The Better Sort (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903)/The Special Type/Chapter 2
II
Quite apart from having been at school with him, I'm conscious—though at times he so puts me out—that I've a taste for Frank Brivet. I'm quite aware, by the same token—and even if when a man's so rich it's difficult to tell—that he's not everyone's affinity. I was struck, at all events, from the first of the affair, with the way he clung to me and seemed inclined to haunt my studio. He's fond of art, though he has some awful pictures, and more or less understands mine; but it wasn't this that brought him. Accustomed as I was to notice what his wealth everywhere does for him, I was rather struck with his being so much thrown upon me and not giving London—the big fish that rises so to the hook baited with gold—more of a chance to perform to him. I very soon, however, understood. He had his reasons for wishing not to be seen much with Mrs. Cavenham, and, as he was in love with her, felt the want of some machinery for keeping temporarily away from her. I was his machinery, and, when once I perceived this, was willing enough to turn his wheel. His situation, moreover, became interesting from the moment I fairly grasped it, which he soon enabled me to do. His old reserve on the subject of Mrs. Brivet went to the winds, and it's not my fault if I let him see how little I was shocked by his confidence. His marriage had originally seemed to me to require much more explanation than anyone could give, and indeed in the matter of women in general, I confess, I've never seized his point of view. His inclinations are strange, and strange, too, perhaps, his indifferences. Still, I can enter into some of his aversions, and I agreed with him that his wife was odious.
"She has hitherto, since we began practically to live apart," he said, "mortally hated the idea of doing anything so pleasant for me as to divorce me. But I've reason to believe she has now changed her mind. She'd like to get clear."
I waited a moment. "For a man?"
"Oh, such a jolly good one! Remson Sturch."
I wondered. "Do you call him good?"
"Good for her. If she only can be got to be—which it oughtn't to be difficult to make her—fool enough to marry him, he'll give her the real size of his foot, and I shall be avenged in a manner positively ideal."
"Then will she institute proceedings?"
"She can't, as things stand. She has nothing to go upon. I've been," said poor Brivet, "I positively have, so blameless." I thought of Mrs. Cavenham, and, though I said nothing, he went on after an instant as if he knew it. "They can't put a finger. I've been so d—d particular."
I hesitated. "And your idea is now not to be particular any more?"
"Oh, about her," he eagerly replied, "always!" On which I laughed out and he coloured. "But my idea is nevertheless, at present," he went on, "to pave the way; that is, I mean, if I can keep the person you're thinking of so totally out of it that not a breath in the whole business can possibly touch her."
"I see," I reflected. "She isn't willing?"
He stared. "To be compromised? Why the devil should she be?"
"Why shouldn't she—for you? Doesn't she love you?"
"Yes, and it's because she does, dearly, that I don't feel the right way to repay her is by spattering her over."
"Yet if she stands," I argued, "straight in the splash———!"
"She doesn't!" he interrupted me, with some curtness. "She stands a thousand miles out of it; she stands on a pinnacle; she stands as she stands in your charming portrait—lovely, lonely, untouched. And so she must remain."
"It's beautiful, it's doubtless inevitable," I returned after a little, "that you should feel so. Only, if your wife doesn't divorce you for a woman you love, I don't quite see how she can do it for the woman you don't."
"Nothing is more simple," he declared; on which I saw he had figured it out rather more than I thought. "It will be quite enough if she believes I love her."
"If the lady in question does—or Mrs. Brivet?"
"Mrs. Brivet—confound her! If she believes I love somebody else. I must have the appearance, and the appearance must of course be complete. All I've got to do is to take up———"
"To take up———?" I asked, as he paused.
"Well, publicly, with someone or other; someone who could easily be squared. One would undertake, after all, to produce the impression."
"On your wife naturally, you mean?"
"On my wife, and on the person concerned."
I turned it over and did justice to his ingenuity. "But what impression would you undertake to produce on———?"
"Well?" he inquired as I just faltered.
"On the person not concerned. How would the lady you just accused me of having in mind be affected toward such a proceeding?"
He had to think a little, but he thought with success. "Oh, I'd answer for her."
"To the other lady?" I laughed.
He remained quite grave. "To myself. She'd leave us alone. As it would be for her good, she'd understand."
I was sorry for him, but he struck me as artless. "Understand, in that interest, the 'spattering' of another person?"
He coloured again, but he was sturdy. "It must of course be exactly the right person—a special type. Someone who, in the first place," he explained, "wouldn't mind, and of whom, in the second, she wouldn't be jealous."
I followed perfectly, but it struck me as important all round that we should be clear. "But wouldn't the danger be great that any woman who shouldn't have that effect—the effect of jealousy—upon her wouldn't have it either on your wife?"
"Ah," he acutely returned, "my wife wouldn't be warned. She wouldn't be 'in the know.'"
"I see." I quite caught up. "The two other ladies distinctly would."
But he seemed for an instant at a loss. "Wouldn't it be indispensable only as regards one?"
"Then the other would be simply sacrificed?"
"She would be," Brivet splendidly put it, "remunerated. I was pleased even with the sense of financial power betrayed by the way he said it, and I at any rate so took the measure of his intention of generosity and his characteristically big view of the matter that this quickly suggested to me what at least might be his exposure. "But suppose that, in spite of 'remuneration.' this secondary personage should perversely like you? She would have to be indeed, as you say, a special type, but even special types may have general feelings. Suppose she should like you too much."
It had pulled him up a little. "What do you mean by 'too much'?"
"Well, more than enough to leave the case quite as simple as you'd require it."
"Oh, money always simplifies. Besides, I should make a point of being a brute." And on my laughing at this: "I should pay her enough to keep her down, to make her easy. But the thing," he went on with a drop back to the less mitigated real—"the thing, hang it! is first to find her."
"Surely," I concurred; "for she should have to lack, you see, no requirement whatever for plausibility. She must be, for instance, not only 'squareable,' but—before anything else even—awfully handsome."
"Oh, 'awfully'!" He could make light of that, which was what Mrs. Cavenham was.
"It wouldn't do for her, at all events," I maintained, "to be a bit less attractive than———"
"Well, than who?" he broke in, not only with a comic effect of disputing my point, but also as if he knew whom I was thinking of.
Before I could answer him, however, the door opened, and we were interrupted by a visitor—a visitor who, on the spot, in a flash, primed me with a reply. But I had of course for the moment to keep it to myself. "Than Mrs. Dundene!"