George stared very hard at her without producing any impression, and in a deeply injured tone he resumed: “Yes; I am going out with Jack Dennison. I find it necessary; in fact, imperative to go —— — —”
“Ah, yes, agricultural affairs are in a bad way!” she said sympathetically. “Do you know, I thought you would have losses this year on the lands — rentals are going down so much, and everything is so hopeless for the farmers; I really think you are wise to try and recuperate. I suppose Dennison has got a mine or something?”
He favoured her with a look that was meant to be scornful, but which only succeeded in being plaintive.
“You mistake the position, Belle,” he said, with severe politeness. “I have had no losses, I do not need to recuperate, and Dennison has no mine. I am going because I wish to go; because, as I have had occasion to mention to you before, I do not appear to be wanted here. You are too much absorbed in — in your ‘kennel’ duties to attend to me and here he gave vent to what he considered a culminating burst of sarcasm. “Yes, I feel in the dog’s way. The dog is master here — I am not. You have several dogs, I know; but the dog, the one I mean at present in your lap, is the chief object of your consideration, tenderness, and interest. He always takes prizes; he deserves attention. I do not take prizes; I cannot compete with him. Therefore I am going away for a change — a change from society and dog shows. It will do me good to grapple with danger and death” — here he looked as tragic as his amiable round face would allow him—” and when I return home again, after many adventures, you will be glad, perhaps, to see me.”
His wife’s eyes twinkled prettily like sapphires as she surveyed him.
“Of course I shall be glad,” she said frankly; “but I quite agree with you in thinking that the trip will do you all the good in the world. I have thought for some time that you’ve been a little out of sorts — a trifle hypochrondriacal — or a touch of the spleen, because you say such funny things.” (“Funny things!” George was speechless.) “And Dennison will make a splendid travelling companion. When do you go?”
“In a fortnight,” he answered feebly, utterly bewildered at her cool way of taking what he thought would prove a startling and fulminating announcement.
“Oh, then I must see to your flannel shirts,” she observed. “They wear flannel next to the skin as a preventive of fever in Africa.”
“Ah! there’s no preventive against that fever,” he muttered, morosely, adding almost under his breath, “Even the natives die!”
“Oh, I should think quinine and flannel would be useful,” she responded cheerfully. “The natives don’t know how to take care of themselves, poor things! Englishmen do. I sha’n’t be a bit anxious about you.”
“Won’t you? No, I don’t suppose you will;” and Fairfax began to feel rather snappish. “It isn’t as if I were Bibi. Adair is going, too.”
“Is he really? Can he bear to leave his lovely Laura?”
“His lovely Laura will get on very well without him, I dare say,” retorted Fairfax. “By the time he comes back she’ll very likely be in knickerbockers, playing football with the Pioneers!”
With this parting shot he marched out of the room in haste, disappointed and indignant at his wife’s indifference. She, left alone, lay back in her chair and indulged in a hearty laugh, which had the effect of rousing the pampered “Bibi” to such a pitch of wonder that he found it necessary to rise on his hind legs and apply his cold, wet nose to his mistress’s chin with a mild sniff of inquiry. She caught the pretty little animal up in her arms and kissed its silky head, still laughing and murmuring, “Oh, Bibi! men are funny creatures! ever so much funnier than dogs! You can’t imagine how nice and funny they are, Bibi!”
After a while she became serious, though her eyes still danced with mirth. Putting her little dog down, she began to count on her fingers.
“In a fortnight — well, I must see Laura, and find out what she thinks about it. Then we’ll both go and consult Mrs. Dennison. The boys are at school — so that’s all right. I wonder what the steamer is? We can easily find out. Dear old George! what a silly he is! And John Dennison and Frank Adair are equally silly — three of the dearest old noodles that ever lived! I must see Laura to-morrow.”
Meanwhile a conversation more or less similar had taken place between Mr and Mrs. Dennison. John was a man of action, and prided himself on the swift (and obstinate) manner in which he invariably made up his mind. His wife did not consider herself behind him in resolution; she was a handsome woman of about thirty-eight, with a bright expression and a frank, sweet smile of her own which proved very attractive to her friends, who came to her with all their troubles, and gave her their unbounded confidence. She was active, strong, and energetic, and never wasted a moment in useless argument; so that when, her husband said quite suddenly, “I am going to Africa,” she accepted the statement calmly as a settled thing, and merely inquired —
“When?”
