A Bachelor Husband Part 17

Feathers smiled grimly, meeting her eyes.

"Mrs. Lawless, may you be forgiven!" he said solemnly. "And may I also remind you that if you want to be in time for the show, you'll have to go without the water ice which I see they promise us as the final t.i.t-bit on the menu."

"I hate water ices," Marie declared. "And I'm quite ready when you are." She looked at her husband.

"Don't wait for me, my child," said Chris. "Run away and amuse yourself."

Marie rose from the table quietly.

"I'll just get my coat," she said to Feathers. She walked down the room between the crowded tables, the eyes of both men following her.

She made a pathetic little figure, so Feathers thought, and was angry with himself for the thought. He did not want to think of her as unhappy. He could not imagine why he always read sadness in her face.

He turned to Chris. "Why don't you come with us?" he asked abruptly.

Chris opened his eyes in faint astonishment.

"What! Be penned up in a stuffy concert hall all the evening?" he said.

"My dear chap, it's no worse than the billiard room." Feathers answered irascibly. "You spend too much of your time there."

Chris looked at him in utter amazement; then he laughed.

"Is it a joke or what?" he asked helplessly.

Feathers pushed back his chair rather violently and rose.

"Think it over," he said curtly, and walked out of the room.

Chris did think it over. He went out on to the sea front, and stared at the sea, and wondered what on earth his friend had been driving at. He did not at all like the way in which Feathers had looked at him or the tone of voice in which he had spoken.

As a rule, everyone looked upon Chris with approval. He threw his half-smoked cigarette over the sea wall on to the sand, and with morose eyes, watched it consume away.

He was not going to be lectured by Feathers, old friends as they were! He began to feel himself distinctly ill-used.

Now he came to think of it it was pretty cool of him to take Marie Celeste off to a concert and leave him to shift for himself. He was not at all sure that he was being fairly treated.

"A penny for your thoughts." said Mrs. Heriot beside him, and he started from his reverie and laughed.

"Nothing. I was just wondering about something, that's all."

He was really rather glad to see her. It was dusk out there on the sea front, and Mrs. Heriot always looked her best in a half-light, as do most women who take the tint of their hair and complexion out of a box.

She was dressed in black, too. It suited her admirably, and there was a fluffy white fur round her throat and shoulders which rather appealed to Chris.

Feathers had knocked a corner off his complacency, and he was just in a mood to accept the soothing flattery which Mrs. Heriot knew to a nicety how to administer.

"I've never seen you look so cross before," she challenged him.

"What is the matter and where is Mrs. Lawless?"

"She's gone to a concert."

"Oh, yes, with Mr. Dakers! I saw them going along the road together Just now." She paused. "You don't care for music, I suppose?"

"Not particularly."

"Neither do I. I don't think people who are very keen on games are ever fond of music and artistic things like that, do you?"

"Perhaps not," he agreed.

She drew the feathery wrap closer round her throat.

"Isn't it a heavenly night? What shall we do?"

Chris laughed rather grimly. "I've nothing to do. I'm quite at your service."

"Really?" Her eyes were bright it the half-light. "Well, then, shall we take a boat and row out to meet the moon?"

"Meet the moon!" Chris echoed blankly.

She laughed. "Yes, isn't that what romantic people do? I know I'm not a romantic person, but I'm going to pretend to be, just for one night---"

She laid her hand on his arm. "Do! It will be such fun."

Her excitement was rather infectious, and after the smallest hesitation Chris yielded.

"Oh, all right. Can we get a boat?"

"Of course we can." She kept her hand through his arm as they went down the sands to look for an old boatman from whom Mrs. Heriot declared she had often hired boats before.

"Do ye want me to come along with yer?" he asked, as he dragged a skiff down to the water's edge.

Mrs. Heriot laughed and looked at Chris.

"Do we want Charon to row us on the Styx?" she asked.

Chris made a wry little face.

"I think we might be able to manage without his help," he said.

He gave her his hand and followed her into the skiff.

It was a perfect night. There was hardly a ripple on the water, and the moon was rising in a gleam half-circle above the horizon.

Mrs. Heriot dabbled her hand in the cool water, and her diamond rings glittered like sparks of fire.

"Now, isn't this better than that horrid, stuffy old billiard room?" she asked presently.

Chris frowned, and his friend's words, which he had forgotten for the moment, came back with worrying insistence.