X
TAKEN TO TASK
"I want to know what you mean," said Archie.
He stood up very straight, with the summer sunlight full in his face, and confronted Nina's husband without a hint of dismay in his bearing.
Wingarde looked at him with a very faint smile on his grim lips.
"You wish to take me to task?" he asked.
"I do," said Archie decidedly.
"For what in particular? The innocent deception practised upon an equally innocent public? Or for something more serious than that?"
There was an unmistakable ring of sternness behind Wingarde's deliberately scoffing tone.
Archie answered him instantly, with the quickness of a man who fights for his honour.
"For something more serious," he said. "It's nothing to me what fool trick you may choose to play for your own amusement. But I am not going to swallow an insult from you or any man. I want an explanation for that."
Wingarde stood with his back to the light and looked at him.
"In what way have I insulted you?" he said.
"You implied that I was not a suitable escort for your wife," Archie said, forcing himself to speak without vehemence.
Wingarde raised his eyebrows.
"I apologize if I was too emphatic," he said, after a moment. "But, considering the circumstances, I am forced to tell you that I do not consider you a suitable escort for my wife."
"What circumstances?" said Archie. He clenched his hands abruptly, and Wingarde saw it.
"Please understand," he said curtly, "that I will listen to you only so long as you keep your temper! I believe that you know what I mean—what circumstances I refer to. If you wish me to put them into plain language I will do so. But I don't think you will like it."
Archie pounced upon the words.
"You would probably put me to the trouble of calling you a liar if you did," he said, in a shaking voice. "I have no more intention than you have of mincing matters. As to listening to me, you shall do that in any case. I am going to tell you the truth, and I mean that you shall hear it."
He strode to the door as he spoke, and locked it, pocketing the key.
Wingarde did not stir to prevent him. He waited with a sneer on his lips while Archie returned and took up his stand facing him.
"You seem very sure of yourself," he said in a quiet tone.
"I am," Archie said doggedly. "Absolutely sure. You think I am in love with your wife, don't you?"
Wingarde frowned heavily.
"Are you going to throw dust in my eyes?" he asked contemptuously.
Archie locked his hands behind him.
"I am going to tell you the truth," he said again, and, though his voice still shook perceptibly there was dignity in his bearing. "Three years ago I was in love with her."
"Calf love?" suggested Wingarde carelessly.
"You may call it what you like," Archie rejoined. "That is to say, anything honourable. I was hard hit three years ago, and it lasted off and on till her marriage to you. But she never cared for me in the same way. That I know now. I proposed to her twice, and she refused me."
"You weren't made of money, you see," sneered Wingarde.
Archie's fingers gripped each other. He had never before longed so fiercely to hurl a blow in a man's face.
"If I had been," he said, "I am not sure that I should have made the running with you in the field. That brings me to what I have to say to you. I wondered for a long time how she brought herself to marry you. When you came back from your honeymoon I began to understand. She married you for your money; but if you had chosen, she would have married you for love."
He blurted out the words hastily, as though he could not trust himself to pause lest he should not say them.
Wingarde stood up suddenly to his full height. For once he was taken totally by surprise and showed it. He did not speak, however, and Archie blundered on:
"I am not your friend. I don't say this in any way for your sake. But—I am her's—- her friend, mind you. I don't say I haven't ever flirted with her. I have. But I have never said to her a single word that I should be ashamed to repeat to you—not one word. You've got to believe that whether you want to or not."
He paused momentarily. The frown had died away from Wingarde's face, but his eyes were stern. He waited silently for more. Archie proceeded with more steadiness, more self-assurance, less self-restraint.
"You've treated her abominably," he said, going straight to the point. "I don't care what you think of me for saying so. It's the truth. You've deceived her, neglected her, bullied her. Deny it if you can! Oh, no, this isn't what she has told me. It has been as plain as daylight. I couldn't have avoided knowing it. You made her your wife, Heaven knows why. You probably cared for her in your own brutal fashion. But you have never taken the trouble to make her care for you. You never go out with her. You never consider her in any way. You see her wretched, ill almost, under your eyes; and instead of putting it down to your own confounded churlishness, you turn round and insult me for behaving decently to her. There! I have done. You can kick me out of the house as soon as you like. But you won't find it so easy to forget what I've said. You know in your heart that it's the truth."
Archie ended his vigorous speech with the full expectation of being made to pay the penalty by means of a damaged skin.
Wingarde's face was uncompromising. It told nothing of his mood during the heavy silence that followed. It was, therefore, a considerable shock when he abruptly surrendered the citadel without striking a single blow.
"I am much obliged to you, Neville," he said very quietly. "And I beg to apologize for a most unworthy suspicion. Will you shake hands?"
Archie tumbled off his high horse with more speed than elegance. He thrust out his hand with an inarticulate murmur of assent. Perhaps after all the fellow had been no worse than an unmannerly bear. The next minute he was discussing politics with the monster he had dared to beard in his own den.
When Nina saw her husband again he treated her with a courtesy so scrupulous that she felt the miserable scourge of her uncertainty at work again. She would have given much to have possessed the key to his real feelings. With regard to his establishment of the Wade Home, he gave her the briefest explanation. He had been originally intended for a doctor, he said, had passed his medical examinations, and been qualified to practise. Then, at the last minute, a chance opening had presented itself, and he had gone into finance instead.
"After that," he somewhat sarcastically said, "I gave myself up to the all absorbing business of money-making. And doctoring became merely my fad, my amusement, my recreation—whatever you please to call it."
"I wish you had told me," Nina said, in a low voice.
At which remark he merely shrugged his shoulders, making no rejoinder.
She felt hurt by his manner and said no more. Only later there came to her the memory of the man she feared, standing in the doorway of the matron's room with a little child in his arms. Somehow that picture was very vividly impressed upon her mind.