Scarlet and Hyssop Part 2

"Tell them to come round at a quarter to four instead," he said, and went slowly upstairs again.

He found his wife on the balcony where he had left her, with her maid beside her with two hats in her hand.

"Yes, that one will do," she said, "and send the other back. No, I will take it myself this afternoon. It is all wrong. Put it in a box and leave it in the hall. I am going out immediately."

The maid retired with the condemned hat, and while Marie pinned the other on, she turned to her husband.

"You wanted to speak to me?" she said, not lifting her eyes.

Jack looked at her in silence a moment, and lit another cigar.

"Finish pinning on your hat first," he said.

Marie found herself obeying him, with a sense of wanting, just in order to see what happened, not to do as he told her. However, she pinned her hat on.

"Well?" she said again.

"Jim Spencer has come back," he said.

"I knew that. Mildred told me just now."

"I wanted to say a few words to you about him. I find people have not forgotten that he was very much attached to you once."

She looked up at him with eyes of indifferent wonder, as if he had asked her some inane unanswerable sort of riddle.

"People are quite at liberty to remember or forget what they like, as far as I am concerned," she said. "Is that all you have to say to me? If so, I will go out, I think. The carriage ought to be round."

"Not yet. I told them not to come round till a quarter to four. And I have more to say."

"Please consult me another time," she said, "before you take it upon yourself to alter my arrangements."

Jack did not reply at once. Then in a voice expressive neither of compunction nor annoyance, "It is no use making a fuss," he said. "I wish merely to warn you that people have not forgotten. I wish also to ask you to behave reasonably. People, very likely, will connect your names again: you know what they are."

She rose flus.h.i.+ng.

"So you wanted a quiet quarter of an hour in which to insult me," she said.

He pointed to a chair.

"Sit down, Marie," he said.

"Supposing I choose not to?"

"We will not suppose anything so absurd. There! Why not have done it at once? As I was saying, this will inevitably happen, and so I should advise you to accept it. That will entail certain alterations in your--your general style. I have often heard you criticising rather mercilessly the world you live in; Mildred tells me you were doing so this afternoon. I don't mind your doing that: you have a racy sort of way of talking, and no doubt all your criticisms are perfectly true. But with the return of Jim Spencer, I should advise you either to drop that sort of thing, or else not see very much of him."

He paused, and flicked the end of his cigar-ash over the balcony.

"Not that I mind your doing either the one or the other in themselves,"

he continued, "but to do both will show a want of wisdom."

"Ah, you don't mind what I do, but only what people say!"

"Exactly. You have quite grasped my meaning."

Again she rose from the chair in which she had sat at his bidding.

"That is all, then, I imagine," she said. "Five minutes was enough."

"Yes, for what I had to say. I thought you might like to talk over it."

"I have not the least desire to."

Jack reached out his hand for an early edition of the evening paper, and unfolded it.

"Perhaps you would tell me what you mean to do."

"I have no intention of doing anything. Certainly I have no intention of discussing the question with you."

Jack did not show the slightest impatience.

"There's no use in being so nettled about it," he observed. "If a woman behaves in a certain way, she gets talked about. That is all. I have indicated to you that if you do certain things you will get talked about; I do not want that."

"From your point of view, I wonder why. Mildred is talked about, so I am told; but I never knew that you considered that a reason for not seeing her a good deal."

For one moment he looked quickly up, then turned back a fluttering leaf of his paper.

"Quite true. And if you were anybody else's wife, I should not mind how much you were talked about. But you are mine--it happens you are mine."

Marie did not reply.

"Somehow the matter has grown to larger dimensions than I had intended,"

he added. "I only meant to give you quite a friendly and, in a way, insignificant word of warning. But somehow you have put it all into capital letters. There, go out for your drive. Really, Marie, I had not the slightest conception you would make such an affair of it."

"You think I have been unreasonable."

"I do."

She made a great effort with herself.

"Very well, I will forget all about it. You see, we rub each other up the wrong way, Jack. It is a great pity."

"Yes. But it's not worth bothering about."

The paper appeared to have nothing much in it, and it was only a few moments after his wife had left him that Jack put it down, and finished his cigar without other employment than his own thoughts. This short scene with Marie had disturbed him in the same way as a fall in the barometer may disturb a picnic-giver: it may come to nothing, but there is a hint of the fair weather breaking. At the same time, he was perfectly well accustomed to be utterly at variance with her, and never contemplated any divergence of opinion between them which could result in his having to give way. It is only selfish people who cannot believe that they are selfish, and Jack never pa.s.sed moral judgments on himself or anybody else. To be critical of any behaviour that did not annoy him personally he held to be an absurd att.i.tude to adopt; it was only behaviour that might prove inconvenient to one's self that could reasonably be criticised, or, rather, not so much criticised as corrected. He knew quite well that the small but well-dressed fragment of the world that at all concerned him, was perfectly aware that his marriage with Marie had not been a romantic success, though personally he considered it quite up to the average. To a nature like his, unbroken constancy and devotion to one's wife is not only an achievement never aimed at, but an achievement not even contemplated. He had married, as many men do, simply because many men do marry, and an heir is certainly the natural complement to estates and a t.i.tle. But no heir had been born, and, in a manner of speaking, Marie had made his estates and t.i.tle appear ridiculous and lopsided; she had not fulfilled her part of the bargain.

It is not meant to be understood that he stated these things to himself with the foregoing baldness, but none the less, if he had a.n.a.lyzed the springs of action that determined the course of the life he led, he would have admitted that they represented its ground-motives with sufficient accuracy. But Jack was not in the habit of a.n.a.lyzing anything: inquiry into the reasons for conduct seemed to him a profitless pursuit, since--again to put the matter baldly--he did not care at all whether a person acted wickedly or not. In fact, as his wife had said, there were many people who simply stared if you talked of wickedness. Her husband was among them, but he did not even stare.

It is commonly said that modern life is too full and too complex, but this generalization requires limiting. Certainly to a man, or in particular a woman, not belonging to "the world," a sudden plunge into that frothy mill-race would be complex to the verge of distraction. But there are many ways of simplifying this complexity, and one of the most convenient and efficient is to strike out, without further consideration, all moral obligations, positive and negative. When once one no longer thinks it necessary to reflect whether one ought or ought not to do or to avoid a thing, the saving of time and tissue is quite enormous. For it is not so much doing things as thinking about them which consumes the minutes and the nerves, and once having made an unalterable rule to do a thing if it is pleasant, and refrain from it if it is not, one can get into a single day a number of delightful experiences which would appear to those who do not know the recipe quite incredible. Again, as among wild beasts, so in the world, the weak go to the wall. There is no place for them, and no use for them. Every one has to look out for himself, and fight for his own possessions and those of other people. Not to recognise this spells failure. Such, at any rate, was Lord Alston's experience, and he was generally understood to have had a good deal of it.