"What shall I be at fifty.
Should nature keep me alive
If I find the world so bitter
When I am but twenty-five?"
AT THE end of the week Dr. Carey ceased his visits, "You won't need
me any more," he assured Marie. "Take care of yourself, that is
all, and no more bathing this season."
Marie shivered, "No, I promise that."
She was feeling quite herself again, though she got tired easily.
She had written to Aunt Madge, making light of her accident, and
assuring her that there was no need to worry.
"And I am ever so happy," she wrote, with desolation in her heart
"And I like the hotel, and there are nice people here, and everyone
is very kind to me. I will let you know when we are coming home."
Chris came and stood behind her as she was writing and caught sight
of the first sentence.
"Is that true?" he asked. He pointed to the words: "I am ever so
happy."
Marie laughed, but she was glad that he could not see her face.
"Of course, it's true," she said. "I have never had such a good
time in my life."
A more observant man would have heard the flatness of her voice,
but Chris only heard what he wanted to hear, and it gave him a
sense of relief. If she was happy, that was all right. He thought
things had arranged themselves admirably. Marriage was not going to
be the tie he had dreaded, after all.
"Mrs. Heriot wants me to play a round of golf with her this
afternoon." he said after a moment. "Do you mind?"
"Of course not. Please go. I shall be all right; I am going to take
my book down on the sands."
"Very well--don't overtire yourself." He laid his hand on her
shoulder for a moment and then walked away.
Marie sat staring at the finished letter before her. Would Aunt
Madge be as blind as Chris, she wondered. She thrust it into an
envelope and took it to the post.
The weather was still holding fine. The days were hot and sunny and
the nights moonlit.
Last night at dinner she had asked Chris to take her for a walk. It
was the first time she had asked anything of him since their
marriage, but she had peeped at the moonlit sands and sea from her
window as she was dressing for dinner and a sudden longing to walk
through its silvery radiance with Chris had seized upon her.
"Come out with you? Why, of course!" Chris said in quick response.
"I promised to play Feathers a hundred up at half-past eight, but
that won't take long, and we can go afterwards."
But it had taken over an hour, and afterwards another man who had
watched the game had challenged Chris to another, and quite
unintentionally Chris had forgotten all about his promise to Marie,
and she had crept off to bed at ten o'clock without seeing him
again.
"I shall get used to it, of course I shall," she told herself as
she lay awake with the moonlight pouring through the open window.
"Other women with husbands like Chris get used to it, and so shall
I."
She never shed tears about him; all her tears seemed to have been
dried up. Her only longing was that he should be happy, and that
she should never bore him or prove a tie to his freedom.
She loved him with complete unselfishness--with complete
foolishness, too, perhaps an unkind critic might have said.
His was a nature so easily spoilt. If anybody offered him his own
way he took it without demur. He liked things to go smoothly. If he
was having a good time himself he took it for granted that
everybody else was, too.
He went off to his golf quite happily. He told Mrs. Heriot that
Marie had taken a book down to the sands.
"Alone?" Mrs. Heriot laughed. "How queer! Doesn't she find it
dull?"
"She loves reading--she'll be quite happy."
And Chris really believed what he was saying.
He did not care a jot for Mrs. Heriot, but she played golf
magnificently, and she was never tired. She could be out on the
links all day and dance all night, and still look as fresh as
paint--perhaps because she owed most of her freshness to paint and
powder.
As she and Chris were leaving the hotel they encountered Feathers.
Feathers stopped dead in front of his friend, blocking the way.
"Where are you going?" he asked uncompromisingly.
"Where are we going?" Chris echoed with sarcasm. "Where do you
think we are going? Hunting?"
Mrs. Heriot laughed immoderately. She did not like Feathers, and
she knew that he did not like her or approve of her friendship with
Chris, and it pleased her to read the annoyance in his ugly face.
"We're going golfing, Mr. Dakers," she said. "Don't you recognize
the clubs? I thought you were a golfer."
"He hates me, you know," she explained to Chris as they went on
down the road.
"He doesn't like any women," Chris said easily.
"You really think so?" she asked, raising her brows.
