. Jack strolled out to join them, lighting a cigarette.
"Good-evening, Spencer," he said. "Pray don't move. There's a storm coming up."
But Jim Spencer rose.
"I was just going," he said. "I shall just get home before it begins."
He shook hands with them both, and went through the sitting-room and down-stairs. On the sound of the front-door banging behind him Jack spoke.
"Do you remember my warning you that people would talk if you were intimate with that man?" he said.
"Perfectly."
"You have chosen to disregard my warning. The consequence is that people have begun to talk."
Marie got up.
"Who, and where?" she said, facing him.
"It does not matter who. Where? In the clubs. 'So the Snowflake has melted. I saw her driving with the melter.' I heard that said this afternoon."
The rain began to fall heavily, and a blue scribble of light rent the sky. Marie did not reply, but went inside, followed by her husband.The room was very dark, and each could see no more than the form of the other. In the gloom her answer came—very cool and crisp, an extraordinary contrast to the hot, thick darkness.
"And you tell this to me," she asked—"to me?"
"It concerns you, does it not?"
"As much as that which the gutter press says of the King concerns the King. And you knew it, Jack."
Jack sat down in a chair, his back to what light there was. To her he was almost invisible except for the glowing spark of his cigarette, which, as he drew breath, faintly illuminated his mouth.
"For a woman of the world," he said, "you are more ignorant than I should have thought possible. Who are the women who are talked about at the clubs? Half a dozen names occur to you, as they do to me. Do you like being the seventh?"
Again there was silence, broken first by a sullen roar of thunder, then by Marie's voice.
"I want to ask you one question, Jack," she said. "Do you not know—you yourself—that to couple my name with that of anyman except you, is to utter a foul and baseless calumny?"
"That is not the point," said he. "The point is that your name has so been coupled."
"Do you not know it?" she repeated.
Again there was silence. The devil, probably, would have betted on Jack's saying "No." If so, he would have lost his money.
"Yes, I know it," he replied; and his tattered flag of honour waved again.
"Then, how dare you repeat such a thing to me?" said Marie, still in the same unnaturally even voice. "For you seem to forget one thing, Jack, and that is that I am your wife!"
"It is exactly that which I remember," he said.
"Then you are beyond me, and I cannot understand you at all. You seem to think—God knows what you think! Anyhow, the standard of honour which is yours is utterly incomprehensible to me. You approach me with a sort of calm gusto to tell me a canard you have picked out of the clubs or out of the gutter, and you seem to think I shall care! What I care about is something quite different, and that is that you should have told me. I suppose your object was to wound me, to punish me—so you put it to yourself, for myhaving disregarded your warning. It is true that you have wounded me, but not in the way you think. Not long ago you thought good to cast doubts on the way in which I told you I had spent my evening. This is one step worse. And I warn you that another step may take you too far! That is all I have to say."
She turned round and, with a quick movement of her finger, turned on the electric light and stood in all her splendid beauty before him. Her bosom heaved with her intense suppressed emotion, her eye was kindled, and her mouth, slightly parted with her quickened breath, just showed the white line of her teeth. And sudden amazement at her loveliness seized the man. He looked long, then got up and advanced to her.
"Marie, Marie!" he said with entreaty, and laid his hand on her arm.
"Ah, don't touch me!" she cried.