“Isn’t it jolly, dear?” he said, laughing across the table; “this grouse is perfection.”
“Tell me,” she said, with that little wave of her wrist towards him that he knew so well—“tell me where the Gales are. I don’t suppose you know, though, but we might guess.”
“I do know,” he answered, laughing; “young Gale came and spoke to me just before I came up to dress. He seemed a nice young fellow. He came up and said something about the rooms—he had heard you speaking to Bannister. They came in just now; a fine-looking elderly man, a lady with beautiful white hair, a pretty girl in pink.”
“Oh! of course! I noticed them! Oh, yes! one could tell they were somebody.” She glanced round the room. “Yes, there they are, by the wall at the back; quite a lovely girl!” She looked at them curiously. “Oh, you spoke to young Gale, did you? He looks quite a nice boy. I hope they have liked the rooms, and, after all, ours aren’t bad, are they? Really, I’m not sure that in some ways——”
She rattled on, praising the grouse, the bread sauce, the vegetables. She speculated on people and made little jokes about them, and he threw the ball back again, gaily, merrily, light-heartedly.
“You know I don’t think Louie really cares about him. I often hoped for her sake, poor girl, that she did, because there’s no denying that she’s getting on; and it isn’t as if she’s got looks or money, and it’s a wonder that he’s stuck to her as he has. I’ve always said that Louie was a marrying woman and she’d make him a good wife, there’s no doubt of that.”
Her little eyes were glittering like diamonds and her cheeks were hot. People were arriving at the fruit stage, and conversation, which had murmured over the soup and hummed over the meat, seemed to Maradick to shriek over the grapes and pears. How absurd it all was, and what was the matter with him? His head was aching, and the silver and flowers danced before his eyes. The great lines of the silver birch were purple over the lawn and the full moon was level with the windows. It must have been the journey, and he had certainly worked very hard these last months in town; but he had never known his nerves like they were to-night, indeed he had often wondered whether he had any nerves at all. Now they were all on the jump; just as though, you know, you were on one of those roundabouts, the horses jumping up and down and round, and the lights and the other people jumping too. There was a ridiculous man at a table close to them with a bald head, and the electric light caught it and turned it into a fiery ball. Such a bald head! It shone like the sun, and he couldn’t take his eyes away from it: and still his wife went on talking, talking, talking—that same little laugh, that gesticulating with the fingers, that glance round to see whether people had noticed. In some of those first years he had tried to make her angry, had contradicted and laughed derisively, but it had had no effect. She simply hadn’t considered him. But she must consider him! It was absurd; they were husband and wife. He had said—what had he said that first day in church? He couldn’t remember, but he knew that she ought to consider him, that she oughtn’t to look past him like that just as though he wasn’t there. He pulled himself together with a great effort and finished the champagne in his glass: the waiter filled it again; then he leant back in his chair and began to peel an apple, but his fingers were trembling.
“That woman over there,” said Mrs. Maradick, addressing a table to her right and then glancing quickly to her left, “is awfully like Mrs. Newton Bassett—the same sort of hair, and she’s got the eyes. Captain Bassett’s coming home in the autumn, I believe, which will be rather a blow for Muriel Bassett if all they say is true. He’s been out in Central Africa or somewhere, hasn’t he? Years older than her, they say, and as ugly as—Oh, well! people do talk, but young Forrest has been in there an awful lot lately, and he’s as nice a young fellow as you’d want to meet.”
He couldn’t stand it much longer, so he put the apple down on his plate and finished the champagne.
“If I went out to Central Africa,” he said slowly, “I wonder whether——”