"I am sure of it." He seemed struck by her silence, and turned his
head sharply. "What do you mean?"
"Only that I thought he seemed rather friendly with your little
wife," she explained.
"Oh, with Marie!" Chris laughed. "Yes, I'm glad to say he is. They
get on very well together. He saved her life, you know."
"Of course! How stupid of me!" She pretended that she had
forgotten, and Chris frowned.
"Why on earth can't the woman be natural?" he was thinking
impatiently. He had quite missed her venomous little shaft with
regard to his wife and Feathers. His was a most unsuspicious
nature, and he cared too little for Marie to feel the slightest
jealousy.
He had laughed at Atkins' devotion to her. Atkins was a young
idiot, but he had been pleased that she and Feathers had taken such
a liking to one another. It argued well for a future in which Chris
could see himself wanting to knock about town with Feathers as he
had done before he was married.
They played a round of golf, and Mrs. Heriot beat him.
"What a triumph!" she said mockingly, when they sat down to rest on
a grassy slope. "You're not playing well to-day, Chris."
She had always called him by his Christian name. She was one of
those women who call all men by their Christian names without first
being invited to do so.
She was a widow with a large income, and a spiteful nature. She did
not actually wish to re-marry, because if she did so she would lose
the money left her by her husband, but all the same, she did not
like to see her men friends monopolized and married by other women.
She was thinking of her husband now, as she sat, chin on hand,
staring down at Chris, sprawled beside her on the grass.
Duncan Heriot had died in India while his wife was in England, and
he had died of too much drink and an enlarged liver. As she looked
at Chris, with his handsome face and long, lithe figure, she was
mentally contrasting him with the short, stubby man whom she had
married solely for his money.
She liked Chris for the same reason that he liked her. They had
many tastes in common and seldom bored one another.
She was a year or two older than he, but she was still a young
woman, and had it not been for the money question she would have
done her best to marry him; but she knew that Chris had no money,
and life without money was to Mrs. Heriot very much as a motor-car
would be without its engine. So she had launched the craft of Plato
between them, and comforted herself with the thought that he was
not a marrying man.
It had been a real shock to her to hear of his wedding. She had
been very anxious to meet his wife and find out for herself why he
had so suddenly changed his mind.
Her quick eyes had already discovered that it had not been for
love! She had made a life study of the opposite sex, and she knew
without any telling that there was another reason for which she
must seek.
"You know," she said, abruptly, "I was ever so surprised to hear
that you were married?"
"Were you?" Christ tilted his hat further over his eyes. "Most
people were, I think. Poor old Feathers was absolutely disgusted."
"It was very sudden, wasn't it?" she pursued. "Quite romantic, from
all accounts."
"Oh, I don't know. I've known her all my life--we were brought up
together."
"Really!" She opened her eyes wide. "Cousins or something?" she
hazarded.
"No. Marie's father adopted me."
Chris rose to his feet and yawned. He knew that he was being
pumped.
"Shall we play another round?" he asked.
"Of course." She was a little chagrined. She had imagined that
their friendship was on too secure a basis to permit of such a
decided snubbing. She played badly, as she always did when she was
annoyed, and Chris won easily.
"You threw that away deliberately," he challenged her.
She laughed. "Did I? Perhaps I did. You annoyed me."
"In what way?"
"I thought we were friends, and when I ventured to be interested in
your marriage you snubbed me abominably."
Her eyes were plaintive as they met his, and, manlike, Chris felt
slightly flattered.
Mrs. Heriot was a much-sought-after woman and he knew that she had
always shown a distinct preference for his society.
"I did not think you would be interested." he said lamely. "And
there is nothing to tell if you are looking for a romance."
"That is what you say." she declared. "But that is so like a man--
never will admit it when he cares for a woman."
Chris colored a little. He could not imagine what it was she wanted
him to say.
"You've always been such a confirmed bachelor." she went on. "I am
beginning to think that your wife must be a very wonderful woman to
have so completely metamorphosed you."
Chris frowned. He resented this cross-examination even while he was
half inclined to think it unreasonable of him to do so. After all,
he had known Mrs. Heriot some considerable time, and, as she said,
they had always been good friends.
