Читать книгу The Missing Angel (Sci-Fi Novel) - Erle Cox - Страница 11

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Jones turned to his work with resolution, but again and again he found his thoughts wandering. Finally, he pushed his papers aside impatiently and, with his elbows on his table and his head in his hands, he surrendered to the mood of the moment. As moods go, it was a very unchristian frame of mind in which he found himself.

He knew Amy too well to flatter himself that the skirmish of the morning could be magnified into a decisive battle. In his mind he pictured her planning a counterattack in reply to his success. Through his mind ran a plan of forcing her into a position in which she would be compelled to accept a judicial separation. It was his one hope for a peaceful life. But, as the plan took shape, he realised that her tactics would be to throw the odium of the legal process on him.

His only means of defence would be to use the weapons that Amy would use without compunction—the stiletto and poisonous gas. Why should he not use them? Why not? Ethically, the suggestion might be untenable, but makers of ethics were not married to Amy.

Then his mind drifted off to the scene he had witnessed an hour earlier. It surprised him a little to think that, instead of being righteously wrathful against Brewer, his feelings were akin to envy. He had accepted Miss Brand's intercession as an easy way out of a situation in which he felt unsure of himself. After all, he thought, was he justified in judging Brewer, or any, man, by codes that were his mother's and Amy's?

He remembered his father's self-effacement. Would he follow his example and remain subservient under the domination of—a tongue? Yes, that was all it was a tongue! He, Tydvil Jones, head of C. B. & D., with an income of fifty thousand pounds a year, whom all his peers envied for his possessions! Yet, he realised that not all his wealth nor all his power had given him as much of liberty as any one of the men who did him service.

The thought that the two women who might have helped him were the ones who had led him under false standards, was very bitter.

Billy Brewer would have been astounded had he known how much of his private life was an open book to Tydvil Jones. More than once he had been called on to "the carpet." He had come each time with such an airy grace of gracelessness, that it disarmed justice. Jones knew that whatever his peccadilloes, he had never let them interfere with his work. While he did not feel inclined to copy Billy in manner or morals, Jones recognised that Billy knew more of life and living than an army corps of Tydvil Joneses.

"Was it," Tydvil asked himself, "such a sin to kiss a pretty girl?" He, himself, had never kissed anyone but Amy; and kissing Amy was rather less stimulating than drinking iced water in winter. Apparently, despite her active indignation, Geraldine Brand did not consider it a capital offence, or she would not have interceded on behalf of the culprit. True, Geraldine had blushed, but he had no recollection of seeing Amy blush even as a bride.

The memory of his courtship came back. His courtship! The farce of it! He had to thank his mother for that. He remembered how, a few days before his marriage, his mother had told him, that if ever there were a saint, Amy was one. Saints! These saints had stolen his boyhood and his youth. These saints had bound him hand and foot. "If these be saints," he muttered aloud, "may Satan himself come and free me from their works." He bowed his head forward on his hands until it rested on his blotting pad.