The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes Part 12

"Amber!" His voice was pained now. "I prepared a surprise for the anniversary of our wedding. One can't consult about surprises."

"Keep your quibbles for the House! But perhaps there is no House, either."

"Naturally. I have done with it all. I have written for the Chiltern Hundreds."

"You are mad, Walter. You must take it all back."

"I can't, Amber. I have quarrelled hopelessly with the Party. The Prime Minister will never forgive what I said at the Council to-day.

The luxury of speaking one's mind is expensive. I ought never to have joined any Party. I am only fit to be Independent."

"Independence leads nowhere." She rose angrily. "And this is to be the end of your Career! The Career you married me for!"

"I did wrong, Amber. But before one finds the true G.o.d, one worships idols."

"And what is the true G.o.d, pray?"

"The one whose angel and minister you have always been, Amber"--he lowered his voice reverently--"Love."

"Love!" Her voice was bitter. "Any bench in the Park, any alley in Highmead, swarms with Love." 'Twas as if Caesar had skipped from his imperial chariot to a sociable.

All her childish pa.s.sion for directing the life of the household, all her girlish relish in keeping lovers in leading strings, all that unconscious love of Power which--inversely--had attracted her to Walter Ba.s.sett, and which had found so delightful a scope in her political activities, leapt--now that her Salon was threatened with extinction--into agonised consciousness of itself.

Through this brilliant husband of hers, she had touched the destinies of England, pulled the strings of Empire. Oh, the intoxication of the fight--the fight for which she had seconded and sponged him! Oh, the rapture of intriguing against his enemies--himself included--the feminine triumph of managing Goodman Waverer or Badman Badgerer!

And now--oh, she could no longer control her sobs!

He tried to soothe her, to caress her, but she repulsed him.

"Go to your yacht--to your miserable shimmering waters. I shall spend my honeymoon here alone.... You discovered I was Irish."

THE WOMAN BEATER

I

She came "to meet John Lefolle," but John Lefolle did not know he was to meet Winifred Glamorys. He did not even know he was himself the meeting-point of all the brilliant and beautiful persons, a.s.sembled in the publisher's Sat.u.r.day Salon, for although a youthful minor poet, he was modest and lovable. Perhaps his Oxford tutorship was sobering.

At any rate his head remained unturned by his precocious fame, and to meet these other young men and women--his reverend seniors on the slopes of Parna.s.sus--gave him more pleasure than the receipt of "royalties." Not that his publisher afforded him much opportunity of contrasting the two pleasures. The profits of the Muse went to provide this room of old furniture and roses, this beautiful garden a-twinkle with j.a.panese lanterns, like gorgeous fire-flowers blossoming under the white crescent-moon of early June.

Winifred Glamorys was not literary herself. She was better than a poetess, she was a poem. The publisher always threw in a few realities, and some beautiful brainless creature would generally be found the nucleus of a crowd, while Clio in spectacles languished in a corner. Winifred Glamorys, however, was reputed to have a tongue that matched her eye; paralleling with whimsies and epigrams its freakish fires and witcheries, and, a.s.suredly, flitting in her white gown through the dark balmy garden, she seemed the very spirit of moonlight, the subtle incarnation of night and roses.

When John Lefolle met her, Cecilia was with her, and the first conversation was triangular. Cecilia fired most of the shots; she was a bouncing, rattling beauty, chockful of confidence and high spirits, except when asked to do the one thing she could do--sing! Then she became--quite genuinely--a nervous, hesitant, pale little thing.

However, the suppliant hostess bore her off, and presently her rich contralto notes pa.s.sed through the garden, adding to its pa.s.sion and mystery, and through the open French windows, John could see her standing against the wall near the piano, her head thrown back, her eyes half-closed, her creamy throat swelling in the very abandonment of artistic ecstasy.

"What a charming creature!" he exclaimed involuntarily.

"That is what everybody thinks, except her husband," Winifred laughed.

"Is he blind then?" asked John with his cloistral _navete_.

"Blind? No, love is blind. Marriage is never blind."

The bitterness in her tone pierced John. He felt vaguely the pa.s.sing of some icy current from unknown seas of experience. Cecilia's voice soared out enchantingly.

"Then, marriage must be deaf," he said, "or such music as that would charm it."

She smiled sadly. Her smile was the tricksy play of moonlight among clouds of faery.

"You have never been married," she said simply.

"Do you mean that you, too, are neglected?" something impelled him to exclaim.

"Worse," she murmured.

"It is incredible!" he cried. "You!"

"Hush! My husband will hear you."

Her warning whisper brought him into a delicious conspiracy with her.

"Which is your husband?" he whispered back.

"There! Near the cas.e.m.e.nt, standing gazing open-mouthed at Cecilia.

He always opens his mouth when she sings. It is like two toys moved by the same wire."

He looked at the tall, stalwart, ruddy-haired Anglo-Saxon. "Do you mean to say he--?"

"I mean to say nothing."

"But you said--"

"I said 'worse.'"

"Why, what can be worse?"

She put her hand over her face. "I am ashamed to tell you." How adorable was that half-divined blush!

"But you must tell me everything." He scarcely knew how he had leapt into this _role_ of confessor. He only felt they were "moved by the same wire."