If the dinner, which was excellent as to food and wine, had been a frost before, it was, naturally, not a howling success after that. The only thing to do was to pretend that Antony had not spoken. It seemed too silly to say to the lovely Creole: “Oh, I’m so sorry!” Poor Diavalen! But I couldn’t pretend, I simply could not find anything to say which didn’t need an answer. Just try being suddenly planted with a dumb woman and see if conversation flows naturally from you.
Tarlyon and Antony talked about English heavyweight boxers. Antony was himself a super-heavyweight and seemed to have a poor opinion of English heavyweights. He wanted to know whether their weight was calculated by the noise they made on being smitten to the ground in the first round. He said that he was tired of opening a newspaper only to read of the domestic history of Famous British Boxers and of seeing photographs of the wives, mothers and children of Famous British Boxers. He said that the whole idea of the press was to impress on the public how gentle, amiable and loving Famous British Boxers were in the home. He pointed out that the whole trouble lay in the fact that Famous British Boxers were too damned gentle, amiable, and loving in the ring. In fact, Antony, having put the lid on his wife, had woken up.
Then, at last, Diavalen rose, and we rose. I rushed to the door and held it open. Her teeth flashed at Tarlyon, and he bowed like a courtier. As she passed Antony, he said, “Good night, Diavalen,” but he said it as though he didn’t care whether her night was good or bad. As she passed Antony she gave him a look out of her large, black eyes. I was glad I did not know what that look said, but I was sure that Antony deserved it. “Good-night, Lady Poole,” I said; teeth flashed at me, a touch of pleasant scent hovered faintly, and Diavalen was gone.
“Heavens, she’s lovely!” I whispered, as I joined them at the table.
Tarlyon’s fingers played with the stem of his port-glass.
“Would you mind explaining, Antony,” he asked dangerously, “why you chose that infamous way of telling us that your wife was—well, not quite like the rest of us?” There was, I agreed, something blasphemous about the ghastly word “dumb” in relation to that lovely creature.
Red Antony leant back in his chair and dug his hands deep in his pockets, so that his white shirt-front stuck out like the breast-plate of a warrior. He looked bored.
“Favourite trick of hers,” he explained morosely. “Always tries to act as though she wasn’t dumb. If you had to live with that silly pretence it would get on your nerves, I can tell you. She does it very well, I admit. Takes a pride in it—making a fool of other people, I call it. On board ship from New York she put it over quite a number of people for a day or two. Lord, it would have got on any one’s nerves, the way she grinned and grinned and showed her teeth! Why not be honest and say one’s dumb and be done with it? Or let me say it! There’s no crime in being dumb, especially with a beautiful face like that. But she won’t see it, she must smile and flash her teeth—she’s got a repertoire of grins that would astonish a movie star; and she’s so proud of them that even if she could speak she wouldn’t. And sometimes all that grinning and toothwork gets me so raw that I could put back my head and howl—and she knows it. Sorry I offended you, George. But I’m nervy these days. I’m raw—raw!” He shouted that last word at us with a thump on the table; and raw he looked, with the eyes blazing out of him, and his once huge, once red, once jolly face shrunk to a mockery of itself, with the skin drawn tight across his jaws and hollow in the cheeks.
Tarlyon picked up a liqueur-glass which the thump had upset. “Sorry about your unhappy marriage, Antony,” he said, “but, you know, it takes a Napoleon to marry a beautiful Creole. How did it happen?”
“How?” And Antony laughed; at least he made a noise which was perhaps intended to sound like laughter. “How? Because she made it happen—how else? D’you think because she’s dumb that she hasn’t got more fascination than a thousand women rolled together? Those eyes? Met eyes like that before, George? If hell has a face its eyes will be like that. I had to marry her.... In Mexico where I went after the Armistice. I suppose you fellows remember that I went to Mexico three years before the war. I was in love with the girl who became Roger’s wife—inevitable, wasn’t it, that the only woman I ever loved should fall to Roger? He didn’t do it on purpose, of course—it just happened. So I went to Mexico, to try to do something which Roger could not do before me. Last chance kind of thing, you know——” The rain of words faded out of him. He had moved considerably from the subject of Diavalen, but who could hold a haunted face like that to a subject? I wished I could, for I didn’t want him to run amok about Roger. There was something—well, indecent, in talking about a man dead nine years or more as though he were alive and still wanting to “put it across” Antony at every turn. I wished Tarlyon would say something, but he was silent, his fingers fiddling with the stem of his port-glass. Antony was drinking next to nothing; round about his coffee-cup were at least six quarter-smoked cigarettes, and now he began to maul a cigar. I never saw him smoke that cigar.