Part 114 (1/2)

'On no account! I couldn't be civil to her.'

Jasper's brows blackened.

'This is idiotic prejudice, Dora. I think I have some claim upon you; I have shown some kindness--'

'You have, and I am not ungrateful. But I dislike Mrs Reardon, and I couldn't bring myself to be friendly with her.'

'You don't know her.'

'Too well. You yourself have taught me to know her. Don't compel me to say what I think of her.'

'She is beautiful, and high-minded, and warm-hearted. I don't know a womanly quality that she doesn't possess. You will offend me most seriously if you speak a word against her.'

'Then I will be silent. But you must never ask me to meet her.'

'Never?'

'Never!'

'Then we shall quarrel. I haven't deserved this, Dora. If you refuse to meet my wife on terms of decent friendliness, there's no more intercourse between your house and mine. You have to choose. Persist in this fatuous obstinacy, and I have done with you!'

'So be it!'

'That is your final answer?'

Dora, who was now as angry as he, gave a short affirmative, and Jasper at once left her.

But it was very unlikely that things should rest at this pa.s.s. The brother and sister were bound by a strong mutual affection, and Whelpdale was not long in effecting a compromise.

'My dear wife,' he exclaimed, in despair at the threatened calamity, 'you are right, a thousand times, but it's impossible for you to be on ill terms with Jasper. There's no need for you to see much of Mrs Reardon--'

'I hate her! She killed her husband; I am sure of it.'

'My darling!'

'I mean by her base conduct. She is a cold, cruel, unprincipled creature! Jasper makes himself more than ever contemptible by marrying her.'

All the same, in less than three weeks Mrs Whelpdale had called upon Amy, and the call was returned. The two women were perfectly conscious of reciprocal dislike, but they smothered the feeling beneath conventional suavities. Jasper was not backward in making known his grat.i.tude for Dora's concession, and indeed it became clear to all his intimates that this marriage would be by no means one of mere interest; the man was in love at last, if he had never been before.

Let lapse the ensuing twelve months, and come to an evening at the end of July, 1886. Mr and Mrs Milvain are entertaining a small and select party of friends at dinner. Their house in Bayswater is neither large nor internally magnificent, but it will do very well for the temporary sojourn of a young man of letters who has much greater things in confident expectation, who is a good deal talked of, who can gather clever and worthy people at his table, and whose matchless wife would attract men of taste to a very much poorer abode.

Jasper had changed considerably in appearance since that last holiday that he spent in his mother's house at Finden. At present he would have been taken for five-and-thirty, though only in his twenty-ninth year; his hair was noticeably thinning; his moustache had grown heavier; a wrinkle or two showed beneath his eyes; his voice was softer, yet firmer. It goes without saying that his evening uniform lacked no point of perfection, and somehow it suggested a more elaborate care than that of other men in the room. He laughed frequently, and with a throwing back of the head which seemed to express a spirit of triumph.

Amy looked her years to the full, but her type of beauty, as you know, was independent of youthfulness. That suspicion of masculinity observable in her when she became Reardon's wife impressed one now only as the consummate grace of a perfectly-built woman. You saw that at forty, at fifty, she would be one of the stateliest of dames. When she bent her head towards the person with whom she spoke, it was an act of queenly favour. Her words were uttered with just enough deliberation to give them the value of an opinion; she smiled with a delicious shade of irony; her glance intimated that nothing could be too subtle for her understanding.

The guests numbered six, and no one of them was insignificant. Two of the men were about Jasper's age, and they had already made their mark in literature; the third was a novelist of circulating fame, spirally crescent. The three of the stronger s.e.x were excellent modern types, with sweet lips attuned to epigram, and good broad brows.

The novelist at one point put an interesting question to Amy.

'Is it true that Fadge is leaving The Current?'