'I beg your pardon,' corrected Locke. 'He is a painter. Whether or not he is an artist remains to be seen. There are very few good painters nowadays. They are afraid of color, and they are afraid of detail. Ronald is not He is now studying under Dufresnes, the only teacher in Europe,' Locke lifted long fingers and snapped them, 'worth that; and we shall see. Still! This is not important.'
'I know that' retorted Thorley. 'And I'm glad (if you'll excuse my saying so, old man) you have the sense to see it too. Then what
'You see no objection?'
'No!'
'Perhaps not' said Locke. 'But before my daughter becomes your second wife, I should prefer to be sure how your first wife died.'
Around the window-embrasure behind Locke's chair ran a window seat of padded red velvet Holden, dropping his long-dead cigarette on the floor, had crept into it All this time Holden had been experiencing the extraordinary sensation that one of the portraits—a Devereux lady of the seventeenth century, with wired ringlets—was looking at him fixedly. So strong was the illusion that he had to wrench his gaze away, even to look at Thorley, when Locke's quiet remark exploded.
Doris, who evidently had heard nothing of the undercurrents, dropped her hand from Thorley's arm and was staring at her father in bewilderment. Thorley's voice grew thick.
'You've been talking to Celia!' he said. 'I beg your pardon?' said Locke.
'You've been talking to Celia,' Thorley almost shouted. 'The little devil's as mad as a coot and...' 'Easy, Thorley!' said Holden, and got to his feet 'I assure you,' interposed Locke, turning round his dark arched brows and prominent cheekbones for a brief glance at Holden, 'I haven't been talking to Celia. I haven't even seen her. I understand the poor girl has been,' he hesitated, 'ill.'
'Her illness,' Holden said bitterly, 'consisting in the statement that Thorley had treated Margot brutally, and probably driven her to suicide.'
But Holden stopped there. He couldn't literally and physically couldn't, pour out the whole grisly story. He didn't quite know why. But he couldn't He left it there, in the air, while Locke stared around and Doris uttered a gasp.. . 'Indeed!' was Locke's only comment
'That's a he!' said Thorley.
'Indeed?' Locke inquired politely.
'I tell you, it's a lie,' Thorley repeated, with white earnestness. 'I think I must be the most misunderstood man on earth. But,' he moistened his lips, 'about Margot's death. If you haven't been talking to Celia, who have you been talking to?'
'Nobody,' answered Locke calmly.
'But nobody's said anything about it!'
'Of course not. Certainly, at least, not in your hearing. But—my dear Marsh!'
'Well?'
'Your wife, in perfect health, dines at my house and goes home with you, and in less than twelve hours she is dead. I say no more. But if you imagine that nobody hereabouts has wondered at it, or has even thought about it, you've been living in a fool's paradise.'
'I see,' muttered Thorley. And he turned his head away.
But it was different with Doris.
After that one gasp, there had flitted across Doris's face such a wild, contemptuous, half-pitying look that she became incoherent. Her blue eyes, half tearful with hero worship, turned toward Thorley as toward a martyred champion fighting in a ring of enemies. Thorley gave her a brave smile and a half-humorous shrug of the shoulders, to imply that they were fighting together.
And so they were. Tough little Doris, with a mutinous underlip, braced herself as she saw her father bend forward to speak.
'Doris?'
'Yes, father?'
'Understand me, my dear. I don't say there's anything at all in these rumors against our friend Marsh.'
'No, father?' (Her frantic lips half-breathed the words, 'How nice!')
'I daresay there isn't, and I hope there isn't But it concerns your welfare. That's the only reason why I mention it at all.'
'So now,' Doris cried out suddenly, 'you're pleading with me.'
'I shouldn't exactly call it pleading, my dear.'
'Shouldn't you? I should.' Her voice rose to a small scream. 'If s all very well for you to sit in the corner, like Voltaire or Anatole France or somebody: that is, when we're in public and not at home. But you see now I'm determined to marry Thorley (yes, and I can get married at nineteen; don't think I can't) and now you're pleading with me!'
'That was another matter, my dear, which I hadn't mentioned. After all, there is a considerable difference in your ages.'
'Really?' said Doris, very pleased with herself. 'Oh, I don't think that'll make much difference.' 'How can you be sure of that?'
'Weill' She lifted her shoulders and laughed. 'I suppose by such a long time of what the lawyers call 'intimacy.''
'Doris!' exclaimed Thorley, genuinely shocked that this should be mentioned in public. Thorley made fussed gestures which implored the others to be calm.
Danvers Locke was as white as a ghost.
'Intimacy.' He managed to swallow the word.
'That's right, father. I'll use a cruder term if you like.'
Locke's arms were extended along the arms of the chair, his fingers gently tapping.
'And how long has this 'intimacy' been going on? Was it —was it before Mrs. Marsh's death?'
'Oh, father dear! Ages before.'
'So that,' Locke spoke with an effort, 'if anyone got the notion that for your sake (your sake!) Mr. Thorley Marsh might have hastened his wife's departure... ?'
'Locke, for God's sake!' said Thorley.
'Oh, why not be frank about it?' Doris demanded. She turned to Thorley with her eyes brimming over. 'Darling,' she said, 'are you ashamed of loving me? I'm not ashamed of it. I'm proud. But I want them to understand you. I want them to see how fine and brave and noble you are.'
'Yes, Thorley,' observed Holden, not without dryness. 'You might begin telling us how fine and brave and noble you are.'
'Just one moment, please,' said Doris, darting in immediately to defend her now-groggy champion. 'If there's going to be any ghastly rot talked about how people behaved, let me say something. I—I shouldn't have said it else.'
Here Doris swallowed hard.
'You—you always want to attack Thorley,' she went on.
'And, of course, he's too contemptuous to say anything, or you'd hear a lot. Thorley’s been my lover. But who was Margot Marsh's lover?'
Locke started to get up from his chair, but sat down again. It was Holden who walked across to Doris.
'Margot,' he asked, 'had a lover?'
'Yes!' sniffed Doris.
'Who was he?'
'I don't know.' Doris threw out her hands. 'Thorley didn't know himself.'
Doris's flares of rage were never of long duration. This one, under her father's cold and steady eye, began to flicker and falter. She caught at Thorley’s arm for support. Yet she fought back.
'That Woman,' she gave Margot the capital letters of sheer hatred, 'That Woman was so intolerably prudish—oh, dear me, yes!—and she'd never done anything like that before —oh, dear, no!—that she was terribly, terribly secret about it. You'd have thought it was an awful sin or something. She was wild about him toward the end, though, whoever he was. Absolutely wild. You could see the signs. And . . .'
