“No, he has not arrived yet, but he will be here soon. He wired that he is bringing Mr. Lawson Holmes back with him.” Her brow grew troubled. “I want to keep him away from Phyllis until after dinner, when I hope the doctor will have been. The children always come in to dessert, you know.”
The words had scarcely passed her lips when the scrunch of carriage wheels on the gravel approached them, and the hall door closed with a heavy sound. A moment later the men’s voices were heard on the stairs, as they parted to go to their respective rooms. The Countess, excusing herself to her guest, went dutifully to greet her husband; but she returned before Patricia had time to notice her absence, and together they descended to the rooms below.
“I think you will find a great change in Athelstan,” she said, as Patricia glanced at the large portrait of the Premier which adorned the wall. “He has aged terribly during the last three years, and suffers from periodical fits of depression which seem to take all the life out of him. The doctors cannot account for it, and put it down to overwork. But I believe I know what it is: there is something preying on his mind.”
“Yes?” Patricia looked up half wonderingly. “I suppose he is troubled about State affairs?”
The Countess waxed confidential.
“It’s the Jews,” she said impressively, forgetting, perhaps, the political position of her friend. “I believe they’ve affected his brain. He thinks about them all day, dreams about them at night, and talks about them in his sleep. It’s Jews, Jews, Jews—always Jews! The fact of the matter is, that in pushing the Expulsion Bill he made a tremendous mistake; and he knows it, and is suffering from remorse. But in spite of this he maintains his ground, and won’t budge an inch from his original standpoint. He is as hard and as obstinate as a piece of flint.”
Patricia turned over the leaves of a magazine with agitation. “Mamie, ought you to tell me this?” she asked, feeling that she had received a confidence which should have been withheld. “Do you think your husband would care for me to know that he is attacked by remorse? Remember, I am the wife of an exiled Jew.”
“I don’t care anyway,” the little woman returned recklessly. “If you can act on that knowledge, so much the better. Oh, Patricia! you do not know what I have suffered during the past two years. You do not know what it is to have a husband so morose that he will scarcely speak, except to say something unkind. For the first few months of our married life, Athelstan was as genial and happy as a boy; but now—now—his only smile is for Phyllis—never for me.”
She sank on to a chair, a look of wounded pride in her eyes. Patricia was genuinely sorry, but she scarcely knew what to say. She remembered the boasted power, the desire to rule which had animated the Countess at the time of Moore’s proposal. Where was that conquering influence of her feminine personality which was to have decided not only the affairs of her husband, but also of the State? Gone—all gone; nay, it had never been there. For Mamie’s will was far too frail to have ever run counter to that of the Premier; and now, after repeated storms, only a crushed and broken spirit remained.
The girl sympathised as best she could, and skilfully drew the conversation to matters of lighter trend. She did not want to hear such secrets, and shrank from prying into the private life of her husband’s enemy. But Mamie was naturally loquacious, and her thoughts expressed themselves in words almost as soon as they entered her mind. It was probably this very garrulity which had sent Moore back into his shell; for knowing that his wife could not be trusted with a secret, he naturally became more reserved.