Part 13

When, that afternoon, he reached home earlier than usual, Alexa’s drawing-room was full of a gayety that overflowed to the stairs. Flamel, for a wonder, was not there; but Dresham and young Hartly, grouped about the tea-table, were receiving with resonant mirth a narrative delivered in the fluttered staccato that made Mrs. Armiger’s conversation like the ejaculations of a startled aviary.

She paused as Glennard entered, and he had time to notice that his wife, who was busied about the tea-tray, had not joined in the laughter of the men.

“Oh, go on, go on,” young Hartly rapturously groaned; and Mrs. Armiger met Glennard’s inquiry with the deprecating cry that really she didn’t see what there was to laugh at. “I’m sure I feel more like crying. I don’t know what I should have done if Alexa hadn’t been home to give me a cup of tea. My nerves are in shreds--yes, another, dear, please--” and as Glennard looked his perplexity, she went on, after pondering on the selection of a second lump of sugar, “Why, I’ve just come from the reading, you know--the reading at the Waldorf.”

“I haven’t been in town long enough to know anything,” said Glennard, taking the cup his wife handed him. “Who has been reading what?”

“That lovely girl from the South--Georgie--Georgie what’s her name--Mrs. Dresham’s protegee--unless she’s YOURS, Mr. Dresham! Why, the big ball-room was PACKED, and all the women were crying like idiots--it was the most harrowing thing I ever heard--”

“What DID you hear?” Glennard asked; and his wife interposed: “Won’t you have another bit of cake, Julia? Or, Stephen, ring for some hot toast, please.” Her tone betrayed a polite satiety of the topic under discussion. Glennard turned to the bell, but Mrs. Armiger pursued him with her lovely amazement.

“Why, the ‘Aubyn Letters’--didn’t you know about it? The girl read them so beautifully that it was quite horrible--I should have fainted if there’d been a man near enough to carry me out.”

Hartly’s glee redoubled, and Dresham said, jovially, “How like you women to raise a shriek over the book and then do all you can to encourage the blatant publicity of the readings!”

Mrs. Armiger met him more than half-way on a torrent of self-accusal. “It WAS horrid; it was disgraceful. I told your wife we ought all to be ashamed of ourselves for going, and I think Alexa was quite right to refuse to take any tickets--even if it was for a charity.”

“Oh,” her hostess murmured, indifferently, “with me charity begins at home. I can’t afford emotional luxuries.”

“A charity? A charity?” Hartly exulted. “I hadn’t seized the full beauty of it. Reading poor Margaret Aubyn’s love-letters at the Waldorf before five hundred people for a charity! WHAT charity, dear Mrs. Armiger?”

“Why, the Home for Friendless Women--”

“It was well chosen,” Dresham commented; and Hartly buried his mirth in the sofa-cushions.

When they were alone Glennard, still holding his untouched cup of tea, turned to his wife, who sat silently behind the kettle. “Who asked you to take a ticket for that reading?”

“I don’t know, really--Kate Dresham, I fancy. It was she who got it up.”

“It’s just the sort of damnable vulgarity she’s capable of! It’s loathsome--it’s monstrous--”

His wife, without looking up, answered gravely, “I thought so too. It was for that reason I didn’t go. But you must remember that very few people feel about Mrs. Aubyn as you do--”

Glennard managed to set down his cup with a steady hand, but the room swung round with him and he dropped into the nearest chair. “As I do?” he repeated.

“I mean that very few people knew her when she lived in New York. To most of the women who went to the reading she was a mere name, too remote to have any personality. With me, of course, it was different--”

Glennard gave her a startled look. “Different? Why different?”

“Since you were her friend--”

“Her friend!” He stood up impatiently. “You speak as if she had had only one--the most famous woman of her day!” He moved vaguely about the room, bending down to look at some books on the table. “I hope,” he added, “you didn’t give that as a reason, by the way?”

“A reason?”

“For not going. A woman who gives reasons for getting out of social obligations is sure to make herself unpopular or ridiculous.

The words were uncalculated; but in an instant he saw that they had strangely bridged the distance between his wife and himself. He felt her close on him, like a panting foe; and her answer was a flash that showed the hand on the trigger.

“I seem,” she said from the threshold, “to have done both in giving my reason to you.”

The fact that they were dining out that evening made it easy for him to avoid Alexa till she came downstairs in her opera-cloak. Mrs. Touchett, who was going to the same dinner, had offered to call for her, and Glennard, refusing a precarious seat between the ladies’ draperies, followed on foot. The evening was interminable. The reading at the Waldorf, at which all the women had been present, had revived the discussion of the “Aubyn Letters” and Glennard, hearing his wife questioned as to her absence, felt himself miserably wishing that she had gone, rather than that her staying away should have been remarked. He was rapidly losing all sense of proportion where the “Letters” were concerned. He could no longer hear them mentioned without suspecting a purpose in the allusion; he even yielded himself for a moment to the extravagance of imagining that Mrs. Dresham, whom he disliked, had organized the reading in the hope of making him betray himself--for he was already sure that Dresham had divined his share in the transaction.

The attempt to keep a smooth surface on this inner tumult was as endless and unavailing as efforts made in a nightmare. He lost all sense of what he was saying to his neighbors and once when he looked up his wife’s glance struck him cold.