The marriage of Colorado Jim with the Honorable Angela created no great stir, for the simple reason that it took place in a registry office and received but two lines’ notice in the “social” column of the press.

Jim was surprised that the family should wish to keep it so quiet, but as he himself much preferred that method of getting “hitched up” he made no complaint. He drove away with his beautiful bride, feeling that the greatest step in his life had been taken—which was certainly the case. Where that step was to lead him he was fortunately unable to foresee.

The attitude of Claude puzzled him. Since that day in Devonshire, when Claude had endeavored to intervene, the latter had spoken scarcely a dozen words to him. He shook hands 87 with Jim at the station and with Angela, but his congratulations sounded weak and insincere.

Jim speedily forgot him in the thrill of the moment. Nice was their destination—Nice in all her October glory. He was actually on honeymoon with the object of his dreams and ambitions!

This chapter in Jim’s life need scarcely be dwelled upon in any detail. It was so amazing, so unexpectedly baffling, that it sent him clean off his pivot of balance. All that marvelous happiness in his heart was shattered little by little. The first night at the hotel at Nice left him pondering. It wasn’t due to the fact that Angela occupied a separate room, but that he heard her turn the key in the lock! He sat up half the night “browsing” on that singular occurrence. The second night, and every night after, the same thing happened. Nothing else was needed to send him into fits of inward rage. Not for all the wealth of the Indies would he have touched the handle of that door! Verily he was learning. Each day drove home the lesson, until he writhed under the lash of it. He had married an iceberg. 88

He found himself very much alone. In Nice Angela met scores of familiar faces. She spent most of her time with these friends, leaving Jim to the terrible naked truth—to wrestle with it as best he might. He had kissed her at Little Badholme, had apparently thawed for ever the chilly heart of her. But here it was again—the frigid exterior that no kisses could melt. What had happened to her? Was it that she had never cared at all—that her acceptance of his marriage offer was dictated by ulterior motives?

Before it was time for them to return to England the last scrap of illusion was knocked out of him. More miserable than ever he had been in his life, he sought for some solution. It was so obvious she didn’t care for him. He saw that, in the company of her “high-browed” friends, she despised him. He found himself sitting down under this contempt—meekly accepting the rÔle of enslaved husband, hand-servant to a beautiful and presumably soulless woman.

On the night before they left she came back to the hotel very late, to find him sitting in a brown study. He watched her, furtively, discarding the expensive cloak, and taking off the heavy pearl 89 necklace he had been fool enough to buy. He stood up and stared for a moment, in silence, out over the moonlit sea. When he turned she was going to her room.

“Angela!”

She stopped, not liking the imperative note in his voice.

“What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?”

“Yep—with us?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“I wasn’t aware that anything was wrong.”

He leaned across the table.

“Angela. Why did you marry me?”

“Because you asked me.”

“No other reason, eh?”

“Isn’t that reason enough?”

His mouth set in a grim smile.

“I thought that when wimmen married men there was usually another reason. To take a man and not to tell him the truth ain’t ’xactly on the level.”

“Don’t begin recriminations,” she retorted.

“I’m not beginning anything,” he growled. “I’m jest telling you we can’t go on like this, 90 living in the same place and acting like strangers. I’m beginning to get wise to this queer shuffle of your family’s——”

She shivered a little as his intense gaze searched her face.

“It wasn’t a straight proposition, because all the perticlers wasn’t put in. I didn’t know I was buying a woman——”

She flared up in an instant.

“How dare you——!”

“Wal, put it how you wish, it comes to the same thing in the end. I fell to it all right, and I ain’t squealing. If I was the sort o’ man you, no doubt, take me for, I might want value for money, and I’m big enough to get it.... No need to get scared. Though you love me like you might a rattlesnake, I happen to love you. You might as well know it.”

His calmness amazed her. She had half expected a furious onslaught. On one point she wanted to put him right.

“You think I despise you, but that’s not true,” she said. “I couldn’t have married you had I despised you. But I can’t love you—I can’t. Can’t you see that our ways lie far apart? All 91 your life, your very mode of thought and speech, are the direct antithesis of mine. Isn’t it plain—wasn’t it plain at first that it was a mere bargain? You and I can be nothing to each other but—friends.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he growled. “If you’d have told me that, I’d have seen you to hell before I married you, or even kissed you. Blood is blood, and nature’s nature, and passion’s passion, and gew-gaws don’t count—no, nor polite chin-music either. You were my woman, and I wanted you before all the other wimmen on God’s earth. It’s the little things that don’t matter that fills your mind. If men were all tea-slopping, thin-spined, haw-hawing creatures like some I seen here, with never a darned notion of how to dig for their daily bread, though they talked like angels and acted like cardboard saints, this world ’ud be a darned poor show.... Anyway, you’ve got to learn that.... We’re going back to-morrow, and I guess we’d better finish this play-acting. Devonshire’s good enough for me if you’ll take the London house.”

She nodded. That had been her own innermost desire. She was glad he made the suggestion 92 himself. Before coming away he had leased a house in Maida Vale, and had given instructions to Liberty’s to furnish it. It would be pleasanter there, in the midst of friends, than planted away in the wilds of Devonshire with a “cowpuncher.”

The months that followed were purgatory to Jim. Once or twice he ran up to the club, where he heard things that were not conducive to a happy state of mind. Angela was entertaining on a lavish scale. Cholmondeley told him of the extraordinary “success” of his wife’s parties. According to Cholmondeley every other hostess was completely outshone by the beautiful Angela, whose photograph was now an almost permanent feature in the daily press.

It was on one of these visits that he met Claude. The latter shook hands with him heartily, but seemed ill at ease.

