Джон Голсуорси
The Country House
CHAPTER VIII
GREGORY VIGIL PROPOSES
About three o’clock that afternoon a tall man walked up the avenue at Worsted Skeynes, in one hand carrying his hat, in the other a small brown bag. He stopped now and then, and took deep breaths, expanding the nostrils of his straight nose. He had a fine head, with wings of grizzled hair. His clothes were loose, his stride was springy. Standing in the middle of the drive, taking those long breaths, with his moist blue eyes upon the sky, he excited the attention of a robin, who ran out of a rhododendron to see, and when he had passed began to whistle. Gregory Vigil turned, and screwed up his humorous lips, and, except that he was completely lacking in embonpoint, he had a certain resemblance to this bird, which is supposed to be peculiarly British.
He asked for Mrs. Pendyce in a high, light voice, very pleasant to the ear, and was at once shown to the white morning-room.
She greeted him affectionately, like many women who have grown used to hearing from their husbands the formula “Oh! your people!” – she had a strong feeling for her kith and kin.
“You know, Grig,” she said, when her cousin was seated, “your letter was rather disturbing. Her separation from Captain Bellew has caused such a lot of talk about here. Yes; it’s very common, I know, that sort of thing, but Horace is so – ! All the squires and parsons and county people we get about here are just the same. Of course, I’m very fond of her, she’s so charming to look at; but, Gregory, I really don’t dislike her husband. He’s a desperate sort of person – I think that’s rather, refreshing; and you know I do think she’s a little like him in that!”
The blood rushed up into Gregory Vigil’s forehead; he put his hand to his head, and said:
“Like him? Like that man? Is a rose like an artichoke?”
Mrs. Pendyce went on:
“I enjoyed having her here immensely. It’s the first time she’s been here since she left the Firs. How long is that? Two years? But you know, Grig, the Maldens were quite upset about her. Do you think a divorce is really necessary?”
Gregory Vigil answered: “I’m afraid it is.”
Mrs. Pendyce met her cousin’s gaze serenely; if anything, her brows were uplifted more than usual; but, as at the stirring of secret trouble, her fingers began to twine and twist. Before her rose a vision of George and Mrs. Bellew side by side. It was a vague maternal feeling, an instinctive fear. She stilled her fingers, let her eyelids droop, and said:
“Of course, dear Grig, if I can help you in any way – Horace does so dislike anything to do with the papers.”
Gregory Vigil drew in his breath.
“The papers!” he said. “How hateful it is! To think that our civilisation should allow women to be cast to the dogs! Understand, Margery, I’m thinking of her. In this matter I’m not capable of considering anything else.”
Mrs. Pendyce murmured: “Of course, dear Grig, I quite understand.”
“Her position is odious; a woman should not have to live like that, exposed to everyone’s foul gossip.”
“But, dear Grig, I don’t think she minds; she seemed to me in such excellent spirits.”
Gregory ran his fingers through his hair.
“Nobody understands her,” he said; “she’s so plucky!”
Mrs. Pendyce stole a glance at him, and a little ironical smile flickered over her face.
“No one can look at her without seeing her spirit. But, Grig, perhaps you don’t quite understand her either!”
Gregory Vigil put his hand to his head.
“I must open the window a moment,” he said.
Again Mrs. Pendyce’s fingers began twisting, again she stilled them.
“We were quite a large party last week, and now there’s only Charles. Even George has gone back; he’ll be so sorry to have missed you!”
Gregory neither turned nor answered, and a wistful look came into Mrs. Pendyce’s face.
“It was so nice for the dear boy to win that race! I’m afraid he bets rather! It’s such a comfort Horace doesn’t know.”
Still Gregory did not speak.
Mrs. Pendyce’s face lost its anxious look, and gained a sort of gentle admiration.
“Dear Grig,” she said, “where do you go about your hair? It is so nice and long and wavy!”
Gregory turned with a blush.
“I’ve been wanting to get it cut for ages. Do you really mean, Margery, that your husband can’t realise the position she’s placed in?”
Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes on her lap.
