CHAPTER XII

DEVILS

Hubert groped his way homewards along the ill-lit road, filled by a certain shame but also nearly chuckling to himself.

What a splendid, encouraging night it had been! Those last and most important speakers were if anything even more enthusiastic about all his novels. It was nice to get into touch with those for whom you wrote and know that they are pleased. It took away the great drawback of a writer's job as compared with the vocalist's or actor's; that you never heard the clapping. (He did not, of course, think about the hisses.)

Wouldn't Helena be glad to hear it all!

He had forgotten by now that there had been any trouble as to this evening's fixture, remembering only how delighted she was always, bless her, with his least success. Imagine, now, if he were going back to lonely digs--or Ruth!

By this time he had reached the crossroads whence the house is visible, and now his bubbling pleasure suddenly went flat. He could see their bedroom windows from here, and there was no light.... He had told her not to sit up, certainly, but he had naturally thought that she would read in bed and keep awake to hear about the evening. Of course he was a little late; but still, he thought resentfully, she might----

Then he remembered.

How feminine! She wished to spite him for deserting her in favour of the Kit Kats! She was asleep, or anyhow pretending, and thought to punish him, like comic-paper husbands, by making him fumble his way into bed in a considerate darkness!

He smiled at her simplicity. How like her! She knew nothing about anything. He'd soon show her how childish she had been. He meant to turn the light on and bang drawers and then--it really would be rather comic to see her, like the child she was, pretending to awake. In this grim mood of resolution, creditable to a bullied sex, he turned into his gate and as he moved slowly out into the dark garden from under the thick ivy arch, was conscious of a male figure not three feet away.

Instantly his trained imagination nimbly leapt from point to point. He understood now why there was no light up there; he could fancy the poor frightened girl listening to a scraping noise; the useless, snoring servants; possibly a struggle, she was so brave----

God, if anything had happened to her!

In a second flash he had seen, for the first time possibly, how much she meant to him. We moan our tragedies and scarcely notice blessings till they go.

And whilst his brain sped along those twin paths, his arm sprang out and gripped the fellow by the throat.

"I say, Brett," cried a strangled voice, "it's me."

"Who is it?" asked Hubert. "Alison?" and he released his hold.

"Yes," said the other, making sure that all his throat was there. Brett, he ruefully reflected, was one of those big devils and big devils never knew their strength. "I've been taking your wife to the causerie."

"Oh!" answered Hubert. Perhaps it was excitement only, but he felt of a sudden as though he could resume his grip with pleasure. "It must have been a long affair."

The sneer was obvious. He never had been jealous about Helena before--but things were happening to-night.

"Oh," laughed the other apologetically: and Hubert realised what an ass he was, wondered why he had ever got to know him, "we've been in some time."

"I see," said Hubert. "Well, good-night." He could not trust himself much longer. It was so dark, and that grip had been vaguely satisfying to some primæval side of him....

Geoffrey Alison returned the greeting and slid away with definite relief. He had not liked the way that Brett said that "I see." It was so obvious he did. And then about the causerie having been long----!

When he grew cooler, sitting in the tube, he began to wonder nervously how this would affect his friendship with Helena (he always thought of her as that), and looked rather doubtfully along the future. Well, he should see. He wouldn't call again until she wrote.

Only one thing was certain. Her husband suspected him--and he felt wickeder than ever....

Hubert meanwhile let himself into the dark hall and merely throwing down his hat, without taking off his coat, strode full of war into the drawing-room. Helena had just finished the postponed yawn with some luxuriance and decided that Mr. Alison must get up very early and do all his work then, and that made him so dull at night. She turned delightedly as the door opened. Good: Hugh already!

"Helena," he said, storming in, "why did you pretend you weren't going to the show to-night?"

"What _do_ you mean, Hugh?" she asked, utterly surprised. "I wasn't." She hoped that he had not been drinking. Men, she believed, mostly did when they got out alone.

"You must think me a fool," he said. "But I don't intend to have an argument about it. I only want to say at once that I think it would be far better if you saw less of your friend Mr. Alison. I meant to say it anyhow. People are talking."

"But I don't understand," she faltered, almost as a question.

He laughed scornfully. "I know you're ignorant but you are not a fool, so don't pretend you are. Of course married women don't need chaperons, I know all that, but a mere girl like you and that young ass and almost midnight--but don't let's go into all that." He calmed himself, swallowing his wrath, and said more gently; "I know it's all right really, dear, don't think I don't, it's only--well, you know what people say."

"_What_ do they say?" she asked indignantly.

"As you ask," he answered, letting the words out coldly, "I heard one man telling another at the Golf Club yesterday that Mrs. Herbertson was saying she had not yet found out whether Alison or I was Mr. Brett, but thought _he_ was as you saw more of him. That's a local joke! It's jolly, isn't it?"

"_I_ think it's disgusting," she answered oddly calm. "I shouldn't ever care what people with that sort of mind think."

"Well _I_ do," he almost shouted at her, "and I want you to understand as my wife that I forbid you to see that young Alison again. I don't know anything about him except that I did him a favour once. And I don't mean to have it."

"I think you're excited," she said calmly, not at all like the child that he had always known. She gathered new strength from his sudden weakness. One of them must have reserve.

"Excited!" he mocked. "Well, who wouldn't be? A dirty-minded little cad like that!"

"Hubert," she said roused at last, "you've got no right to call him that. It's you and Mrs. Herbertson and every one that have the dirty minds. I don't know what you think. He's not a cad. He's _your_ friend and I like him. He's been nice to me." A devil tempted her, urging her on beyond the point of a good friend's defence. "I'm very fond of him," she said, provocatively.

And then that devil entered into Hubert Brett. It had been a full night and excitement all the way. He had not yet recovered from that garden scene. And now, listening to her words, hearing his rival praised, he felt again as he had felt when he thought that some harm had come to her. He seized her in his arms with an unreasoning passion; held her there, resisting; kissed her furiously on lips, eyes, everywhere; laughing and saying: "You are mine, mine. You belong to me, I tell you. You're all mine!"

"Let me go, Hubert," she cried terrified. She could not understand.

He let her go, at that. She moved away and stood behind the table, as though that gave her protection. He gazed at her smiling, panting.

"I'm sorry," he said presently. "It was your fault: you were so maddening. You don't see what it means to me."

The little gods of Comedy laughed out upon the tragic spectacle of a man released by oddly joined emotions from his chains of Self and a wife who wondered in fear whether Kit Kats drank champagne....

"And how did the dinner go off?" she asked soon, in her usual tones.