Justine dropped into the low seat beside her, and laid a hand on hers. “You don’t look as well as when I went away, Bessy. Are you sure you’ve done wisely in beginning your house-parties so soon?”
It always alarmed Bessy to be told that she was not looking her best, and she sat upright, a wave of pink rising under her sensitive skin.
“I am quite well, on the contrary; but I was dying of inanition in this big empty house, and I suppose I haven’t got the boredom out of my system yet!”
Justine recognized the echo of Mrs. Carbury’s manner.
“Even if you were bored,” she rejoined, “the inanition was probably good for you. What does Dr. Wyant say to your breaking away from his régime?” She named Wyant purposely, knowing that Bessy had that respect for the medical verdict which is the last trace of reverence for authority in the mind of the modern woman. But Mrs. Amherst laughed with gentle malice.
“Oh, I haven’t seen Dr. Wyant lately. His interest in me died out the day you left.”
Justine forced a laugh to hide her annoyance. She had not yet recovered from the shrinking disgust of her last scene with Wyant.
“Don’t be a goose, Bessy. If he hasn’t come, it must be because you’ve told him not to—because you’re afraid of letting him see that you’re disobeying him.”
Bessy laughed again. “My dear, I’m afraid of nothing—nothing! Not even of your big eyes when they glare at me like coals. I suppose you must have looked at poor Wyant like that to frighten him away! And yet the last time we talked of him you seemed to like him—you even hinted that it was because of him that Westy had no chance.”
Justine uttered an impatient exclamation. “If neither of them existed it wouldn’t affect the other’s chances in the least. Their only merit is that they both enhance the charms of celibacy!”
Bessy’s smile dropped, and she turned a grave glance on her friend. “Ah, most men do that—you’re so clever to have found it out!”
It was Justine’s turn to smile. “Oh, but I haven’t—as a generalization. I mean to marry as soon as I get the chance!”
“The chance–-?”
“To meet the right man. I’m gambler enough to believe in my luck yet!”
Mrs. Amherst sighed compassionately. “There is no right man! As Blanche says, matrimony’s as uncomfortable as a ready-made shoe. How can one and the same institution fit every individual case? And why should we all have to go lame because marriage was once invented to suit an imaginary case?”
Justine gave a slight shrug. “You talk of walking lame—how else do we all walk? It seems to me that life’s the tight boot, and marriage the crutch that may help one to hobble along!” She drew Bessy’s hand into hers with a caressing pressure. “When you philosophize I always know you’re tired. No one who feels well stops to generalize about symptoms. If you won’t let your doctor prescribe for you, your nurse is going to carry out his orders. What you want is quiet. Be reasonable and send away everybody before Mr. Amherst comes back!”
She dropped the last phrase carelessly, glancing away as she spoke; but the stiffening of the fingers in her clasp sent a little tremor through her hand.
“Thanks for your advice. It would be excellent but for one thing—my husband is not coming back!”
The mockery in Bessy’s voice seemed to pass into her features, hardening and contracting them as frost shrivels a flower. Justine’s face, on the contrary, was suddenly illuminated by compassion, as though a light had struck up into it from the cold glitter of her friend’s unhappiness.
“Bessy! What do you mean by not coming back?”
“I mean he’s had the tact to see that we shall be more comfortable apart—without putting me to the unpleasant necessity of telling him so.”
Again the piteous echo of Blanche Carbury’s phrases! The laboured mimicry of her ideas!
Justine looked anxiously at her friend. It seemed horribly false not to mention her own talk with Amherst, yet she felt it wiser to feign ignorance, since Bessy could never be trusted to interpret rightly any departure from the conventional.
“Please tell me what has happened,” she said at length.
Bessy, with a smile, released her hand. “John has gone back to the life he prefers—which I take to be a hint to me to do the same.”
Justine hesitated again; then the pressure of truth overcame every barrier of expediency. “Bessy—I ought to tell you that I saw Mr. Amherst in town the day I went to Philadelphia. He spoke of going away for a time…he seemed unhappy…but he told me he was coming back to see you first—” She broke off, her clear eyes on her friend’s; and she saw at once that Bessy was too self-engrossed to feel any surprise at her avowal. “Surely he came back?” she went on.
“Oh, yes—he came back!” Bessy sank into the cushions, watching the firelight play on her diamond chain as she repeated the restless gesture of lifting it up and letting it slip through her fingers.
“Well—and then?”
“Then—nothing! I was not here when he came.”
“You were not here? What had happened?”
“I had gone over to Blanche Carbury’s for a day or two. I was just leaving when I heard he was coming back, and I couldn’t throw her over at the last moment.”
Justine tried to catch the glance that fluttered evasively under Bessy’s lashes. “You knew he was coming—and you chose that time to go to Mrs. Carbury’s?”
“I didn’t choose, my dear—it just happened! And it really happened for the best. I suppose he was annoyed at my going—you know he has a ridiculous prejudice against Blanche—and so the next morning he rushed off to his cotton mill.”
There was a pause, while the diamonds continued to flow in threads of fire through Mrs. Amherst’s fingers.
At length Justine said: “Did Mr. Amherst know that you knew he was coming back before you left for Mrs. Carbury’s?”
Bessy feigned to meditate the question. “Did he know that I knew that he knew?” she mocked. “Yes—I suppose so—he must have known.” She stifled a slight yawn as she drew herself languidly to her feet.
“Then he took that as your answer?”
“My answer–-?”
“To his coming back–-“
“So it appears. I told you he had shown unusual tact.” Bessy stretched her softly tapering arms above her head and then dropped them along her sides with another yawn. “But it’s almost morning—it’s wicked of me to have kept you so late, when you must be up to look after all those people!”
She flung her arms with a light gesture about Justine’s shoulders, and laid a dry kiss on her cheek.
“Don’t look at me with those big eyes—they’ve eaten up the whole of your face! And you needn’t think I’m sorry for what I’ve done,” she declared. “I’m not—the—least—little—atom—of a bit!” XXIV