“I have enlisted, too—in the Aviation. They took me this afternoon. I’m on the ragged edge of being too old for it; but I’m as fit as a fiddle, and I passed all those whirligig things they put you through better than any of the youngsters.”
No one, of course, is any longer surprised by anything. I heard myself make the usual remarks, with a wave of my hand toward Lafayette and Rochambeau, standing on their pedestals among the Washington trees. Peter smiled a little.
“I don’t know very much about right and wrong, and our debt to France, and all the rest of it; but I’m not used to being a quiet family man, you know, and you feel like a fool rolling around here in a limousine while over there——”
He broke off abruptly, drawing me in the direction of our theatre. He might be fit as a fiddle, but it struck me as I glanced at him under an electric light that he looked worn—as if, perhaps, he had been required to produce itemised accounts, and had found it difficult. He had nothing of his own, not even the oil company now, and with the best possible intentions there seemed no likelihood of his obtaining anything commensurate with his position as the husband of Mrs. Maturin. Charming as his wife was, I should expect to find her a rather precise pay-master. That was an element of the situation which I had not taken in at first in considering what we had brought about, Providence and I. At any rate, Peter would never be able to slide the bill for an extremely large and perfectly cut emerald into his postage account—the less so as I don’t suppose he wrote three letters a year. But long before our winding path brought us back to the street I had absolved him. If he had sowed his wild oat or two, he had never been a cad. He could not have known, poor wretch, what he was letting himself in for. He had never been one to go smelling around antiquity shops. He had not known until he took the emerald to be mounted. And after the commission, the emerald must have become a thing too terrific to explain. Had the marriage been, perhaps, an attempt at reparation which might not succeed? At any rate, Peter had always needed air in moments of exaltation. Well, he would get it. He would no doubt get medals, too. They made me, as we sauntered toward our belated theatre-party, a sufficiently telling picture. I seemed to see, against a background of sanguine mist, with perhaps a white wooden cross visible in it, the image of a Mrs. Maturin no longer young, fingering an emerald now never to be cut, which was all that was left to her of the most romantic episode of her life. But what I saw most clearly was that life is an egregiously jumbled-up mess, and that many nameless things, not to be mentioned in official histories, must lie behind the momentous decisions of life. And then at last we reached the lighted doorway of the theatre. For some reason or other we both hesitated to go in and admire the well-arranged passions and admirable upholstery of Mr. Belasco.
“That was a rum affair you started us off on, wasn’t it?” Peter suddenly exclaimed. “But, after all, it was only fair that you should hear the rest of the story. Did my wife tell you the end?”
I hedged.
“She told me that she got the emerald.” But I found the courage to add: “She also told me that she was debating whether to have it cut.”
“Oh, did she?” uttered Peter, slowly. “Well, you know how women are. They hate to come to a decision. So I decided myself. I made up my mind this morning to end the thing and take it, after all, to the jeweller.”
“I hope,” ventured I, “that the jeweller was properly impressed with the emerald of Tamerlane. What did he say?”
Peter threw away his cigarette and started into the lobby.