The Business of Life

"Is that you, Desboro?" he asked.

"Yes. I stopped this morning to speak to your wife a moment, but very naturally she was not at home to me at such an hour in the morning. I have just called her on the telephone, but her maid says she has gone out."

"Yes. She is not very well. I understand she has gone to see Dr. Allen. But she ought to be back pretty soon. Won't you come up to the house, Desboro?"

There was a short pause, then Desboro's voice again, in reply:

"I believe I will come up, Clydesdale. And I think I'll talk to you instead of to your wife."

"Just as it suits you. Very glad to see you anyway. I'll be in the rear extension fussing about among the porcelains."

"I'll be with you in ten minutes."

In less time than that Desboro arrived, and was piloted through the house and into the gallery by an active maid. At the end of one of the aisles lined by glass cases, the huge bulk of Cary Clydesdale loomed, his red face creased with his eternal grin.

"Hello, Desboro!" he called. "Come this way. I've one or two things here which will match any of yours at Silverwood, I think."

And, as Desboro approached, Clydesdale strode forward, offering him an enormous hand.

"Glad to see you," he grinned. "Congratulations on your marriage! Fine girl, that! I don't know any to match her." He waved a comprehensive arm. "All this stuff is her arrangement. Gad! But I had it rottenly displayed. And the collection was full of fakes, too. But she came floating in here one morning, and what she did to my junk-heap was a plenty, believe me!" And the huge fellow grinned and grinned until Desboro's sombre face altered and became less rigid.

A maid appeared with a table and a frosted cocktail shaker.

"You'll stop and lunch with us," said Clydesdale, filling two glasses. "Elena won't be very long. Don't know just what ails her, but she's nervous and run down. I guess it's the spring that's coming. Well, here's to all bad men; they need the boost and we don't. Prosit!"

He emptied his glass, set it aside, and from the open case beside him extracted an exquisite jar of the Kang-He, famille noire, done in five colours during the best period of the work.

"God knows I'm not proud," he said, "but can you beat it, Desboro?"

Desboro took the beautiful jar, and, carefully guarding the cover, turned it slowly. Birds, roses, pear blossoms, lilies, exquisite in composition and colour, passed under his troubled eyes. He caressed the paste mechanically.

"It is very fine," he said.

"Have you anything to beat it?"

"I don't think so."

"How are yours marked?" inquired the big man, taking the jar into his own enormous paws as lovingly as a Kadiak bear embraces her progeny. "This magnificent damn thing is a forgery. Look! Here's the mark of the Emperor Ching-hwa! Isn't that the limit? And the forgery is every bit as fine as the originals made before 1660 – only it happened to be the fashion in China in 1660 to collect Ching-hwa jars, so the maker of this piece deliberately forged an earlier date. Can you beat it?"

Desboro smiled as though he were listening; and Clydesdale gingerly replaced the jar and as carefully produced another.

"Ming!" he said. "Seventeenth century Manchu Tartar. I've some earlier Ming ranging between 1400 A.D. and 1600; but it can't touch this, Desboro. In fact, I think the eighteenth century Ming is even finer; and, as far as that goes, there is magnificent work being done now – although the occidental markets seldom see it. But – Ming for mine, every time! How do you feel about it, old top?"

Desboro looked at the vase. The soft beauty of the blue underglaze, the silvery thickets of magnolia bloom amid which a magnificent, pheasant-hued phœnix stepped daintily, meant at the moment absolutely nothing to him.

Nor did the poudre-bleu jar, triumphantly exhibited by the infatuated owner – a splendid specimen painted on the overglaze. And the weeds and shells and fiery golden fishes swimming had been dimmed a little by rubbing, so that the dusky aquatic depths loomed more convincingly.

"Clydesdale," said Desboro in a low voice, "I want to say one or two things to you. Another time it would give me pleasure to go over these porcelains with you. Do you mind my interrupting you?"

The big man grinned.

"Shoot," he said, replacing the "powder-blue" and carefully closing and locking the case. Then, dropping the keys into his pocket, he came over to where Desboro was seated beside the flimsy folding card-table, shook the cocktail shaker, offered to fill Desboro's glass, and at a gesture of refusal refilled his own.

