by Joan Smith
“Kay has shifted a few rooms around to make space for Mrs. Traveller,” he said.
“I suppose she thought I wouldn’t want her next to me!”
“I don’t know why she should think that,” he answered, seeing it had been an ill-chosen excuse, giving some credence to Belle’s unfounded suspicions.
“What is it you want?” she inquired, pushing the door closed a very little.
“I want to talk to you."
“Can’t it wait till morning?”
“It’s not late. It isn’t even midnight,” he said, pushing the door back open and wedging a foot into the opening.
“We’ve just been talking for an hour. I don’t see why you couldn’t tell me then. Well, what is it?”
He eased his way through the door, meeting no great opposition, and left the door hanging open behind him, as he did not wish to arouse her suspicions to too high a pitch.
“It’s private,” he told her, to explain this nocturnal call, and he advanced into the room itself from the sort of little hallway that separated the two chambers.
She was more curious than suspicious, and waited expectantly to hear what he had to say, but soon discovered that he had no real matter of the least importance to discuss at all, and had come in to urge on her again a reconciliation.
She was tired, and unhappy still with Mrs. Traveller’s coming, but most of all she was vexed that he should presume to come barging into her bedroom when they were legally separated. She had been at considerable pains and expense to obtain that separation, and if she changed her mind and went back to him, it would be her own doing. She hadn’t changed it yet, and wouldn’t be bludgeoned into it. “I can’t say much for your timing, Oliver. You were not used to be so inept.”
“I used to have more opportunities. What time do I have to see you alone here but at night? It’s not late at all.”
“We’ve been through all this once. I’ve said I’ll reconsider, and I shall, but I can’t do it in two minutes.”
“You’ve had all evening, Belle.”
“I had other things to think about,” she reminded him significantly.
“If you’ve wasted any part of the evening thinking that I am involved with my cousin’s wife, I want to state positively and categorically that I have nothing to do with her. Nothing at all.”
“Except to pay her bills.”
He waved his hand in a dismissing gesture. “A couple of shillings at the inn, because she is connected to me.”
“You used to be a little closer to her in London, I believe.”
He looked at her from beneath lowered brows, as though weighing how much she knew, or at least it was the way his wife interpreted the look. “A little more. George, you know, her husband, is a rackety old soul, and I once had some thoughts of trying to reclaim him, but gave it up as a bad job.”
But George’s hat had not been in the hall the day he was with Mrs. Traveller. The two of them had been alone, not to be disturbed. “How did you think to reform him? Was it a case of lectures, moral support, that sort of thing?”
“Lord no! I got him a job at the Foreign Office, but he botched it.”
There seemed no possibility that long conversations in private with Mrs. Traveller should have been necessary for this simple effort at reformation.
“How about Mrs. Traveller? Did you try to reform her too?”
“Honey is past reforming,” he answered, and laughed airily. He was happy to see the talk progressing satisfactorily, and he even began looking about for a chair. But he soon realized he had made a slip to use Mrs. Traveller’s first name.
“Honey?” she asked, stiffening.
“That is her name,” he explained hastily.
“Nobody is named Honey!”
“It is a pet name—nickname! Her name is actually Elvira.”
“I see. And she is just called Honey by her very good friends.”
“Is it possible you’re jealous?” he asked. “Here is an improvement. You didn’t use to care who I was seeing.”
Belle felt it was not so much an improvement as a great folly that she was allowing her indifference to slip. “I’m not jealous. Haven’t you just told me you have nothing to do with her?”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t have told you so if I’d ever thought you would be jealous. I would have claimed her as a secret lover.”
“Told the truth, you mean?” she asked, trying to make it sound light, teasing.
“If you think that, let me stay here with you. Then you’ll know where I spend the night,” he answered. He looked at her measuringly, and was too aware of the brass of his suggestion to manage any air of lightness at all.
“If that’s the way it is—if I have to keep an eye on you every minute . . .”
“It’s not like that. I was joking, Belle. I mean, I want to stay, but . . . It was a stupid, ill-judged thing to say. Forget it.”
Her stiff spine and stiffer face told him he had gone too far. The best thing to do was to retire, as gracefully as possible, and try again the next day, after Honey was gotten rid of. He arose—for he had managed to get onto the edge of a chair—and returned to the hallway between their rooms. She didn’t follow him, but he thought she must have moved with a great haste once the door was closed, as there was a loud slamming as she threw the bolt on her side. It seemed he was still enough of a cobra that his deadly bite was to be guarded against.
Had he been able to see Belle’s face, he would have felt otherwise. She did not look in the least frightened, nor even offended at his hint that he would like to remain with her. Even a smile was on her lips. She didn’t bother going to bed. She knew she wouldn’t sleep for a long time yet. Oliver had lied to her, no doubt about that, but she was not so demanding that she wanted the unvarnished truth on every detail of his past transgressions, so long as they were past.