“What’s wrong, young feller?” queried Jim.

Claude passed off the question with a laugh. Later, however he came to Jim.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Jim looked at him from under his eyebrows. 93

“Look here, Jim,” said Claude impetuously, “can’t you make it up with Angela? It seems silly to prolong a quarrel.”

“Eh!”

The ejaculation made Claude start.

“Well, whatever you quarreled about, it can’t be much. Come along and see her now.”

His frank smile dissipated any suspicions in Jim’s mind. Claude actually didn’t know what was wrong with the Conlans! He believed it to be a mere marital squabble, that would blow over sooner or later.

“Kid,” gasped Jim, “you are the pink limit! I guess there ain’t nothing that would stop Angela from regarding me as unsifted muck, just as she has since the first time I saw her.”

“What!”

“And you didn’t know. Wal, it’s all in the family, and you may as well git wise to it.”

“But she’s—she’s your wife——!”

“Yep.... Don’t hurry, youngster. Get it right back and masticate it well. They’ve fine heads for business in your family, not to mention play-acting.” 94

Claude flushed. He stood up and gripped a chair by the back.

“Steady,” said Jim. “I’m telling you the truth.... But I thought you knew.”

Claude was realizing it fast enough.

“Then there was no quarrel?” he gasped. “She—she simply left you?”

“I told her she might—and she did. But you needn’t worry none, I’ve staked bad claims afore.”

Claude came over to him, much affected by the deep emotion that had crept into his voice.

“Jim, I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know. I warned you because I didn’t believe she could love and respect you as you deserve. But when I heard you were engaged I believed you had melted her in a strange way.... I see now where the money came from.... God! and she was mean enough to do that—to my—my friend.”

Jim took him by the shoulder and steadied him.

“She saved your people from a big financial crash, anyway—remember that.”

“Is that any mitigation? I’d rather die in the 95 gutter than live on money that was obtained by a vulgar fraud. She acted a lie—a damned despicable lie. That sort of thing is done every day, but the man usually knows what he is doing, and hasn’t any scruples, and the girl sometimes learns to love him.... So we’re living on the benevolence and innocence of a man who isn’t good enough to be the real husband of a Featherstone. I wish to God my name were Smith or Jones—or anything that is honest....”

He broke away from Jim, humiliated by the knowledge that had come to him. On the morrow he dropped in at the club, his face set in a way strange to him.

“I dropped in to say good-bye, Jim.”

“Eh!”

“We had it all out last night—a real family gathering. I think I got a little militant. Anyhow, it’s better this way. What sort of chance is there for a chap like me in Canada, Jim?”

Jim put down his newspaper and stared.

“You don’t mean that, kid.”

“I do. I leave Liverpool this evening.”

Jim stood up and took his hand.

“I reckon you’ll do,” he said. “But how’s the 96 bank? You wouldn’t like a kind o’ sleeping partner on a fifty-fifty basis, eh?”

Claude shook his head.

“I know what you mean, Jim. But I’ve money enough to get started at something. If ever I get a partner out there, I shall consider myself lucky if he’s half the man you are.”

Jim sighed.

“I wish I was coming too.... You’re sure about the dough? Come, I’d like to invest a little in a real promising proposition. Say five thousand—jest a small interest——”

Claude gripped his hand.

“You’re a real brick, Jim, but it can’t be done. No, I can’t stay to lunch. I’ve got one or two calls to make. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

He was about to leave when he turned again.

“You mustn’t mind me saying this, Jim. Meredith is seeing a great deal too much of Angela. There is doubtless nothing in it, but—well, Angela is my sister, and I don’t like Meredith.”

When he had gone Jim sat and pondered over the words. A similar hint had been dropped by 97 Cholmondeley. So Angela was already considered fair spoil by men like Meredith! Meredith was out to win the love that he had lost. It rankled—it hurt. But behind his fury there lurked the sinister shadow of defeat and humiliation. There were giddy heights to which he could not climb, and to which Meredith was soaring—Meredith, a man he could have taken in his own hands and broken; a cheat, armed with every weapon that culture could forge, and little else.

In the evening he summoned up his failing courage and went to Angela’s house. It was one blaze of light and one tumult of sound. A dapper footman opened the door and took his card. He waited in the hall, running his eyes over the rich decorations. From higher up the hall came sounds of revelry, and now and again he caught sight of figures flitting to and fro. The sound of a string band drifted down to him, and then laughter—cultured, high-toned laughter that grated on his nerves.

When eventually he was shown into the drawing-room, he wished he hadn’t come. Angela was one blaze of glory. Her guests bowed to 98 him in a fashion that was intended, and succeeded, to make their superiority felt. Angela was cool and remarkably self-possessed.

“I was passing and jest dropped in,” he explained.

“That was very nice of you. Will you take anything to drink?”

He shook his head negatively. He only wanted to get away from these people. They were too polite to whisper to each other, but their silence was eloquent enough. They were laughing in their sleeves at this unfortunate husband. A figure dawdled up, and bowing, took Angela’s arm with a smirking smile. It was Meredith.

It was a pleasure to breathe the fresher air outside. Jim caught the next train to Devonshire, feeling like a dog that has been kicked by its mistress. He arrived home to find a pile of bills—debts incurred by Angela—awaiting him. He glared at them, half inclined to return them and repudiate responsibility. But he didn’t. He wrote numerous checks for considerable sums and sent them away.

“What a pace! But it’s got to stop. God, why can’t I get a holt on myself. Jim, you ain’t 99 a man. They’re putting you through your paces like a circus dog, and you’re taking it all lying down.”

He jammed on his hat and went striding out into the country.