The Indifference of Juliet Part 29

Juliet flushed brilliantly. Even in Anthony's cheek the colour rose a little. Their eyes met with a challenge.

"Very well," said Juliet proudly. "I'll offer no more woman's plans.

Invest the money as you like. Then, when you've lost it----"

Anthony's eyes flashed. "When I've lost it----" he began, and turned away with a gesture of impatience. Then he stopped short. "That isn't like you," he said.

Juliet stared at him an instant. Then she shut her lips together and walked on in silence. Anthony shut his lips together also. It was not their habit to indulge in sharp altercation. While both had decided ideas about things, both were also much too well bred to be willing to allow differences of opinion--which must arise as inevitably as two human beings live under the same roof--to degenerate into the deplorable thing commonly referred to as a quarrel.

When they had proceeded a few rods Juliet turned abruptly off from the path and picked up from the ground a slender straight stick, evidently cut and trimmed by some boy and then thrown aside. She looked about her and after some search found another, of similar size, untrimmed. She held out the latter to Anthony. He accepted it with a look of surprise. Then she walked into the path in front of him, stood stiff and straight, her small heels together, and made him the fencer's salute. "_On guard!_" she cried.

His lips relaxing, Anthony grasped his stick and fell into position. A moment more and two accomplished fencers were engaged in close combat.

Juliet happened to be wearing a trim linen skirt of short walking length, which impeded her movements as slightly as anything not strictly adapted to the exercise could do. Although her fencing lessons were some years past, the paraphernalia belonging both to herself and Anthony were in the house, and an occasional bout with the masks and foils was a means of exercise and diversion which both thoroughly enjoyed. Although Juliet was no match for the superior skill and endurance of her husband, she was nevertheless no mean antagonist, and her alertness of eye and hand usually gave him sufficient to do to make the encounter a stimulating one.

On the present occasion Anthony, challenged to combat with his coat and cuffs on, and wielding the more awkward weapon of the two impromptu foils, found himself distinctly at a disadvantage. Moreover, he was at the moment not precisely in the mood for fun, and he began to defend himself with a somewhat lazy indifference. After a minute or two, however, he discovered that his adversary's slightly ruffled temper was inspiring her hand and wrist to distinctly effective work, and he found himself forced to look to his methods.

Attack and parade, disengagement and thrust--the battle was waged over the uneven ground of the wood. And presently Anthony discovered that the richly glowing face opposite his was a smiling one. The absurdity of the match struck him irresistibly and he smiled in return. He tripped a little over an obtruding oak-root, and Juliet took advantage of her opportunity to press him hard. He fended off the attack and himself a.s.sumed the aggressive. An instant more and he had disarmed her and had thrown his own stick flying after hers. Both were laughing heartily enough.

"Forgive the trick," cried Anthony. "A man must disarm his wife when she becomes his enemy."

Breathless, Juliet sank upon a small knoll, her hand at her side. "If I'd been dressed for it--" she panted.

"You need coaching on your time thrusts, but you gave me plenty to do as it was," Anthony admitted. "More than that, you've presented me with a chance to recover my equilibrium. I was hot inside before. Now it's all on the outside."

He looked down at her affectionately. She smiled back. "I was crosser than sticks," she said. "I really can't imagine why, now. I apologise."

"So do I." He threw himself down on the ground at her feet, lay flat on his back, his clasped hands behind his head, and gazed up into the tree-tops.

"I'll take your advice into careful consideration," said he.

"I know you won't do anything rash," said she, and they both laughed again.

"How much more diplomatic that sort of talk is," he observed. "Why do we ever allow ourselves to use any other?"

"Because we are human, I suppose." Juliet was putting a ma.s.s of waving brown hair, disordered by the fight, into shape again. "It isn't nice. We don't do it often. To-night you came home tired, and found a wife who had been entertaining people from town all the afternoon. But it's all right now, isn't it?"

She bent forward, and Anthony took her outstretched hand in his own and gave it a grip which made it sting. He began to whistle cheerfully.

"Should we be happier if we never disagreed?" she asked thoughtfully.

The whistle stopped. "Jupiter, no! I want a thinking being to talk things over with, not a mental pincus.h.i.+on."

