"Do you know," said Colonel Musgrave, with deliberation, "it is she I cannot understand. To discover that he had been systematically hoodwinking her for some ten years; that, after making away with as much of her fortune as he was able to lay hands on, he has betrayed business trust after business trust in order to--to maintain another establishment; that he has never cared for her, and has made her his dupe time after time, in order to obtain money for his gambling debts and other even less reputable obligations--she must realize all these things now, you know, and one would have thought no woman"s love could possibly survive such a test. Yet, she is standing by him through thick and thin. Yes, I confess, Amelia Lethbury puzzles me. I don"t understand her mental att.i.tude."
Musgrave was looking at Anne very intently as he ended.
"Why, but of course," said Anne, "she realizes that it was all the fault of that--that other woman; and, besides, the--the entanglement has been going on only a little over eight years--not ten, Rudolph."
She was entirely in earnest; Colonel Musgrave could see it plainly.
"I admit I hadn"t looked on it in that light," said he, at length, and was silent for a moment Then, "Upon my soul, Anne," he cried, "I believe you think the woman is only doing the natural thing, only doing the thing one has a right to expect of her, in sticking to that blackguard after she has found him out!"
Mrs. Charteris raised her eyebrows; she was really surprised.
"Naturally, she must stand by her husband when he is in trouble; why, if his own wife didn"t, who would, Rudolph? It is just now that he needs her most. It would be abominable to desert him now."
Anne paused and thought. "Depend upon it, she knows a better side of his nature than we can see; she knows him, possibly, to have been misled, or to have acted thoughtlessly; because otherwise, she would not stand by him so firmly." Having reached this satisfactory conclusion, Anne began to laugh--at Musgrave"s lack of penetration, probably. "So, you see, Rudolph, in either case, her conduct is perfectly natural."
"And this," he cried, "this is how women reason!"
"Am I very stupid? Jack says I am a bit illogical at times. But, Rudolph, you mustn"t expect a woman to judge the man she loves; if you call on her to do that, she doesn"t reason about it; she just goes on loving him, and thinking how horrid you are. Women love men as they do children; they punish them sometimes, but only in deference to public opinion. A woman will always find an excuse for the man she loves. If he deserts her, she is miserable until she succeeds in demonstrating to herself it was entirely her own fault; after that, she is properly repentant, but far less unhappy; and, anyhow, she goes on loving him just the same."
The colonel pondered over this. "Women are different," he said.
"I don"t know. I think that, if all women could be thrown with good men, they would all be good. Women want to be good; but there comes a time to each one of them when she wants to make a certain man happy, and wants that more than anything else in the world; and then, of course, if he wants--very much--for her to be bad, she will be bad. A bad woman is always to be explained by a bad man."
Anne nodded, very wisely; then, she began to laugh, but this time at herself. "I am talking quite like a book," she said. "Really, I had no idea I was so clever. But I have thought of this before, Rudolph, and been sorry for those poor women who--who haven"t found the right sort of man to care for."
"Yes." Musgrave"s face was alert. "You have been luckier than most, Anne," he said.
"Lucky!" she cried, and that queer little thrill of happiness woke again in her rich voice. "Ah, you don"t know how lucky I have been, Rudolph! I have never cared for any one except--well, yes, you, a great while ago--and Jack. And you are both good men. Ah, Rudolph, it was very dear and sweet and foolish, the way we loved each other, but you don"t mind--very, very much--do you, if I think Jack is the best man in the world, and by far the best man in the world for me? He is so good to me; he is so good and kind and considerate to me, and, even after all these years of matrimony, he is always the lover. A woman appreciates that, Rudolph; she wants her husband to be always her lover, just as Jack is, and never to give in when she coaxes--because she only coaxes when she knows she is in the wrong--and never, never, to let her see him shaving himself. If a husband observes these simple rules, Rudolph, his wife will be a happy woman; and Jack does. In consequence, every day I live I grow fonder of him, and appreciate him more and more; he grows upon me just as a taste for strong drink might. Without him--without him--"
Anne"s voice died away; then she faced Musgrave, indignantly. "Oh, Rudolph!" she cried, "how horrid of you, how mean of you, to come here and suggest the possibility of Jack"s dying or running away from me, or doing anything dreadful like that!"
Colonel Musgrave was smiling, "I?" said he, equably. "My dear madam! if you will reconsider,--"
"No," she conceded, after deliberation, "it wasn"t exactly your fault. I got started on the subject of Jack, and imagined all sorts of horrible and impossible things. But there is a sort of a something in the air to-night; probably a storm is coming down the river. So I feel very morbid and very foolish, Rudolph; but, then, I am in love, you see.
Isn"t it funny, after all these years?" Anne asked with a smile;--"and so you are not to be angry, Rudolph."
"My dear," he said, "I a.s.sure you, the emotion you raise in me is very far from resembling that of anger." Musgrave rose and laughed. "I fear, you know, we will create a scandal if we sit here any longer. Let"s see what the others are doing."
