At Twickenham

WHEN John Corbett married Minnie Wray, her sister Loetitia,
their parents being dead, came to live under his roof also,
which seemed to Corbett the most natural arrangement in the
world, for he was an Irishman, and the Irish never count the
cost of an extra mouth. “Where there’s enough for two, there’s
enough for three,” is a favourite saying of theirs, and even in the
most impecunious Irish household no one ever dreams of grudging
you your bite of bread or sup o’ th’ crathur.

But Corbett was not impecunious. On the contrary, he was
fairly well off, being partner in and traveller for an Irish whiskey
house, and earning thus between eight and nine hundred a year.
In the Income Tax returns he put the figure down as five hundred,
but in conversation he referred to it casually as over a thousand ;
for he had some of the vices of his nationality as well as most of
its virtues, and to impress Twickenham with a due sense of the
worth of John Corbett was perhaps his chief preoccupation out of
business hours.

He lived in an imitation high art villa on the road to Strawberry
Hill ; a villa that rejoiced in the name of “Braemar,” gilded in
gothic letters upon the wooden gate ; a villa that flared up into
pinnacles, blushed with red-brick, and mourned behind sad-tinted

                                                glass.

glass. The Elizabethan casements let in piercing draughts, the
Brummagen brass door-handles came off in the confiding hand
that sought to turn them, the tiled hearths successfully conducted
all the heat up the chimneys to disperse it generously over an
inclement sky. But Corbett found consolation in the knowledge
that the hall was paved with grey and white mosaic, that “Salve”
bristled at you from the door-mat, that the dining-room boasted
of a dado, and that the drawing-room rose to the dignity of a
frieze.

Minnie Corbett, whose full name was Margaret but who pre-
ferred to be called Rita, although she could not teach her family to
remember to call her so, and Loetitia, who had recently changed
the “Tish” of her childhood to the more poetical Letty, dressed
the windows of “Braemar,” with frilled Madras muslin, draped the
mantel-pieces with plush, hung the walls with coloured photographs,
Chinese crockery, and Japanese fans. They made expeditions
into town in search of pampas grass and bulrushes, with which in
summer-time they decorated the fireplace, and in winter the
painted drain-pipes which stood in the corners of the room.

Beyond which labours of love, and Minnie’s perfunctory ordering
of the dinner every morning, neither she not Loetitia found any-
thing to do, for Corbett kept a cook, a house-parlourmaid, and a
nurse to look after Minnie’s three children, in whom her interest
seemed to have ceased when she had bestowed on them the fine-
sounding names of Lancelot, Hugo, and Guinevere. Loetitia had
never pretended to feel any interest in the children at all.

The sisters suffered terribly from dulness, and one memorable
Sunday evening, Corbett being away travelling, they took first-
class tickets to Waterloo, returning by the next train, merely to
pass the time.

When Corbett was not travelling, his going to and fro between

                                                Twickenham

Twickenham and the city lent a spice of variety to the day. He
left every morning by the 9.15 train, coming home in the evening
in time for a seven o’clock dinner. On Saturdays he got back by
two, when he either mowed the lawn, in his shirt-sleeves, or played
a set of tennis with Loetitia, or went with the girls for a row on the
river. Or, if Minnie made a special point of it, he escorted them
into town again, where he treated them to a restaurant table d’hôte
and a theatre afterwards. On Sundays he rose late, renewed his
weekly acquaintance with the baby, read through the Referee from
first line to last, and accompanied by his two little boys, dressed in
correct Jack Tar costume, went for a walk along the towing-path,
whence they could watch the boating.

Humanly speaking, he would have like to have followed the
example of those flannel-shirted publicans and sinners who pushed
off every moment in gay twos and threes from Shore’s landing-
stage, but consideration for the susceptibilities of Providence and
of Twickenham held him in check.

It is true he did not go to church, although often disquieted by
the thought of the bad effect this omission must produce on the
mind of his next-door neighbour ; but he salved his conscience with
the plea that he was a busy man, and that Sunday was his only
day of home life. Besides, the family was well represented by
Minnie and Loetitia, who when the weather was fine, never
missed morning service. When it was wet they stayed away on
account of their frocks.