“You see, Grig,” she began, “she was here a good deal before she left the Firs, and, of course, she’s related to me – though it’s very distant. With those horrid cases, you never know what will happen. Horace is certain to say that she ought to go back to her husband; or, if that’s impossible, he’ll say she ought to think of Society. Lady Rose Bethany’s case has shaken everybody, and Horace is nervous. I don’t know how it is, there’s a great feeling amongst people about here against women asserting themselves. You should hear Mr. Barter and Sir James Malden, and dozens of others; the funny thing is that the women take their side. Of course, it seems odd to me, because so many of the Totteridges ran away, or did something funny. I can’t help sympathising with her, but I have to think of – of – In the country, you don’t know how things that people do get about before they’ve done them! There’s only that and hunting to talk of.”
Gregory Vigil clutched at his head.
“Well, if this is what chivalry has come to, thank God I’m not a squire!”
Mrs. Pendyce’s eyes flickered.
“Ah!” she said, “I’ve thought like that so often.”
Gregory broke the silence.
“I can’t help the customs of the country. My duty’s plain. There’s nobody else to look after her.”
Mrs. Pendyce sighed, and, rising from her chair, said: “Very well, dear Grig; do let us go and have some tea.”
Tea at Worsted Skeynes was served in the hall on Sundays, and was usually attended by the Rector and his wife. Young Cecil Tharp had walked over with his dog, which could be heard whimpering faintly outside the front-door.
General Pendyce, with his knees crossed and the tips of his fingers pressed together, was leaning back in his chair and staring at the wall. The Squire, who held his latest bird’s-egg in his hand, was showing its spots to the Rector.
In a corner by a harmonium, on which no one ever played, Norah talked of the village hockey club to Mrs. Barter, who sat with her eyes fixed on her husband. On the other side of the fire Bee and young Tharp, whose chairs seemed very close together, spoke of their horses in low tones, stealing shy glances at each other. The light was failing, the wood logs crackled, and now and then over the cosy hum of talk there fell short, drowsy silences – silences of sheer warmth and comfort, like the silence of the spaniel John asleep against his master’s boot.
“Well,” said Gregory softly, “I must go and see this man.”
“Is it really necessary, Grig, to see him at all? I mean – if you’ve made up your mind – ”
Gregory ran his hand through his hair.
“It’s only fair, I think!” And crossing the hall, he let himself out so quietly that no one but Mrs. Pendyce noticed he had gone.
An hour and a half later, near the railway-station, on the road from the village back to Worsted Skeynes, Mr. Pendyce and his daughter Bee were returning from their Sunday visit to their old butler, Bigson. The Squire was talking.
“He’s failing, Bee-dear old Bigson’s failing. I can’t hear what he says, he mumbles so; and he forgets. Fancy his forgetting that I was at Oxford. But we don’t get servants like him nowadays. That chap we’ve got now is a sleepy fellow. Sleepy! he’s – What’s that in the road? They’ve no business to be coming at that pace. Who is it? I can’t see.”
Down the middle of the dark road a dog cart was approaching at top speed. Bee seized her father’s arm and pulled it vigorously, for Mr. Pendyce was standing stock-still in disapproval. The dog cart passed within a foot of him and vanished, swinging round into the station. Mr. Pendyce turned in his tracks.
“Who was that? Disgraceful! On Sunday, too! The fellow must be drunk; he nearly ran over my legs. Did you see, Bee, he nearly ran over – ”
Bee answered:
“It was Captain Bellew, Father; I saw his face.” “Bellew? That drunken fellow? I shall summons him. Did you see, Bee, he nearly ran over my – ”
“Perhaps he’s had bad news,” said Bee. “There’s the train going out now; I do hope he caught it!”
“Bad news! Is that an excuse for driving over me? You hope he caught it? I hope he’s thrown himself out. The ruffian! I hope he’s killed himself.”
