A Bachelor Husband Part 63

"Yes; can I come up?"

"Of course."

They met on the stairs.

"Atkins is here," Feathers said; "but he's just off. Come in."

Chris did not care for Atkins, and greeted him rather curtly.

"Mrs. Lawless is well, I hope?" young Atkins asked awkwardly, and Chris grunted out that she was quite well.

"I haven't seen her for some time," Atkins said rather wistfully.

n.o.body answered, and he took up his hat.

"Well, I'll be off." He said good-night and clattered away down the stairs.

"Young idiot!" Chris said, flinging himself into a chair. "Phew!

It's warm, isn't it?"

"It's abnormal weather for September," Feathers agreed.

There was a little silence, then Feathers knocked the ashes from his pipe and stood up.

"Well, out with it! What's the matter?"

"What do you mean?"

"That I know you've come here with something on your mind. Get it off and you'll feel better."

He half-expected an outburst of rage from his friend, but none came, and there was a painful note in Chris' voice as he said:

"It's--my wife!"

"Yes." It gave Feathers a little shock to hear Chris speak of Marie in those words. He could not remember ever having heard him use them before. It was usually "Marie" or "Marie Celeste." It brought home to him with sharp reality how far removed she was from him, how much she belonged to the man whose name she bore.

Chris looked up, his eyes hot and faintly suspicious.

"d.a.m.n it! You know as well as I do that things are all wrong between us," he said roughly. "And now the climax has come and she wants to be free of me--separation, divorce--whatever it is you get when your wife hates you like poison."

Feathers did not move. His ugly face was a little pale, but his eyes betrayed nothing. Chris started up and began pacing the room.

"I'm to blame, I suppose," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "I ought not to have married her, but it seemed the best thing to do at the time."

A little contemptuous flash crossed his friend's eyes, but he made no comment.

Chris swung round with startling suddenness.

"What would you do if you were me?" he demanded.

"My dear chap! What an impossible question to answer! I know nothing about women--you know that. You should be the best judge as how to settle your own affairs."

Chris crumped his hair agitatedly.

"I'm hanged if I am! I never was so up against it in my life.

Perhaps if I cleared off abroad somewhere for a year ..."

Feathers interrupted quietly:

"Don't you think you've been away long enough already?"

"You mean Scotland! Pooh! That was nothing. She wouldn't have cared about that." But his voice was uncertain, and after a moment he asked suspiciously:

"What are you driving at?"

"Nothing. But I think, as I thought at the time, that it would have saved a lot of trouble if you had taken her with you. You were newly married. It would have been a most natural thing to do."

Chris colored, but he did not feel at all resentful. He was grateful to Feathers for his interest. It was a relief to be able to tell his troubles to somebody.

"I don't think it made any difference," he said after a moment.

"It's not as if ours was an ordinary sort of marriage. I mean---"

He broke off in confusion, to blunder on again: "Marie doesn't care for me, and that's the whole truth. I thought she did once upon a time. It shows my darned conceit, I suppose."

Feathers said nothing, and, struck by his silence, Chris said with slow deliberation: "Sometimes, now and again, I've wondered if there isn't some other fellow she cares for--some chap she would marry if I wasn't in the way."

He was looking hard at Feathers all the time he spoke, and his friend's ugly face was at the moment mercilessly exposed to the glare of the electric light, but there was no change in its quiet indifference, and Chris gave a sharp sigh of relief.

He had not realized till now how great had been that vague dread in his heart. Marie might care for Feathers, but at that moment Chris was sure that Feathers cared nothing for her--perhaps because he wished to be sure. Feathers was sc.r.a.ping out the bowl of his pipe with an irritating little sound and finished it carefully before he spoke:

"I'm not much of a judge of that sort of thing, but I should not think it at all likely. Mrs. Lawless does not know many people, does she?"

"If you mean men--as far as I know there is only Atkins and--you."

Feathers looked up. There was a little wry smile in his eyes.

"You are hardly flattering to your wife," he said quietly, "if you think that either Atkins or myself could make an impression where you have failed."

Chris laughed awkwardly.

"I never was a suspicious chap," he said. "I hate suspicious people, but since I came home, well ..." He turned and looked Feathers squarely in the eyes. "I've thought all sorts of queer things--things I would even hesitate to tell you," he added deliberately.

Feathers laughed casually.

"I don't want your confidences, my son," he said. "You started this conversation, you know, and I didn't offer my advice, but as we're on the subject I should just like to remind you that Mrs. Lawless is very young, little more than a child, and--children like attention and amus.e.m.e.nt."

Chris colored.

"You mean that she hasn't had either from me." he said. "I know you're right, but what the deuce can I do?"