Sunday afternoons were spent by them sitting in the drawing-room
awaiting the visitors who did not come. The number of persons in
Twickenham with whom they were on calling terms was limited,
nor can it be maintained that “Braemar” was an amusing house
at which to call. For though Corbett was one of the most
cordial, one of the most hospitable of young men, his women-

                                                folk

At Twickenham

folk shone rather by their silences than by their conversational
gifts.

Minnie Corbett was particularly silent. She had won her
husband by lifting to his a pair of blankly beautiful eyes, and it
did not seem to her requisite to give greater exertion to the
winning of minor successes.

Loetitia could talk to men, provided they were unrelated to her,
but she found nothing to say to members of her own sex. Even
with her sister she was mostly silent, unless there was a new
fashion in hats, the cut of a sleeve, or the set of a skirt to discuss.
There was, however, one other topic which invariably aroused her
to a transitory animation. This was the passing by the windows
in his well-appointed dog-cart, of a man who, because of his
upright bearing, moustache, and close-cut hair, she and Minnie
had agreed to call “the Captain.”

He was tall, evidently, and had a straight nose. Loetitia also
was straight-nosed and tall. She saw in this physical resemblance
a reason for fostering a sentimental interest in him.

“Quick, Minnie, here’s the Captain !” she would cry, and
Minnie would awake from the somnolency of Sunday with a start,
and skip over to the window to watch a flying vision of a brown
horse, a black and red painted cart, and a drab-coated figure hold-
ing the reins, while a very small groom in white cords and top-
boots maintained his seat behind by means of tightly folded arms
and a portentous frown.

“He’s got such a pretty horse,” observed Minnie on one
occasion, before relapsing back into silence, the folding of hands,
and a rocking-chair.

“Yes,” Loetitia agreed pensively, “it has such a nice tail.”

Although she knew nothing concerning the Captain, although
it did not seem probable that she ever would know anything,

                                                although

although it was at least a tenable supposition that he was married
already and the father of a family, she saw herself, in fancy, the
wife of the wearer of the drab coat, driving by his side along the
roads of Twickenham, up the High Street of Richmond. She
wore, in fancy, a sealskin as handsome as Minnie’s and six inches
longer, and she ordered lavishly from Gosling and the other
tradesmen, giving the address of Captain Devereux of Deepdene,
or Captain Mortimer of the Shrubberies. The names were either
purely imaginary, or reminiscent of the novels she constantly
carried about with her and fitfully read.

She sat nearly always with an open book upon her knee, but
neither Hall Caine nor Miss Marie Corelli even in their most
inspired moments could woo her to complete self-forgetfulness. She
did not wish to forget herself in a novel. She wished to find
in it straw for her own brick-making, bricks for her own castle-
building. And if a shadow fell across the window, if a step was
heard along the hall, she could break off in the most poignant
passage to lift a slim hand to the better arrangement of her curls,
to thrust a slim foot in lace stocking and pointed shoe to a position
of greater conspicuousness.

On Sunday evenings at “Braemar” there was cold supper
at eight, consisting of the early dinner joint, eaten with a
salad scientifically mixed by Corbett, the remains of the apple
or gooseberry pie, cheese, and an excellent Burgundy obtained
by him at trade price. When the cloth was removed he did
not return to the drawing-room. He never felt at ease in
that over-furnished, over-ornate room, so darkened by shaded
lamps and pink petticoated candles that it was impossible to
read. The white, untempered flames of three gas-burners in
the dining-room suited him better, and here he would sit on one
side of the hearth in an arm-chair grown comfortable from continual

The Yellow Book—Vol. XII. T

                                                use.

use, and read over again the already well-read paper, while Minnie,
on the other side of the hearth, stared silently before her, and
Loetitia fingered her book at the table.

Sometimes Corbett, untaught by past experience, would make
a hopeful appeal to one or the other, for an expression of opinion
concerning some topic of the day : some new play, some new
book. But Minnie seldom took the trouble to hear him at all,
and Loetitia would answer with such superficial politeness, with
so wide an irrelevance to the subject, that discouraged, he would
draw back again into his shell. At the end of every Sunday
evening he was glad to remember that the next day was Monday
when he could return to his occupations and his acquaintances in
the City. In the City men were ready to talk to him, to listen
to what he said, and even to affect some show of interest in his
views and pursuits.

