The Interested Married Man
Lord Kneedrock lived, when he was in town, in a small suite in St.
James's Square.
Here Carleigh came on a bright morning, three days later, to find
Kneedrock in the little sitting-room reading before a fire, three
windows open and two dogs asleep at his feet.
They talked for half an hour before the visitor reached his point.
"She told me all," he said, then. "I suppose it's fairest to say
outright that she told me all."
Kneedrock didn't look at him. He was smoking his pipe, and his gaze
fixed itself on the curling clouds of smoke that eddied in the
cross-currents of air from the open windows.
"I suppose that she told you she was to blame, eh?" he drawled after a
moment.
"She said that she hadn't cared what happened."
"It isn't a pretty story, no matter how you look at it," the viscount
observed, putting his reflections into words. "Two desperate persons who
didn't care what happened. Poor Darling! He didn't care what happened,
either, don't you know. I've often wondered if he didn't load the thing
and call her to manage the discharge."
Carleigh's eyes were fascinatedly fixed on the flames in the
grate--little blue, dancing devils of light whose heat was overpowered
by the chill from outside.
"I thought of that, too," he said, grimly.
"Poor Darling!" Kneedrock went on musingly. "I saw him before any one
else. The smoke hadn't cleared away. His face was quite gone, you know.
It was awful."
"Good God!"
There was a little pause, and then the older man said:
"What horrible things go on in the world, anyhow!"
"Yes," the other said simply.
"I saw him after that, though," pursued Kneedrock, "in his coffin,
tricked out in his dress uniform, a handkerchief spread where his face
used to be, and his head on a silk pillow. He looked very peaceful. Glad
it was all over, I dare say."
Carleigh only nodded, still looking at the fire. And then there was
another pause, which Kneedrock broke eventually with: "We're awfully
primitive.... Still Nina's story wasn't strictly primitive. It was all
warped and twisted by civilization.
"In the stone age things would have been different. The troglodyte would
have clubbed Darling, and later, if the lady played tricks, he would
have ended her in the same way. That's how to manage women."
He stretched out his iron hand and wrist and looked at them--his right
hand and wrist, not the scarred ones. "I hate civilization," he said
then suddenly. "I hate honor, and _noblesse oblige_, and all such
tommyrot. It's the ruin of the race."
He spoke slowly now, but with a frightful bitterness.
"Yes," said Carleigh, sympathy swelling quick, "we've gone a long way
from the truth of existence."
"It isn't any use going on a wild-goose chase after happiness in these
times," Kneedrock went on. "You can't cure your ills, nowadays. I tried
to help myself once, and made the worst kind of a mess of it. Go back to
your wife, or go off with your mother-in-law, but don't imagine that
either course is going to help you to happiness. Because it isn't."
Carleigh was looking Nibbetts straight in the eyes now.
"And yet," he said frankly, "I think that I could be happy--quite
happy--with Mrs. Darling."
"No, you couldn't," returned the viscount sharply--gruffly, in fact.
"You couldn't. She's too shallow."
"Shallow?"
"Yes, shallow. She has no depths--of feeling, or anything else. Her
whole life shows that. She was too pretty when she was young. She led
her husband a devil of a dance, and she'll never reform.
"You must go after some other trail or grail, or whatever you choose to
call it. You can never either help Nina or get her. Take my word for
that."
Carleigh, who wasn't in any sense a strong character, felt depressed at
the words. Kneedrock, who was a very strong character, relit his pipe
and waited. After a little the other said:
"Do you, by any chance, know a man named Andrews?"
"I know one Andrews," answered Kneedrock, and this time he held out his
left hand and wrist. "It was he who gave me that," he added, indicating
the healed wound, "the night before poor Darling was shot."
"In India?"
"In India."
"What sort of a chap?"
"Tallish, rather good-looking, brown eyes and hair, young. Was in the
civil service."
Carleigh looked puzzled. "I wonder if it could have been the same?" he
asked, half to himself. "I met him at Mrs. Darling's the day I called."
"Oh, I dare say," said Kneedrock, non-committally. "He's followed her
after five years. Once one gets the virus in one's blood, it's likely to
break out any time. So Andrews is at Bath!"
"He seemed to be quite at home."
"Doubtless he is. Nina can make one feel that way. He was very much at
home in the Darling bungalow at Umballa. Just before he fired at me he
and Nina seemed to be sharing a single chair. You see, I was there on a
spying expedition."
"You mean--" queried Carleigh. He couldn't just reconcile Kneedrock and
the word.
"I'd heard that Darling was cruel to her and I traveled all the way from
Tuamota to the Punjab to find out."
Sir Caryll held his peace, and Kneedrock added: "Of course I found it
was the most unwarranted slander. Darling was a saint."
He got up and closed the three windows. Then he poked the coals, and
took a place on the hearth-rug with his back to the grate. The dogs
still slept.
"So she's amusing herself with Andrews again, eh!" he chuckled.
"Recalling those halcyon days of bloodshed, I suppose."
"Perhaps," said Carleigh thoughtfully, "now, after all these years,
she'll marry him."
"Oh, no, she won't," flashed from Kneedrock, who was smiling. "She
can't, you know."
"I don't see why not," the other rejoined. "She's her own mistress.
She's of age, and a widow, and of sound mind."
The viscount maintained a rather disconcerting silence for the space of
several seconds, puffing at his pipe and following the smoke with his
eyes. Then he patted the head of the nearest dog with the toe of his
boot.
When, finally, he spoke, it was to ask: "Did you ever hear me spoken of
as her lover?"
"Yes," answered Carleigh, surprised beyond words.
Kneedrock raised his head and his eyes as they rested for a moment upon
Sir Caryll's were curiously devoid of expression.
"I was," he said with a sort of dry grimness. "I'm more than that--I'm
her _husband_."