'My dear Ted, I assure you——'
'No, you don't,' he stopped her. 'I wish you did. Now you must just listen. I know exactly what sort of an idiot I was that night as well as you do. But I couldn't help it. I was a fool to tell you. Still, I thought I was dying. I simply had a babbling fit. People are like that. You thought I was dying, too, didn't you?'
'Yes,' she said quietly, 'for a minute or two.'
'Ah! It was that minute or two that did it. Well, I let it out, the rotten little secret. I admit it wasn't on the square, that bit of business. But, on the other hand, it wasn't anything really bad—like cruelty to animals or ruining a girl. Of course, the chap was your father, but, but——. Look here, May, you ought to be able to see that I was exactly the same man after I told you as I was before. You ought to be able to see that. My character wasn't wrecked because I happened to split on myself, like an ass, about that affair. Mind you, I don't blame you. You can't help your feelings. But do you suppose there's a single man on this blessed earth without a secret? I'm not going to grovel before gods or men. I'm not going to pretend I'm so frightfully sorry. I'm sorry in a way. But can't you see——'
'Don't say any more, Ted,' she begged him, fingering her sash. 'I know all that. I know it all, and everything else you can say. Oh, my darling boy! do you think I would look down on you ever so little because of—what you told me? Who am I? I wouldn't care twopence even if——'
'But it's between us all the same,' he broke in. 'You can't get over it.'
'Get over it!' she repeated lamely.
'Can you? Have you?' He pinned her to a direct answer.
She did not flinch.
'No,' she said.
'I thought you would have done,' he remarked, half to himself. 'I thought you would. I thought you were enough a woman of the world for that, May. It isn't as if the confounded thing had made any real difference to your father. The old man died, and——'
'Ted!' she exclaimed, 'I shall have to tell you, after all. It killed him.'
'What killed him? He died of gastritis.'
'He was ill with gastritis, but he died of suicide. It's easy for a gastritis patient to commit suicide. And father did.'
'Why?'
'Oh, ruin, despair! He'd been in difficulties for a long time. He said that selling those shares just one day too soon was the end of it. When he saw them going up day after day, it got on his mind. He said he knew he would never, never have any luck. And then ...'
'You kept it quiet.' He was walking about the room.
'Yes, that was pretty easy.'
'And did your mother know?'
He turned and looked at her.
'Yes, mother knew. It finished her. Oh, Ted!' she burst out, 'if you'd only telegraphed to him the next morning that the shares weren't sold, things might have been quite different.'
'You mean I killed your father—and your mother.'
'No, I don't,' she cried passionately. 'I tell you I don't. You didn't know. But I think of it all, sometimes. And that's why—that's why——'
She sat down again.
'By God, May,' he swore, 'I'm frightfully sorry!'
'I never meant to tell you,' she said, composing herself. 'But, there! things slip out. Good-night.'
She was gone, but in passing him she had timidly caressed his shoulder.
'It's all up,' he said to himself. 'This will always be between us. No one could expect her to forget it.'
V
Gradually her characteristic habits deserted her; she seemed to lose energy and a part of her interest in those things which had occupied her most. She changed her dress less frequently, ignoring dressmakers, and she showed no longer the ravishing elegance of the bride. She often lay in bed till noon, she who had always entered the dining-room at nine o'clock precisely to dispense his coffee and listen to his remarks on the contents of the newspaper. She said 'As you please' to the cook, and the meals began to lose their piquancy. She paid no calls, but some of her women friends continued, nevertheless, to visit her. Lastly, she took to sewing. The little dark doctor, who had become an acquaintance, smiled at her and told her to do no more than she felt disposed to do. She reclined on sofas in shaded rooms, and appeared to meditate. She was not depressed, but thoughtful. It was as though she had much to settle in her own mind. At intervals the faint sound of the Hungarian Rhapsody mingled with her reveries.
As for Edward, his behaviour was immaculate. During the day he made money furiously. In the evening he sat with his wife. They did not talk much, and he never questioned her. She developed a certain curious whimsicality now and then; but for him she could do no wrong.
The past was not mentioned. They both looked apprehensively towards the future, towards a crisis which they knew was inexorably approaching. They were afraid, while pretending to have no fear.
And one afternoon, precipitately, surprisingly, the crisis came.
'You are the father of a son—a very noisy son,' said the doctor, coming into the drawing-room where Edward had sat in torture for three hours.
'And May?'
'Oh, never fear: she's doing excellently.'
'Can I go and see her?' he asked, like a humble petitioner.
'Well—yes,' said the doctor, 'for one minute; not more.'
So he went into the bedroom as into a church, feeling a fool. The nurse, miraculously white and starched, stood like a sentinel at the foot of the bed of mystery.
'All serene, May?' he questioned. If he had attempted to say another word he would have cried.
The pale mother nodded with a fatigued smile, and by a scarcely perceptible gesture drew his attention to a bundle. From the next flat came a faint, familiar sound, insolently joyous.
'Yes,' he thought, 'but if they had both been lying dead here that tune would have been the same.'
Two months later he left the office early, telling his secretary that he had a headache. It was a mere fibbing excuse. He suffered from sudden fits of anxiety about his wife and child. When he reached the flat, he found no one at home but the cook.
'Where's your mistress?' he demanded.
'She's out in the park with baby and nurse, sir.'
'But it's going to rain,' he cried angrily. 'It is raining. They'll get wet through.'
He rushed into the corridor, and met the procession—May, the perambulator, and the nursemaid.
'Only fancy, Ted!' May exclaimed, 'the perambulator will go into the lift, after all. Aren't you glad?'
'Yes,' he said. 'But you're wet, surely?'
'Not a drop. We just got in in time.'
'Sure?'
'Quite.'
The tableau of May, elegant as ever, but her eyes brighter and her body more leniently curved, of the hooded perambulator, and of the fluffy-white nursemaid behind—it was too much for him. Touching clumsily the apron of the perambulator, the stockbroker turned into his doorway. Just then the girl from the next flat came out into the corridor, dressed for social rites of the afternoon. The perambulator was her excuse for stopping.
'What a pretty boy!' she exclaimed in ecstasy, trying to squeeze her picture hat under the hood of the perambulator.
'Do you really think so?' said the mother, enchanted.