The chief breaks in his home life, its principal excitements,
were the various ailments the children developed, the multifarious
and unexpected means they found of putting their lives in
jeopardy and adding items to Dr. Payne’s half-yearly accounts.
Corbett would come home in the happiest mood, to have
his serenity roughly shattered by the news that Lancelot had
forced a boot-button down his ear, and was rolling on the floor in
agony ; that Hugo had bolted seventeen cherry-stones in succes-
sion and obstinately refused an emetic ; that the baby had been
seized with convulsions, that the whole family were in for
chicken-pox, whooping-cough, or mumps.

On such occasions Minnie, recovering something of her ante-
nuptial vivacity, seemed to take a positive pleasure in unfolding
the harrowing details, in dwelling on the still more harrowing
consequences which would probably ensue.

When, on turning into Wetherly Gardens on his way from

                                                the

the station, Corbett perceived his wife’s blonde head above
the garden gate, he knew at once that it betokened some
domestic catastrophe. It had only been in the very early days of
their married life that Minnie had hurried to greet his return for
the mere pleasure it gave her.

The past winter had brought rather more than the usual crop
of casualties among the children, so that it had seemed to Corbett
that the parental cup of bitterness was already filled to over-
flowing, that Fate might well grant him a respite, when, returning
from town one warm May Saturday, his thoughts veering river-
wards, and his intention being to invite the girls to scull up and
have tea at Tagg’s, his ears were martyrised by the vociferous
howls of Hugo, who had just managed to pull down over himself
the kettle of water boiling on the nursery fire.

While the women of the household disputed among themselves
as to the remedial values of oil, treacle, or magnesia, Corbett
rushed round to Payne’s to find him away, and to be referred to
Dr. Matheson of Holly Cottage, who was taking Payne’s cases.
At the moment he never noticed what Matheson was like, he
received no conscious impression of the other’s personality.
But when that evening, comparative peace having again fallen
upon the Villa, Loetitia remarked for the twentieth time, “How
funny that Dr. Matheson should be the Captain, isn’t it ?” he
found in his memory the picture of a tall fair man, with regular
features and a quiet manner, he caught the echoes of a pleasantly
modulated voice.

The young women did not go to service next morning, but
Loetitia put on her best gown nevertheless. She displayed also a
good deal of unexpected solicitude for her little nephew, and when
Matheson looked in, at about 10 A.M., she saw fit to accompany
him and Corbett upstairs to the night-nursery, where Minnie, in

                                                a white

a white wrapper trimmed with ribbons as blue as her eyes
and as meaningless, sat gazing into futurity by her son’s bed-
side.

Hugo had given up the attempt to obtain illuminating answers
to the intricate social and ethical problems with which he wiled away
the pain-filled time. For when by repeated interrogatives of
“Mother ?” “Eh, mother ?” “Well, mother ?” he had induced
Minnie at least to listen to him, all he extracted from her was
some unsatisfying vagueness, which added its quota to the waters
of contempt already welling up in his young soul for the intelli-
gence of women.

He rejoiced at the appearance of his father and the doctor,
despite some natural heart-sinkings as to what the latter, might
not purpose doing to him. He knew doctors to be perfectly
irresponsible autocrats, who walked into your bedroom, felt your
pulse, turned you over and over just as though you were a puppy
or a kitten, and then with an impassive countenance ordered you
a poultice or a powder, and walked off. He knew that if they
condemned you to lose an arm or a leg they would be just as
despotic and impassible, and you would have to submit just as
quietly. None of the grown-ups about you would ever dream of
interfering in your behalf.

So he fixed Matheson with an alert, an inquiring, a profoundly
distrustful eye, and with a hand in his father’s awaited develop-
ments. Loetitia he ignored altogether. He supposed that the
existence of aunts was necessary to the general scheme of things,
but personally he hadn t any use for them. His predominate
impression of Auntie Tish was that she spent her day heating curl-
ing-irons over the gas-bracket in her bedroom, and curling her
hair, and although he saw great possibilities in curling-irons heated
red-hot and applied to reasonable uses, he was convinced that no

                                                one

one besides herself ever knew whether her hair was curled or
straight. But women were such ninnies.

The examination over, the scalds re-dressed and covered up
again, Matheson on his way downstairs stopped at the staircase
window to admire the green and charming piece of garden, which
ending in an inconspicuous wooden paling, enjoyed an illusory
proprietorship in the belt of fine old elm trees belonging to the
demesne beyond.

Corbett invited him to come and take a turn round it, and the
two young men stepped out upon the lawn.

