Part 37 (1/2)
During the evening a neighbour and his wife came in. He and she and the two ladies played bridge, while Gussie looked on or fidgeted aimlessly about the room, taking up and putting down again books and papers, looking into empty ornamental jars, continually comparing his own watch with the drawing-room clock.
”To tell you the truth, he always goes out in the evening,” Grace informed Auntie, while seeing her to her bedroom. ”He has his club, you know. They play rather high. I don't think he cares for our careful little game. If you don't mind, I think I shall tell him to go there to-morrow night. He does worry me so when he prowls about the drawing-room.”
”Let him go, by all means. I don't mind at all,” Auntie acquiesced.
”I knew she'd win. They always do, when they've money, and don't want to,” Mellish said to his wife, talking over the evening's game. ”Played threepence a hundred, didn't she?”
”Isn't it mean of her!” Grace said. ”With a purse full of sovereigns--for I saw them when she gave it to me to pay the cab--and thirty more, she told me, in her jewel-case. By the way, the servants asked for their wages again to-day, Gussie.”
”Oh, I daresay! Ask your aunt to pay them.”
”I should like to see myself stooping to ask such a thing of Auntie!”
”You don't mind stooping to ask money of me every time you open your mouth.”
”I wonder you can dare to say it! I haven't had a penny from you, for a week. I hadn't even the half-crown to buy the child the new paint-box he wrote for.”
”Henry? Does he want a paint-box? He shall have it, poor little chap. I will see about it tomorrow.”
”Once he's gone to the office, don't you see him any more, all day?”
Auntie asked, as the front door closed on the master of the house, next morning.
”Not till dinner. He has a biscuit for his lunch, or goes without it.
He isn't a man to care for food at any time.”
”No. He isn't what I call a restful man,” Auntie said, and spread herself more at her ease in her chair. ”He isn't one, I should say, to enjoy the comforts of home.”
”Oh, as for that, I don't care for a man always in your way among the chairs and tables,” Mrs Mellish said. ”Gussie isn't a woman's man, you see, Auntie. He's about as clever as they're made, Gussie is; and when they're like that they're _men's_ men; and I like them better so.”
Grace's red cheeks were redder. She was a quick-tempered, high-spirited young woman. ”Hands off! he's mine,” her manner, more than her words, said to Auntie, who would have liked to listen to a few wifely confidences as she and her niece sat _tete-a-tete_ through the long morning.
They lived in a provincial town, and on the second night of Auntie's stay they went to the theatre, at which a London company happened to be performing.
Grace loved the play, and was in high spirits, making an extra toilette for the occasion. She was not half through it when her husband, who had hurried over his dressing, left her and went downstairs. He had heard Auntie, who was always too early for everything, and made a merit of it, leave her room. He found her in the drawing-room, pulling a pair of long white gloves over her large hands and arms.
”I have been stupid enough to leave myself short of cash,” Mellish said, beginning lightly at once, almost before he had closed the door behind him. ”I wonder if you could oblige me, Auntie, with a few pounds for a couple of days? Say ten or fifteen? Just to carry me on till my money-s.h.i.+p comes in.”
Auntie, working on her tight gloves, looked at him; his tone was carefully careless, but his face, which she had called chalk-white, was surely whiter yet. His question being asked, his lips still moved.
”How Grace can bear to sit opposite to him at meals every day, I don't know!” Auntie said to herself. ”He gives me the creeps.”
She drew in her lower lip loosely beneath her teeth, her gaze grew blanker; never a clever-looking woman, now she looked a fool. Slowly she shook her head.
”No. I am afraid I can't,” she said. ”I'm afraid I can't spare it. I only brought as much as I should want to get me back home again.”
There was a minute's unbroken silence. Gussie's smile, always so p.r.o.nounced, spread across his gums till his face looked as if it were cut in two.