Jane was reading in the drawing-room when William reached home that night.
“Had a nice day?” asked William.
“Quite nice,” said Jane.
“Play golf?” asked William.
“Just practised,” said Jane.
“Lunch at the club?”
“Yes.”
“I thought I saw that bloke Spelvin in town,” said William. Jane wrinkled her forehead.
“Spelvin? Oh, you mean Rodney Spelvin? Did you? I see he’s got a new book coming out.”
“You never run into him these days, do you?”
“Oh, no. It must be two years since I saw him.”
“Oh?” said William. “Well, I’ll be going upstairs and dressing.”
It seemed to Jane, as the door closed, that she heard a curious clicking noise, and she wondered for a moment if little Braid had got out of bed and was playing with the Mah-Jongg counters. But it was only William gnashing his teeth.
There is nothing sadder in this life than the spectacle of a husband and wife with practically identical handicaps drifting apart; and to dwell unnecessarily on such a spectacle is, to my mind, ghoulish. It is not my purpose, therefore, to weary you with a detailed description of the hourly widening of the breach between this once ideally united pair. Suffice it to say that within a few days of the conversation just related the entire atmosphere of this happy home had completely altered. On the Tuesday, William excused himself from the morning round on the plea that he had promised Peter Willard a match, and Jane said What a pity! On Tuesday afternoon William said that his head ached, and Jane said Isn’t that too bad? On Wednesday morning William said he had lumbago, and Jane, her sensitive feelings now deeply wounded, said Oh, had he? After that, it came to be agreed between them by silent compact that they should play together no more.
Also, they began to avoid one another in the house. Jane would sit in the drawing-room, while William retired down the passage to his den. In short, if you had added a couple of icons and a photograph of Trotsky, you would have had a mise-en-scène which would have fitted a Russian novel like the paper on the wall.
One evening, about a week after the beginning of this tragic state of affairs, Jane was sitting in the drawing-room, trying to read Braid on Taking Turf. But the print seemed blurred and the philosophy too metaphysical to be grasped. She laid the book down and stared sadly before her.
Every moment of these black days had affected Jane like a stymie on the last green. She could not understand how it was that William should have come to suspect, but that he did suspect was plain; and she writhed on the horns of a dilemma. All she had to do to win him back again was to go to him and tell him of Anastatia’s fatal entanglement. But what would happen then? Undoubtedly he would feel it his duty as a brother to warn the girl against Rodney Spelvin; and Jane instinctively knew that William warning anyone against Rodney Spelvin would sound like a private of the line giving his candid opinion of the sergeant-major.
Inevitably, in this case, Anastatia, a spirited girl and deeply in love, would take offence at his words and leave the house. And if she left the house, what would be the effect on little Braid’s mashie-play? Already, in less than a fortnight, the gifted girl had taught him more about the chip-shot from ten to fifteen yards off the green than the local pro had been able to do in two years. Her departure would be absolutely disastrous.
What it amounted to was that she must sacrifice her husband’s happiness or her child’s future; and the problem of which was to get the loser’s end was becoming daily more insoluble.
She was still brooding on it when the postman arrived with the evening mail, and the maid brought the letters into the drawing-room.
Jane sorted them out. There were three for William, which she gave to the maid to take to him in his den. There were two for herself, both bills. And there was one for Anastatia, in the well-remembered handwriting of Rodney Spelvin.
Jane placed this letter on the mantelpiece, and stood looking at it like a cat at a canary. Anastatia was away for the day, visiting friends who lived a few stations down the line; and every womanly instinct in Jane urged her to get hold of a kettle and steam the gum off the envelope. She had almost made up her mind to disembowel the thing and write “Opened in error” on it, when the telephone suddenly went off like a bomb and nearly startled her into a decline. Coming at that moment, it sounded like the Voice of Conscience.
“Hullo?” said Jane.
“Hullo!” replied a voice.
Jane clucked like a hen with uncontrollable emotion. It was Rodney.
“Is that you?” asked Rodney.
“Yes,” said Jane.
And so it was, she told herself.
“Your voice is like music,” said Rodney.
This may or may not have been the case, but at any rate it was exactly like every other female voice when heard on the telephone. Rodney prattled on without a suspicion.
“Have you got my letter yet?”
“No,” said Jane. She hesitated. “What was in it?” she asked, tremulously.
“It was to ask you to come to my house tomorrow at four.”
“To your house!” faltered Jane.
“Yes. Everything is ready. I will send the servants out, so that we shall be quite alone. You will come, won’t you?”
The room was shimmering before Jane’s eyes, but she regained command of herself with a strong effort.
“Yes,” she said. “I will be there.”
She spoke softly, but there was a note of