It was a delicious blue and white morning, with that Sunday
feeling in the uir which is produced by the cessation of all
workaday noises, and heightened just now by the last melodious
bell-cadences floating out from the church on the distant green.
The garden was full of flowers and bees, scent and sunshine.
Roses, clematis, and canariensis tapestried the brick unsightly-
nesses of the back of the house. Serried ranks of blue-green
lavender, wild companies of undisciplined sweet pea, sturdy clumps
of red-hot poker shooting up in fiery contrast to the wide-spread-
ing luxuriance of the cool white daisy bushes, justled side by side
in the border territories which were separated from the lawn by
narrow gravel paths.

While Corbett and his guest walked up and down the centre of
the grass, Minnie and Loetitia watched them from behind the
curtains of the night nursery window.

“He’s got such nice hands,” said Loetitia, “so white and well
kept. Did you notice, Minnie ?” Loetitia always noticed hands,
because she gave a great deal of attention to her own.

But Minnie, whose hands were not her strong point, was more
impressed by Matheson’s boots. “I wish Jack would get brown
boots, they look so much smarter with light clothes,” she

                                                remarked,

remarked, but without any intensity of desire. Before the short
phrase was finished, her voice had dropped into apathy, her gaze
had wandered away from Matheson’s boots, from the garden,
from the hour. She seemed not to hear her sister’s dubious “Yes,
but I wonder he wears a tweed suit on Sundays !”

Loetitia heard herself calling him Algernon or Edgar, and re-
monstrating with him on the subject. Then she went into her
bedroom, recurled a peccant lock on her temple, and joined the
men just as the dinner gong sounded.

Matheson was pressed to stay and share the early dinner.
“Unless,” said Corbett, seeing that he hesitated, “Mrs. Matheson
. . . perhaps . . . is waiting for you ?”

“There is no Mrs. Matheson, as yet,” he answered smiling,
“although Payne is always telling me it s my professional duty to
get married as soon as possible.”

Loetitia coloured and smiled.

* * * * *

From that day Matheson was often at “Braemar.” At first he
came ostensibly to attend to Hugo, but before that small pickle
was on his feet again and in fresh mischief, he was sufficiently
friendly with the family to drop in without any excuse at all.

He would come of an evening and ask for Corbett, and the maid
would show him into the little study behind the dining-room,
where Corbett enjoyed his after-dinner smoke. He enjoyed it
doubly in Matheson s society, and discovered he had been
thirsting for some such companionship for years. The girls were
awfully nice, of course, but …. and then, the fellows in the
City … he compared them with Matheson, much to their
disadvantage. For Matheson struck him as being amazingly
clever—a pillar of originality—and his fine indifference to the
most cherished opinions of Twickenham made Corbett catch his

                                                breath,

breath. But the time spent with his friend was only too short.
Minnie and Loetitia always found some pretext to join them, and
they would reproach Matheson in so cordial a manner for never
coming into the drawing-room, that presently, somewhat to
Corbett’s chagrin, he began to pay his visits to them instead.

Then as the summer advanced, the fine weather suggested river
picnics, and the young women arranged one every week. They
even ventured under Matheson’s influence to go out on a Sunday,
starting in the forenoon, getting up as far as Chertsey, and not
returning till late at night. Corbett, half delighted with the
abandoned devilry of the proceeding, half terrified lest Wetherly
Gardens should come to hear of it, Providence deal swift
retribution, was always wholly surprised and relieved when they
found themselves again ashore, as safe and comfortable as though
the day had been a mere Monday or Wednesday. And if this
immunity from consequences slightly shook Corbett s respect for
Providence, it sensibly increased his respect for his friend.

Corbett would have enjoyed this summer extremely, but for the
curious jealousy Minnie began to exhibit of his affection for
Matheson. It seemed to him it could only be jealousy which
made her intrude so needlessly on their tête-à-têtes, interrupt their
conversation so pointedly, and so frequently reproach Corbett, in
the privacy of the nuptial chamber, for monopolising all the
attention of their guest.

“You’re always so selfish,” Minnie would complain.

Yet, reviewing the incidents of the evening—Matheson had
been dining perhaps at ” Braemar”—it seemed to Corbett that he
had hardly had a chance to exchange a word with him at all. It
seemed to Corbett that Loetitia had done all the talking ; and her
light volubility with Matheson, so different to the tongue-tiedness
of her ordinary hours, her incessant and slightly meaningless

                                                laugh,

laugh, echoed in his ears at the back of Minnie’s scoldings, until
both were lost in sleep.

