He was accustomed to consider himself as a part of her property; for nearly ten years she had disposed of his time, his circumstance, and his resources; he had always been at her beck and call, and the nurseries had been his recompense; he was stunned to be flung off in this way like any stranger. She saw that he was angry, more angry than he knew. She guessed all the various feelings which were at work within him; they were clearer to her than to himself. She was fond of him; she did not wish to lose him entirely; there was nobody else she liked so much, nobody else so extremely good-looking. She administered an opiate after the severe wound she had given.
“You goose!” she said softly, whilst her blue eyes smiled caressingly upon him. “You are too terribly tragic to-day. Do look at things in their right form, dear; you must see that however much we might like it we can’t possibly afford to marry each other. We might as well want to drive a team of giraffes down Piccadilly. We have nothing to marry upon, and we are both of us people who require a good deal. Besides, society will expect us to marry, and for that reason alone I wouldn’t. It would be de me donner dans le tort. I shall marry somebody extremely rich. I don’t know who yet, but somebody, I promise you, who shall be nice to you, dear; just as nice as poor Cocky was, and somebody who won’t be always wanting five pounds as Cocky was, but, on the contrary, will be able to lend five hundred if you wish for it.”
The future she so delicately suggested seemed to her so seductive that she expected it to fully satisfy her companion. But he saw it in another and a less favorable aspect. His handsome face grew dark as a thunder-cloud and his teeth shut tightly together. He stood before her, staring down on her.
“The devil take you and all your soft speeches!” he said, through his clenched teeth. “You are an out and out bad woman. That’s what you are. If you weren’t their mother I would——.”
His voice choked in his throat. He turned quickly, took up his hat and cane from the chair he had left them on, and went out of the room without looking behind him. He closed the door roughly and ran down the staircase.
A youthful philosopher in powder and black shoulder-knots, who was on duty at the head of the stairs, looked after his retreating figure with placid derision. “She’s wanting him to be spliced to her and he won’t hear of it,” thought the youth; but even philosophers in powder, whose Portico is the vestibule of a fashionable London house, sometimes err in their conclusions.
Fury, as though it were the drug curare, held her motionless and speechless as she heard the door close behind her self-emancipated slave. The common coarse language of the streets used to her! She could not believe her ears. Her rage stifled her. She could scarcely breathe. The Blenheims were frightened at her expression and went under a sofa. She took the satin wheelbarrow—she did not know why, except that it was associated in her thoughts with him—and she broke it, and tore it, and flung its contents all over the room, and trampled on the gilded wheel and handles till they were mere glittering splinters and shivers. That exercise of violence did her good, the blood ceased to buzz in her ears, her nerves grew calmer; she would willingly have killed someone or something, but even this destruction of a toy did her good, it was better than nothing, it relaxed the tension of her nerves. It had allowed her a little of that violent physical action which is the instinct of even civilized human nature when it is offended or outraged.
When she was a little calmer and could reflect, she thought she would tell his commanding officer and demand his punishment; she thought she would tell the Prince of Wales and entreat his exclusion from Marlborough House and Sandringham; she thought she would tell the editor of Truth, and beg him to have a paragraph about it. Then, as she grew calmer still, she became aware that she could tell nobody at all anything whatever. If the world knew that Harry had used bad words to her, the world would immediately ask what tether had been given to Harry that he had ever so greatly dared.
“The coward, the coward!” she said, in her teeth. “He knows I can’t even have him thrashed by another man.”
His crime against her seemed to her monstrous. It was indeed of the kind which no woman forgives. It was the cruellest of all insults; one which was based upon fact. To her own idea she had very delicately and good-naturedly intimated to her friend that she would arrange her future so that their relation should be as undisturbed as in the past. If that did not merit a man’s gratitude, what did? Yet, instead of thanks, he had spoken to her as she had not supposed women were spoken to outside the Haymarket or the Rat Mort.