In this strain Mr. Pendyce continued until they reached the church. On their way up the aisle they passed Gregory Vigil leaning forward with his elbows on the desk and his hand covering his eyes…
At eleven o’clock that night a man stood outside the door of Mrs. Bellew’s flat in Chelsea violently ringing the bell. His face was deathly white, but his little dark eyes sparkled. The door was opened, and Helen Bellew in evening dress stood there holding a candle in her hand.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
The man moved into the light.
“Jaspar! You? What on earth – ”
“I want to talk.”
“Talk? Do you know what time it is?”
“Time – there’s no such thing. You might give me a kiss after two years. I’ve been drinking, but I’m not drunk.”
Mrs. Bellew did not kiss him, neither did she draw back her face. No trace of alarm showed in her ice-grey eyes. She said: “If I let you in, will you promise to say what you want to say quickly, and go away?”
The little brown devils danced in Bellew’s face. He nodded. They stood by the hearth in the sitting-room, and on the lips of both came and went a peculiar smile.
It was difficult to contemplate too seriously a person with whom one had lived for years, with whom one had experienced in common the range of human passion, intimacy, and estrangement, who knew all those little daily things that men and women living together know of each other, and with whom in the end, without hatred, but because of one’s nature, one had ceased to live. There was nothing for either of them to find out, and with a little smile, like the smile of knowledge itself, Jaspar Bellew and Helen his wife looked at each other.
“Well,” she said again; “what have you come for?”
Bellew’s face had changed. Its expression was furtive; his mouth twitched; a furrow had come between his eyes.
“How – are – you?” he said in a thick, muttering voice.
Mrs. Bellew’s clear voice answered:
“Now, Jaspar, what is it that you want?”
The little brown devils leaped up again in Jaspar’s face.
“You look very pretty to-night!”
His wife’s lips curled.
“I’m much the same as I always was,” she said.
A violent shudder shook Bellew. He fixed his eyes on the floor a little beyond her to the left; suddenly he raised them. They were quite lifeless.
“I’m perfectly sober,” he murmured thickly; then with startling quickness his eyes began to sparkle again. He came a step nearer.
“You’re my wife!” he said.
Mrs. Bellew smiled.
“Come,” she answered, “you must go!” and she put out her bare arm to push him back. But Bellew recoiled of his own accord; his eyes were fixed again on the floor a little beyond her to the left.
“What’s that?” he stammered. “What’s that – that black – ?”
The devilry, mockery, admiration, bemusement, had gone out of his face; it was white and calm, and horribly pathetic.
“Don’t turn me out,” he stammered; “don’t turn me out!”
Mrs. Bellew looked at him hard; the defiance in her eyes changed to a sort of pity. She took a quick step and put her hand on his shoulder.
“It’s all right, old boy – all right!” she said. “There’s nothing there!”
CHAPTER IX
MR. PARAMOR DISPOSES
Mrs. Pendyce, who, in accordance with her husband’s wish, still occupied the same room as Mr. Pendyce, chose the ten minutes before he got up to break to him Gregory’s decision. The moment was auspicious, for he was only half awake.
“Horace,” she said, and her face looked young and anxious, “Grig says that Helen Bellew ought not to go on in her present position. Of course, I told him that you’d be annoyed, but Grig says that she can’t go on like this, that she simply must divorce Captain Bellew.”
Mr. Pendyce was lying on his back.
“What’s that?” he said.
Mrs. Pendyce went on
“I knew it would worry you; but really” – she fixed her eyes on the ceiling – “I suppose we ought only to think of her.”
The Squire sat up.
“What was that,” he said, “about Bellew?”
Mrs. Pendyce went on in a languid voice and without moving her eyes:
“Don’t be angrier than you can help, dear; it is so wearing. If Grig says she ought to divorce Captain Bellew, then I’m sure she ought.”
Horace Pendyce subsided on his pillow with a bounce, and he too lay with his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“Divorce him!” he said – “I should think so! He ought to be hanged, a fellow like that. I told you last night he nearly drove over me. Living just as he likes, setting an example of devilry to the whole neighbourhood! If I hadn’t kept my head he’d have bowled me over like a ninepin, and Bee into the bargain.”
Mrs. Pendyce sighed.
“It was a narrow escape,” she said.
