“I should think it was soon! Well, I guess she might have thought it out before she went so far. Too hard on a man to be treated like that. Kind of humiliates him before his friends, that a woman couldn’t put up with him one month—”
“I shouldn’t worry about his pride,” I said curtly. “What about hers? It would be worse than humiliating for a woman to be obliged to go! He must have been a poor thing!”
“Well, I don’t know. He was a real popular man. He may have been a bit careless and extravagant; quite a good many young men are that, but they settle down into staid, steady-going husbands if the right woman comes along to help. Doesn’t seem to me, Miss Wastneys, that it’s possible for any man to be so bad, that in three weeks the woman who had promised to stick to him till death should throw up the sponge!”
It did not seem so to me, either, so I made no comment. I should not have been human if I had not burned to ask questions, but I would not allow myself to do it. What Charmion wished me to hear, she would tell me herself. The time had come when she would tell me. I knew that. This chance encounter had decided the moment when her silence should be broken.
Mrs Elliott smothered a yawn, and straightened a diamond bracelet on her wrist. The diamonds were massed together so heavily that the weight dragged them to the inside of her arm, leaving only the plain gold band in sight, a hiding of treasures which did not please the owner.
“Well,” she said deliberately once more, “I guess it was a real cruel trick. Whatever he’d done, she put herself in the wrong that time. The poor fellow’s not done a mite of good ever since.”
I had to hold myself tight to prevent a start. Not done! She talked of the man in the present case, as though he were alive, as though—stupefying thought!—Charmion was not a widow after all! The thought was stupefying, but even as it passed through my brain, I realised that no word of her own had been responsible for my conviction that her husband was dead. It was rather because she never did mention him that Kathie and I had made so sure that he did not exist. My thoughts dived into the past, recalling faded impressions. I remembered how Kathie had said, “She must have loved him dreadfully not to be able to refer to him even now!” And how I had been silent, fighting the impression that it was the ghost of sorrow, rather than of joy, which sealed Charmion’s lips.
The door opened, and the men came into the room. The different groups broke up and drifted here and there; into the palm-house to look at the flowers, back into the drawing-room to talk, drink coffee, and glance surreptitiously at the clock. In this old-fashioned household, no one thought of providing any other amusement for a dinner party than the dinner itself. Having been well fed, the guests were expected to amuse themselves for the hour that
remained. In an ordinary way I could have taken my share in the amusing; I like talking, and am never troubled by not knowing what to say. Given people to listen, and look appreciative, I can monologue for an indefinite time. But—to-night!