If he had stopped seeing Mrs. Traveller, she would not deprecate his trying to hide that he ever had been going around with her. Any man might try to conceal such a thing, out of consideration of his wife’s feelings. Maybe she should have let him know she had feelings. He seemed glad to think she was jealous, after all the trouble she had gone to hide it. He was not so circumspect. He fairly oozed jealousy, of Arnold, of all people.
Funny how Arnold had shrunk from being a possible husband a week ago, after her divorce, of course, to a negligible quantity entirely. And she enjoyed Oliver’s jealousy too. Why shouldn’t he enjoy knowing she was jealous? For all people’s saying it was a demeaning thing, jealousy was only the other face of love, the negative face. If you loved someone, you couldn’t help being afraid and hurt to think you were losing him. Jealous, in other words.
While these philosophical ideas were turned over by her, she glanced to the carefully bolted door. She had no notion of unbolting it, but her face wore a smile to know Oliver was there, so close to her, thinking of her likely, as she thought of him. Certainly he wasn’t sleeping. She could hear quiet movements from behind the facade of the paneled door. Soon she heard his door open. She thought he was leaving, going downstairs for a drink or a book, but soon realized that rather than his leaving, someone had entered. She heard just one phrase in a woman’s voice, followed by an ejaculation from Oliver loud enough to be heard, then complete silence.
Kay dropping in to see that his room was satisfactory. She was really a wonderful hostess. In a moment the outer door of Oliver’s room opened again, very quietly—Kay leaving. She suddenly wanted to talk to someone. Not Oliver, but someone who knew him well, liked him. What she really wanted, she supposed, was to have someone encourage her to go back to him, and she knew it was wanted by Kay. She stood with her hand on the doorknob, wondering if it was too late to ask her in. She must be tired after her busy day.
Then she remembered the porcelain figurine she had picked up for her that morning. Kay collected them, and it would be an excellent excuse to call her. She took the statuette up from the dresser and dashed back to the door, just in time to see Oliver and Mr
s. Traveller tiptoeing like a couple of thieves in the night down the hallway. They stopped at a door half a hall length away, and Oliver opened the door for her to precede him into the room. She looked back over her shoulder and laughed at him, saying something, then he glanced down the hall to her own door. That was where he was looking, all right, to check she wasn’t watching him, and he saw her staring at them.
His face froze into a mask of horror, looking back at her, then he vanished. Was hauled bodily into the room by Honey, she thought from the jerking manner of his disappearance, and really he looked too petrified to move on his own steam. She was in the same state herself. She just stood staring for a long minute, then went back into her room, closed the door, set the figurine back on the dresser and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
She couldn’t do either; she was too stunned. What an awful, deceitful, lying person he was. Even with herself right in the next room to him, and he trying to arrange a reconciliation, he couldn’t behave. For one night he couldn’t behave with some common decency.
He was little better than an animal, and she had thought he had reformed. Was just telling a little white lie to spare her feelings. He was a monster of duplicity—would do anything to get his own way. While she stood stock still considering this, in a state half numb, she heard rapid footfalls coming down the hall. Oliver, of course. Too late, the damage is done, she thought. He opened the door to her room from the hallway and came hurtling in. She had forgotten, in her confused state, that he might come in by that door. It had glanced off some corner of her mind that the connecting door was bolted—that he couldn’t come barging in from his room—and she had thought she was safe.
“Belle, it’s not what you think!” he declared loudly.
“Get out!”
“The hell I will. You’re going to listen to me!”
“You have taken up profanity, I see, to add to your other accomplishments. How nice."
“I have not had the advantages of a wife’s refining influence this past ten months or more."
“Don’t blame it on me. You had no such advantage the first thirty years of your life either, but you didn’t use to speak like a commoner. I can hardly credit that the highly polished Duke of Avondale is sunk to swearing. Next you’ll be brawling in the streets and appearing in public drunk.”
“I’m not here to discuss my manners. I want to explain why I was with Mrs. Traveller.”
“Ah, Honey is become Mrs. Traveller again. And what little story are you going to tell me this time, milord?” She felt an overwhelming compulsion to laugh. She was heartbroken, but felt a smile, an ironic smile, settle on her features, and was glad. Tears could wait. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of showing any jealousy. “I bet you just went down there to reform Honey. To check and see she didn’t have a man tucked under her bed.”
“I went because she asked me to.”
“As good a reason as any. That way you are sure of a welcome. I shouldn’t think a gentleman would have many ladies tapping at this chamber door with direct requests for his company. Not even you.”
“Not from my wife, in any case! And if you hadn’t been spying—”
“Spying! No, no, you overestimate my interest in your doings. It was only a quite natural curiosity to see who was clumping down the hall at such an hour.”
“We were going as quietly as possible!” he shouted, then felt very cheap as the ramifications of this statement were borne in on him.
“I wonder why all that stealth was necessary?”
“I didn’t want you to see us. It was business, purely business. George is in trouble.”
“He certainly is. Any man with a wife and cousin like you two must be in hot water seven days a week.”
“He is in financial trouble.”
“I bet he isn’t anymore. You would be happy to take care of your poor cousin, wouldn’t you, Oliver? Especially when he has such an attractive and accommodating wife.”