“Divorce him!” resumed Mr. Pendyce – “I should think so! She ought to have divorced him long ago. It was the nearest thing in the world; another foot and I should have been knocked off my feet!”
Mrs. Pendyce withdrew her glance from the ceiling.
“At first,” she said, “I wondered whether it was quite – but I’m very glad you’ve taken it like this.”
“Taken it! I can tell you, Margery, that sort of thing makes one think. All the time Barter was preaching last night I was wondering what on earth would have happened to this estate if – if – ” And he looked round with a frown. “Even as it is, I barely make the two ends of it meet. As to George, he’s no more fit at present to manage it than you are; he’d make a loss of thousands.”
“I’m afraid George is too much in London. That’s the reason I wondered whether – I’m afraid he sees too much of – ”
Mrs. Pendyce stopped; a flush suffused her cheeks; she had pinched herself violently beneath the bedclothes.
“George,” said Mr. Pendyce, pursuing his own thoughts, “has no gumption. He’d never manage a man like Peacock – and you encourage him! He ought to marry and settle down.”
Mrs. Pendyce, the flush dying in her cheeks, said:
“George is very like poor Hubert.”
Horace Pendyce drew his watch from beneath his pillow.
“Ah!” But he refrained from adding, “Your people!” for Hubert Totteridge had not been dead a year. “Ten minutes to eight! You keep me talking here; it’s time I was in my bath.”
Clad in pyjamas with a very wide blue stripe, grey-eyed, grey-moustached, slim and erect, he paused at the door.
“The girls haven’t a scrap of imagination. What do you think Bee said? ‘I hope he hasn’t lost his train.’ Lost his train! Good God! and I might have – I might have – ” The Squire did not finish his sentence; no words but what seemed to him violent and extreme would have fulfilled his conception of the danger he had escaped, and it was against his nature and his training to exaggerate a physical risk.
At breakfast he was more cordial than usual to Gregory, who was going up by the first train, for as a rule Mr. Pendyce rather distrusted him, as one would a wife’s cousin, especially if he had a sense of humour.
“A very good fellow,” he was wont to say of him, “but an out-and-out Radical.” It was the only label he could find for Gregory’s peculiarities.
Gregory departed without further allusion to the object of his visit. He was driven to the station in a brougham by the first groom, and sat with his hat off and his head at the open window, as if trying to get something blown out of his brain. Indeed, throughout the whole of his journey up to town he looked out of the window, and expressions half humorous and half puzzled played on his face. Like a panorama slowly unrolled, country house after country house, church after church, appeared before his eyes in the autumn sunlight, among the hedgerows and the coverts that were all brown and gold; and far away on the rising uplands the slow ploughman drove, outlined against the sky:
He took a cab from the station to his solicitors’ in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He was shown into a room bare of all legal accessories, except a series of Law Reports and a bunch of violets in a glass of fresh water. Edmund Paramor, the senior partner of Paramor and Herring, a clean-shaven man of sixty, with iron-grey hair brushed in a cockscomb off his forehead, greeted him with a smile.
“Ah, Vigil, how are you? Up from the country?”
“From Worsted Skeynes.”
“Horace Pendyce is a client of mine. Well, what can we do for you? Your Society up a tree?”
Gregory Vigil, in the padded leather chair that had held so many aspirants for comfort, sat a full minute without speaking; and Mr. Paramor, too, after one keen glance at his client that seemed to come from very far down in his soul, sat motionless and grave. There was at that moment something a little similar in the eyes of these two very different men, a look of kindred honesty and aspiration. Gregory spoke at last.
“It’s a painful subject to me.”
Mr. Paramor drew a face on his blotting-paper.
“I have come,” went on Gregory, “about a divorce for my ward.”
“Mrs. Jaspar Bellew?”
“Yes; her position is intolerable.”
Mr. Paramor gave him a searching look.
“Let me see: I think she and her husband have been separated for some time.”
“Yes, for two years.”
“You’re acting with her consent, of course?”
“I have spoken to her.”
“You know the law of divorce, I suppose?”
