第11章 CHAPTER IV(3)

"I should hardly call twenty-five years of married life a cloud," said Henry Greech, lamely.

"Don't let's talk about married life," said a tall handsome woman, who looked like some modern painter's conception of the goddess Bellona; "it's my misfortune to write eternally about husbands and wives and their variants. My public expects it of me. I do so envy journalists who can write about plagues and strikes and Anarchist plots, and other pleasing things, instead of being tied down to one stale old topic."

"Who is that woman and what has she written?" Francesca asked Youghal; she dimly remembered having seen her at one of Serena Golackly's gatherings, surrounded by a little Court of admirers.

"I forget her name; she has a villa at San Remo or Mentone, or somewhere where one does have villas, and plays an extraordinary good game of bridge. Also she has the reputation, rather rare in your sex, of being a wonderfully sound judge of wine."

"But what has she written?"

"Oh, several novels of the thinnish ice order. Her last one, 'The Woman who wished it was Wednesday,' has been banned at all the libraries. I expect you've read it."

"I don't see why you should think so," said Francesca, coldly.

"Only because Comus lent me your copy yesterday," said Youghal. He threw back his handsome head and gave her a sidelong glance of quizzical amusement. He knew that she hated his intimacy with Comus, and he was secretly rather proud of his influence over the boy, shallow and negative though he knew it to be. It had been, on his part, an unsought intimacy, and it would probably fall to pieces the moment he tried seriously to take up the ROLE of mentor.

The fact that Comus's mother openly disapproved of the friendship gave it perhaps its chief interest in the young politician's eyes.

Francesca turned her attention to her brother's end of the table.

Henry Greech had willingly availed himself of the invitation to leave the subject of married life, and had launched forthwith into the equally well-worn theme of current politics. He was not a person who was in much demand for public meetings, and the House showed no great impatience to hear his views on the topics of the moment; its impatience, indeed, was manifested rather in the opposite direction. Hence he was prone to unburden himself of accumulated political wisdom as occasion presented itself - sometimes, indeed, to assume an occasion that was hardly visible to the naked intelligence.

"Our opponents are engaged in a hopelessly uphill struggle, and they know it," he chirruped, defiantly; "they've become possessed, like the Gadarene swine, with a whole legion of - "

"Surely the Gadarene swine went downhill," put in Lady Caroline in a gently enquiring voice.

Henry Greech hastily abandoned simile and fell back on platitude and the safer kinds of fact.