Horace Innes looked round his wife’s drawing-room as if he were making an inventory of it, carefully giving each article its value, which happened, however, to have nothing to do with rupees. Madeline Anderson had been saying something the day before about the intimacy and accuracy with which people’s walls expressed them, and though the commonplace was not new to him, this was the first time it had ever led him to scan his wife’s. What he saw may be imagined, but his only distinct reflection was that he had no idea that she had been photographed so variously or had so many friends who wore resplendent Staff uniforms. The relation of cheapness in porcelain ornaments to the lady’s individuality was beyond him, and he could not analyze his feelings of sitting in the midst of her poverty of spirit. Indeed, thinking of his ordinary unsusceptibility to such things, he told himself sharply that he was adding an affectation of discomfort to the others that he had to bear; and that if Madeline had not given him the idea it would never have entered his mind. The less, he mused, that one had to do with finicking feelings in this world the better. They were well enough for people who were tolerably conditioned in essentials—he preferred this vagueness, even with himself, in connection with his marriage—otherwise they added pricks. Besides he had that other matter to think of.
He thought of the other matter with such obvious irritation that the butler coming in to say that the ‘English water’ was finished, and how many dozen should he order, put a chair in its place instead, closed the door softly again, and went away. It was not good for the dignity of butlers to ask questions of any sort with a look of that kind under the eyebrows of the sahib. The matter was not serious, Colonel Innes told himself, but he would prefer by comparison to deal with matters that were serious. He knew Simla well enough to attach no overwhelming importance to things said about women at the Club, where the broadest charity prevailed underneath, and the idle comment of the moment had an intrinsic value as a distraction rather than a reflective one as a criticism. This consideration, however, was more philosophical in connection with other men’s wives. He found very little in it to palliate what he had overheard, submerged in the ‘Times of India’, that afternoon. And to put an edge on it, the thing had been said by one of his own juniors. Luckily the boy had left the room without discovering who was behind the ‘Times of India’. Innes felt that he should be grateful for having been spared the exigency of defending his wife against a flippant word to which she had very probably laid herself open. He was very angry, and it is perhaps not surprising that he did not pause to consider how far his anger was due to the humiliating necessity of speaking to her about it. She was coming at last though; she was in the hall. He would get it over quickly.
‘Goodbye!’ said Mrs. Innes at the door. ‘No, I can’t possibly let you come in to tea. I don’t know how you have the conscience after drinking three cups at Mrs. Mickie’s, where I had no business to take you! Tomorrow? Oh, all right if you want to VERY badly. But I won’t promise you strawberries—they’re nearly all gone.’
There was the sound of a departing pony’s trot, and Mrs. Innes came into the drawing-room.
‘Good heavens, Horace! what are you sitting there for like a—like a ghost? Why didn’t you make a noise or something, and why aren’t you at office? I can’t tell you how you startled me.’
‘It is early,’ Colonel Innes said. ‘We are neither of us in the house, as a rule, at this hour.’
‘Coincidence!’ Violet turned a cool, searching glance on her husband, and held herself ready. ‘I came home early because I want to alter the lace on my yellow bodice for tonight. It’s too disgusting as it is. But I was rather glad to get away from Mrs. Mickie’s lot. So rowdy!’
‘And I came because I had a special reason for wanting to speak to you.’
Mrs. Violet’s lips parted, and her breath, in spite of herself, came a little faster.
‘As we are dining out tonight, I thought that if I didn’t catch you now I might not have another opportunity—till tomorrow morning.’
‘And it’s always a pity to spoil one’s breakfast. I can tell from your manner, mon ami, it’s something disagreeable. What have I been and gone and done?’
She was dancing, poor thing, in her little vulgar way, on hot iron. But her eyes kept their inconsistent coolness.
‘I heard something today which you are not in the way of hearing. You have—probably—no conception that it could be said.’
‘Then she has been telling other people. ABSOLUTELY the worst thing she could do!’ Mrs. Innes exclaimed privately, sitting unmoved, her face a little too expectant.
‘You won’t be prepared for it—you may be shocked and hurt by it. Indeed, I think there is no need to repeat it to you. But I must put you on your guard. Men are coarser, you know, than women; they are apt to put their own interpretation—’
‘What is it?’