Gregory answered with a painful smile:
“I’m not very clear about it; I hardly ever look at those cases in the paper. I hate the whole idea.”
Mr. Paramor smiled again, became instantly grave, and said:
“We shall want evidence of certain things. Have you got any evidence?”
Gregory ran his hand through his hair.
“I don’t think there’ll be any difficulty,” he said. “Bellew agrees – they both agree!”
Mr. Paramor stared.
“What’s that to do with it?”
Gregory caught him up.
“Surely, where both parties are anxious, and there’s no opposition, it can’t be difficult.”
“Good Lord!” said Mr. Paramor.
“But I’ve seen Bellew; I saw him yesterday. I’m sure I can get him to admit anything you want!”
Mr. Paramor drew his breath between his teeth.
“Did you ever,” he said drily, “hear of what’s called collusion?”
Gregory got up and paced the room.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anything very exact about the thing at all,” he said. “The whole subject is hateful to me. I regard marriage as sacred, and when, which God forbid, it proves unsacred, it is horrible to think of these formalities. This is a Christian country; we are all flesh and blood. What is this slime, Paramor?”
With this outburst he sank again into the chair, and leaned his head on his hand. And oddly, instead of smiling, Mr. Paramor looked at him with haunting eyes.
“Two unhappy persons must not seem to agree to be parted,” he said. “One must be believed to desire to keep hold of the other, and must pose as an injured person. There must be evidence of misconduct, and in this case of cruelty or of desertion. The evidence must be impartial. This is the law.”
Gregory said without looking up:
“But why?”
Mr. Paramor took his violets out of the water, and put them to his nose.
“How do you mean – why?”
“I mean, why this underhand, roundabout way?”
Mr. Paramor’s face changed with startling speed from its haunting look back to his smile.
“Well,” he said, “for the preservation of morality. What do you suppose?”
“Do you call it moral so to imprison people that you drive them to sin in order to free themselves?”
Mr. Paramor obliterated the face on his blotting-pad.
“Where’s your sense of humour?” he said.
“I see no joke, Paramor.”
Mr. Paramor leaned forward.
“My dear friend,” he said earnestly, “I don’t say for a minute that our system doesn’t cause a great deal of quite unnecessary suffering; I don’t say that it doesn’t need reform. Most lawyers and almost any thinking man will tell you that it does. But that’s a wide question which doesn’t help us here. We’ll manage your business for you, if it can be done. You’ve made a bad start, that’s all. The first thing is for us to write to Mrs. Bellew, and ask her to come and see us. We shall have to get Bellew watched.”
Gregory said:
“That’s detestable. Can’t it be done without that?”
Mr. Paramor bit his forefinger.
“Not safe,” he said. “But don’t bother; we’ll see to all that.”
Gregory rose and went to the window. He said suddenly:
“I can’t bear this underhand work.”
Mr. Paramor smiled.
“Every honest man,” he said, “feels as you do. But, you see, we must think of the law.”
Gregory burst out again:
“Can no one get a divorce, then, without making beasts or spies of themselves?”
Mr. Paramor said gravely
“It is difficult, perhaps impossible. You see, the law is based on certain principles.”
“Principles?”
A smile wreathed Mr. Paramor’s mouth, but died instantly.
“Ecclesiastical principles, and according to these a person desiring a divorce ‘ipso facto’ loses caste. That they should have to make spies or beasts of themselves is not of grave importance.”
Gregory came back to the table, and again buried his head in his hands.
“Don’t joke, please, Paramor,” he said; “it’s all so painful to me.”
Mr. Paramor’s eyes haunted his client’s bowed head.
“I’m not joking,” he said. “God forbid! Do you read poetry?” And opening a drawer, he took out a book bound in red leather. “This is a man I’m fond of:
”Life is mostly froth and bubble;
Two things stand like stone —
KINDNESS in another’s trouble,
COURAGE in your own.”
“That seems to me the sum of all philosophy.”
