“It wouldn’t do,” he said, “because I should certainly send it. I will with pleasure if you like.”
Edith was silent a moment.
“But what are we to do?” she said. “You see you have said that you will do your utmost to make me leave the Literific, while I have sent a grovelling message by Mrs. Owen to say that I will read them a paper. The situation is impossible. As it stands, too, you are dead cuts with your brother-in-law. That’s impossible, too.”
Edith pulled Hugh’s hair gently.
“Hugh, I’m going to talk for quite a long time without stopping,” she said. “In fact, you mustn’t consider I have stopped till I tell you so. Now, first of all, I just love you for having said all those things to Canon Alington, because your first reason was that you were sticking up for me. Thank you most awfully, dear.
“But then, do you know, Hughie, another reason came in. You lost your temper because you thought he was insulting me, but you continued to let it be lost because he has, times without number, got on your nerves. Though you told him you laughed at what he said about ‘Tristan,’ you told him that in order to vex him, to hurt him.”
“This is what we used to call a pi jaw at school,” remarked Hugh.
“Yes, and you can call it one now, if you like. You were really irritated by his attitude about ‘Tristan’ and about ‘Gambits,’ and though perhaps you laughed at the time, this afternoon you were not laughing at it at all. You told him that Peggy would roar about it for the same reason, in order to vex him, and you sent that message by Mrs. Owen about the Nineteenth Century for the same reason. I didn’t ask you not to then, because it would have looked to her as if you and I were at discord. But I wish you hadn’t; she is quite—quite tactless enough to give it him.
“Now, my darling, you mustn’t do things to vex people. It isn’t you when you do that. It wasn’t you this afternoon; it was your anger on my account that left the door open, and the devil got in. It is so cheap, and easy, and vulgar to be angry, and to try to vex people. And, believe me, it never does any good at all. Anger is one of the two absolutely indefensible and useless emotions, and the other is fear. Oh, Hughie, what dreadful twins!”