He eyed her severely.
“In a fortnight,” he answered, jerking out his Words like so many clicks of a toy-pistol. “Gold Coast. Bad place for fever. Even the natives die.”
Mrs. Dennison’s tender heart was touched at once, but, as her husband thought, in quite the wrong way.
“Poor things!” she said, pityingly; “I dare say their notions of medicine are very primitive. You must take a double quantity of quinine with you, John, dear, and you may be able to save many lives.”
He stared at her, his face reddening visibly.
“God bless my soul, Mary, I shall have enough to do in taking care of my own life,” he snapped out, “without bothering after the natives. You don’t seem to think of that!”
“Oh, yes, I do,” responded Mary, very tranquilly. “But you are a strong, healthy man, John, and very sensible; you know how to look after yourself — no one better; and I should indeed be silly if I felt any anxiety about you. May I ask what you are going to the Gold Coast for? or is it a secret?”
Now, John Dennison was, on the whole, a good fellow; honest, honorable, and true to the heart’s core; but with all his virtues he had a temper, and he showed it just then.
“No, it is not a secret, madam!” he burst forth, trembling from head to foot with the violence of his emotions. “If I were to speak quite plainly, I should say the reason of my going is an open scandal! Yes, that is what it is! Oh, you may look at me as if you thought me a troublesome lunatic — you have that irritating way, you know — but I mean it. I may as well be a wanderer and a vagabond on the face of the earth, for I have no home. What should be my home is turned into a meeting-place for all the crack-brained faddists in London, who form ‘societies’ for want of anything better or more useful to do. It may be very interesting to talk and make speeches about the necessity of feeding the people on nourishing bread instead of non-nourishing alum stuff, but it has nothing to do with Me! I don’t personally care what the people eat, or what they don’t eat. I ought to care, I suppose, but I don’t! When I was a hard-working lad, I ate what I could get, and was thankful; no nice ladies and gentlemen met in drawing-rooms to assert that I was badly fed, and that I ought to be looked after more tenderly. ‘Fads’ were not in fashion then; people fought for themselves manfully, as they should do, and came up or went down according to their own capabilities; and there wasn’t all this cosseting and coddling of the silly and incompetent. It is quite ridiculous that in an age like ours a ‘society’ should be formed for the purpose of teaching the majority what sort of bread to eat. By the Lord Harry! if they’re such confounded idiots that they can’t distinguish between good bread and bad, they deserve to starve. Even the dullest monkey knows the difference between a real turnip and a sham one. I’ve given you my opinion on these sort of subjects before. I’m against all ‘Leagues’ and ‘Bodies’ and ‘Working Committees.’ I hate them. You like them. That’s where we differ. You, in your Anti-Corset League, want to make girls give up tight-lacing; now, I say, let them tight-lace till
they split in half, if they like it; there’ll only be so many feminine fools the less in the world. And as for the ‘Social Reformation’ business — pah! that’s not fit for a decent woman to meddle with. If women would only begin to ‘reform’ themselves, and make their husbands happy, society might be purified to a great extent; but so long as households are looked upon as a nuisance, husbands a bore, and children a curse, nothing but misery can come of it. And the reason I am going away is this — that I do not feel myself the master of my own house; there are too many ‘Committees’ accustomed to meet in it at their own discretion; your time is entirely taken up with laudable efforts to improve the community” — here he indulged in a mild sneer—” so much so that I have become nothing but an unnecessary appendage to the importance of your position. Now” — and he grew fierce again—” I do not choose to play second fiddle to any one, least of all to my own wife. So I shall clear out and leave you to it. George Fairfax and Frank Adair feel the domestic wretchedness of their positions as keenly as I do, and they are going out to the Gold Coast with me. I shall provide you amply with means — and they will do the same on behalf of their wives — and we shall be absent for a considerable time. In fact, who knows whether we may ever come back at all?” — here his voice became sepulchral. “Fortunately, our wills are made!”
He ceased. Throughout his somewhat lengthy tirade, his wife had sat quite still, patiently listening, her hands reposefully folded over a book on her knee, her eyes regarding him with a clear steadfastness in which there was a soft lurking gleam of something like compassion. Now that he had finished what he had to say she spoke, in gentle deliberate accents.