"This won't do a thing to my appetite," he remarked genially. "Go ahead, Desboro." And he settled himself to listen, with occasional furtive, sidelong glances at his beloved porcelains.

Desboro said: "Clydesdale, you and I have known each other for a number of years. We haven't seen much of each other, except at the club, or meeting casually here and there. It merely happened so; if accident had thrown us together, the chances are that we would have liked each other – perhaps sought each other's company now and then – as much as men do in this haphazard town, anyway. Don't you think so?"

Clydesdale nodded.

"But we have been on perfectly friendly terms, always – with one exception," said Desboro.

"Yes – with one exception. But that is all over now – "

"I am afraid it isn't."

Clydesdale's grin remained unaltered when he said: "Well, what the hell – " and stopped abruptly.

"It's about that one exception of which I wish to speak," continued Desboro, after a moment's thought. "I don't want to say very much – just one or two things which I hope you already know and believe. And all I have to say is this, Clydesdale; whatever I may have been – whatever I may be now, that sort of treachery is not in me. I make no merit of it – it may be mere fastidiousness on my part which would prevent me from meditating treachery toward an acquaintance or a friend."

Clydesdale scrutinised him in silence.

"Never, since Elena was your wife, have I thought of her except as your wife."

Clydesdale only grinned.

"I want to be as clear as I can on this subject," continued the other, "because – and I must say it to you – there have been rumours concerning – me."

"And concerning her," said Clydesdale simply. "Don't blink matters, Desboro."

"No, I won't. The rumours have included her, of course. But what those rumours hint, Clydesdale, is an absolute lie. I blame myself in a measure; I should not have come here so often – should not have continued to see Elena so informally. I was in love with her once; I did ask her to marry me. She took you. Try to believe me, Clydesdale, when I tell you that though for me there did still linger about her that inexplicable charm which attracted me, which makes your wife so attractive to everybody, never for a moment did it occur to me not to acquiesce in the finality of her choice. Never did I meditate any wrong toward you or toward her. I did dangle. That was where I blame myself. Because where a better man might have done it uncriticised, I was, it seems, open to suspicion."

"You're no worse than the next," said Clydesdale in a deep growl. "Hell's bells! I don't blame you! And there would have been nothing to it anyway if Elena had not lost her head that night and bolted. I was rough with you all right; but you behaved handsomely; and I knew where the trouble was. Because, Desboro, my wife dislikes me."

"I thought – "

"No! Let's have the truth, damn it! That's the truth! My wife dislikes me. It may be that she is crazy about you; I don't know. But I am inclined to think – after these months of hell, Desboro – that she really is not crazy about you, or about any man; that it is only her dislike of me that possesses her to – to deal with me as she has done."

He was still grinning, but his heavy lower lip twitched, and suddenly the horror of it broke on Desboro – that this great, gross, red-faced creature was suffering in every atom of his unwieldy bulk; that the fixed grin was covering anguish; that the man's heart was breaking there, now, where he sat, the rictus mortis stamped on his quivering face.

"Clydesdale," he said, unsteadily, "I came here meaning to say only what I have said – that you never had anything to doubt in me – but that rumours still coupled my name with Elena's. That was all I meant to say. But I'll say more. I'm sorry that things are not going well with you and Elena. I would do anything in the world that lay within my power to help make yours a happy marriage. But – marriages all seem to go wrong. For years – witnessing what I have – what everybody among our sort of people cannot choose but witness – I made up my mind that marriage was no good."

He passed his hand slowly over his eyes; waited a moment, then:

"But I was wrong. That's what the matter is – that is how the matter lies between the sort of people we are and marriage. It is we who are wrong; there's nothing wrong about marriage, absolutely nothing. Only many of us are not fit for it. And some of us take it as a preventive, as a moral medicine – as though anybody could endure an eternal dosing! And some of us seek it as a refuge – a refuge from every ill, every discomfort, every annoyance and apprehension that assails the human race – as though the institution of marriage were a vast and fortified storehouse in which everything we have ever lacked and desired were lying about loose for us to pick up and pocket."

He bent forward across the table and began to play absently with his empty glass.

"Marriage is all right," he said. "But only those fit to enter possess the keys to the magic institution. And they find there what they expected. The rest of us jimmy our way in, and find ourselves in an empty mansion, Clydesdale."