But when the problem of Minnie’s vexation recurred to him
next morning, he decided that the key to it could only be
jealousy, and he was annoyed with himself that he could find no
excuses for a failing at once so ridiculous and so petty. The
true nature of the case never once crossed his mind, until Minnie
unfolded it for him one day, abruptly and triumphantly.

“Well, it’s all right. He’s proposed at last.”

“What do you mean ? Who ?” asked Corbett bewildered.

“Why, Jim Matheson, of course ! Who else do you suppose ?
He proposed to Tish last night in the garden. You remember
how long they were out there, after we came in ? That was
why.”

Corbett was immensely surprised, even incredulous, although
when he saw that his incredulity made his wife angry, he stifled
it in his bosom.

After all, as she said with some asperity, why shouldn’t
Matheson be in love with Loetitia ? Loetitia was a pretty girl
… a good girl . . . yet somehow Corbett felt disappointed
and depressed.

“You’re such a selfish pig,” Minnie told him ; “you never
think of anybody but yourself. You want to keep Tish here
always.”

Corbett feared he must be selfish, though scarcely in respect to
Loetitia. In his heart he would have been very glad to see her
married. But he didn t want Matheson to marry her.

“Jim’s awfully in love,” said Minnie, and it sounded odd to
Corbett to hear his wife call Matheson “Jim.” “He fell in love
with her the very first moment he saw her. That’s why he’s been
here so often. You thought he came to see you, I suppose !”

                                                Her

Her husband’s blank expression made her laugh.

“You are a pig !” she repeated. “You never do think of any
one but yourself. Now hurry up and get dressed, and we’ll go
into town and dine at the Exhibition, and after dinner we’ll go
up in the Big Wheel.”

“Is Letty coming too ?” Corbett asked

“Don’t be so silly ! Of course not. She’s expecting Jim.
That’s why I m taking you out. You don’t imagine they want
your society, do you ? Or mine ?” she added as an afterthought,
and with an unusual concession to civility.

Henceforward Corbett saw even less of Matheson than before.
He was as fond of him as ever, but the friendship fell into
abeyance.

It seemed too that Matheson tried to avoid him, and when he
offered his congratulations on the engagement, the lover showed
himself singularly reticent and cold. Corbett concluded he was
nervous. He remembered being horribly nervous himself in the
early days of his betrothal to Minnie Wray, when her mother had
persisted in introducing him to a large circle at Highbury as
“My daughter Margaret’s engagé.”

On the other hand, Corbett could not enough rejoice at the
genial warmth which the event shed over the atmosphere of
“Braemar.” Both young women brightened up surprisingly,
nor was there any lack of conversation between them now.
Corbett thankfully gathered up such crumbs of talk as fell to his
share, and first learned that the wedding was to take place in
October when Minnie informed him she must have a new frock.
She rewarded him for his immediate consent by treating him to a
different description of how she would have it made, three nights
in the week.

Loetitia thought of nothing but new frocks, and set about

                                                making

making some. A headless and armless idol, covered in scarlet
linen, was produced from a cupboard, and reverentially enshrined
in the dining-room. Both sisters were generally found on
their knees before it, while a constant chattering went on in its
praise. Innumerable yards of silk and velvet were snipped up in
sacrifice, and the sofas and chairs were sown with needles and
pins, perhaps to extract involuntary homage from those who
would not otherwise bow the head. The tables were littered
with books of ritual having woodcuts in the text and illuminated
pictures slipped between the leaves.

There were constant visits to Richmond and Regent Street,
much correspondence with milliners and dressmakers, a long
succession of drapers’ carts standing in the road, of porters laden
with brown paper parcels passing up and down the path.
Loetitia talked of Brighton for her wedding tour, and of having
a conservatory added to the drawing-room of Holly Cottage.
Friends and acquaintances called to felicitate her, and left to ask
themselves what in the world Dr. Matheson could have seen in
Letty Wray. Presents began to arrive, and a transitory gloom
fell upon “Braemar” when Loetitia received two butter dishes
of identical pattern from two different quarters, neither of
which, on examination by the local clockmaker, proved to be
silver.

