Part 16 (2/2)
”Well, it sometimes seems hard, because I didn't used to have to do it.
In fact I used to be scolded if I did do it.” She laughed. ”I'm not pretending to like being poor.”
”But you took it on fast enough, Mrs. Ledstone. You knew, I mean?”
”Oh yes, I knew, and I took it on, as you call it. So I don't complain.”
”I tell you what--some day you and G.o.dfrey must come for a spree with me. Go to Monte Carlo or somewhere, and have a high old time!”
”I don't believe I should like Monte Carlo a bit.”
”Not like it? Oh, I say, I bet you would.”
”I suppose it's prejudice to condemn even Monte Carlo without seeing it.
Perhaps we shall manage to go some day. I think G.o.dfrey would like it.”
”Oh, I took him once, all right, with--with some other friends.”
”And all you men gambled like anything, I suppose?”
”Yes, we did a bit.” Bob was inwardly amused at her a.s.sumption of the nature of the party--amused, yet arrested by a sudden interest, a respect, and a touch of Mrs. Lenoir's pity. If there had been only himself to confess about, he would have confessed.
”You want keeping in order, Mr. Purnett,” she said, smiling. ”You ought to marry, and be obliged to spend your money on your wife.”
She puzzled Bob. Because here she was, not married herself! He could not get away from that rigid and logical division of his--and of many other people's, such as Dennehy and the like.
”I'm not a marrying man. Heaven help the woman who married me!” he said, in whimsical sincerity.
She saw the sincerity and met it with a plump ”Why?”
Bob was not good at a.n.a.lysis--of himself or other people (though he was making a rudimentary effort over Winnie). ”The way a chap's built, I suppose.”
”What a very conclusive sort of argument!” she laughed. ”How's G.o.dfrey built, Mr. Purnett?”
”G.o.dfrey's all right. He'd settle down if he ever got married.”
The theories came tumbling in through the open door. Cowardly theories, had they refused an opening like that!
”Well, isn't he?” asked Winnie, with dangerously rising colour.
Bob Purnett was a picture of shame and confusion.
”I could bite my tongue out, Mrs. Ledstone--hang it, you don't think I'm--er--what you'd call an interfering chap? It's nothing to me how my friends choose to--to settle matters between themselves. Fact is, I just wasn't thinking. Of course you're right. He--well, he feels himself married all right. And so he is married all right--don't you know? It's what a chap feels in the end, isn't it? Yes, that's right, of course.”
The poor man was terribly fl.u.s.tered. Yet behind all his aghastness at his blunder, at the back of his overpowering penitence, lay the obstinate question--could she really think it made no difference? No difference to a man like G.o.dfrey Ledstone, whom he knew so well?
Submerged by his remorse for having hurt her, yet the question lay there in the bottom of his mind. People neither regular nor irregular, people s.h.i.+fting the boundaries (really so well settled!)--how puzzling they were! What traps they laid for the heedless conversationalist, for the traditional moralist--or immoralist!
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