But the struggle, though painful, was short-lived. After going to bed for five evenings in succession fearing that care would drive sleep from his pillow that night, and sleeping soundly from midnight till eight-thirty, the illuminating thought came to him that, owing to the truly Heaven-made laws of the country in which he then was, the conflict practically did not exist. In America people divorced; no foolish stigma was attached to the process, as at home; it was easy, it was respectable, it was done! He blessed his stars; what a marvelous stroke of luck that Beatrice had married an American and not an Englishman! He thought of the years of carking secrecy through which such things are dragged in England, and contrasted it with the neat despatch of the Yankee system. A few weeks of legal formalities, tiresome, of course, but trivial in view of the object, and then—a triumphant return to native shores, closing in a long vista of years with Beatrice at his side as Lady Clairloch and eventually as Lady Strathalmond! Sweet ultimate union of desire and decency! He gave thanks to Heaven in his fervent, simple-souled way.
Nothing remained save to persuade Beatrice to take the crucial step. Well, there would be little trouble about that, judging by the way things were going....
As for Beatrice, she was at first much too exhausted, both physically and mentally, to think much about Tommy one way or the other. That last month in New York had been a horribly enervating one, both meteorologically and domestically speaking. Scarcely had she been able to bring herself to face the impossibility of winning her husband's affection when the hot weather came on, the crushing heat of July, that burned every ounce of a desire to live out of one and made the whole world as great a desert as one's own home.... It was James who had suggested her going to Aunt Cecilia's—"because he didn't want me to die on his hands," Beatrice idly reflected, as she lay at last in a hammock on the broad verandah, luxuriating in the sea breeze that made a light wrap necessary.
Then Tommy came back to the Wimbournes' to stay, and a regular daily routine was begun. Beatrice remained in her room all the morning, while Tommy played golf. They met at lunch and strolled or drove or watched people play tennis together in the afternoon. After dinner Beatrice generally ensconced herself with rugs on the verandah while Tommy buzzed about fetching footstools or cushions or talked to her or simply sat by her side. After a while she found that Tommy was quite good company, if you didn't take him seriously. Tommy—she supposed this was the real foundation of her liking for him—was her countryman. He knew things, he understood things, he looked at things as she had been brought up to look at them. Tommy, to take a small instance, never stifled a smile when she used such words as caliber or schedule, pronouncing them in the English way—the proper way, when all was said and done, for was not England the home and source of the English language?
A few days later, as returning health quickened her perceptions, she realized that another thing that made Tommy agreeable was the fact that he strove honestly to please her. A pleasant change, at least!... She was well enough to be bitter again, it seemed. Not only was Tommy attentive in such matters as rugs and cushions, but he made definite efforts to fit his speech and his moods to her. He found that she liked to talk about England and he was at some pains to read up information about current events there, a thing he had not bothered much about since his departure from home. She had only to ask a leading question about a friend at home and he would gossip for a whole evening about their mutual acquaintance.
Presently she began to discover—or fancy she discovered—hitherto unsounded depths—or what were, comparatively speaking, depths—in Tommy's character.
"I say, how jolly the stars are to-night," he observed as he took his place by her one evening. "Never see the stars, somehow, but I think of tigers. Ever since I went to India. Went off on a tiger hunt, you know, out in the wilds somewhere, and we had to sleep out on a sort of grassy place with a fire in the middle of us, you know, to keep the beasties off. Well, I'd never seen a tiger, outside of the zoo, and I had 'em on the brain. I had a dream about meeting one, and it got so bad that I woke up at last with a shout, thinkin' a tiger was standin' just over me with his two dev'lish old eyes staring down into mine! Then I saw it was only two bright stars, rather close together. But I never can see stars now without thinkin' of tiger's eyes, though I met a tiger quite close on soon after that and his eyes weren't like that, at all....
"Rather sad, isn't it?" he added after a moment.
"Sad? Why?"
"Well, other people have something better than an old beast's blinkers to compare stars to. Women's eyes, you know, and all that."