Horace Innes looked round his wife’s drawing-room as if he were making
an inventory of it, carefully giving each article its value, which
happened, however, to have nothing to do with rupees. Madeline Anderson
had been saying something the day before about the intimacy and accuracy
with which people’s walls expressed them, and though the commonplace was
not new to him, this was the first time it had ever led him to scan his
wife’s. What he saw may be imagined, but his only distinct reflection
was that he had no idea that she had been photographed so variously or
had so many friends who wore resplendent Staff uniforms. The relation of
cheapness in porcelain ornaments to the lady’s individuality was beyond
him, and he could not analyze his feelings of sitting in the midst of
her poverty of spirit. Indeed, thinking of his ordinary unsusceptibility
to such things, he told himself sharply that he was adding an
affectation of discomfort to the others that he had to bear; and that
if Madeline had not given him the idea it would never have entered his
mind. The less, he mused, that one had to do with finicking feelings
in this world the better. They were well enough for people who were
tolerably conditioned in essentials--he preferred this vagueness, even
with himself, in connection with his marriage--otherwise they added
pricks. Besides he had that other matter to think of.
He thought of the other matter with such obvious irritation that the
butler coming in to say that the ‘English water’ was finished, and how
many dozen should he order, put a chair in its place instead, closed
the door softly again, and went away. It was not good for the dignity of
butlers to ask questions of any sort with a look of that kind under the
eyebrows of the sahib. The matter was not serious, Colonel Innes told
himself, but he would prefer by comparison to deal with matters that
were serious. He knew Simla well enough to attach no overwhelming
importance to things said about women at the Club, where the broadest
charity prevailed underneath, and the idle comment of the moment had
an intrinsic value as a distraction rather than a reflective one as
a criticism. This consideration, however, was more philosophical
in connection with other men’s wives. He found very little in it to
palliate what he had overheard, submerged in the ‘Times of India’, that
afternoon. And to put an edge on it, the thing had been said by one of
his own juniors. Luckily the boy had left the room without discovering
who was behind the ‘Times of India’. Innes felt that he should be
grateful for having been spared the exigency of defending his wife
against a flippant word to which she had very probably laid herself
open. He was very angry, and it is perhaps not surprising that he did
not pause to consider how far his anger was due to the humiliating
necessity of speaking to her about it. She was coming at last though;
she was in the hall. He would get it over quickly.
‘Goodbye!’ said Mrs. Innes at the door. ‘No, I can’t possibly let you
come in to tea. I don’t know how you have the conscience after drinking
three cups at Mrs. Mickie’s, where I had no business to take you!
Tomorrow? Oh, all right if you want to VERY badly. But I won’t promise
you strawberries--they’re nearly all gone.’
There was the sound of a departing pony’s trot, and Mrs. Innes came into
the drawing-room.
‘Good heavens, Horace! what are you sitting there for like a--like a
ghost? Why didn’t you make a noise or something, and why aren’t you at
office? I can’t tell you how you startled me.’
‘It is early,’ Colonel Innes said. ‘We are neither of us in the house,
as a rule, at this hour.’
‘Coincidence!’ Violet turned a cool, searching glance on her husband,
and held herself ready. ‘I came home early because I want to alter the
lace on my yellow bodice for tonight. It’s too disgusting as it is. But
I was rather glad to get away from Mrs. Mickie’s lot. So rowdy!’
‘And I came because I had a special reason for wanting to speak to you.’
Mrs. Violet’s lips parted, and her breath, in spite of herself, came a
little faster.
‘As we are dining out tonight, I thought that if I didn’t catch you now
I might not have another opportunity--till tomorrow morning.’
‘And it’s always a pity to spoil one’s breakfast. I can tell from your
manner, mon ami, it’s something disagreeable. What have I been and gone
and done?’
She was dancing, poor thing, in her little vulgar way, on hot iron. But
her eyes kept their inconsistent coolness.
‘I heard something today which you are not in the way of hearing. You
have--probably--no conception that it could be said.’
‘Then she has been telling other people. ABSOLUTELY the worst thing she
could do!’ Mrs. Innes exclaimed privately, sitting unmoved, her face a
little too expectant.
‘You won’t be prepared for it--you may be shocked and hurt by it.
Indeed, I think there is no need to repeat it to you. But I must put you
on your guard. Men are coarser, you know, than women; they are apt to
put their own interpretation--’
‘What is it?’
