‘Even my own dear husband,’ continued Lady Adela, ‘the best and most devoted of men, had had his moments of madness—really, one can call it nothing else, can one, Min? You remember how good and orderly James always was? Nothing seemed able to excite him, and though I am sure he loved me most warmly, still—well, it wasn’t at all public, Minnie. And yet, you know, there was a Frenchwoman, or something dreadful like that, whom James quite lost his head over, so I am told, before he met me. Perfectly crazy, they say he was, and when she was drowned he wanted to commit suicide. Now, could anything sound more unbelievable, Min?’
‘I have heard about it,’ replied Mrs. Mimburn; ‘one of those ridiculous affairs I was talking of. Poor, sober, straightforward, stodgy, bourgeois James, and some terrible creature with padded hips and a French walk. That is just what happens. Your nonconformist, your decent provincial, always gets caught by the most brazen horizontale. James was absolutely idiotic about it, so people told me—met her—now, where did he meet her?—anyway, he suddenly made himself more absurd than a schoolboy—and I could tell you stories of them, La-la—fell in love with her at first sight, and talked the most amazing nonsense you can imagine. She was his affinity, if you please, the other half of his soul, the lost love of a century ago. And all this from sober old James. She must have been a shameless creature, too—but they always are, ces dames; for she seems to have met him—well, quite half-way, and encouraged his monstrous craze. And then she was most mercifully drowned, and after a week of sheer madness, James calmed down into his right mind again, and was only too glad to marry a nice quiet girl like you, La-la. Now, that just shows. If there ever was a person whom one would have thought perfectly safe from a passion like that, the person was our decent, beef-eating James. But no, one can never count on a man. Nine out of ten of the men we marry, however placid and devoted they may be, have had some dreadful insane romance in their lives, La-la. One knows what it is to be a man’s romance one’s self, and, dear me, it’s not by any means the same thing as being a man’s wife!’
‘Such a sad, dreadful story,’ commented Lady Adela comfortably, taking no notice of Mrs. Mimburn’s artful, question-courting sighs. ‘And to think of its happening to James, too. Do you know, Min, he always wore black for that woman on the twentieth of July. So stuffy of him, in the hot weather!’
‘Oh, my dear La-la, trust a man always to afficher himself in the most ridiculous way he can.’
‘Minna, do you think Kingston is at all like his father?’
‘My dear La-la, all men are alike. Let us trust that Kingston’s marriage will prevent him from playing the fool like that, though.’
‘Minnie, do you know Kingston sometimes seems to me so like his father that I am almost frightened. And yet he is quite different, which makes it all the odder. Somehow, his father seems to look over Kingston’s shoulder at me from time to time, and every now and then I hear poor James’s voice distinctly in something Kingston says. And yet they are two quite different people. Isn’t it uncanny? I take quinine for it, Minnie. And I know dear James is safe in heaven, of course, but yet I can never quite help feeling that the father and son are the same in some mysterious way. And that is so uncomfortable, Min. One does like to think that people are really dead when they have been buried. It seems so much more proper, somehow.’
Exhausted by her effort of subtlety, Lady Adela sighed and poured more water into the teapot. Meanwhile Mrs. Mimburn was growing impatient.
‘Well, dear La-la,’ she said, ‘Kingston is just a man. That’s all the likeness there is between him and his father. It is the male element you feel in both. No woman can help feeling it—voilà ce qui donne les frissons. And now, La-la, I seem to have been a perfect age, and, really, I ought to be going on. Do you think Kingston and Gundred are likely to be in soon? Because I did want to see her, and it is getting so late that I can hardly spare more than another minute or two.’
Lady Adela looked helplessly at the clock.