Edward Benson - Scarlet and Hyssop - A Novel

They drew up at the top of the mile, and Mildred adjusted her hat.

"There," she said, "the cobwebs have been dispersed for the day. Now we'll go on talking. Explain, Jack. Why do you want treatment for Marie?"

Jack lit a cigarette.

"She makes scenes," he said, "and they bore me. She made one last night."

"What about?"

"I don't know that it's worth repeating, really," he said.

"Probably not, but you are going to tell me."

He looked at her a moment with his thin eyebrows drawn together in a frown, hit his horse rather savagely for an imaginary stumble, and reined it in again more sharply than was necessary.

"I don't the least like being dictated to, Mildred," he said. "Nobody adopts that tone with me – with any success, that is to say."

She laughed.

"Oh, my excellent friend," she said, "you really speak as if I was afraid of you. For goodness' sake, don't put on schoolmaster airs. You know perfectly well that doesn't go down. Don't hit your horse now; you are behaving like a sulky child that whips its doll. What was the scene about?"

"Did you see the infernal manner in which she walked off with Jim Spencer last night, driving him home in her brougham and saying she was going to Blanche Devereux'? That was her way of getting quits with me."

"Quits with you? What for?"

"For a conversation I had with her after lunch yesterday. I told her that if she was seen about with Jim Spencer people would talk, and if they talked it was absurd for her to keep up the sort of attitude she maintains towards society in general, saying that we are both fools and knaves."

Mildred made a gesture of despair.

"The stupidity of men really exceeds all bounds," she said. "I beg your pardon, that is by the way. You were saying that she walked off with Jim last night. I suppose you commented on that too, did you?"

He flushed angrily.

"If she imagines she is going to make a fool of me before all the world, the sooner she learns her mistake the better," said he.

"You said that to her?" asked Mildred in a tone in which "even despair was mild."

"Of course I did, or rather, I asked her whether she really went to see Blanche. She saw what I meant all right."

"You seem to imagine she is as great a fool as you," remarked Mildred.

He turned half round on his horse.

"I don't stand such language from any one," said he.

"Oh, for God's sake don't be absurd! You stand exactly what language I choose to use to you. Is it really possible, Jack, that you don't see what a dangerous and foolish game you are playing? Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! you are married to that pearl of a woman, and you think you can treat her like that. You aren't fit to tie her boot-laces, and – "

"I have no intention of trying."

"Don't be funny. I was saying you weren't fit to tie her boot-laces, but I can't expect you to see that. And you have practically told her you suspect her of an intrigue with Jim Spencer. Now, if she was the sort of woman you seem to think she is, that would be the very way to drive her into it. Personally, I wish she was, but she isn't, and we must make the best of it. But what you have done is to show her, if further demonstration were necessary, your own utter depravity. Of the sickening folly of that, I needn't speak. Go on: what did she say then?"

"She said she didn't care in the slightest degree whether I believed she went to Lady Devereux's or not. She also said that Jim was coming to lunch. So of course I shall go home to lunch."

Mildred laughed outright.

"You have the most wonderful power of choosing the only impossible thing to do or say," she remarked. "That is the one thing out of the question. The impeccable attitude of guardian angel, my dear Jack, is the one attitude that cannot be made to pose well. Nor have you the figure for it."

They rode on a little while in silence.

"Have your own way, then," he said at length.

"Of course I shall. Poor old Jack, how you do manage to put your foot in it! And I have to pull you out so often. Aren't you grateful to me?"

"Not particularly this moment."

"Well, you will be soon. You needn't tell me when you are. A good action is its own reward, and I am bursting with an approving conscience this morning. I've helped Guardina and Pagani, I've helped you."

"Yourself perhaps?"

"That also is my reward. I didn't think of myself – at least, not much."

She looked at him with a gay and kindled eye; the exercise had brought the blood into her face, and it was impossible to credit her with the six-and-thirty years which she had assured Marie were hers. And looking at her, his smarting ill-humour evaporated.

"How is it one never gets tired of you?" he said.

She laughed.

"Because I do not let you get accustomed to me," she answered.

Certainly if Jack Alston had, as was generally supposed, the gift of getting his way with other people, Mrs. Brereton had the gift of getting her way with him. This, she knew well, but was far too wise to say, was the true secret of his absolute dependence on her, for there is nothing that a masterful and brutal mind really enjoys so much as finding some one stronger than itself. At times she was inwardly afraid that she would some day get the worst of it, but knowing that in managing men, as in managing horses, the real secret of their mutiny is not so much fear on their driver's part, as the knowledge of that fear in the driver, she was always, as in this particular instance, more than usually brutal, and was accustomed to make him, so to speak, more resonant under her hand, when she was not quite certain in the depths of her own mind that she was going to win. Then, when the stress was over, she gave him his own head again, with such completeness as to convey to him the impression that he had always been free: there was no reminder, not the faintest strain on the curb to show him that the curb was still there. She used it, in fact, rarely, but in earnest, and never fell into the habit, so common in women of her stamp who are otherwise clever, of nagging, or making a point of getting her way over any matter on which she did not really desire it.

Nor was her genuine attachment to him less capable of comprehension than his to her. In addition to the immense charm of his extraordinary good looks and his devotion to her, there was added that sense, so dear to an ambitious woman, that she was controlling a figure that bade fair to be one of the most prominent of the day, and could make it dance to her wire-pulling like a marionette on its string. Though Jack was not yet forty, he already held a minor post in the Government, and when the elections came on in the summer or autumn, it was expected in many quarters that he would be made Chief Secretary at the War Office. For the nation had of late begun to wonder whether that serene and unbiased attitude which is the natural outcome of complete ignorance on the affairs of the Department is really the ideal equipment for a statesman. A little knowledge, it has long been agreed, is a dangerous thing, but the nation, in view of recent events, had distinctly formed the suspicion that no knowledge at all was almost as hazardous. Indeed, it was supposed that this idea had gently begun to communicate itself to the Government itself. Anyhow, it was rumoured that more than a mere reshuffling of the old cards would take place, and Jack Alston's name was freely mentioned as a probable occupant of the office in Pall Mall. Until his succession to the title on his father's death six years ago, he had been a soldier of the practical, hard-working order, not content with figures and much polo, but busy with ideas on boots and rifles, and the knowledge he had thus acquired he had since used on more than one occasion with telling effect on discussions in the Upper House about military matters, and the cold, aloof attitude with which anything so out of taste as criticism founded on knowledge, or the discussion of practical questions in a practical manner, is usually treated in that august assembly had not produced the slightest effect on him. He asked awkward questions, and pointed out the absurdity of the answers or the silence they received with such imperturbable pertinacity that it was beginning to be felt that there really might be something in this novel idea of letting a man who knew a good deal about a subject be employed in that capacity. At any rate, he could not then continue to criticise the Department in question if he controlled it. Builders and Government contractors Jack appeared to consider not as masters of the Government, but as their servants, and where a firm vowed that a particular programme could not be completed under six years, he would have no hesitation in demanding to know how they had managed to take foreign orders in the interval. These things shook the immemorial calm of Pall Mall, and produced the sort of gentle perturbation which might be caused by the introduction of a risky topic at a tea-party of elderly maiden ladies. But Jack Alston was without tact in these matters, and continued to be horribly risky.