“I am to understand then, my poor John,” she said, almost maternally, “that you are leaving home on account of your dislike to the way I try to employ myself (very ineffectually I admit) in doing good to others?”
He gave a short nod of assent and turned his eyes away from her. It rather troubled him to be called “my poor John!”
“And Mr. Adair finds equal fault with his beautiful girl-wife Laura!”
“Poor Adair has equal reason to find fault,” was the stem reply. “A man may very well become crusty when he finds the woman he loves to adoration deliberately rejecting his affection for that of a Pioneer!”
A curious little trembling appeared to affect Mrs. Dennison’s full white throat, suggestive of a rising bubble of laughter that was instantly suppressed.
“Mr. Fairfax, you say, is going also?” she murmured gently.
“He is. Not having the necessary qualifications for a dog-trainer, he is not required in his home,” replied her husband with intense bitterness. “Dogs now occupy Mrs. Fairfax’s whole time to the total exclusion of her domestic duties.”
Mrs. Dennison was silent for a little while, thinking. Then she put the book she held carefully down on a side-table, and rose in all her stately height and elegance, looking the very beau ideal of a handsome English matron. Crossing over to where her husband stood, she laid her plump pretty hand, sparkling with rings, tenderly on his bald spot, and said in the sweetest of voices —
“Well, John, dear, all I can say is that I am delighted you are going! It will do you good; in fact it’s the very best thing possible for all three of you. I think you’ve all been too comfortable and lazy for a long time; a voyage to the Gold Coast will be the very tonic you require. Of course I’m sorry you’ve no sympathy with me in my humble efforts to do a little useful work among my fellow-women during my leisure days, and while the children are at school, but I don’t blame you a bit. Of course you have your ideas of life just as I have mine, and there’s no need for us to be rude to each other or quarrel about it. An ocean-trip will be just splendid for you. I’ll see to your things. I know pretty well what you will want in Africa. I fitted out a poor fellow only the other day, who was convicted of his first theft; the gentleman he robbed wouldn’t prosecute, because of the sad circumstances. It’s too long a story to tell now, but we got him a place out in Africa with a kind farmer, and I fitted him out. So I know just the kind of flannels and things required.”
“Exactly!” said “Dennison, quivering and snorting with repressed wrath and pain. “Fit me out like a convicted thief! Nothing could be better! Suit me down to the ground!”
His wife looked at him with that kind maternal air of hers and laughed. She had a very musical laugh.
“Oh, you dear old boy!” she said cheerfully. “You must always have your little joke, you know!”
And with that she moved in a queen-like way across the room and out of it.
Left alone, John sank into a chair and wiped his fevered brow.
“Was there ever such a woman!” he groaned within himself despairingly. “To think that she once loved me! and now — now she takes my going to a malarial climate as coolly as if it were a mere trip across Channel and back! What a heart of stone! These handsome women (she is a handsome woman) are as impervious to all sentiment as — as icebergs! And as for tact, she has none. Fancy bringing that convicted thief into the conversation. Almost as if she thought I resembled him. Oh, the sooner I’m out of England the better. I’ll lose myself in Africa, and she can get up an ‘Exploration Fund’ with a working committee, and pretend to try and find me. And then when she hasn’t found me, she can write a book of adventure (made up at home) entitled How! Found my Husband. That’s the way reputations are made nowadays, and by the Lord Harry, what devilish humbug it all is!”
Plunging his hands deep in his pockets he sat and stared at the pattern of the carpet in solitary reverie, angrily conscious, through all his musings, of having “felt small” in the presence of his wife, inasmuch as throughout their conversation she had maintained her wonted composure and grace, and he, though of the “superior” sex, had been unwise enough to lose his temper.
Two or three days later Mrs. Dennison, Mrs. Fairfax, and Mrs. Adair had what they called “a quiet tea.” They spent the whole afternoon together, shut up in Mrs. Adair’s elegant little boudoir, and spoke in low voices like conspirators. The only witness of their conference was Bibi, who took no interest whatever in their conversation, he being entirely absorbed in the contemplation of a tiger-skin rug which had a stuffed and very life-like head. Desiring, yet fearing, to spring at the open throat and glittering teeth of this dreadfully-alive looking beast, Bibi occupied his time in making short runs and doubtful barks at it, and quite ignored the occasional ripples of soft and smothered laughter that escaped from the three fair ones seated round the tea-table, because he thought, in his “prize-terrier” importance, that their amusement was merely derived from watching his cleverness. It never entered into his head that there could be any other subject in the world so entertaining and delightful as himself. So he continued his dead-tiger hunt, and the ladies continued their causerie, till the tiny Louis Seize clock on the mantelpiece tinkled a silvery warning that it was time to break up the mysterious debate.
