“Won’t you sit down?” I said.
“You are very kind,” he replied, taking a seat, while a spasm of pain crossed his heavy features. “The fact is—but that has nothing to do with it. What I want to do is to explain. This unhappy business of Ronnie has broken us up, but I want you to know—” He broke off and again a twinge took him.
“Would you mind if I were to light my pipe?” he asked.
I offered him cigars.
“You are too kind,” he said, taking one. “More than I deserve really. But—”—he lit it—“you, well, the best way I can put it is perhaps to say you are not a married man.”
I agreed.
“And not being married, you, well—in point of fact, you can’t know. A man, especially as he gets on in years, has to make concessions to his wife. All life is compromise, as you know, and married life in particular. A certain happiness, or, at any rate, peace, must be secured, and compromise is the highroad to it—in fact, the only road. But it is absurd for me to be saying all this, because of course you know Lady Fergusson.”
I knew her well, but I knew also that in that ménage the grey mare was not the better animal; it was Sir Edmund who ruled, and any compromise that was made came from his wife’s side.
He may suddenly have been aware that some such thoughts were passing in my mind, for he added, not without a slight flush, “Of course, you have not seen her lately”—as though during the few months of our estrangement both her character and his own had undergone one of those changes that happen only in tracts and fairy tales. He even had the hardihood to add, “You’ll notice a great difference when,” but stumbled over it and went on quickly—“that is, if you ever honour us by your company again, as I most cordially hope you will.
“For,” he continued more fluently, “it is about that that I have come; about that, and our letter to you, which I have been regretting ever since it was sent. What I want to make clear—without any disloyalty, mind, to Lady Fergusson—is that that letter was written when we were in a highly nervous state and was written almost wholly at her Ladyship’s wish. You recall what I said about compromise?