"What makes you think that?"
"Fred found that out. My husband said he went to the club three or four nights a week to play bridge. Fred knows one of the members, and said something about Charles being a great bridge-player. The man was surprised. He said he"d never even seen Charles in the card-room. It"s quite clear now that when I thought Charles was at his club he was with her."
I was silent for a moment. Then I thought of the children.
"It must have been difficult to explain to Robert," I said.
"Oh, I never said a word to either of them. You see, we only came up to town the day before they had to go back to school.
I had the presence of mind to say that their father had been called away on business."
It could not have been very easy to be bright and careless with that sudden secret in her heart, nor to give her attention to all the things that needed doing to get her children comfortably packed off. Mrs. Strickland"s voice broke again.
"And what is to happen to them, poor darlings? How are we going to live?"
She struggled for self-control, and I saw her hands clench and unclench spasmodically. It was dreadfully painful.
"Of course I"ll go over to Paris if you think I can do any good, but you must tell me exactly what you want me to do."
"I want him to come back."
"I understood from Colonel MacAndrew that you"d made up your mind to divorce him."
"I"ll never divorce him," she answered with a sudden violence.
"Tell him that from me. He"ll never be able to marry that woman.
I"m as obstinate as he is, and I"ll never divorce him.
I have to think of my children."
I think she added this to explain her att.i.tude to me, but I thought it was due to a very natural jealousy rather than to maternal solicitude.
"Are you in love with him still?"
"I don"t know. I want him to come back. If he"ll do that we"ll let bygones be bygones. After all, we"ve been married for seventeen years. I"m a broadminded woman. I wouldn"t have minded what he did as long as I knew nothing about it.
He must know that his infatuation won"t last. If he"ll come back now everything can be smoothed over, and no one will know anything about it."
It chilled me a little that Mrs. Strickland should be concerned with gossip, for I did not know then how great a part is played in women"s life by the opinion of others.
It throws a shadow of insincerity over their most deeply felt emotions.
It was known where Strickland was staying. His partner, in a violent letter, sent to his bank, had taunted him with hiding his whereabouts: and Strickland, in a cynical and humourous reply, had told his partner exactly where to find him. He was apparently living in an Hotel.
"I"ve never heard of it," said Mrs. Strickland. "But Fred knows it well. He says it"s very expensive."
She flushed darkly. I imagined that she saw her husband installed in a luxurious suite of rooms, dining at one smart restaurant after another, and she pictured his days spent at race-meetings and his evenings at the play.
"It can"t go on at his age," she said. "After all, he"s forty.
I could understand it in a young man, but I think it"s horrible in a man of his years, with children who are nearly grown up. His health will never stand it."
Anger struggled in her breast with misery.
"Tell him that our home cries out for him. Everything is just the same, and yet everything is different. I can"t live without him. I"d sooner kill myself. Talk to him about the past, and all we"ve gone through together. What am I to say to the children when they ask for him? His room is exactly as it was when he left it. It"s waiting for him. We"re all waiting for him."
Now she told me exactly what I should say. She gave me elaborate answers to every possible observation of his.
"You will do everything you can for me?" she said pitifully.
"Tell him what a state I"m in."
I saw that she wished me to appeal to his sympathies by every means in my power. She was weeping freely. I was extraordinarily touched. I felt indignant at Strickland"s cold cruelty, and I promised to do all I could to bring him back.
I agreed to go over on the next day but one, and to stay in Paris till I had achieved something. Then, as it was growing late and we were both exhausted by so much emotion, I left her.
Chapter XI
During the journey I thought over my errand with misgiving.
Now that I was free from the spectacle of Mrs. Strickland"s distress I could consider the matter more calmly. I was puzzled by the contradictions that I saw in her behaviour.
She was very unhappy, but to excite my sympathy she was able to make a show of her unhappiness. It was evident that she had been prepared to weep, for she had provided herself with a sufficiency of handkerchiefs; I admired her forethought, but in retrospect it made her tears perhaps less moving. I could not decide whether she desired the return of her husband because she loved him, or because she dreaded the tongue of scandal; and I was perturbed by the suspicion that the anguish of love contemned was alloyed in her broken heart with the pangs, sordid to my young mind, of wounded vanity. I had not yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know how much pose there is in the sincere, how much baseness in the n.o.ble, nor how much goodness in the reprobate.
But there was something of an adventure in my trip, and my spirits rose as I approached Paris. I saw myself, too, from the dramatic standpoint, and I was pleased with my role of the trusted friend bringing back the errant husband to his forgiving wife. I made up my mind to see Strickland the following evening, for I felt instinctively that the hour must be chosen with delicacy. An appeal to the emotions is little likely to be effectual before luncheon. My own thoughts were then constantly occupied with love, but I never could imagine connubial bliss till after tea.
I enquired at my hotel for that in which Charles Strickland was living. It was called the Hotel des Belges. But the concierge, somewhat to my surprise, had never heard of it.
I had understood from Mrs. Strickland that it was a large and sumptuous place at the back of the Rue de Rivoli. We looked it out in the directory. The only hotel of that name was in the Rue des Moines. The quarter was not fashionable; it was not even respectable. I shook my head.
"I"m sure that"s not it," I said.
The concierge shrugged his shoulders. There was no other hotel of that name in Paris. It occurred to me that Strickland had concealed his address, after all. In giving his partner the one I knew he was perhaps playing a trick on him.
I do not know why I had an inkling that it would appeal to Strickland"s sense of humour to bring a furious stockbroker over to Paris on a fool"s errand to an ill-famed house in a mean street. Still, I thought I had better go and see.
Next day about six o"clock I took a cab to the Rue des Moines, but dismissed it at the corner, since I preferred to walk to the hotel and look at it before I went in. It was a street of small shops subservient to the needs of poor people, and about the middle of it, on the left as I walked down, was the Hotel des Belges. My own hotel was modest enough, but it was magnificent in comparison with this. It was a tall, shabby building, that cannot have been painted for years, and it had so bedraggled an air that the houses on each side of it looked neat and clean. The dirty windows were all shut. It was not here that Charles Strickland lived in guilty splendour with the unknown charmer for whose sake he had abandoned honour and duty.
I was vexed, for I felt that I had been made a fool of, and I nearly turned away without making an enquiry. I went in only to be able to tell Mrs. Strickland that I had done my best.
The door was at the side of a shop. It stood open, and just within was a sign: I walked up narrow stairs, and on the landing found a sort of box, gla.s.sed in, within which were a desk and a couple of chairs. There was a bench outside, on which it might be presumed the night porter pa.s.sed uneasy nights. There was no one about, but under an electric bell was written I rang, and presently a waiter appeared. He was a young man with furtive eyes and a sullen look. He was in shirt-sleeves and carpet slippers.
I do not know why I made my enquiry as casual as possible.
"Does Mr. Strickland live here by any chance?" I asked.
"Number thirty-two. On the sixth floor."
I was so surprised that for a moment I did not answer.
"Is he in?"
The waiter looked at a board in the
"He hasn"t left his key. Go up and you"ll see."
I thought it as well to put one more question.