In this endless discussion of details, it did occasionally cross
Corbett’s mind that that which might perhaps be considered an
essential point, namely, Matheson’s comfort and happiness, was
somewhat lost sight of. But as he made no complaint, and
maintained an equable demeanour, Corbett supposed it was all
right. Every woman considered the acquisition of fallals an
indispensable preliminary to marriage, and it was extravagant to
look for an exception in Loetitia.

                                                Matters

Matters stood thus, when turning into Wetherly Gardens one
evening at the end of August, Corbett perceived, with a sudden
heart-sinking, Minnie awaiting him at the gate. He recited the
litany of all probable calamities, prayed for patience, and
prepared his soul to endure the worst.

“What do you think, Jack,” Minnie began, with immense blue
eyes, and a voice that thrilled with intensity. “The most
dreadful thing has happened—”

“Well, let me get in and sit down at least,” said Corbett,
dispiritedly. He was tired with the day’s work, weary at the
renewal of domestic worry. But the news which Minnie gave
him was stimulating in its unexpectedness.

“Jim Matheson’s been here to break off the engagement ! He
actually came to see Tish this afternoon and told her so himself.
Isn’t it monstrous ? Isn’t it disgraceful ? And the presents
come and everything. She’s in a dreadful state. She’s been
crying on the bed ever since.”

But Loetitia, hearing her brother-in-law’s return, came down,
her fringe, ominous sign, out of curl, her eyes red, her face
disfigured from much weeping.

And when she began, brokenly, “He’s thrown me over, Jack !
He’s jilted me, he’s told me so to my face ! Oh, it’s too hard.
How shall I ever hold up my head again ?” then, Corbett’s
sympathy went out to her completely. But he wanted particulars.
How had it come about ! There had been some quarrel, surely
some misunderstanding !

Loetitia declared there had been none. Why should she
quarrel with Jim when she had been so happy, and everything had
seemed so nice ? No, he was tired of her, that was all. He had
seen some one else perhaps, whom he fancied better, some one
with more money. She wept anew, and stamped her foot upon

                                                the

the floor. “I wish you’d kill him, Jack, I wish you’d kill
him !” she cried. “His conduct is infamous !”

Matheson’s conduct as depicted by the young woman did seem
infamous to Corbett, and after the first chaotic confusion of his
mind had fallen into order again, his temper rose. His Irish
pride was stung to the quick. No one had a light to treat a
woman belonging to him with contumely. He would go up, at
once, to Matheson, this very evening, and ask him what he meant
by it. He would exact ample satisfaction.

He swallowed a hurried and innutritious meal, with Loetitia’s
tears salting every dish, and Minnie’s reiterations ringing dirges
in his ears. She and Loetitia wanted him to “do something” to
Matheson ; to kill him if possible, to horsewhip him certainly.
Corbett was in a mood to fall in with their wishes, and the justice
of their cause must have seemed unimpeachable to them all, since
neither he nor they reflected for a moment that he could not have
the smallest chance in a tussle with the transgressor, who over-
looked him by a head and shoulders, and was nearly twice his size.
This confidence in righteousness is derived from the story-
books, which teach us that in personal combat the evil-doer
invariably succumbs, no matter what the disparity of physical
conditions may be, although it must be added that in every
properly written story-book it is always the hero who boasts of
breadth of muscle and length of inches, while the villain’s black
little soul is clothed in an appropriately small and unlovely body.

Corbett, however, set off without any misgivings.

He found Matheson still at table, reading from a book propped
up against the claret-jug. He refused the hand and the chair
Matheson offered him, and came to the point at once.

“Is this true what I hear at home ? That you came up this
afternoon to break off your engagement with Loetitia ?”

                                                Matheson,

Matheson, who had flushed a little at the rejection of his hand-
shake, admitted with evident embarrassment that it was true.

“And you’ve the—the cheek to tell me that, to my face ?”
said Corbett, turning red.

“I can’t deny it, to your face.”

“But what’s your meaning, what s your motive, what has Letty
done ? What has happened since yesterday ? You seemed all
right yesterday,” Corbett insisted.

“It’s not Letty’s—it’s not Miss Wray’s fault at all. It’s my
mistake. I’ve made the discovery we’re not a bit suited to each
other, that’s all. And you ought to be thankful, as I am, that I’ve
discovered it in time.”

