The Oyster Part 40

Marie was ready waiting, supplying the pet.i.t soins which Bertie had forgotten.

"Pauvre Madame is tired." Marie had a cup of coffee with but just a soupcon of eau de vie. The bath was prepared. She hovered round Esme, getting a soft wrapper, soothing jangled nerves. Marie was a treasure!

Esme took up her letters. Bills, invitations, more bills, a scrawl from Dollie asking them to dinner. Esme had forgotten her ill-humour.

"Bertie, we're dining out--telephone to Dollie. Yes, I said we'd go."

Dollie Gresham's was better than dinner in the restaurant, or brought up by a flat-faced German to their dining-room. Bertie distrusted the tinned soup, the besauced entrees and tasteless meat. He was glad to go out. Esme had told him nothing; he was hurt and would not show it.

"Ring up the coupe people, Marie. Dollie may be going to a theatre, Bert."

"We must owe them a fortune," was on Bertie's lips, but he stopped. To even ask if a taxi would do might disturb peace.

Dollie wanted them for bridge. Her little dinners surpa.s.sed Esme's now.

They were a party of eight, Dollie's bitterly clever tongue keeping away all fears of dullness.

"Cousin May was here to-night, Esme; she came from Paris to-day also.

She saw you there--at the Ritz, having a dinner with blue-eyed Tommy.

You heard some pretty tales before that evening was over, Esme. Let's have them now."

"Am I to undermine the peace of this dinner-table?" Esme's wit was fairly ready, and she watched with a smile as women flushed and men looked uncomfortable.

"Unsavoury little dustman," said Bertie, sharply.

Esme had not told him of her dinner. His look at her made the table know it, and gave them something to talk of afterwards.

"Sly Esme, setting up as such a model too. And Tommy of all men. She was a friend of Jimmie Helmsley's once, too; _don't_ you remember he dropped her for the Chauntsey girl?" people whispered. The teeth of Society loves a bone of scandal to crunch.

After dinner Bertie cut in at Dollie's table, and as her partner found himself absent, playing badly, losing tricks carelessly.

"I'm really sorry," he apologized, as their opponents went across for sandwiches. "I'll wake up now."

"You're out of sorts," Dollie said kindly. "What is it?"

"Debts," he said wearily. "We're the old proverbial china crock, Mrs Gresham, trying to swim with the bra.s.s one. What does it cost a woman to dress, Mrs Gresham?"

"It costs Esme about fifteen hundred a year," said Dollie, shrewdly.

"Claire is ruinous now. Never an evening frock under sixty, and the etceteras at so much an ounce. Then Esme's furs are all new. She's a bad little lady going to Claire, and Lilie in Paris."

"Fifteen hundred!" Bertie laughed. "No, about three; and it's far more than I can manage."

"Three--grandmothers!" observed Dollie, blandly. "You see Claire's little bill and tell me then. You're very extravagant children. Esme paid those electric people fifty pounds before you left London, and taxis are just as good."

"Fifty pounds!" Bertie shuffled the cards silently. He had not given Esme fifty pounds for the garage. He certainly did not pay Claire's bill. His payments had been to big drapers, and to a tailor.

A sudden sickening doubt was a.s.sailing him. Was Esme getting money he did not know of? Was he one among the hundreds of fooled husbands? He flung the thought away, and turned to the game, and played carefully.

But on the way home the thought returned.

"Esme, we must pay these people," he said, trying to speak carelessly.

"Not let it get too high."

"Oh, I sent them a sop to Cerberus months ago--a big one."

"But--I never gave it to you."

"No." He saw her hand move impatiently. "No, it was bridge winnings, I suppose. Or when Poeticus won the Hunt Cup. I forget."

Suspicion is a seed which, sown, grows, and will not be hoed up. Bertie came into his wife's room as she lay asleep, and looked sadly at her pale face. There was a small room next door, lined with cupboards; he went to it, opened the doors, saw the shimmer of satins and silks, the softness of chiffon and lace, the gleam of rich embroidery--dress upon dress. He had loved to see her well dressed, and not dreamt of the great cost of some of these mere wisps of evening gowns. Sixty pounds!

Bertie shut the doors, feeling mean, as if he had spied, but he was not satisfied.

Had Esme some way of getting money? Instead of sleeping, he did accounts; got up frowning, to go to sleep at last in the grey bleakness of an autumn morning, to wake with the little parasite, suspicion, gnawing at his heart.

He went into his wife's room after his breakfast; she did not come down for hers now. Esme was up, her golden hair loose, waiting to have some brightening stuff rubbed into it.

She was bending over her jewel-case, choosing a necklace and pendant to wear.

"This clasp is loose, Marie; the clasp of these sapphires"--Esme held up a thin chain holding together little cl.u.s.ters of sapphires and diamond sparks. "It's--oh! you, Bertie!"

"That's new, isn't it, Esme?" He took the chain from her.

"New--if a year old is new."

"And this"--he snapped open two or three cases, holding glittering toys. "I didn't give you any of these, did I?"

Esme moved impatiently. "Paste," she said suddenly. "Parisian! I can't go about always wearing the same old things, so I am foolish, and get these."

"Oh, paste!" He was putting back a pendant when he looked at the setting. Surely paste had a backing, was not set clear.

"They're wonderfully done," he said gravely. The satin lining of the case bore a Bond Street jeweller's name.

"Oh, wonderfully." Esme snapped the case to. "And I get the cases so as to deceive my friends' maids. Run away, Bertie, you worry me standing there."

He went slowly. Esme was lying to him. The things were real. Her jewel-box was full of new toys and trifles; he began to realize that her dresses were magnificent.

Her letters lay in a litter on her bureau, some half-opened, all tossed about as if they had worried her. One long slip oozed from its envelope, with a huge total at its foot. It was a bill for new furs.

Another thick envelope bore the word "Claire" on the back.

A man has a right to see his wife's bills. Bertie took out the letter.

Madame Claire begged immediately for a cheque on account. She really must have a few--Bertie turned white--a few hundreds. A smaller slip of paper was enclosed. Amount of account furnished, three hundred and ten pounds. Yellow evening gown, lace overdress, seventy pounds. Blue tea gown, forty pounds. The total was for five hundred pounds.

Bertie laid it down with a sick feeling of despair. He could not pay this. It was impossible. Five hundred pounds to a dressmaker. Dollie Gresham had been right in her estimate. He sat looking at the dull blue of the drawing-room carpet, sat thinking hopelessly.

Then Esme, in dull blue-green, ma.s.ses of black making a foil to her fair skin, came back. A faint perfume clung about her, nothing emphasized, but the memory of sachets or little pieces of perfumed skin sewn into her dress.

The necklace of small sapphires and diamonds glistened at her throat.

She was humming gaily, ready to write to Denise.