“He was much more amusing than some people who can,” retorted Mrs. Korner.
“It is possible, my dear Aimee,” her husband pointed out to her, “for a man to be amusing without being drunk; also for a man to be drunk without – ”
“Oh, a man is all the better,” declared Mrs. Korner, “for letting himself go occasionally.”
“My dear – ”
“You, Christopher, would be all the better for letting yourself go – occasionally.”
“I wish,” said Mr. Korner, as he passed his empty cup, “you would not say things you do not mean. Anyone hearing you – ”
“If there’s one thing makes me more angry than another,” said Mrs. Korner, “it is being told I say things that I do not mean.”
“Why say them then?” suggested Mr. Korner.
“I don’t. I do – I mean I do mean them,” explained Mrs. Korner.
“You can hardly mean, my dear,” persisted her husband, “that you really think I should be all the better for getting drunk – even occasionally.”
“I didn’t say drunk; I said ‘going it.’”
“But I do ‘go it’ in moderation,” pleaded Mr. Korner, “‘Moderation in all things,’ that is my motto.”
“I know it,” returned Mrs. Korner.
“A little of everything and nothing – ” this time Mr. Korner interrupted himself. “I fear,” said Mr. Korner, rising, “we must postpone the further discussion of this interesting topic. If you would not mind stepping out with me into the passage, dear, there are one or two little matters connected with the house – ”
Host and hostess squeezed past the visitor and closed the door behind them. The visitor continued eating.
“I do mean it,” repeated Mrs. Korner, for the third time, reseating herself a minute later at the table. “I would give anything – anything,” reiterated the lady recklessly, “to see Christopher more like the ordinary sort of man.”
“But he has always been the sort – the sort of man he is,” her bosom friend reminded her.
“Oh, during the engagement, of course, one expects a man to be perfect. I didn’t think he was going to keep it up.”
“He seems to me,” said Miss Greene, “a dear, good fellow. You are one of those people who never know when they are well off.”
“I know he is a good fellow,” agreed Mrs. Korner, “and I am very fond of him. It is just because I am fond of him that I hate feeling ashamed of him. I want him to be a manly man, to do the things that other men do.”
“Do all the ordinary sort of men swear and get occasionally drunk?”
“Of course they do,” asserted Mrs. Korner, in a tone of authority. “One does not want a man to be a milksop.”
“Have you ever seen a drunken man?” inquired the bosom friend, who was nibbling sugar.
“Heaps,” replied Mrs. Korner, who was sucking marmalade off her fingers.
By which Mrs. Korner meant that some half a dozen times in her life she had visited the play, choosing by preference the lighter form of British drama. The first time she witnessed the real thing, which happened just precisely a month later, long after the conversation here recorded had been forgotten by the parties most concerned, no one could have been more utterly astonished than was Mrs. Korner.
How it came about Mr. Korner was never able to fully satisfy himself. Mr. Korner was not the type that serves the purpose of the temperance lecturer. His “first glass” he had drunk more years ago than he could recollect, and since had tasted the varied contents of many others. But never before had Mr. Korner exceeded, nor been tempted to exceed, the limits of his favourite virtue, moderation.
“We had one bottle of claret between us,” Mr. Korner would often recall to his mind, “of which he drank the greater part. And then he brought out the little green flask. He said it was made from pears – that in Peru they kept it specially for Children’s parties. Of course, that may have been his joke; but in any case I cannot see how just one glass – I wonder could I have taken more than one glass while he was talking.” It was a point that worried Mr. Korner.
The “he” who had talked, possibly, to such bad effect was a distant cousin of Mr. Korner’s, one Bill Damon, chief mate of the steamship La Fortuna. Until their chance meeting that afternoon in Leadenhall Street, they had not seen each other since they were boys together. The Fortuna was leaving St. Katherine’s Docks early the next morning bound for South America, and it might be years before they met again. As Mr. Damon pointed out, Fate, by thus throwing them into each other’s arms, clearly intended they should have a cosy dinner together that very evening in the captain’s cabin of the Fortuna.
Mr. Korner, returning to the office, despatched to Ravenscourt Park an express letter, announcing the strange news that he might not be home that evening much before ten, and at half-past six, for the first time since his marriage, directed his steps away from home and Mrs. Korner.