“It’s a one-sided loyalty, old boy. Joyce has betrayed you with Kenneth Murless. If she’s not his mistress, she’s a much slandered woman. Every one thinks so in Paris.”
Bertram went cold, and stared at Susan with a kind of horror in his eyes.
“Susan! In God’s name, what do you mean by that?”
She told him it was none of her business. But friends of hers in Paris who knew that Joyce was her sister-in-law, had taken it for granted that she had “run off” with Kenneth. They were always about together, in the Bois, at the opera, at Longchamps, in Henri’s restaurant night after night.
“What else can people think when a woman leaves her husband and comes to Paris with a man like Kenneth?”
“She came with Lady Ottery,” said Bertram, “and what your friends say is a damned lie. If they say so to me, I’ll beat them into pulp.”
Susan laughed again, in her mocking way. “That’s the primitive man. Not peace and love this time, when it touches you so closely! You’ll beat any man to pulp who slanders Joyce—or tells the truth, maybe. But you can’t forgive an Irishman who hates England, not for slandering his country, but for outraging her, trampling on her face, murdering her children! Nor a Frenchman who wants to beat Germany to pulp! Where’s your logic, Bertram?”
He sat silent, staring at a puddle of coffee on the marble-topped table. What Susan said was true enough. She had found the weak spot in his armour. His “dedication to peace” only held good as long as it was in the abstract, and impersonal. This accusation against Joyce, that word “mistress” coupled with Kenneth’s name, put the instinct of murder in his mind. If he believed the story he would go to Kenneth and shoot him like a dog. Fortunately it was absurd. He could afford to laugh at it. He laughed now, harshly.
“Extraordinary how some women, and most Irish, have the spirit of vendetta. Why do you hate Joyce so much that you want to kill her reputation?”
Susan rose, and left the café table.