Man's Country/Chapter 18
BUT Fay met him at the door in her jauntiest riding costume—the linen one with white boots—and wearing a flat-crowned panama hat with a blue-and-white striped band and a dashing roll to the narrow brim.
"Oh, George!" she effervesced. "I've just prevailed upon Sir Brian to stay and dine with us tonight, riding togs and all. We've had such a jolly afternoon that I simply couldn't give him up."
Although the thought of a stranger at his hearth-side tonight was as the thought of salt in an open and sensitive wound, what could the husband do? His was not the heart to damp such beautiful, glowing ardor as his wife's, and besides—Sir Brian! What was there about that man to make George Judson instantly brace and preen himself like a fighting cock?
"Perfectly fine of you to accept, Sir Brian." Stepping forward, he offered a hearty hand.
"Awfully kind of you and all that sort of thing," smiled Sir Brian.
Now it was perfectly true that Judson was glad to see more of Sir Brian. But tonight! It was enough to make him hate the man forever. Yet George rallied astonishingly. Youth can often do that.
"This fellow is a thoroughbred," George meditated. "I can imagine just how his inherited pride, with all that ancestor stuff in his mind, would get away with a situation like mine. You'd never know he was sitting on a red-hot stove. Well, I'm a thoroughbred, too. Watch me!"
The dinner was from every point of view a triumph. It was a triumph for Sir Brian, because he retold his tiger story and added many other exciting events of a very active and widely traveled life. It was a triumph for Fay, for she was never more beautiful, more vivacious, or more capable of stimulating the admiration of mankind. And it was a triumph for George Judson because, despite the hollow feeling in his chest, he arched it stoutly against terrible external pressure from most unhappy circumstances. He was witty, entertaining, cordial. Fay was especially proud of him. She had never heard him talk better. He manifested a perfect breeding at all points.
As for the woman, she sparkled and scintillated with brilliance unusual even for her. The fact that her husband was present to witness the effect upon this presumably seasoned appraiser of beauty seemed like a challenge to her to exert her every charm. Colorful as a tiger lily, soft as ermine, warm as vital life is warm, she cast her glowing spell, and George Judson was proud—excessively proud—that he possessed her and that she was proud of him and flaunted that pride before their guest.
He had already made up his mind that, Sir Brian or no Sir Brian, he would not tell her about his business situation. Her faith in him as a superman was too fine, too enjoyable, too necessary to his influence over her, to spoil it by confession of unpleasant facts. He would have to tell her something, of course, but not that. Reflecting upon just what he should tell her, he fell out of the conversation without exactly being aware that he had done so.
Fay and Sir Brian continued to talk animatedly—not privately, not confidentially, and yet a conversation in which only themselves were interested. But suddenly Fay roused her husband from reverie by breaking out vivaciously like a child with a new plan!
"Oh, Sir Brian hasn't been out yet on our beautiful Lake St. Clair. Suppose we take him for a run tomorrow. We could, couldn't we?" Her note of cheery proposal was the very essence of partnerly pride and loyalty; yet to George the proposal was painful—if for no other reason than that it reminded him that there must be a tomorrow.
"Couldn't make it tomorrow, dearie," he regretted to have to confess to that bright, hopeful, appealing face. "I've got something on the fire that's liable to boil over. But you go," insisted George generously. "Make up a party. Make a day of it. Better, make two or three days of it. Go on up to Huron or over to see your mother at Birch Cottage. It will do you good to get on the water for a few days. Do the Gray Gull and her crew good, too."
Fay knew generosity when she encountered it. This was perfectly noble of George, and she forgave him her first disappointment, her face brightening by a few additional beams in consequence.
"That would be a lovely plan, wouldn't it?" she agreed instantly. "Only there isn't time, because we have to be back for the Newcomb dinner on Friday night."
"Easy enough," insisted George. "Start tomorrow. Start at ten o'clock, and you can get round all right for Friday. Use the telephone—catch-as-catch-can. In half an hour you can make up a party."
Within ten seconds Fay was on her way to the telephone, and George Judson was experiencing another sickening hollow feeling in his breast. To think that she was actually willing to go away with his affairs at such a crisis. With man-like unreasonableness he again failed to take account of the fact that she did not know his affairs were at a crisis—and that he did not intend her to know it.
"Oh, by the way, Fay," her husband remarked quite casually, when at last they were alone; "you might hear some talk tomorrow about shutting down our works temporarily. Don't let it disturb you. We always do begin laying men off this time of year, and this is part of our sales campaign on the Nemos. One of our quick, market-startling turns."
If Fay's mind had not been full of a thousand details about her lake-going party tomorrow, she might have lifted her brows and steadied her blue eyes upon her husband's face, she might have asked questions, casual, blundering, woman questions, that would have torn the thin tissue of dissimulation from before his face, but her mind was full of those details. Would Herbie McRae go, she wondered, and the Austins? The Irwins had already promised.
"George," she said sweetly, and threw her arms upon his shoulders for a moment, "you're a wonderful man, and when you get your business far enough along so you can devote all your time to me, you're going to be a wonderful husband!"
"Going to be? Well, I like that!" protested George, pretending playfully to be ruffled, but careful to let her see that it was only pretense and that he was complaisant over the compliment.
So they went to bed. Fay was up betimes next morning, because of the cruise for Sir Brian, and so had breakfast with her husband. When she kissed him good-by, it was with a caress that was tender and affectionate, and yet it was not the kiss that he wanted—that he needed to brace him for the grilling day that lay ahead.