“Paramor,” said Gregory, “my ward is very dear to me; she is dearer to me than any woman I know. I am here in a most dreadful dilemma. On the one hand there is this horrible underhand business, with all its publicity; and on the other there is her position – a beautiful woman, fond of gaiety, living alone in this London, where every man’s instincts and every woman’s tongue look upon her as fair game. It has been brought home to me only too painfully of late. God forgive me! I have even advised her to go back to Bellew, but that seems out of the question. What am I to do?”
Mr. Paramor rose.
“I know,” he said – “I know. My dear friend, I know!” And for a full minute he remained motionless, a little turned from Gregory. “It will be better,” he said suddenly, “for her to get rid of him. I’ll go and see her myself. We’ll spare her all we can. I’ll go this afternoon, and let you know the result.”
As though by mutual instinct, they put out their hands, which they shook with averted faces. Then Gregory, seizing his hat, strode out of the room.
He went straight to the rooms of his Society in Hanover Square. They were on the top floor, higher than the rooms of any other Society in the building – so high, in fact, that from their windows, which began five feet up, you could practically only see the sky.
A girl with sloping shoulders, red cheeks, and dark eyes, was working a typewriter in a corner, and sideways to the sky at a bureau littered with addressed envelopes, unanswered letters, and copies of the Society’s publications, was seated a grey-haired lady with a long, thin, weatherbeaten face and glowing eyes, who was frowning at a page of manuscript.
“Oh, Mr. Vigil,” she said, “I’m so glad you’ve come. This paragraph mustn’t go as it is. It will never do.”
Gregory took the manuscript and read the paragraph in question.
“This case of Eva Nevill is so horrible that we ask those of our women readers who live in the security, luxury perhaps, peace certainly, of their country homes, what they would have done, finding themselves suddenly in the position of this poor girl – in a great city, without friends, without money, almost without clothes, and exposed to all the craft of one of those fiends in human form who prey upon our womankind. Let each one ask herself: Should I have resisted where she fell?”
“It will never do to send that out,” said the lady again.
“What is the matter with it, Mrs. Shortman?”
“It’s too personal. Think of Lady Malden, or most of our subscribers. You can’t expect them to imagine themselves like poor Eva. I’m sure they won’t like it.”
Gregory clutched at his hair.
“Is it possible they can’t stand that?” he said.
“It’s only because you’ve given such horrible details of poor Eva.”
Gregory got up and paced the room.
Mrs. Shortman went on
“You’ve not lived in the country for so long, Mr. Vigil, that you don’t remember. You see, I know. People don’t like to be harrowed. Besides, think how difficult it is for them to imagine themselves in such a position. It’ll only shock them, and do our circulation harm.”
Gregory snatched up the page and handed it to the girl who sat at the typewriter in the corner.
“Read that, please, Miss Mallow.”
The girl read without raising her eyes.
“Well, is it what Mrs. Shortman says?”
The girl handed it back with a blush.
“It’s perfect, of course, in itself, but I think Mrs. Shortman is right. It might offend some people.”
Gregory went quickly to the window, threw it up, and stood gazing at the sky. Both women looked at his back.
Mrs. Shortman said gently:
“I would only just alter it like this, from after ‘country homes’. ‘whether they do not pity and forgive this poor girl in a great city, without friends, without money, almost without clothes, and exposed to all the craft of one of those fiends in human form who prey upon our womankind,’ and just stop there.”
Gregory returned to the table.
“Not ‘forgive,’.rdquo; he said, “not ‘forgive’.”
Mrs. Shortman raised her pen.
“You don’t know,” she said, “what a strong feeling there is. Mind, it has to go to numbers of parsonages, Mr. Vigil. Our principle has always been to be very careful. And you have been plainer than usual in stating the case. It’s not as if they really could put themselves in her position; that’s impossible. Not one woman in a hundred could, especially among those who live in the country and have never seen life. I’m a squire’s daughter myself.”
“And I a parson’s,” said Gregory, with a smile.
Mrs. Shortman looked at him reproachfully.
“Joking apart, Mr. Vigil, it’s touch and go with our paper as it is; we really can’t afford it. I’ve had lots of letters lately complaining that we put the cases unnecessarily strongly. Here’s one:
“‘BOURNEFIELD RECTORY,
“‘November 1.
