“Make him a clubman,” suggested Farleigh with a slow illuminating smile.
“He is one. That’s what’s the matter with him. He belongs to the Men’s Literary and the Byron Brigade and the Reformed Republicans—downtown branch—and the Kindling Wood Karpet Knights (that’s in winter), and the Sons of Adam and—well, she’ll tell you. Anyway he’s a regular attendant and officer in all of ’em. Now—Mrs. Chalmers, how am I to unite this alienated couple? Don’t you see, as a philanthropist, I’ve got to unite them? Come, now, you said you liked complexity, unravel for me. How am I to make them see that each of them is part wrong?”
“Always the first step in reconciliation?” queried Farleigh, slipping deeper into her chair. “I should make her a suffragette and him an indigent tailor—they live at home, don’t they?”
“On the principle that a swapping of wrongs makes right? It would be good humor, but not good philanthropy. Because—you see, Mrs. Chalmers”—Pix dropped the monocle and looked quite steadily into Chalmers’ wife’s eyes—“underneath their—ah—differences, they care for each other.”
“How original!” Farleigh’s laugh was light like the little breeze. “But you said, didn’t you, they were in the middle class? Of course. But Mr. Pix—this is all tremendously interesting—but I wanted to ask you, I started to ask you before, you know” (her eyes under their blue black screen kept shifting toward the door); “there’s a post open in London now—first Secretary of the Embassy—and I understand Sir Maxon-Goring is being asked by the Administration to suggest some one. Some one from here, who has had training in Washington. Of course your being such an intimate of Sir Maxon-Goring’s—for I know you are, spite of your epigram—and such a friend of Kent’s as well—well, Mr. Pix, I know the man whose lot you want for your new Children’s Library. He’s told you he won’t sell, but——”
“Ah, so here you are, old man—at last!” Pix got up leisurely and held his host three fingers as Kent entered. “Three fingers is correct, not? for a philanthropist? Four for a hard drinker? Well, you have done yourself well!” He looked at his watch—not at Mrs. Chalmers. “Ten after eight—a primp worthy of a guardsman, what?”
Kent, standing by his wife’s chair, smiled. More absently than ever, “It was that miserable man who wanted to see me at such length”—the big clubman’s eyes wandered; from Pix to Farleigh, from Farleigh to Pix, and back again—“Shall we go out, Farleigh?” he asked, after a little pause.
“Yes, Binks announced some time ago.” In Farleigh’s voice was a hint of rumble; like the purr of a cat that has been disturbed. “You will lead me?” She laughed at Pix, slipping her hand through his arm.
“With pleasure,” he said gravely, “I will lead you both.” And slipping his other arm through Kent’s, he took them in to dinner.
“Mrs. Chalmers has promised to come down and help me with the tangle at the ah—gymnasium, Kentie,” Pix remarked with some satisfaction, as they sat in the library again later, over their coffee. “I say,” he leaned forward almost eagerly—for a philanthropist—“there’s going to be an exhibition—er—Field Day or something or other on Thursday, and Mrs. Budd is sure to come in—um-m, that’s their name, Budd,” he turned to Farleigh, “why not drop down for a moment, late, and you can see her and Budd too. There’s sure to be some row on—anyway you’d have a splendid chance to diagnose and suggest a medicine. You will?”