“Wouldn’t I?” Harry exclaimed. But the statement sobered him. With anonymous letters in the air no one could tell where they might strike. His conscience was none too clear, his skirts either. Abruptly he tacked. “But that is neither here nor there. What you have to consider is that if Fred should be amusing himself—and mind the if—it does not in the least follow but that he cares for you as much as ever.”
“A queer way to show it, then.”
“Yes, but men are queer and that’s the point—a point, too—that women such as you never understand. A man may like terrapin and canvasback. He can’t eat them every day. A man requires variety in the menu. It is not his fault. Nature made him that kind of a brute.”
“But you are ridiculous with your terrapin and your menu,” Claire got in. “I don’t know at all what you mean. What I do know is that no man can care for two women at the same time.”
“Certainly he can—unless one of them catches him at it.”
“Well, apparently I am that one.”
“But you are not sure.” And as Harry said that ardently he hoped that Fred had covered his tracks. “Yet supposing you were,” he continued and in so doing promised himself to tip Fred off. “Supposing you were. Then, in that case, for heaven’s sake, don’t get hysterical and shriek for divorce.” By George! he thought, between us, Fred and I will gag her first. “No,” he resumed, “all that is such wretched form. Decent people never make a fuss about anything.”
He paused and for clincher threw out: “I am sure Fred doesn’t.”
Impatiently Claire looked him up and down. “What has that to do with it?”
“Why, everything! Everything in the world! If Fred made a nuisance of himself, if as some eminently virtuous people do, he nagged, argued, contradicted, found fault and sulked, that would be a different kettle of fish. But he does not, and in married life it is the cardinal virtues such as his that count—the big things like smiling and forbearing and minding your own business. It is these things that count, never the trifles that occur behind your back and of which you are supposed to know nothing.”
“But I can’t take it out in supposing. I do know.”
Harry made a gesture. “No, you do not. But if you should—” He hesitated. An idea had come to him. He blurted it. “I say! You have not by any chance got a man up your sleeve, have you?”
At that, indignation marks shot from her eyes.
Harry waved at them. “You see nowadays sensible people don’t take jumps in the dark unless there is somebody with an electric light in waiting. But since that is not your case, then don’t be stupid enough to kick the apple cart over and all for what? I ask you for what? An illusion!”
But Claire was rising. “Is it constancy that you call an illusion? Harry!”
“Well, anyway, it went out with crinolines—before then even, it went out with girls in turrets and knights in armour. If you like, though, we will call it lack of imagination.”
“Then I am very unimaginative and, fortunately for you, so is Lilian.”
Sagaciously Harry nodded. “It is not imagination that Lilian lacks. It is temperament. It is the same way with you. Good women never have any. It is their salvation, their husbands’ as well.”
With a smile—the self-satisfied smile of a man whose salvation is assured—he fumbled for his cigarette case. But the thing eluded him. In its place his fingers closed on the letter which he had received in the hall. He drew it out and indifferently, with a gesture of apology, opened it.
At once a curious phenomenon occurred. If, from under the table, a dog had run and bit him he could not have started more quickly. He looked as though he were in some dreadful dream. His mouth went dry and chokingly he stared at the letter.
Claire, who was standing, approached. “What is it?”
With an intake of the breath, he gave her the letter.
On florid paper, in a cramped hand, Henry Verelst, Esquire, was informed that his wife and brother-in-law were no better than they should be.
At sight of it, Claire’s lips parted. She had not known whom to suspect. Now that she was told, she gasped. Realizing instantly that this letter and the one which she had received emanated from the same sewer, she realized as rapidly that the writer, however mephitic, was only a fool.
To her great eyes a mist came. She had known Lilian too long, too well, too wholly, to credit anything of the sort. The charge had overshot the mark. From Lilian it fell away ridiculously and, in falling from her, fell, too, from Fred.
“I’ll divorce her. As for him—”
In anyone’s anger there is humour, if you can only see it, and Claire, though her eyes were brimming, could. Drying her eyes, she laughed and returned the letter.
“Here, take the stupid thing and don’t be an imbecile. Lilian is as innocent as a babe unborn. Besides, a moment ago you said that decent people never see anything that was not intended for them, that they never make a fuss, that a matter of this kind is quite negligible, that constancy went out with crinolines, that the things that count are not the trifles that occur behind your back but the cardinal virtue of minding your own business.”
Without, at the street door, a bell sounded. Neither heard.
“That is what you said, did you not?” Claire maliciously ran on. “Or is it that you have a woman up your sleeve?”
Ragingly Harry backed. “What I meant—”
But what he meant was never explained, or at least not then. The portieres had parted. Through them, with none of that wearily satisfied look which culprits display, but debonair and exuberant, sauntered the suspects.
Menacingly Harry glared. “Where have you been?”
Fred, who was removing a glove, looked him over. “Never