“‘DEAR MADAM,
“‘While sympathising with your good work, I am afraid I cannot become a subscriber to your paper while it takes its present form, as I do not feel that it is always fit reading for my girls. I cannot think it either wise or right that they should become acquainted with such dreadful aspects of life, however true they may be.
“‘I am, dear madam,
“‘Respectfully yours,
“‘WINIFRED TUDDENHAM.
“‘P.S. – I could never feel sure, too, that my maids would not pick it up, and perhaps take harm.’.rdquo;
“I had that only this morning.”
Gregory buried his face in his hands, and sitting thus he looked so like a man praying that no one spoke. When he raised his face it was to say:
“Not ‘forgive,’ Mrs. Shortman, not ‘forgive’.”
Mrs. Shortman ran her pen through the word.
“Very well, Mr. Vigil,” she said; “it’s a risk.”
The sound of the typewriter, which had been hushed, began again from the corner.
“That case of drink, Mr. Vigil – Millicent Porter – I’m afraid there’s very little hope there.”
Gregory asked:
“What now?”
“Relapsed again; it’s the fifth time.”
Gregory turned his face to the window, and looked at the sky.
“I must go and see her. Just give me her address.”
Mrs. Shortman read from a green book:
“‘Mrs. Porter, 2 Bilcock Buildings, Bloomsbury.’ Mr. Vigil!”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Vigil, I do sometimes wish you would not persevere so long with those hopeless cases; they never seem to come to anything, and your time is so valuable.”
“How can I give them up, Mrs. Shortman? There’s no choice.”
“But, Mr. Vigil, why is there no choice? You must draw the line somewhere. Do forgive me for saying that I think you sometimes waste your time.”
Gregory turned to the girl at the typewriter.
“Miss Mallow, is Mrs. Shortman right? do I waste my time?”
The girl at the typewriter blushed vividly, and, without looking round, said:
“How can I tell, Mr. Vigil? But it does worry one.”
A humorous and perplexed smile passed over Gregory’s lips.
“Now I know I shall cure her,” he said. “2 Bilcock Buildings.” And he continued to look at the sky. “How’s your neuralgia, Mrs. Shortman?”
Mrs. Shortman smiled.
“Awful!”
Gregory turned quickly.
“You feel that window, then; I’m so sorry.”
Mrs. Shortman shook her head.
“No, but perhaps Molly does.”
The girl at the typewriter said:
“Oh no; please, Mr. Vigil, don’t shut it for me.”
“Truth and honour?”
“Truth and honour,” replied both women. And all three for a moment sat looking at the sky. Then Mrs. Shortman said:
“You see, you can’t get to the root of the evil – that husband of hers.”
Gregory turned.
“Ah,” he said, “that man! If she could only get rid of him! That ought to have been done long ago, before he drove her to drink like this. Why didn’t she, Mrs. Shortman, why didn’t she?”
Mrs. Shortman raised her eyes, which had such a peculiar spiritual glow.
“I don’t suppose she had the money,” she said; “and she must have been such a nice woman then. A nice woman doesn’t like to divorce – ”
Gregory looked at her.
“What, Mrs. Shortman, you too, you too among the Pharisees?”
Mrs. Shortman flushed.
“She wanted to save him,” she said; “she must have wanted to save him.”
“Then you and I – ” But Gregory did not finish, and turned again to the window. Mrs. Shortman, too, biting her lips, looked anxiously at the sky.
Miss Mallow at the typewriter, with a scared face, plied her fingers faster than ever.
Gregory was the first to speak.
“You must please forgive me,” he said gently. “A personal matter; I forgot myself.”
Mrs. Shortman withdrew her gaze from the sky.
“Oh, Mr. Vigil, if I had known – ”
Gregory Gregory smiled.
“Don’t, don’t!” he said; “we’ve quite frightened poor Miss Mallow!”
Miss Mallow looked round at him, he looked at her, and all three once more looked at the sky. It was the chief recreation of this little society.