The Country House. Galsworthy John

kiss him, neither did she draw back her face. No trace of alarm showed in her ice-grey eyes. She said: “If I let you in, will you promise to say what you want to say quickly, and go away?”

      The little brown devils danced in Bellew’s face. He nodded. They stood by the hearth in the sitting-room, and on the lips of both came and went a peculiar smile.

      It was difficult to contemplate too seriously a person with whom one had lived for years, with whom one had experienced in common the range of human passion, intimacy, and estrangement, who knew all those little daily things that men and women living together know of each other, and with whom in the end, without hatred, but because of one’s nature, one had ceased to live. There was nothing for either of them to find out, and with a little smile, like the smile of knowledge itself, Jaspar Bellew and Helen his wife looked at each other.

      “Well,” she said again; “what have you come for?”

      Bellew’s face had changed. Its expression was furtive; his mouth twitched; a furrow had come between his eyes.

      “How – are – you?” he said in a thick, muttering voice.

      Mrs. Bellew’s clear voice answered:

      “Now, Jaspar, what is it that you want?”

      The little brown devils leaped up again in Jaspar’s face.

      “You look very pretty to-night!”

      His wife’s lips curled.

      “I’m much the same as I always was,” she said.

      A violent shudder shook Bellew. He fixed his eyes on the floor a little beyond her to the left; suddenly he raised them. They were quite lifeless.

      “I’m perfectly sober,” he murmured thickly; then with startling quickness his eyes began to sparkle again. He came a step nearer.

      “You’re my wife!” he said.

      Mrs. Bellew smiled.

      “Come,” she answered, “you must go!” and she put out her bare arm to push him back. But Bellew recoiled of his own accord; his eyes were fixed again on the floor a little beyond her to the left.

      “What’s that?” he stammered. “What’s that – that black – ?”

      The devilry, mockery, admiration, bemusement, had gone out of his face; it was white and calm, and horribly pathetic.

      “Don’t turn me out,” he stammered; “don’t turn me out!”

      Mrs. Bellew looked at him hard; the defiance in her eyes changed to a sort of pity. She took a quick step and put her hand on his shoulder.

      “It’s all right, old boy – all right!” she said. “There’s nothing there!”

      CHAPTER IX

      MR. PARAMOR DISPOSES

      Mrs. Pendyce, who, in accordance with her husband’s wish, still occupied the same room as Mr. Pendyce, chose the ten minutes before he got up to break to him Gregory’s decision. The moment was auspicious, for he was only half awake.

      “Horace,” she said, and her face looked young and anxious, “Grig says that Helen Bellew ought not to go on in her present position. Of course, I told him that you’d be annoyed, but Grig says that she can’t go on like this, that she simply must divorce Captain Bellew.”

      Mr. Pendyce was lying on his back.

      “What’s that?” he said.

      Mrs. Pendyce went on

      “I knew it would worry you; but really” – she fixed her eyes on the ceiling – “I suppose we ought only to think of her.”

      The Squire sat up.

      “What was that,” he said, “about Bellew?”

      Mrs. Pendyce went on in a languid voice and without moving her eyes:

      “Don’t be angrier than you can help, dear; it is so wearing. If Grig says she ought to divorce Captain Bellew, then I’m sure she ought.”

      Horace Pendyce subsided on his pillow with a bounce, and he too lay with his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

      “Divorce him!” he said – “I should think so! He ought to be hanged, a fellow like that. I told you last night he nearly drove over me. Living just as he likes, setting an example of devilry to the whole neighbourhood! If I hadn’t kept my head he’d have bowled me over like a ninepin, and Bee into the bargain.”

      Mrs. Pendyce sighed.

      “It was a narrow escape,” she said.

      “Divorce him!” resumed Mr. Pendyce – “I should think so! She ought to have divorced him long ago. It was the nearest thing in the world; another foot and I should have been knocked off my feet!”

      Mrs. Pendyce withdrew her glance from the ceiling.

      “At first,” she said, “I wondered whether it was quite – but I’m very glad you’ve taken it like this.”

      “Taken it! I can tell you, Margery, that sort of thing makes one think. All the time Barter was preaching last night I was wondering what on earth would have happened to this estate if – if – ” And he looked round with a frown. “Even as it is, I barely make the two ends of it meet. As to George, he’s no more fit at present to manage it than you are; he’d make a loss of thousands.”

      “I’m afraid George is too much in London. That’s the reason I wondered whether – I’m afraid he sees too much of – ”

      Mrs. Pendyce stopped; a flush suffused her cheeks; she had pinched herself violently beneath the bedclothes.

      “George,” said Mr. Pendyce, pursuing his own thoughts, “has no gumption. He’d never manage a man like Peacock – and you encourage him! He ought to marry and settle down.”

      Mrs. Pendyce, the flush dying in her cheeks, said:

      “George is very like poor Hubert.”

      Horace Pendyce drew his watch from beneath his pillow.

      “Ah!” But he refrained from adding, “Your people!” for Hubert Totteridge had not been dead a year. “Ten minutes to eight! You keep me talking here; it’s time I was in my bath.”

      Clad in pyjamas with a very wide blue stripe, grey-eyed, grey-moustached, slim and erect, he paused at the door.