“You’re quite agreed then?” said Mrs. Dennison, as she rose and drew her mantle round her in readiness to depart.
“Quite!” exclaimed Laura Adair, clasping her hands in ecstasy, “it will be glorious!”
“Simply magnificent!” echoed Belle Fairfax, with rapture sparkling in her blue eyes, then suddenly perceiving her Liliputian dog nigh upon actually getting bodily in to the elaborately-modelled throat of the tiger-head, she caught him up, murmuring, “Zoo naughty sing! zoo sail go too; rocky-pocky, uppy-downy, jiggamaree!”
“Good heavens, Belle,” cried Mrs. Dennison, putting up her hands to her ears in affected horror, “no wonder your husband complains if he hears you talk such rubbish to that little monster!”
“He isn’t a monster!” protested Belle indignantly. “You can’t say it; you daren’t! Just look at him!”
And she held Bibi up, sitting gravely on his haunches in one little palm of her hand. He looked so absurdly small and quaint, and withal had such a loving, clever, bright, wee face of his own, that Mrs. Dennison relented
.
“Positively he is a darling!” she said, “I’m bound to admit it. Landseer might have raved over him. No wonder your husband’s jealous of him!”
All three ladies laughed gaily, though Laura had something like tears in her beautiful eyes.
“I think,” she said softly, “that as far as I am concerned, Frank may have a little cause to feel himself neglected. You see when one goes very much into society as I do, one falls unconsciously into society’s ways, and one gets ashamed of showing too decided a liking for one’s own husband. It is a false shame, of course, but there it is. — And I am really so deeply in love with Frank, that when we were first married people remarked it, — and other women made fun of me, and then — then I joined the Pioneers out of a silly notion of self-defence. The Pioneers, you know, are all against husbands and the tyrannies of men generally — even the loving tyrannies; and I thought if I was a Pioneer nobody would tease me any more for being too fond of my own husband. It was very stupid of me, yet when I once got among them I felt so sorry for them all; they seemed to have such topsy-turvy notions of marriage and life generally that I set myself to try and cheer up some of the loneliest and most embittered of the members, and do you know I have succeeded in making a few of them happier, but Frank sees it in the wrong light—”
She stopped, and Belle Fairfax kissed her enthusiastically.
“You are a dear!” she declared. “The prettiest and sweetest woman alive! The upshot of it all is, that if we have made mistakes with the dear old boys, so have they made mistakes with us, and we’ve hit upon the best plan in the world for proving how wrong they are. All we’ve got to do now is to carry out our scheme thoroughly and secretly.”
“Leave that to me!” said Mrs. Dennison, smiling placidly, “only you two girls be ready — the rest is plain sailing.”
The following week Mr and Mrs. Dennison gave a little dinner-party. The company numbered six, and were the host and hostess, Mr and Mrs. Adair, and Mr and Mrs. Fairfax. It was a “farewell” feast; the ladies were in high spirits, the gentlemen spasmodically mirthful and anon depressed. Bright Mrs. Fairfax, at dessert, made a telling little speech, proposing the healths of “Our Three dear Husbands! A pleasant trip and a safe return to their loving wives!” Laura smiled sweetly, and looked volumes as she kissed her glass and waved it prettily to Adair. Mrs. Dennison nodded smiling from the head of the table to her husband sitting glumly at the foot thereof, and Mrs. Fairfax openly wafted a kiss to the silent George, whose face was uncommonly red, and who, moreover, had evidently lost his usual excellent appetite. As a matter of fact the Three Wise Men were very uncomfortable. Their wives had never seemed to them so perfectly fascinating, and they themselves had never felt so utterly “small” and embarrassed. However, they were all too obstinate to confess their sensations one to another; their resolve was made, and there was no going back upon it without, as they considered, a loss of dignity.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 897