“And now I’ve burned my mouth!” he said.
Mrs. Ames put down her napkin, left her seat, and came and stood by him.
“I am sorry you are so much vexed,” she said, “but I can’t and I won’t discuss anything with you if you talk like that. You are thinking about nothing but yourself, whether you are disgraced, and whether you have had a bad night.”
“Certainly you don’t seem to have thought about me,” he said.
“As a matter of fact I did,” she said. “I knew you would not like it, and I was sorry. But do you suppose I liked it? But I thought most about the reason for which I did it.”
“You did it for notoriety,” said Major Ames, with conviction. “You wanted to see your name in the papers, as having interrupted a Cabinet Minister’s speech. You won’t even have that satisfaction, I am glad to say. Your cousin James, who is a decent sort of fellow after all, spoke to the reporters last night and asked them to leave out all account of the disturbance. They consented; they are decent fellows too; they didn’t want to give publicity to your folly. They were sorry for you, Amy; and how do you like half-a-dozen reporters at a pound a week being sorry for you? Your cousin James was equally generous. He bore no malice to me, and shook hands with me, and said he saw you were unwell when he sat down to dinner. But when a man of the world, as your Cousin James is, says he thinks that a woman is unwell, I know what he means. He thought you were intoxicated. Drunk, in fact. That’s what he thought. He thought you were drunk. My wife drunk. And it was the kindest interpretation he could have put upon it. Mad or drunk. He chose drunk. And he hoped I should be able to come over some day next week and help him to thin out the pheasants. Very friendly, considering all that had happened.”
Mrs. Ames moved slightly away from him.
“Do you mean to go?” she asked.
“Of course I mean to go. He shows a very generous spirit, and I think I can account for the highest of his rocketters. He wants to smoothe things over and be generous, and all that—hold out the olive branch. He recognizes that I’ve got to live down your folly, and if it’s known that I’ve been shooting with him, it will help us. Forgive and forget, hey? I shall just go over there, en garçon, and will patch matters up. I dare say he’ll ask you over again some time. He doesn’t want to be hard on you. Nor do I, I am sure. But there are things no man can stand. A man’s got to put his foot down sometimes, even if he puts it down on his wife. And if I was a bit rough with you just now, you must realize, Amy, you must realize that I felt strongly, strongly and rightly. We’ve got to live down what you have done. Well, I’m by you. We’ll live it down together. I’ll make your peace with your cousin. You can trust me.”
These magnificent assurances failed to dazzle Mrs. Ames, and she made no acknowledgement of them. Instead, she went back rather abruptly and inconveniently to a previous topic.