"I can tell you one thing," he said half seriously. "And that is,
that my wife is the only woman in the world for whom I would have
given up my bachelor freedom! There, will that satisfy you?"
Mrs. Heriot smiled sweetly. She always smiled sweetly when she was
feeling particularly vixenish.
"How sweet of you! How very sweet!" she murmured. "Of course, I
have always said what a particularly charming girl she is--so
unspoilt, so unsophisticated! I suppose it is just another case of
like attracting unlike."
"I suppose it is," said Chris bluntly. He wished to goodness she
would talk about something else. He was shrewd enough to detect the
sting beneath her sugary words, and all his pride, if nothing more,
rose in defense of Marie. He thought of her with a little glow of
affectionate warmth.
"She's the most unselfish child I've ever met." he said
impulsively.
She was still a child to him. It was odd that he still could not
dissociate her in his mind from the little girl with the pigtail
and wistful eyes who had waited on him hand and foot all his life.
Perhaps if he could have realized that Marie was a woman, at least
in heart and thoughts, there might have been a better understanding
between them; but as it was--well, everything was all right, and
Marie had written to Aunt Madge that she was "ever so happy."
It was just as they reached the hotel again that Mrs. Heriot said
with a sentimental sigh: "Perfect, perfect weather, isn't it?
Glorious days, and--oh, did you notice the moon last night?"
Chris stood quite still. With a shock of guilt he remembered
Marie's little request to him and his own forgetfulness. The angry
blood rushed to his face. He hated to feel that perhaps he had
disappointed her.
He left Mrs. Heriot in the lounge and went straight up to his
wife's room. She was not there, but a book which he knew she had
been reading was lying open on her dressing-table and a little pair
of white shoes stood neatly together on the rug.
Chris rubbed the back of his head with a curiously boyish look of
embarrassment. It seemed odd to think that he and little Marie
Celeste were really husband and wife! He cast a furtive look at
himself in her mirror. He did not look much like a married man, he
thought, and laughed as he took up the book which Marie had been
reading. It was a book of poems, and Chris made a little grimace.
He had never read a poem in his life, but his eyes fell now on some
of the lines which had been faintly underscored with a pencil:
"What shall I be at fifty,
Should nature keep me alive--
If I find the world so bitter
When I am but twenty-five?"
He read the words through twice with a vague sense of discomfort.
Had Marie underlined them--and if so, why? They did not convey a
tremendous deal to Chris, though he had a faintly uncomfortable
feeling that they might to a woman.
Marie was not twenty-five either, she was only nineteen! And anyway
it was absurd to imagine that she was finding the world bitter when
she had just written home to Aunt Madge that she was quite happy.
He had still got the book in his hand when the door opened and
Marie came in. She caught her breath when she saw her husband.
"You, Chris!"
"Yes, I thought you were in." He turned round, holding out the
book. "Are you reading this?"
"Yes." She tried to take it from him, but he avoided her. "Did you
underline that verse?"
He saw the color flicker into her face, but she laughed as she bent
over the book and read the words he indicated.
"Did I? Of course not. It's a pretty poem. It's Tennyson's 'Maud,'
you know." Chris knew nothing about Tennyson's "Maud," but he was
relieved to hear the natural way in which his wife spoke. He shut
the book and threw it down carelessly.
"I came to say that I'm sorry about last night--about forgetting
to take you out, I mean. I clean forgot all about it. We'll go
to-night, shall we?" There was the smallest hesitation before she
answered. She was taking off her hat at the wardrobe so he could
not see her face.
"Mr. Dakers has two tickets for a concert," she said at last, "I
almost promised him I would go." She waited. "If you don't mind,"
she added.
"Of course, I don't mind. Go by all means. I dare say you'll enjoy
it. I shall be all right--I can have a game at billiards with
someone. I suppose it's time to dress?"
"Yes, I think so."
"See you downstairs, then?"
"Yes."
Chris went off whistling. He was quite happy again. Somebody else
had marked that verse. He ought to have known Marie Celeste would
not be so foolish--and they were stupid lines anyway. He could not
imagine why anybody ever wanted to read poetry.