Ainslee's Magazine, February 1913 — page 155: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE BEAST frail ribs, you could not help agreeing with the archduke, the colonel, and myself, that plain, little Miss Munt was worth all the rest of the bejeweled and décolleted trash boiled into one. The archduke attracted by Mrs. Mawlyn? “Poof!” he used to exclaim with a snort, which expressed his opinion of her briefly, Poof! His excellency was right. That was precisely what Mrs. Mawlyn amounted to Poof! That svelte blond doll, with the eyes of an odalisque and the heart of a sorceress. Another week has passed, and Cyril Reeves has become more her abject slave than ever. His flirtation, which began with such irresponsible ease, has assumed a colossal importance, the woman has blotted out all else in his mind, and the very fact that she is practically ostracized now by the others increases his devotion. Mawlyn, from all accounts, is worse, and is rarely seen downstairs; and it is a damnable ex- hibition of brutal selfishness to see his own wife, whose duty it is to be con- stantly at his bedside, spending hours in the most secluded corners of the salon with Cyril Reeves, crocheting or winding yards of pink worsted about his uplifted thumbs, their silence of per- fect understanding broken now and then, by whispered words of endear- ment; and yet there’s that little thor- oughbred of ours, Miss Munt, stopping often to chat with her, full of sincere solicitude for Mawlyn, and asking re- peatedly if she can do anything for him; and, as the colonel said, Mawlyn: would not be her first patient, for it seems Miss Munt has already distinguished herself as nurse during the Boer War. Mrs. Mawlyn ought to go down on her knees: to her, since the little old maid is almost without exception the only woman who speaks to her now. Torture for Cyril Reeves, you may well imagine, these kindly interruptions of Miss Munt, but anything which is tor- ture to the boy now I can see amuses Mrs. Mawlyn, just as I believe she en- joys abandoning Mawlyn in pain. Ce) 145 I have pictured him more than once, helpless, depending solely on a bell that sometimes is answered and sometimes is not. Feeling right and left for every little attention. Ringing, calling, often in agony, hammering the floor with his stick to attract attention, and, worse, far worse, than all this, I am firmly con- vinced he loves the woman—loves her desperately—hopelessly. Owing to Cy- ril Reeves, he sees his wife but at brief, rare intervals. The long hours that in- tervene when the Beast is absent must be far more terrible to endure than his spasms of pain. The studied cruelty of some women is beyond belief. At first young Reeves lunched and dined alone at a small table in the big dining room, from whose vantage point beneath the candle shades and over the roses, he saw, I am told, Mrs. Mawlyn for the first time. Now that Mawlyn rarely comes to the dining room, Reeves and Mrs. Mawlyn actually lunch and dine together. In France it is enough to create an open scandal, innocent, no doubt, as they are. To-night, to our intense surprise, Mawlyn made his appearance for the first time among our small circle of habitués, who prefer the sofaed nook under the main stairs as a cozy corner nightly for our whiskies and sodas. =I was chatting there to-night, after din- ner, with the good, old admiral, who, in his difficulty of trying to tell me what it really felt like to be in action and un- der fire, summed it up by blurting out: “God bless me! It’s—it’s—like other days—only there’s more smoke, and fire, and noise, d’ye see? And some of us old fellers on the bridge have to duck a bit now and then to keep our heads on.” In the laughter that followed from the archduke, the colonel, and myself, my eyes became riveted on the figure of a man in a tuxedo—a frail figure with bent shoulders, who was creeping down the stairs step by step, his mouth and jaw set firmly under a sandy mustache, his keen eyes for an instant half closed as if in pain. The colonel sprang to his feet. CONNIE NOOK (C@