“Damn it !” exclaimed Corbett, and a V-shaped vein rose in
the centre of his forehead, and his blue eyes darkened. “You come
to my house, I make a friend of you, my wife and sister receive
you into their intimacy, you ask the girl to be your wife. . . . . I
suppose you admit doing that ?” Corbett interpolated in wither-
ing accents, “and now you throw her away like an old glove,
break her heart, and expect me to be thankful ? Damn it all,
that’s a bit steep.”

“I shouldn’t think I ve broken her heart,” said Matheson
embarrassed again. “I should hope not.” There was interroga-
tion in his tone.

“She feels it acutely,” said Corbett. “Any woman would.
She’s very—” he stopped, but Matheson had caught the
unspoken word.

“Angry with me ? Yes. But anger’s a healthy sign. Anger
doesn’t break hearts.”

“Upon my soul,” cried Corbett amazed at such coolness, “I
call your conduct craven, I call it infamous !” he added,
remembering Loetitia’s own word.

                                                “Look

“Look here Jack,” appealed the other, “can’t you sit
down ? I want to talk the matter over with you, but it gets
on my nerves to see you walking up and down the room like
that.”

Corbett, all unconscious of his restlessness, now stood still, but
determined he would never sit down in Matheson’s house again.
Then he weakly subsided into the chair his friend pushed over
to him.

“You call my conduct craven ? I assure you I never had to
make so large a demand upon my courage as when I called upon
Loetitia to-day. But I said to myself, a little pluck now, a bad
quarter of an hour to live through, and in all probability you save
two lives from ruin. For we should have made each other
miserable.”

“Then why have engaged yourself?” asked Corbett with
renewed heat.

“Yes . . . why . . . do you know, Jack, that the very
morning of our engagement, five minutes even before the fateful
moment, I’d no more idea . . . you know how such things can
come about. The garden, the moonlight, a foolish word taken
seriously. And then the apparent impossibility of drawing back,
the reckless plunging deeper into the mire. . . . I don’t deny I
was attracted by Letty, interested in her. She is a pretty girl, an
unusually pretty girl. But like most other girls she’s a victim to
her upbringing. Until you are all in all to an English girl you
are nothing at all. She never reveals herself to you for a moment ;
speaks from the lips only ; says the things she has been taught
to say, that other women say. You’ve got to get engaged
to a woman in England it seems, if you’re ever to know
anything about her. And I engaged myself, as I told you, in a
moment of emotion, and then hopefully set to work to make the

                                                best

best of it. But I didn’t succeed. I didn’t find in Letty the
qualities I consider necessary for domestic happiness.”

“But Letty is a very good—”

Matheson interrupted with “In a way she’s too good, too
normal, too well-regulated. I could almost prefer a woman who
had the capacity, at least, for being bad ! It would denote some
warmth, some passion, some soul. Now, I never was able to
convince myself that Loetitia was fond of me. Oh, she liked me
well enough. She was satisfied with my position, modest as it is,
with my prospects. My profession pleased her, principally as she
confessed to me, because it necessitates my keeping a carriage.
But fond . . . do you think she is capable of a very passionate
affection, Jack ?

“Of course, I know this is going to do me a lot of harm.
Twickenham, no doubt, will echo your verdict, and describe my
conduct as infamous. I daresay I shall have to pull up stakes and
go elsewhere. But for me, it has been the only conduct possible.
I discovered I didn’t love her. Wouldn’t it be a crime to marry
a woman you don’t love ? I saw we could never make each
other happy. Wouldn’t it be a folly to rush open-eyed into such
misery as that ?”

Which was, practically, the end of the matter, although the
friends sat long over their whiskey and cigarettes, discussing all
sublunary things. Corbett enjoyed a most delightful evening,
and it had struck twelve before he set off homewards, glowing
outside and in with the warmth which good spirits and good
fellowship impart. He reaffirmed to his soul the old decision that
Matheson was undoubtedly the cleverest, the most entertaining,
the most lovable of men—and suddenly he remembered the
mission on which he had been sent nearly four hours ago,
simultaneously he realised its preposterous failure. All his happy

                                                self-complacency

self-complacency radiated off into the night. Chilled and
sobered and pricked by conscience, he stood for a moment with
his hand upon the gate of “Braemar,” looking up at the lighted
windows of Minnie’s room.

What was he going to say to her and to Loetitia ? And, more
perturbing question still, what when they should hear the truth,
were his womenfolk going to say to him ?