THE GOOD COMRADE
Rawson-Clew was very busy that autumn, so busy that the events which had taken place in Holland were rather blotted out of his mind; he had not exactly forgotten them, only among the press of other things he did not often think about them and they soon came to take their proper unimportant place among his recollections. Julia he thought of occasionally, but less and less in connection with the foolish holiday, more in connection with some chance saying or doing. Things recalled her, a passage in a book, a sentiment she would have shared, an opinion she would have combated. Or perhaps it was that some one he met set him thinking of her shrewd swift judgments; some scene in which he played a part that made him imagine her an amused spectator of its unconscious absurdity. He had turned her thyme flowers out of his pocket; he had no sentiment about them or her, but he did not forget her; their acquaintance had, to a certain extent, been a thing of mind, and in mind it seemed he occasionally came in contact with her still. Also there is no doubt she must have been one of those virile people who take hold, for though one could sometimes overlook her presence, in absence one did not forget.
Of herself and her doings he never heard; at first he had half thought he might have some communication from Mr. Gillat, but as the autumn went on and he heard nothing, he came to the conclusion that she really must have arranged something satisfactorily and there was an end to the whole affair. He settled down to his own concerns and became very thoroughly absorbed in them, to the exclusion of nearly everything else. For women he never had much taste, and now, being busy and preoccupied, he got into the way of scanning them more critically than ever when he did happen to come across them. Not comparing them with any ideal standard, but just finding them uninteresting, whether they were the cultivated, well-bred girls of the country, or the smart young matrons and wide-awake maidens of the town.
That autumn the young Rawson-Clew, Captain Polkington's acquaintance, came into a fortune and took a wife. The latter was, perhaps, on the whole, a wise proceeding, for, though the wife in question would undoubtedly help him in the rapid and inevitable spending of the fortune, she was likely also to enable him to get more for his money than if he were spending alone. Rawson-Clew was not introduced to this lady till the winter, then, one evening, he met her at a friend's "at home."
She was very pretty, small and fair and plump, with childish blue eyes, and an anything but childish mind behind them. She had dainty little feet, as well shaped as any he had ever seen, and she was perfectly dressed, her gown a diaphanous creation of melting colours and floating softness, which suggested more than it revealed of her person, like a nymph's drapery. She was the centre of attraction and talked and laughed a great deal, the latter in little tinkles like a child of five, the former from the top of her throat with the faintest lisp and in the strange jargon that was the slang of the moment. She knew no more of Florentine art or Wagner or Egyptology than Julia did, and cared even less. She set out to be intelligently ignorant—to be anything else was called "middle-class" in her set—and she achieved her end, although she could do some things extremely well—play bridge, gamble in stocks and shares and anything else, and arrange lights and colours with the skill of an artist when a suitable setting for her pretty self was concerned. She had all the charms of womanly weakness without any old-fashioned and grandmotherly narrowness; she was quite free and emancipated in mind and manners, no man had to modify his language for her; she preferred a double meaning to a single one, and a risque story to a plain one. She had an excellent taste in dinners, a critical one in liqueurs, and a catholic one in men.
She was most gracious to Rawson-Clew when he was introduced, breaking up her court and dismissing her admirers solely to accommodate him. The instant she saw him, before she heard who he was, she picked him out as the game best worthy of her prowess, and she lost no time in addressing herself to the chase with the skill and determination of a Diana—though that perhaps is hardly a good comparison, enthusiasm for the chase being about the only quality she shared with the maiden huntress.
Rawson-Clew did not show signs of succumbing at once to her charms; she hardly expected that he would, for she gave him credit for knowing his own value and was not displeased thereby; where is the pleasure of sport if the quarry be captured at the outset? But if he did not succumb he did all that was otherwise expected of him, standing in attendance on her and sitting by her when he was invited to the settee she had chosen in a quiet corner. So well, indeed, did he comport himself that by the time they parted she felt fairly satisfied with her progress.
Perhaps she would have been less satisfied if she had heard something he said soon after. A man he knew left the house at the same time he did and persuaded him to come to the club. On the way the little lady came in for some discussion; the other man chiefly gave his opinion though he once asked Rawson-Clew what he thought of his young cousin's wife.
"As a wife?" he answered; "I should not think of her. If I wanted, as I certainly do not, the privilege of paying that kind of woman's bills, I should not bother to marry her."
The other man laughed, but if he quarrelled with anything in the answer, it appeared to be the taste rather than the judgment. He maintained that the lady was charming; Rawson-Clew merely said—