There was a physical gasp, a sharpness in her voice that brought Innes’s eyes from the floor to her face.
‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but—don’t overestimate it, don’t let it worry you. It was simply a very impertinent—a very disagreeable reference to you and Mr. Holmcroft, I think, in connection with the Dovedell’s picnic. It was a particularly silly thing as well, and I am sure no one would attach any importance to it, but it was said openly at the Club, and—’
‘Who said it?’ Mrs. Innes demanded.
A flood of colour rushed over her face. Horace marked that she blushed.
‘I don’t know whether I ought to tell you, Violet. It certainly was not meant for your ears.’
‘If I’m not to know who said it, I don’t see why I should pay any attention to it. Mere idle rumour—’
Innes bit his lip.
‘Captain Gordon said it,’ he replied.
‘Bobby Gordon! DO tell me what he said! I’m dying to know. Was he very disagreeable? I DID give his dance away on Thursday night.’
Innes looked at her with the curious distrust which she often inspired in him. He had a feeling that he would like to put her out of the room into a place by herself, and keep her there.
‘I won’t repeat what he said.’ Colonel Innes took up the ‘Saturday Review’.
‘Oh, do, Horace! I particularly want to know.’
Innes said nothing.
‘Horace! Was it—was it anything about Mr. Holmcroft being my Secretariat baa-lamb?’
‘If you adorn your guess with a little profanity,’ said Innes, acidly, ‘you won’t be far wrong.’
Mrs. Violet burst into a peal of laughter.
‘Why, you old goose!’ she articulated, behind her handkerchief; ‘he said that to ME.’
Innes laid down the ‘Saturday Review’.
‘To you!’ he repeated; ‘Gordon said it to you!’
‘Rather!’ Mrs. Violet was still mirthful. ‘I’m not sure that he didn’t call poor little Homie something worse than that. It’s the purest jealousy on his part—nothing to make a fuss about.’
The fourth skin which enables so many of us to be callous to all but the relative meaning of careless phrases had not been given to Innes, and her words fell upon his bare sense of propriety.
‘Jealous,’ he said, ‘of a married woman? I find that difficult to understand.’
Violet’s face straightened out.
‘Don’t be absurd, Horace. These boys are always jealous of somebody or other—it’s the occupation of their lives! I really don’t see how one can prevent it.’
‘It seems to me that a self-respecting woman should see how. Your point of view in these matters is incomprehensible.’
‘Perhaps,’ Violet was driven by righteous anger to say, ‘you find Miss Anderson’s easier to understand.’
Colonel Innes’s face took its regimental disciplinary look, and, though his eyes were aroused, his words were quiet with repression.
‘I see no reason to discuss Miss Anderson with you,’ he said. ‘She has nothing to do with what we are talking about.’
‘Oh, don’t you, really! Hasn’t she, indeed! I take it you are trying to make me believe that compromising things are said about Mr. Holmcroft and me at the Club. Well, I advise you to keep your ears open a little more, and listen to the things said about you and Madeline Anderson there. But I don’t suppose you would be in such a hurry to repeat them to HER.’
Innes turned very white, and the rigidity of his face gave place to heavy dismay. His look was that of a man upon whom misfortune had fallen out of a clear sky. For an instant he stared at his wife. When he spoke his voice was altered.
‘For God’s sake!’ he said, ‘let us have done with this pitiful wrangling. I dare say you can take care of yourself; at all events, I only meant to warn you. But now you must tell me exactly what you mean by this that you have said—this—about—’
‘The fat’s in the fire,’ was Mrs. Innes’s reflection.
‘Certainly, I’ll tell you—’
‘Don’t shout, please!’
‘I mean simply that all Simla is talking about your affair with Miss Anderson. You may imagine that because you are fifteen years older than she is things won’t be thought of, but they are, and I hear it’s been spoken about at Viceregal Lodge. I KNOW Lady Bloomfield has noticed it, for she herself mentioned it to me. I told her I hadn’t the slightest objection, and neither have I, but there’s an old proverb about people in glass houses. What are you going to do?’
Colonel Innes’s expression was certainly alarming, and he had made a step toward her that had menace in it.
‘I am going out,’ he said, and turned and left her to her triumph.
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