III
That night, after his guests had retired, Colonel Musgrave smoked a cigarette on the front porch of Matocton. The moon, now in the zenith, was bright and chill. After a while, Musgrave raised his face toward it, and laughed.
"Isn"t it--isn"t it funny?" he demanded, echoing Anne"s query ruefully.
"Eh, well! perhaps I still retained some lingering hope; in a season of discomfort, most of us look vaguely for a miracle. And, at times, it comes, but, more often, not; life isn"t always a pantomime, with a fairy G.o.d-mother waiting to break through the darkness in a burst of glory and reunite the severed lovers, and transform their enemies into pantaloons.
In this case, it is certain that the fairy will not come. I am condemned to be my own G.o.d in the machine."
Having demonstrated this to himself, Musgrave went into the house and drugged his mind correcting proofsheets--for the _Lichfield Historical a.s.sociation"s Quarterly Magazine_--and brought down to the year 1805 his "List of Wills Recorded in Brummell County."
IV
The night was well advanced when Charteris stepped noiselessly into the room. The colonel was then sedately writing amid a host of motionless mute watchers, for at Matocton most of the portraits hang in the East Drawing-room.
Thus, above the great marble mantel,--carved with thyrsi, and supported by proud deep-bosomed caryatides,--you will find burly Sebastian Musgrave, "the Speaker," an all-overbearing man even on canvas. "Paint me among dukes and earls with my hat on, to show I am in all things a Republican, and the finest diamond in the Colony shall be yours," he had directed the painter, and this was done. Then there is frail Wilhelmina Musgrave--that famed beauty whose two-hundred-year-old story all Lichfield knows, and no genealogist has ever cared to detail--eternally weaving flowers about her shepherd hat. There, too, is Evelyn Ramsay, before whose roguish loveliness, as you may remember, the colonel had snapped his fingers in those roseate days when he so joyously considered his profound unworthiness to be Patricia"s husband. There is also the colonial governor of Albemarle--a Van Dyck this--two Knellers, and Lely"s portrait of Thomas Musgrave, "the poet," with serious blue eyes and flaxen hair. The painting of Captain George Musgrave, who distinguished himself at the siege of Cartagena, is admittedly an inferior piece of work, but it has vigor, none the less; and below it hangs the sword which was presented to him by the Lord High Admiral.
So quietly did Charteris come that the colonel was not aware of his entrance until the novelist had coughed gently. He was in a dressing-gown, and looked unusually wizened.
"I saw your light," he said. "I don"t seem to be able to sleep, somehow.
It is so infernally hot and still. I suppose there is going to be a thunderstorm. I hate thunderstorms. They frighten me." The little man was speaking like a peevish child.
"Oh, well--! it will at least clear the air," said Rudolph Musgrave.
"Sit down and have a smoke, won"t you?"
"No, thanks." Charteris had gone to the bookshelves and was gently pushing and pulling at the books so as to arrange their backs in a mathematically straight line. "I thought I would borrow something to read--Why, this is the Tennyson you had at college, isn"t it? Yes, I remember it perfectly."
These two had roomed together through their college days.
"Yes; it is the old Tennyson. And yonder is the identical Swinburne you used to spout from, too. Lord, Jack, it seems a century since I used to listen by the hour to _The Triumph of Time and Dolores!_"
"Ah, but you didn"t really care for them--not even then." Charteris reached up, his back still turned, and moved a candlestick the fraction of an inch. "There is something so disgustingly wholesome about you, Rudolph. And it appears to be ineradicable. I can"t imagine how I ever came to be fond of you."
The colonel was twirling his pen, his eyes intent upon it. "And yet--we _were_ fond of each other, weren"t we, Jack?"
"Why, I positively adored you. You were such a strong and healthy animal. Upon my word, I don"t believe I ever missed a single football game you played in. In fact, I almost learned to understand the game on your account. You see--it was so good to watch you raging about with touzled hair, like the only original bull of Bashan, and the others tumbling like ninepins. It used to make me quite inordinately proud."
The colonel smoked. "But, Lord! how proud _I_ was when you got medals!"
"Yes--I remember."
"Even if I did bully you sometimes. Remember how I used to twist your arm to make you write my Latin exercises, Jack?"
"I liked to have you do that," Charteris said, simply. "It hurt a great deal, but I liked it."
He had come up behind the colonel, who was still seated. "Yes, that was a long while ago," said Charteris. "It is rather terrible--isn"t it?--to reflect precisely how long ago it was. Why, I shall be bald in a year or two from now. But you have kept almost all your beautiful hair, Rudolph."
Charteris touched the colonel"s head, stroking his hair ever so lightly once or twice. It was in effect a caress.
The colonel was aware of the odor of myrrh which always accompanied Charteris and felt that the little man was trembling.
"Isn"t there--anything you want to tell me, Jack?" the colonel said. He sat quite still.
There was the tiniest pause. The caressing finger-tips lifted from Musgrave"s head, but presently gave it one more brief and half-timid touch.