There was a physical gasp, a sharpness in her voice that brought Innes’s
eyes from the floor to her face.
‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but--don’t overestimate it, don’t let it worry
you. It was simply a very impertinent--a very disagreeable reference
to you and Mr. Holmcroft, I think, in connection with the Dovedell’s
picnic. It was a particularly silly thing as well, and I am sure no one
would attach any importance to it, but it was said openly at the Club,
and--’
‘Who said it?’ Mrs. Innes demanded.
A flood of colour rushed over her face. Horace marked that she blushed.
‘I don’t know whether I ought to tell you, Violet. It certainly was not
meant for your ears.’
‘If I’m not to know who said it, I don’t see why I should pay any
attention to it. Mere idle rumour--’
Innes bit his lip.
‘Captain Gordon said it,’ he replied.
‘Bobby Gordon! DO tell me what he said! I’m dying to know. Was he very
disagreeable? I DID give his dance away on Thursday night.’
Innes looked at her with the curious distrust which she often inspired
in him. He had a feeling that he would like to put her out of the room
into a place by herself, and keep her there.
‘I won’t repeat what he said.’ Colonel Innes took up the ‘Saturday
Review’.
‘Oh, do, Horace! I particularly want to know.’
Innes said nothing.
‘Horace! Was it--was it anything about Mr. Holmcroft being my
Secretariat baa-lamb?’
‘If you adorn your guess with a little profanity,’ said Innes, acidly,
‘you won’t be far wrong.’
Mrs. Violet burst into a peal of laughter.
‘Why, you old goose!’ she articulated, behind her handkerchief; ‘he said
that to ME.’
Innes laid down the ‘Saturday Review’.
‘To you!’ he repeated; ‘Gordon said it to you!’
‘Rather!’ Mrs. Violet was still mirthful. ‘I’m not sure that he didn’t
call poor little Homie something worse than that. It’s the purest
jealousy on his part--nothing to make a fuss about.’
The fourth skin which enables so many of us to be callous to all but the
relative meaning of careless phrases had not been given to Innes, and
her words fell upon his bare sense of propriety.
‘Jealous,’ he said, ‘of a married woman? I find that difficult to
understand.’
Violet’s face straightened out.
‘Don’t be absurd, Horace. These boys are always jealous of somebody or
other--it’s the occupation of their lives! I really don’t see how one
can prevent it.’
‘It seems to me that a self-respecting woman should see how. Your point
of view in these matters is incomprehensible.’
‘Perhaps,’ Violet was driven by righteous anger to say, ‘you find Miss
Anderson’s easier to understand.’
Colonel Innes’s face took its regimental disciplinary look, and, though
his eyes were aroused, his words were quiet with repression.
‘I see no reason to discuss Miss Anderson with you,’ he said. ‘She has
nothing to do with what we are talking about.’
‘Oh, don’t you, really! Hasn’t she, indeed! I take it you are trying to
make me believe that compromising things are said about Mr. Holmcroft
and me at the Club. Well, I advise you to keep your ears open a little
more, and listen to the things said about you and Madeline Anderson
there. But I don’t suppose you would be in such a hurry to repeat them
to HER.’
Innes turned very white, and the rigidity of his face gave place to
heavy dismay. His look was that of a man upon whom misfortune had fallen
out of a clear sky. For an instant he stared at his wife. When he spoke
his voice was altered.
‘For God’s sake!’ he said, ‘let us have done with this pitiful
wrangling. I dare say you can take care of yourself; at all events, I
only meant to warn you. But now you must tell me exactly what you mean
by this that you have said--this--about--’
‘The fat’s in the fire,’ was Mrs. Innes’s reflection.
‘Certainly, I’ll tell you--’
‘Don’t shout, please!’
‘I mean simply that all Simla is talking about your affair with Miss
Anderson. You may imagine that because you are fifteen years older than
she is things won’t be thought of, but they are, and I hear it’s been
spoken about at Viceregal Lodge. I KNOW Lady Bloomfield has noticed it,
for she herself mentioned it to me. I told her I hadn’t the slightest
objection, and neither have I, but there’s an old proverb about people
in glass houses. What are you going to do?’
Colonel Innes’s expression was certainly alarming, and he had made a
step toward her that had menace in it.
‘I am going out,’ he said, and turned and left her to her triumph.