Part 118 (1/2)
”I haven't grasped it yet. I must think it out,” he said, as he began to walk up and down the room so far as the crowded furniture would permit.
”We must try and think it's G.o.d's will,” said his wife, making an effort to get her thoughts under control.
”What!” cried Devitt, stopping short in his walk to look at his wife with absent eyes.
”G.o.d has singled us out for this bitter punishment,” snuffled Mrs Devitt, as her eyes glanced at the heavily gilded chandelier.
With a gesture of impatience, Devitt resumed his walk, while Miss Spraggs quickly went to windows and door, which she threw open to their utmost capacity for admitting air.
”One thing must be done,” declared Devitt.
”Yes?” asked his wife eagerly.
”That Hunter girl who split on Mavis Keeves havin' been at Polperro with Perigal.”
”She knows everything; we shall be disgraced,” wailed Mrs Devitt.
”Not at all. I'll see to that,” replied her husband grimly.
”What will you do?”
”Give her a good job in some place as far from here as possible, and tell her that, if her tongue wags on a certain subject, she'll get the sack.”
”What!” asked his wife, surprised at her husband's decision and the way in which he expressed himself.
”Suggest somethin' better.”
”I was wondering if it were right.”
”Right be blowed! We're fightin' for our own hand.”
With this view of the matter, Mrs Devitt was fain to be content.
It was a dismal and forlorn family party which sat down to dinner that evening under the eye of the fat butler. Husband, wife, and Miss Spraggs looked grey and old in the light of the table lamps. By this time Lowther had been told of the trouble which had descended so suddenly upon the family. His comment on hearing of it was characteristic.
”Good G.o.d! But she hasn't a penny!” he said. He realised that the prospects of his father a.s.sisting him out of his many sc.r.a.pes had declined since news had arrived of Harold's unlooked-for marriage. When the scarcely tasted meal was over, Montague sent Lowther upstairs ”to give the ladies company,” while he smoked an admirable cigar and drank the best part of a bottle of old port wine. The tobacco and the wine brought a philosophical calm to his unquiet mind; he was enabled to look on the marriage from its least unfavourable aspects. He had always liked Mavis and would have done much more for her than he had already accomplished, if his womenfolk had permitted him to follow the leanings of his heart; he knew her well enough to know that she was not the girl to bestow herself lightly upon Charlie Perigal. He had not liked Perigal's share in the matter at all, and the whole business was still much of a mystery. Although grieved beyond measure that the girl had married his dearly loved boy, he realised that with Harold's ignorance of women he might have done infinitely worse.
”What are you going to do?” asked Mrs Devitt of her husband in the seclusion of their bedroom.
”Try and make the best of it. After all, she's a lady.”
”What! You're not going to try and have the marriage annulled?”
It was her husband's turn to express astonishment.
”Surely you'll do something?” she urged.
”What can I do?”
”As you know, it can't be a marriage in--in the worldly sense; when it's like that something can surely be done,” said Mrs Devitt, annoyed at having to make distant allusions to a subject hateful to her heart.