“She drinks,” Daniel Povey continued. “And has done this last two year!”
“I’m very sorry to hear it,” said Samuel, tremendously shocked by this brutal rending of the cloak of decency.
Always, everybody had feigned to Daniel, and Daniel had feigned to everybody, that his wife was as other wives. And now the man himself had torn to pieces in a moment the veil of thirty years’ weaving.
“And if that was the worst!” Daniel murmured reflectively, loosening his grip.
Samuel was excessively disturbed. His cousin was hinting at matters which he himself, at any rate, had never hinted at even to Constance, so abhorrent were they; matters unutterable, which hung like clouds in the social atmosphere of the town, and of which at rare intervals one conveyed one’s cognizance, not by words, but by something scarce perceptible in a glance, an accent. Not often is a town such as Bursley starred with such a woman as Mrs. Daniel Povey.
“But what’s wrong?” Samuel asked, trying to be firm.
And, “What is wrong?” he asked himself. “What does all this mean, at after one o’clock in the morning?”
“Look here, Sam’l,” Daniel recommenced, seizing his shoulder again. “I went to Liverpool corn market to-day, and missed the last train, so I came by mail from Crewe. And what do I find? I find Dick sitting on the stairs in the dark pretty high naked.”
“Sitting on the stairs? Dick?”
“Ay! This is what I come home to!”