"Thank you.--Isn't it lovely here?"

"Delightful.--Julie, do you know we'll have been married five years next September?"

"It doesn't seem possible."

"I shouldn't know it, to look at you," he observed. He rolled upon his left side and regarded her from under intent brows. "You haven't grown a day older."

"I'm not sure that's a compliment."

"It's meant for one. Do you know you're a beauty?"

"I never was one and never shall be," she answered laughing, but she could not object to the obvious sincerity of his opinion as he delivered it.

"You're near enough to satisfy me. I'd rather have your good looks than all the--Well, I sat in front of a newly married pair on the way home to-night--that fellow Scrivener and his bride. _She's_ what people call a raving beauty, I suppose. I wouldn't have her in the house at a dollar an hour. She's a whiner. Had him doing something to satisfy her whim every minute. I heard him trying to tell her about something that interested him, but she couldn't take time from herself to listen. His voice had a note of fatigue in it, already, or I'm not Robeson. I tell you, Juliet--that's the sort of thing that makes a bachelor vow to stay single, and he can't be blamed."

"Suppose a bachelor had overheard us half an hour ago?"

"I'm glad none did--but if he had it wouldn't have disgusted him the way the other sort of thing did me to-day. A brisk little altercation is nothing, with unlimited hours of friendliness and understanding before and after. But a perpetual drizzle of fault finding and exactions--would make a fellow go hang himself. Mrs. Robeson, do you know, you're a very exceptional young person?"

"In what way, sir?"

"Whatever you do, you never nag. I've an awful suspicion that Judith Carey nags. You know how to let a man alone when he's in the mood for being alone. She never does. Carey had me out there not long ago, for what he called a quiet, confidential talk on some business matters. We went into what is supposed to be his private room and shut the door. Probably she came to that door not less than twelve times during that two hours. She called Carey away on every sort of pretext. Once she got him to do a stroke of work for her that took up at least ten minutes neither of us could spare. And she looked like a thundercloud every time I caught a glimpse of her face. Caesar!--think of having to live with that sort of person. No wonder Carey looks old before his time."

"It's certainly unfortunate. But I'm not an exception, Tony. There are plenty of women who know when to keep out of the way."

"Well, then, they're erratic on some other line, that's all. You're absolutely the only thoroughly sweet and sane woman I know."

"My dear boy! Remember how snappish I was just this evening."

"I was grouchy enough to match it. I tell you, Julie--the women who don't talk you to death on every subject, important or trivial, bore you with idiotic questions or impertinence about your affairs. How do I know so much about 'em? My dear, dozens of them come into the office every day, and Mr. Henderson has acquired a habit lately of turning them all over to me. I earn a double salary every hour I spend that way--wish I could put in a demand for it. Speaking of salaries, dear"--Anthony suddenly sat up--"I've no right to be grouchy, for I'm promised another advance next month."

"Splendid!" She put out her hand, and the two shook hands vigorously again, like the pair of comrades they were.

"Juliet," said her husband, watching her face closely. "It's been a happy five years, hasn't it?"

"A happy five years, Tony."

"Do you mean it?" He smiled at her. "You've never been sorry?" Then he got to his feet and held out his hand again to help her up. "The mortal combat we engaged in gave you a magnificent colour," he commented, and pa.s.sed affectionate fingers across the smooth cheek near his shoulder.

"Sweetheart----" he drew her into his arms--"I may fence with you once in a while with sharp words for weapons, but--do you know how I love you?"

"I wonder why?"

"It's strange, isn't it?--after all these years. To be really up-to-date, we should long since have become interested each in some other----"

A hand came gently but effectually upon his mouth. He kissed the hand.

"No, I won't say it. It's a cynical philosophy, and I'll not take its language on my lips--not with my wife in my arms, giving the lie to that sort of thing. Julie, we're not sentimentalists because we still care----"

"Who thinks we are?"

"Plenty of envious skeptics, I'll wager. I see it in their green-eyed glances. They can't believe it's genuine. Dear--is it genuine? Look up, and tell me."

She looked up, and seeing his heart in his eyes, met his deep caress with a tenderness which told him more than she could have put into the words she suddenly found it impossible to speak.