The right thing to do, according to all unwritten laws of the conduct of a gentleman, would be to destroy such communications and at once forget them. To show them to her, Percy felt, would be degrading to himself and to such a woman as his wife, whom he now realised he placed on a pedestal. The idea of seeing the pedestal rock seemed to take the earth from under his feet. But not only that, he now felt that, though he hadn’t known it, he loved her, not with a mild, half-patronising affection, but with the maddening jealousy of a lover in the most passionate stage of love. A man placed in his position nearly always thinks that it is the idea of being deceived that hurts the most. Particularly when the object of suspicion is his wife. Now he knew it was not that; he could forgive the deception; but he couldn’t bear to think that any other man could think of her from that point of view at all. And if he found that the mere facts stated in the three letters were true, even if the inferences suggested were utterly false, he had made up his mind what to do. He would go and see Nigel on the subject, forbid him the house, saying that too frequent visits had caused talk, and never mention the subject to Bertha. That was his present plan. Perhaps it would not be possible to carry it out, but that was his idea.
The fact that Bertha had been vague about her morning engagement—for it was really unlike her not to seem pleased at the idea of spending the whole day with him and the little brother—so agonised Percy that he pretended to have a headache and saw practically nothing of Bertha till the next day. He said then that he would go to chambers, meet Clifford at Prince’s and come home after lunch and take Bertha out somewhere. This was to leave her perfectly free, so that she need not alter any arrangements. He wished to see what she would do.
It was a glorious morning, and Percy felt rather mean and miserable and unlike the day as he left the house.
Bertha was already dressed, looking deliciously fresh and pink, and sparkling and fair as the sunshine. A second of acute physical jealousy made him remark rather bitterly before he left that her hat was a little bit striking, wasn’t it? Upon which she at once, in her good-tempered, amiable way (only too delighted that he should have noticed anything in her toilette even to object to it), plucked the white feather out of the black hat and put a little coat on over her dress, so as to look less noticeable.
At a quarter past eleven Percy paid his shilling at the gallery, walked in, looking slowly at the drawings on the walls in the narrow passage that led to the rooms.
The moment he reached the first door on the left-hand side, which was open, he saw through it, exactly opposite to him, seated on a sofa, Bertha, looking up and chattering to Nigel Hillier, who was looking down in a protecting manner, and listening with great interest to her conversation.
Neither of them saw him.
The pain of finding one part of the letter true was so startling and terrible that he dared not look another moment; a second more, and he might have made a scandal, perhaps for ever after to be regretted, and possibly entirely groundless.
He walked straight out of the gallery again, and drove to Sloane Street in a taxi. During the drive he felt extraordinary sensations. He remembered an occasion when he had been to a dentist as a little boy, and the strange new suffering it had caused him. Then he thought that when he got home, he would feel better. Instead of that the sight of the familiar house was unbearable agony; he could not endure to go into it; he drove back again to the club of which both he and Nigel were members, and where Nigel was generally to be found before lunch. There he tried to wait and master himself a little; it was peculiar torture to have left them there now. He felt he would like to go back to the gallery and at least spoil their morning. But that, his sound sense told him, would be a mistake. He would wait there till Nigel came in.