“I haven’t the slightest curiosity. Why?”
“I forgot where I was and lighted a cigarette. Oh, my goodness!”
“Now what?”
“I thought I heard a mouse. Do you think there are mice in this cupboard?”
“Certainly,” said Frederick. “Dozens of them.”
He would have gone on to specify the kind of mice—large, fat, slithery, active mice: but at this juncture something hard and sharp took him agonizingly on the ankle.
“Ouch!” cried Frederick.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Was that you?”
“It was.”
“I was kicking about to discourage the mice.”
“I see.”
“Did it hurt much?”
“Only a trifle more than blazes, thank you for inquiring.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
“Anyway, it would have given a mouse a nasty jar, if it had been one, wouldn’t it?”
“The shock, I should imagine, of a lifetime.”
“Well, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t mention it. Why should I worry about a broken ankle, when. …”
“When what?”
“I forgot what I was going to say.”
“When your heart is broken?”
“My heart is not broken.” It was a point which Frederick wished to make luminously clear. “I am gay … happy. … Who the devil is this man Dillingwater?” he concluded abruptly.
There was a momentary pause.
“Oh, just a man.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“At the Ponderbys’.”
“Where did you get engaged to him?”
“At the Ponderbys’.”
“Did you pay another visit to the Ponderbys’, then?”
“No.”
Frederick choked.
“When you went to stay with the Ponderbys, you were engaged to me. Do you mean to say you broke off your engagement to me, met this Dillingwater, and got engaged to him all in the course of a single visit lasting barely two weeks?”
“Yes.”
Frederick said nothing. It struck him later that he should have said “Oh, Woman, Woman!” but at the moment it did not occur to him.
“I don’t see what right you have to criticize me,” said Jane.
“Who criticized you?”
“You did.”
“When?”
“Just then.”
“I call Heaven to witness,” cried Frederick Mulliner, “that not by so much as a single word have I hinted at my opinion that your conduct is the vilest and most revolting that has ever been drawn to my attention. I never so much as suggested that your revelation had shocked me to the depths of my soul.”
“Yes, you did. You sniffed.”
“If Bingley-on-Sea is not open for being sniffed in at this season,” said Frederick coldly, “I should have been informed earlier.”
“I had a perfect right to get engaged to anyone I liked and as quick as I liked, after the abominable way you behaved.”
“Abominable way I behaved? What do you mean?”
“You know.”
“Pardon me, I do not know. If you are alluding to my refusal to wear the tie you bought for me on my last birthday, I can but repeat my statement, made to you at the time, that, apart from being the sort of tie no upright man would be seen dead in a ditch with, its colours were those of a Cycling, Angling, and Dart-Throwing club of which I am not a member.”
“I am not alluding to that. I mean the day I was going to the Ponderbys’ and you promised to see me off at Paddington, and then you phoned and said you couldn’t as you were detained by important business, and I thought, well, I think I’ll go by the later train after all because that will give me time to lunch quietly at the Berkeley, and I went and lunched quietly at the Berkeley, and when I was there who should I see but you at a table at the other end of the room gorging yourself in the company of a beastly creature in a pink frock and henna’d hair. That’s what I mean.”
Frederick clutched at his forehead.
“Repeat that,” he exclaimed.
Jane did so.
“Ye gods!” said Frederick.
“It was like a blow over the head. Something seemed to snap inside me, and. …”
“I can explain all,” said Frederick.
Jane’s voice in the darkness was cold.
“Explain?” she said.
“Explain,” said Frederick.
“All?”
“All.”
Jane coughed.
“Before beginning,” she said, “do not forget that I know every one of your female relatives by sight.”
“I don’t want to talk about my female relatives.”
“I thought you were going to say that she was one of them—an aunt or something.”
“Nothing of the kind. She was a revue star. You probably saw her in a piece called Toot-Toot.”
“And that is your idea of an explanation!”
Frederick raised his hand for silence. Realizing that she could not see it, he lowered it again.
“Jane,” he said in a low, throbbing voice, “can you cast your mind back to a morning in the spring when we walked, you and I, in Kensington Gardens? The sun shone brightly, the sky was a limpid blue flecked with fleecy clouds, and from the west there blew a gentle breeze. …”
“If you think you can melt me with that sort of. …”
“Nothing of the kind. What I was leading up to was this. As we walked, you and I, there came snuffling up to us a small Pekinese dog. It left me, I admit, quite cold, but you went into ecstasies: and from that moment I had but one mission in life, to discover who that Peke belonged to and buy it for you. And after the most exhaustive inquiries, I tracked the animal down. It was the property of the lady in whose company you saw me lunching—lightly, not gorging—at the Berkeley that day. I managed to get an introduction to her, and immediately began to make offers to her for the dog. Money was no object to me. All I wished was to put the little beast in your arms and see your face light up. It was to be a surprise. That morning the woman phoned, and said that she had practically decided to close with my latest bid, and would I take her to lunch and discuss the matter? It was agony to have to ring you up and tell you that I could not see you off at Paddington, but it had to be done. It was anguish having to sit for two hours listening to that highly-coloured female telling me how the comedian had ruined her big number in her last show by
