第26章

Winifred--a plucky woman,if a little too fashionable--who had borne the brunt of him for exactly twenty-one years,had never really believed that he would do what he now did.Like so many wives,she thought she knew the worst,but she had not yet known him in his forty-fifth year,when he,like other men,felt that it was now or never.Paying on the 2nd of October a visit of inspec-tion to her jewel case,she was horrified to observe that her woman's crown and glory was gone--the pearls which Montague had given her in '86,when Benedict was born,and which James had been compelled to pay for in the spring of '87,to save scandal.She consulted her husband at once.He 'pooh-poohed'the matter.They would turn up!Nor till she said sharply:"Very well,then,Monty,I shall go down to Scotland Yard myself,"did he consent to take the matter in hand.Alas!that the steady and resolved continuity of design necessary to the accomplishment of sweeping operations should be liable to interruption by drink.That night Dartie returned home without a care in the world or a particle of reticence.Under normal conditions Winifred would merely have locked her door and let him sleep it off,but torturing suspense about her pearls had caused her to wait up for him.Taking a small revolver from his pocket and holding on to the dining table,he told her at once that he did not care a cursh whether she lived s'long as she was quiet;but he himself wash tired o'life.

Winifred,holding onto the other side of the dining table,answered:

"Don't be a clown,Monty.Have you been to Scotland Yard?"Placing the revolver against his chest,Dartie had pulled the trigger several times.It was not loaded.Dropping it with an imprecation,he had muttered:"For shake o'the children,"and sank into a chair.Winifred,having picked up the revolver,gave him some soda water.The liquor had a magical effect.Life had illused him;Winifred had never 'unshtood'm.'If he hadn't the right to take the pearls he had given her himself,who had?That Spanish filly had got'm.If Winifred had any 'jection he w'd cut--her--throat.What was the matter with that?(Probably the first use of that celebrated phrase--so obscure are the origins of even the most classical language!)Winifred,who had learned self-containment in a hard school,looked up at him,and said:"Spanish filly!Do you mean that girl we saw dancing in the Pandemonium Ballet?Well,you are a thief and a blackguard."It had been the last straw on a sorely loaded consciousness;reaching up from his chair Dartie seized his wife's arm,and recalling the achievements of his boyhood,twisted it.

Winifred endured the agony with tears in her eyes,but no murmur.

Watching for a moment of weakness,she wrenched it free;then placing the dining table between them,said between her teeth:"You are the limit,Monty."(Undoubtedly the inception of that phrase--so is English formed under the stress of circumstances.)Leaving Dartie with foam on his dark moustache she went upstairs,and,after locking her door and bathing her arm in hot water,lay awake all night,thinking of her pearls adorning the neck of another,and of the consideration her husband had presumably received therefor.

The man of the world awoke with a sense of being lost to that world,and a dim recollection of having been called a 'limit.'He sat for half an hour in the dawn and the armchair where he had slept perhaps the unhappiest half-hour he had ever spent,for even to a Dartie there is something tragic about an end.And he knew that he had reached it.Never again would he sleep in his dining-room and wake with the light filtering through those curtains bought by Winifred at Nickens and Jarveys with the money of James.Never again eat a devilled kidney at that rose-wood table,after a roll in the sheets and a hot bath.He took his note case from his dress coat pocket.Four hundred pounds,in fives and tens--the remainder of the proceeds of his half of Sleeve-links,sold last night,cash down,to George Forsyte,who,having won over the race,had not conceived the sudden dislike to the animal which he himself now felt.The ballet was going to Buenos Aires the day after to-morrow,and he was going too.Full value for the pearls had not yet been received;he was only at the soup.

He stole upstairs.Not daring to have a bath,or shave (besides,the water would be cold),he changed his clothes and packed stealthily all he could.It was hard to leave so many shining boots,but one must sacrifice something.Then,carrying a valise in either hand,he stepped out onto the landing.The house was very quiet--that house where he had begotten his four children.It was a curious moment,this,outside the room of his wife,once admired,if not perhaps loved,who had called him 'the limit.'He steeled himself with that phrase,and tiptoed on;but the next door was harder to pass.It was the room his daughters slept in.Maud was at school,but Imogen would be lying there;and moisture came into Dartie's early morning eyes.She was the most like him of the four,with her dark hair,and her luscious brown glance.Just coming out,a pretty thing!He set down the two valises.This almost formal abdication of fatherhood hurt him.The morning light fell on a face which worked with real emotion.Nothing so false as penitence moved him;but genuine paternal feeling,and that melancholy of 'never again.'He moistened his lips;and complete irresolution for a moment paralysed his legs in their check trousers.It was hard--hard to be thus compelled to leave his home!"D---nit!"he muttered,"I never thought it would come to this."Noises above warned him that the maids were beginning to get up.And grasping the two valises,he tiptoed on downstairs.