2
The Hallidays went abroad that August, or rather they went to Deauville, and Euphemia Halliday lent Magdalen her house near Sonning for that month. In the last few months Euphemia had discovered a surprising affection for Magdalen, to whom she had always referred to as “poor little Magdalen! she is so witty, you know!” Euphemia always referred to women poorer than herself as “poor little——,” and gave it to be understood that she liked to be kind to people. But she had never before been “kind” to or about Magdalen, and Magdalen was quite puzzled about it until she heard that Euphemia had quarrelled with Lois Lamprey, for Euphemia was full of caddish little enthusiasms about women, and as one collapsed she must quickly make another. However, Magdalen couldn’t help being charming to her, and Euphemia gushed over with the gift of her house near Sonning for August.
“A gift,” Magdalen pathetically told Ivor, “for which she will ask me twenty to thirty guineas a week when she comes back—and get it, what’s more! I’m the most easily cheated woman I know, Ivor.”
“That’s just your kind of vanity,” he pointed out. “You’re the vainest woman in the world, really—but it’s a private vanity, and doesn’t hurt any one but yourself, for it consists of letting horrible people impose on you while you just quietly despise them all to yourself.”
“This house we were speaking of,” said Magdalen severely, “is a charming house. What I mean is that it has every modern comfort and convenience, and duplicates of each. There is a bathroom to each bedroom and a divan in each sitting-room, telephones in every corner and servants round every corner. And it’s just far enough from the river to be out of the reach of passing footlight-favourites and energetic men wearing Leander ties. One will be very comfortable there, Ivor.”
“One would prefer a cottage, maybe,” she said thoughtfully. “My husband—with whose tastes you seem to agree so well, Ivor—has always told me that I could wear a cottage very becomingly.”
“Do you know,” Ivor broke in, “that that man seems to me the nicest man in the world, from what you always say of him.”
“But indeed he is,” she cried. “He’s a dear, my Tristram. I married him when I was eighteen, and I still say it, although I’ve been begging him to divorce me ever since. But he’s too wise to do that, and though he has offered to let me divorce him, I’m not quite cad enough to do that—not until he wants to marry some one else, anyway, which I’m afraid is improbable. And when he comes home he stays at the club and we dine together, and I have to confess that being married to him has prevented me from marrying some awful men in my time.... Oh, Ivor!” she suddenly clapped her hands with an idea, “let’s take a flight of fancy and imagine you going to see Tristram one day—he would like you, you’re his sort of man; and let’s suppose you told him what you’ve threatened to tell him as soon as you see him, that if he divorced me or let me divorce him you would marry me. Whereupon he would first of all ask you if you could keep me in the luxury to which I’ve been accustomed. On your saying rather sulkily that you could, he would further ask you what grounds you had for thinking you would make me happy. Then you’d look sulkier than ever, and mutter something about my loving you (which indeed I do). After a silence of a few seconds, spent by both of you in emptying the drinks which Tristram had ordered on hearing that a man had come to see him about his wife—after this short, impressive silence, he would say, quite gently, ‘But she loved me, too!’ Now he’s much older than you, Ivor, and your natural deference for age would be fighting a battle with your stern conviction that the two cases weren’t at all parallel—but before you could explain that he would add, ever so genially: ‘Suppose, Marlay, we talk of it in a year from to-day—how would that do?’ At that you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, especially if you were sitting in his club; and so you would spend the rest of the time in asking him about the extremely foreign countries he had visited, and then you’d both forget all about me and probably lunch together....”
“This house we were speaking of,” said Ivor, “seems to me a charming house....”