Chapter 14
"Did you see our heroine on the lawn, with her cavaliers? Very amusing, isn't it? I don't suppose she has ever had so much attention in her life? They say that he married her straight from the schoolroom."
"Really! She looks only a child!" the other woman answered interestedly. "By the way, which is her husband? The big, ugly man, or the good-looking one?"
Mrs. Heriot laughed. "My dear! Do you mean to say you don't know!
Why, the good-looking one, of course!"
"Perhaps it was stupid of me, but I thought--I really quite thought that it was the other one. There is something in the way he looks at her... I can't explain! But if you hadn't told me, I should certainly have said that he was the one who was in love with her."
Feathers' big hands gripped the paper with sudden tension.
What cackling, sentimental fools women were! In love! He! Why, he had never looked at a woman in his life.
He flung the paper down, and, rising, stalked out of the lounge.
The two women looked after him in blank dismay.
"My dear, do you think he heard?" the younger one whispered.
Mrs. Heriot laughed spitefully.
"I hope he did! It will do him good! He's never even commonly civil to a woman." she said. "But it's really rather droll, you thinking he was the husband! How he will hate it!"
CHAPTER VI
"What shall I be at fifty.
Should nature keep me alive If I find the world so bitter When I am but twenty-five?"
AT THE end of the week Dr. Carey ceased his visits, "You won't need me any more," he a.s.sured Marie. "Take care of yourself, that is all, and no more bathing this season."
Marie s.h.i.+vered, "No, I promise that."
She was feeling quite herself again, though she got tired easily.
She had written to Aunt Madge, making light of her accident, and a.s.suring her that there was no need to worry.
"And I am ever so happy," she wrote, with desolation in her heart "And I like the hotel, and there are nice people here, and everyone is very kind to me. I will let you know when we are coming home."
Chris came and stood behind her as she was writing and caught sight of the first sentence.
"Is that true?" he asked. He pointed to the words: "I am ever so happy."
Marie laughed, but she was glad that he could not
"Of course, it's true," she said. "I have never had such a good time in my life."
A more observant man would have heard the flatness of her voice, but Chris only heard what he wanted to hear, and it gave him a sense of relief. If she was happy, that was all right. He thought things had arranged themselves admirably. Marriage was not going to be the tie he had dreaded, after all.
"Mrs. Heriot wants me to play a round of golf with her this afternoon." he said after a moment. "Do you mind?"
"Of course not. Please go. I shall be all right; I am going to take my book down on the sands."
"Very well--don't overtire yourself." He laid his hand on her shoulder for a moment and then walked away.
Marie sat staring at the finished letter before her. Would Aunt Madge be as blind as Chris, she wondered. She thrust it into an envelope and took it to the post.
The weather was still holding fine. The days were hot and sunny and the nights moonlit.
Last night at dinner she had asked Chris to take her for a walk. It was the first time she had asked anything of him since their marriage, but she had peeped at the moonlit sands and sea from her window as she was dressing for dinner and a sudden longing to walk through its silvery radiance with Chris had seized upon her.
"Come out with you? Why, of course!" Chris said in quick response.
"I promised to play Feathers a hundred up at half-past eight, but that won't take long, and we can go afterwards."
But it had taken over an hour, and afterwards another man who had watched the game had challenged Chris to another, and quite unintentionally Chris had forgotten all about his promise to Marie, and she had crept off to bed at ten o'clock without seeing him again.
"I shall get used to it, of course I shall," she told herself as she lay awake with the moonlight pouring through the open window.
"Other women with husbands like Chris get used to it, and so shall I."
She never shed tears about him; all her tears seemed to have been dried up. Her only longing was that he should be happy, and that she should never bore him or prove a tie to his freedom.
She loved him with complete unselfishness--with complete foolishness, too, perhaps an unkind critic might have said.
His was a nature so easily spoilt. If anybody offered him his own way he took it without demur. He liked things to go smoothly. If he was having a good time himself he took it for granted that everybody else was, too.
He went off to his golf quite happily. He told Mrs. Heriot that Marie had taken a book down to the sands.
"Alone?" Mrs. Heriot laughed. "How queer! Doesn't she find it dull?"
"She loves reading--she'll be quite happy."
And Chris really believed what he was saying.
He did not care a jot for Mrs. Heriot, but she played golf magnificently, and she was never tired. She could be out on the links all day and dance all night, and still look as fresh as paint--perhaps because she owed most of her freshness to paint and powder.
As she and Chris were leaving the hotel they encountered Feathers.
Feathers stopped dead in front of his friend, blocking the way.
"Where are you going?" he asked uncompromisingly.
"Where are we going?" Chris echoed with sarcasm. "Where do you think we are going? Hunting?"
Mrs. Heriot laughed immoderately. She did not like Feathers, and she knew that he did not like her or approve of her friends.h.i.+p with Chris, and it pleased her to read the annoyance in his ugly face.
"We're going golfing, Mr. Dakers," she said. "Don't you recognize the clubs? I thought you were a golfer."