"And Mrs. Vivian comes to-morrow," she was saying. "You like her, don't you, Chesterford? You must be awfully good to her, and take her to see all the drunken idlers in the village. That will be dear of you. It's just what she likes. She has sort of passion for drunken cabmen, who stamp on their wives. If you stamped on me a little every evening, she would cultivate you to any extent. Shall I lie down on the floor for you to begin?"
Chesterford leant back in his chair in a kind of ecstasy.
"Ah, Dodo," he said, "you are wonderfully good to me. But I must go and write two notes before dinner; and you must amuse your guests. I am very glad Jack has come. He is a very good chap. But don't make him an apostle."
Dodo laughed.
"I shall make a little golden hoop for him like the apostles in the Arundels, and another for you, and when nobody else is there you can take them off, and play hoops with them. I expect the apostles did that when they went for a walk. You couldn't wear it round your hat, could you?"
Miss Grantham instantly annexed Dodo.
"Dodo," she said, "come and take my part. These gentlemen say you shouldn't cultivate emotions."
"No, not that quite," corrected Jack. "I said it was expensive for your friends if they had to make themselves miserable, in order to afford food for your emotions."
"Now, isn't that selfish?" said Miss Grantham, with the air of a martyr at the stake. "Here am I ready to be drawn and quartered for anyone's amusement, and you tell me you are sorry for your part, but that it costs too much. Maud, come off that sofa, and take up the daggers for a too unselfish woman."
"I expect I don't know much about these things," said Maud.
"No; Maud would not go further than wrapping herself in a winding-sheet of blue worsted," remarked Dodo incisively.
Maud flushed a little.
"Oh, Dodo!" she exclaimed deprecatingly.
"It's no use hitting Maud," said Dodo pensively. "You might as well hit a feather bed. Now, if you hit Jack, he will hit back."
"Well, I'd prefer you hit me," said Jack, "than that you should hit anyone who can't hit back."
"Can't you see that I have determined not to hit feather beds," said Dodo in a low tone. "Really, Jack, you do me an injustice."
Jack looked up at her quickly.
"Do you say that already?" he asked.
"Oh, if you are going to whisper, I shall whisper too," remarked Miss Grantham calmly. "Lord Ledgers, I want to tell you a secret."
"I was only telling. Jack he was stupid," said Dodo. "I thought I would spare him before you all, but I see I have to explain. Have you seen Bertie yet, Jack? He's in the smoking-room, I think. Edith Staines is probably there too. She always smokes after tea, and Chesterford doesn't like it in the drawing-room. You know her, don't you? She's writing a symphony or something, and she's no use except at meal-times. I expect she will play it us afterwards. We must make Bertie sing too. There's the dressing-bell. I'm going to be gorgeous to-night in honour of you, Jack."
Jack found himself making a quantity of reflections, when he retired to his room that night. He became aware that he had enjoyed himself more that evening than he had done for a very long time. He questioned himself as to when he had enjoyed himself so much, and he was distinctly perturbed to find that the answer was, when he had last spent an evening with Dodo. He had formed an excellent habit of being exactly honest with himself, and he concluded that Dodo's presence had been the cause of it. It was a very unpleasant blow to him. He had accepted her refusal with an honest determination to get over it. He had not moped, nor pined, nor striven, nor cried. He had no intentions of dying of a broken heart, but the stubborn fact remained that Dodo exercised an unpleasantly strong influence over him. He could have repeated without effort all she had said that night. She had not said anything particularly remarkable, but somehow he felt that the most striking utterances of other men and women would not have produced any such effect on him. It really was very inconvenient. Dodo had married a man who adored her, for whom she did not care two pins' heads, and this man was one of his oldest friends. Decidedly there was something left-handed about this particular disposition of destiny. And the worst of it was that Chesterford was being hopelessly duped. About that he felt no doubt. Dodo's acting was so remarkably life-like, that he mistook it at present for reality. But the play must end some time, and the sequel was too dark and involved to be lightly followed out. He could not conceive why this elaborate drama on Dodo's part did not disgust him more. He wished he had been deceived by it himself, but having been behind the scenes, he had seen Dodo, as it were, in the green-room, putting on the rouge and powder. But failing that, he wished that a wholesome impulse of disgust and contempt had superseded his previous feelings with regard to her. But he believed with her that under the circumstances it was the best thing to do. The marriage was a grand mistake, true, but given that, was not this simply so many weeks of unhappiness saved? Then he had an immense pity for Dodo's original mistake. She had told him once that she was no more responsible for her philosophy than for the fact that she happened to be five foot eight in height, and had black eyes and black hair. "It was Nature's doing," she had said; "go and quarrel with her, but don't blame me. If I had made myself, I should have given myself a high ideal; I should have had something to live up to. Now, I have no ideal. The whole system of things seems to me such an immense puzzle, that I have given up trying to find a solution. I know what I like, and what I dislike. Can you blame me for choosing the one, and avoiding the other? I like wealth and success, and society and admiration. In a degree I have secured them, and the more I secure them the more reason I have to be satisfied. To do otherwise would be like putting on boots that were too large for me – they are excellent for other people, but not for me. I cannot accept ideals that I don't feel. I can understand them, and I can sympathise with them, and I can and do wish they were mine; but, as Nature has denied me them, I must make the best of what I have."
Jack felt hopeless against this kind of reasoning, and angry with himself for letting this woman have such dominion over him. In a measure he felt himself capable of views bounded by a horizon not so selfishly fatalistic, and the idea of the smoking chimney in the cottage did not seem to matter, provided that Dodo was sitting on the other side of the hearthrug. He would willingly have sacrificed anything else, to allow himself to give full reins to his thought on this point. But the grand barrier which stood between him and Dodo, was not so much her refusal of him, but the existence of her husband. At this Jack pulled himself up sharp. There are certain feelings of loyalty that still rank above all other emotions. Miss Grantham would certainly have classed such among the litany things. There was nothing heroic about it. It simply consisted in a sturdy refusal to transgress, even in vaguest thought, a code which deals with the most ordinary and commonplace virtues and vices. There is nothing heroic in a street boy passing by the baker's cart without a grab at the loaves, and it sounds almost puritanical to forbid him to cast a glance at them, or inhale a sniff of their warm fragrance. "Certainly this side of morality is remarkably dull," thought Jack; and the worst of it is, that it is not only dull but difficult. With practice most of us could become a Simeon Stylites, provided we are gifted with a steady head, and a constitution that defies showers. It is these commonplace acts of loyalty, the ordinary and rational demands of friendship and society, that are so dreadfully taxing to most of us who have the misfortune not to be born saints. Then Jack began to feel ill-used. "Why the deuce should Chesterford be born a marquis and not I? What has he done to have a title and fortune and Dodo that I have been given the chance to do?" It struck him that his reflections were deplorably commonplace, and that his position ought to be made much more of. He wondered whether this sort of situation was always so flat. In novels there is always a touch of the heroic in the faithful friend who is loyal to his cousin, and steadily avoids his cousin's wife; but here he is in identically the same situation, feeling not at all heroic, but only discontented and quarrelsome with this ill-managed world. Decidedly he would go to bed.
Owing to a certain habit that he had formed early in life he slept soundly, and morning found him not only alive, but remarkably