“I can’t say you’ve shown yourself over friendly. If you’ve had to meet Ocky, you’ve let all the world see you were irritated. If you’ve ever invited him to your house, you’ve taken very good care that no one important was present. One would judge that you thought he lowered you. I can’t see that you have the right to know anything.”
“That can only be because your husband hasn’t told you. To quote one instance, it was through my influence that he got this position that he’s now thrown over—Wagstaff is my lawyer.”
Jehane tossed her head. “You always want to make out that he owes you everything—— Well, what is it that I’m forced to tell you?”
Barrington kept silence while they walked down the path to where chairs were spread beneath the cedar. The children ran up boisterously to greet him; having kissed them, he told Grace to take them away and to keep them quiet. When he spoke, his tones were grave and measured: “It wasn’t fair of Ocky to send you to tell us; he ought to have come himself.”
“He didn’t send——”
Barrington held up his hand. “You can’t tell me anything on that score; from the first he’s shirked responsibility. He would never fight if he could get anyone else to fight for him. Many and many’s the time I’ve had to dohis dirty work. Now you’re doing it. This is unpleasant hearing, Jehane; but you know it’s true. I’d take a wager that you spent hours trying to screw up his courage to make him come himself.”
She lifted her head to deny it, but his quiet gray eyes met hers. Their sympathy and justice disturbed her. She refused to be pitied by this man——. A great fear rose in her throat. What if his opinion of her husband were correct? It was the opinion she herself had had for years and had tried to stifle. Time and again she had listened to his plausibility—his boastings that he was the brains of the office, that luck was against him and that one day he would show the world. She had used his arguments to defend him to her relations and friends. In public she had made a parade of being proud of him. In private she had tried to ridicule him out of his shame-faced manners. And now she was trying so hard to believe that he had found his opportunity.—It was cruel of Barrington, especially cruel when he knew quite well that it was him she had loved. She could not endure to sit still and hear him voice her own suspicious and calmly analyze the folly of her marriage.
“If you think that my husband was afraid to come and tell you, the only way to prove the contrary is to let him come himself to-morrow.”
“I shall be more than glad to see him.”
But Ocky did not come to-morrow, nor the next day. The day after that Barrington went to see his lawyer.