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The Assize of Jealousy32
But Benham did not leave England again until he had had an encounter with Lady Marayne.
The little lady came to her son in a state of extraordinary anger and distress. Never had she seemed quite so resolute nor quite so hopelessly dispersed and mixed. And when for a moment it seemed to him that she was not as a matter of fact dispersed and mixed at all, then with an instant eagerness he dismissed that one elucidatory gleam. "What are you doing in England, Poff?" she demanded. "And what are you going to do?
"Nothing! And you are going to leave her in your house, with your property and a lover. If that`s it, Poff, why did you ever come back? And why did you ever marry her? You might have known; her father was a swindler. She`s begotten of deceit. She`ll tell her own story while you are away, and a pretty story she`ll make of it."
"Do you want me to divorce her and make a scandal?"
"I never wanted you to go away from her. If you`d stayed and watched her as a man should, as I begged you and implored you to do. Didn`t I tell you, Poff? Didn`t I warn you?"
"But now what am I to do?"
"There you are! That`s just a man`s way. You get yourself into this trouble, you follow your passions and your fancies and fads and then you turn to me! How can I help you now, Poff? If you`d listened to me before!"
Her blue eyes were demonstratively round.
"Yes, but--"
"I warned you," she interrupted. "I warned you. I`ve done all I could for you. It isn`t that I haven`t seen through her. When she came to me at first with that made-up story of a baby! And all about loving me like her own mother. But I did what I could. I thought we might still make the best of a bad job. And then--. I might have known she couldn`t leave Pip alone. . . . But for weeks I didn`t dream. I wouldn`t dream. Right under my nose. The impudence of it!"
Her voice broke. "Such a horrid mess! Such a hopeless, horrid mess!"
She wiped away a bright little tear. . . .
"It`s all alike. It`s your way with us. All of you. There isn`t a man in the world deserves to have a woman in the world. We do all we can for you. We do all we can to amuse you, we dress for you and we talk for you. All the sweet, warm little women there are! And then you go away from us! There never was a woman yet who pleased and satisfied a man, who did not lose him. Give you everything and off you must go! Lovers, mothers. . . ."
It dawned upon Benham dimly that his mother`s troubles did not deal exclusively with himself.
"But Amanda," he began.
"If you`d looked after her properly, it would have been right enough. Pip was as good as gold until she undermined him. . . . A woman can`t wait about like an umbrella in a stand. . . . He was just a boy. . . . Only of course there she was--a novelty. It is perfectly easy to understand. She flattered him. . . . Men are such fools."
"Still--it`s no good saying that now."
"But she`ll spend all your money, Poff! She`ll break your back with debts. What`s to prevent her? With him living on her! For that`s what it comes to practically."
"Well, what am I to do?"
"You aren`t going back without tying her up, Poff? You ought to stop every farthing of her money--every farthing. It`s your duty."
"I can`t do things like that."
"But have you no Shame? To let that sort of thing go on!"
"If I don`t feel the Shame of it-- And I don`t."
"And that money--. I got you that money, Poff! It was my money."
Benham stared at her perplexed. "What am I to do?" he asked.
"Cut her off, you silly boy! Tie her up! Pay her through a solicitor. Say that if she sees him ONCE again--"
He reflected. "No," he said at last.
"Poff!" she cried, "every time I see you, you are more and more like your father. You`re going off--just as he did. That baffled, MULISH look--priggish--solemn! Oh! it`s strange the stuff a poor woman has to bring into the world. But you`ll do nothing. I know you`ll do nothing. You`ll stand everything. You--you Cuckold! And she`ll drive by me, she`ll pass me in theatres with the money that ought to have been mine! Oh! Oh!"
She dabbed her handkerchief from one swimming eye to the other. But she went on talking. Faster and faster, less and less coherently; more and more wildly abusive. Presently in a brief pause of the storm Benham sighed profoundly. . . .
It brought the scene to a painful end. . . .
For weeks her distress pursued and perplexed him.
He had an extraordinary persuasion that in some obscure way he was in default, that he was to blame for her distress, that he owed her-- he could never define what he owed her.
And yet, what on earth was one to do?
And something his mother had said gave him the odd idea that he had misjudged his father, that he had missed depths of perplexed and kindred goodwill. He went down to see him before he returned to India. But if there was a hidden well of feeling in Mr. Benham senior, it had been very carefully boarded over. The parental mind and attention were entirely engaged in a dispute in the SCHOOL WORLD about the heuristic method. Somebody had been disrespectful to Martindale House and the thing was rankling almost unendurably. It seemed to be a relief to him to show his son very fully the essentially illogical position of his assailant. He was entirely inattentive to Benham`s carefully made conversational opportunities. He would be silent at times while Benham talked and then he would break out suddenly with: "What seems to me so unreasonable, so ridiculous, in the whole of that fellow`s second argument--if one can call it an argument--. . . . A man who reasons as he does is bound to get laughed at. If people will only see it. . . ."
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