The younger man seemed to consider before he spoke.
"It struck me that he was something else as well as drunk. He didn't carry himself like an ordinary drunken man. He seemed to be under the influence of some drug. She says that he's been ill; he looks it. I wonder if they've been drugging him to bring him up to concert pitch."
The elder man shook his head. He seemed to be weighing the other's words.
"It's a sad case, a very sad case, whichever way you look at it. Poor woman! She may have had her own motives when she promised to love, honour, and obey him, but it's a long row she has set herself to plough."
When the pair in question were back in the brougham, and the horse's head was turned the other way, they had not gone very far before a distinct change took place in the lady's manner. She was no longer solicitous; she no longer sat close to her companion's side; indeed, she seemed disposed to give him as wide a berth as possible, to ignore him as completely as the exigencies of the situation permitted, and she never spoke a word. She was, possibly, too engrossed with the singularity of her proceedings to pay any attention to him. On her lap was a pile of bank-notes which she was dividing into separate parcels; these parcels she was bestowing in distinctly surprising portions of her attire. She slipped one parcel in the top of one stocking, a second into the top of the other; she took off her shoes, and placed a wad of notes in each; she turned up the sleeves of her coat--into the lining about the wrists, in which an aperture seemed to have been purposely cut, she inserted quite a number. Loosening her bodice, she slipped several into the band at the top of her skirt. With the residue she performed quite a surprising feat of legerdemain. She produced a small bag which was made of what looked like oil-skin, into which she crammed the notes; raising it to the back of her neck, she gave her shoulders a sort of hunch, it slipped down the back of her dress; one could see from the movements she made that she was trying to get it to settle in its proper place. Then, for the first time, she turned towards Beaton.
Some of her performances had been hardly of the kind which the average woman would care to essay in front of an entire stranger. She had been as indifferent to her companion's presence as if he had been a mechanical figure; and, indeed, when she looked at him, one perceived that he might just as well have been. He seemed to be as devoid of intelligence, as incapable of taking active interest in what was going on about him; it was probable that he had been quite oblivious of what she had been doing. But this time the spectacle he presented, instead of amusing her, seemed to fill her with quite different feelings. She addressed him all at once as if he had been a dog, her voice hard, cold, strident, even a trifle vulgar:
"Hullo--over there!" He remained still, clearly not realising that he was being spoken to. She went on in the same tone: "Now then, wake up! Haven't you been ill quite long enough? Try another sort of game. Do you hear me speak to you?" Apparently he did not. "Don't you, or won't you? Are you drunk? Now then, this won't do. I'm very much obliged to you, but I've had quite enough of it."
Leaning towards him, taking him by the shoulder, she began to shake him with considerable vigour, considering he was a man, and a big one, and she was a woman. The effect was, in its way--a grim way, ludicrous. His hat first tilted forward over his nose, then dropped on to the floor; his head fell forward over his chest. It seemed as if, if she kept on shaking him, he would come to pieces. Perceiving this, she stopped, eyeing him more closely, but still with no show of amusement, rather with contempt and annoyance.
"What's the matter with you? Are you ill, or is it the liqueurs and--the other things? Anyhow, I've had enough of it; I'm not going to have you ill in here. The time has come when we must part. Do you hear? Wake up!"
He did seem to wake up, in a kind of a fashion. He raised his head with an effort, looking at her with lack-lustre eyes.