Scarlet and Hyssop Part 17

Silly Billy rose, looking exceedingly small and young.

"Rather. Next room, I should think," he said.

The two pa.s.sed out, and Martyn spoke.

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned!" he said, and n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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 of _amende_ for 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 was no 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 a.s.sault," he said, "for I suppose you are not _vieux jeu_ enough 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 G.o.d!"

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 am not 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, d.a.m.n 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."

CHAPTER X

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 a.s.suredly this would be, there is no more stopping it than there is stopping the flight of Time by holding back the hands of a clock. It would a.s.sume protean and monstrous forms; but whatever form it a.s.sumed, 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 cla.s.s 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 turning aimlessly 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 Devons.h.i.+re 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 sc.u.m and flotsam in some cross-movement of tides, moved rows of sandwichmen bearing a various burden of advertis.e.m.e.nt, from strictly private ma.s.sage establishments to ballets, the more public the better. But Berkeley Street and the Square following 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 prints hung 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.