“Why bother with women at all?” said I. “Aren’t they all colorless? What do they know about life? What experience have they had?”
“An intelligent woman’s mind is the complement of an intelligent man’s mind,” said he, as if this trite old fallacy were a brilliant discovery of his own making. “Women stimulate me, give me ideas.”
“Oh, I see,” said I practically. “Business. Yes, an architect does deal chiefly with the women.”
“I didn’t mean that,” said he, showing as much anger as he dared show the husband of the woman to whom he had attached himself.
“Where’s the harm in it?” said I encouragingly. “You’ve got to make a living—haven’t you? It’s good sense for a business man to cultivate his customers.”
He, the poseur and the small man, hated this plain truthful way of dealing with his profession. Like all chaps of that kidney he thought only of himself and of appearances, and sought to degrade a noble profession to the base uses of his vanity. In fact, he had begun with my wife because of the orders he hoped to get—for, he suspected that once she looked about her in the fashionable world from the new viewpoint of a fashionable person, she would want changes in her house to make it less vividly grand. He believed she would let Hilda Armitage educate her; and Hilda, unlike most of her friends, liked the quiet kinds of ostentation and costliness. And he guessed correctly. He was well paid for undertaking to replace me as escort—so far as I could be replaced without causing scandal—and, thank heaven, that was very far in the New York of busy and bored husbands, detesting the gaudy gaddings their wives loved.
Soon he was serving my wife for other reasons than pay. I saw something of him from time to time, and I presently began to note a change in his manner toward me—a formal politeness, an exaggeration of courtesy. I spoke to Armitage about it. Armitage and I had become the most intimate of friends—knocked about together in the evenings, were more closely associated than ever in business.
“Bob,” said I to Armitage, “what ails that ass, MacIlvane? He treats me as if he were in love with my wife.”
Armitage laughed. “That’s it,” said he. “My wife’s spaniel, Courtleigh, who writes poetry, treats me the same way. Get any anonymous letters yet?”
“Two,” said I.