“You really don’t give a damn, do you? You couldn’t care less if I went there to make love to her, so long as I don’t pester you. You’re inhuman, Belle. Even if you don’t love me, even if you hate me, it should bother you that I would do that.”
“It does bother me. I find your total lack of discretion irksome in the extreme. But you were never much good at discretion, were you? You didn’t care who knew you were running after that trollop, including your wife.”
“I wasn’t running after her. She asked me to help her, to help George.”
“What pickle has George got himself into now? I wouldn’t be surprised to hear it’s a duel, to preserve that wife’s shady honor.”
“It is,” Oliver replied instantly. His look of arrested attention might have been due to her having hit on the truth, or on the other hand it might equally have been caused by the finding of a miraculous lie to explain away his behavior.
“Are you the other participant?”
“You deserve a whipping for that.” He looked very much as though he would like to administer one, too.
“You lack polish, my dear,” she chided softly.
“You have acquired too much of it to suit me. I preferred your other face.”
“I have only one. You are the two-faced member of the family.”
“It’s not funny, and it’s not a time for joking.”
“I wasn’t joking. I am trying to take this farce seriously. It’s not my fault that you make it so difficult, with your childish absurd lies.”
“Let me explain. He’s killed a man.”
“Ah, then he has not gotten around to you yet.”
“Meaning I am not a man?”
“You are hunting for insults when none was intended. Meaning that whatever you are, you are still alive.”
He glowered at her, finding it hard indeed not to find insults at such barbed comments. “He has no reason to challenge me. He must leave the country. It is illegal to fight duels, and as he killed his man, he has to leave. He sent Honey to borrow some money, but naturally he wanted it kept quiet.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s hiding out in London. The duel was fought at Hounslow Heath. She came here only to get money.”
“A few shillings won’t be much help. That was the sum mentioned earlier, was it not? Give her a guinea, Oliver. Don’t be so cheap.”
“I don’t see why you treat it so frivolously.”
“How can I take a fairy tale seriously?”
“Ask her! Walk down the hall and ask her!” he said, his voice rising louder at each utterance.
“I wouldn’t want to disturb her. There is no saying she hasn’t invited someone else to her room by now. You’re not the only man here, you know.”
“You don’t ask her because you know she’ll tell you the truth.”
“Let us say I know she will substantiate your claim. You have had time to cook it up between you.”
“I wasn’t there a minute.”
“You had ample time to rig up a story to fool me over your little souper à deux, if you weren’t entirely immersed in other plans.”
“You know it wasn’t prearranged. I wanted to stay with you.”
“I am monstrously flattered you preferred me to her more voluptuous charms, but you can’t always have first choice, you know, and you were wise to settle for second best.”
“If you weren’t a woman, Belle, I’d beat you for that.” She could see he was exerting all his control to forbear from beating her anyway, and felt an exultant surge of triumph to have such power over him. Oh yes, Oliver was really letting his control slip.
“If I weren’t a lady, I’d tell you what I think of you.”
“Tell me. Forget for once you’re a great lady and try to act like a human being.”
“I’m not at all sure I care for the way you mere mortals carry on.”
There was a light tap at the door, and they stopped shouting to look at each other. The door opened, and Kay stepped in, with a netted sh
awl thrown over her shoulders. “Belle—Oliver!” she said, looking toward the door. “I can hear you shouting four rooms away. And as I came down the hall to see what was going on, Lady Dempster had her door open. What are you thinking of?”
“It’s all your fault!” Belle said to her husband.
“Oliver, you told me it would be all right,” Kay reminded him, thinking the changing of the rooms was the cause of the ruckus. He looked at her, bewildered. She jerked her head toward the adjoining room, but said nothing.
“You’d better go to your room, Oliver,” Kay went on. “You can continue this argument tomorrow, and for God’s sake do it far enough away from the house that you don’t have the whole party listening in.”
“Let them listen,” Oliver said.
“Go on. Go back to your room,” Belle said in a milder tone.
“I’m not leaving till you let me explain,” Oliver said grimly and stood his ground.
“You have explained.”
‘‘You don’t believe me.”
“You lied.”
“I did not!”
Their voices were rising steadily again, and in exasperation with this pair of adults that were beginning to sound a good deal like children, Kay took her cousin's arm and marched him to the door. “Say goodnight,” she ordered like a nanny.
“I wasn’t lying!” he said instead, and allowed himself to be led off.
Kay breathed a sigh of relief, but once outside, Oliver turned the opposite direction from his own door and called in a carrying voice, “Goodnight, Lady Dempster. To be continued tomorrow.”
“Oliver!” Kay shrieked in a strangled gasp and clamped her hand over his mouth.
Behind the closed door, Belle moaned into her hands, then was overcome with a spasm of giggles. How had she thought in London that Oliver cared what people thought? He was completely incorrigible.
Farther down the hall, Lady Dempster contemplated the niceties of polite behavior as to whether or not she should open her door and say goodnight to Avondale. By the time she had determined she should do so and got her door open, he was gone into his room, but Kay was still there in the hall, and she said goodnight to her instead.
