Overcome again!
Cyril understood in a moment. He knew now what Emmie's trouble had been; and a throb of anger passed through him. Why had she not told all before he spoke? He did not step forward or show himself. Better to leave the poor wife to manage her hard task alone, than to appear as spectator of her shame.
Happily, the drawing-room door had made no noise as it opened, and Cyril was well in the shade. He stood perfectly still, and the two disappeared within the study—Captain Lucas giving another great lurch, then breaking into a rollicking fragment of song. They did not see Cyril. But the sense of sick disgust which swept over him can hardly be described. That his future father-in-law!
Cyril fled from the house, as Emmie had fled from him. His rapid escape can be told in no other words. He felt that he could not breathe till he was outside in the street. Then, dark and dull and wintry as it was, he started off at a furious pace through Dutton, along the nearest country road, and away to the marshlands, where as a boy he had loved to wander with Jean.
The marshes were hardly what anybody in his sober senses would have chosen for a January stroll after sundown; but Cyril could scarcely be termed in his sober senses just then. From quiet satisfaction and complacent pleasure in himself and Emmie, he had leaped at one bound, by an instantaneous transition, into a very tumult of disordered feeling and tempestuous thought.
He had done it now!—And done it himself! Nobody else had brought him into this coil. Nobody could get him out of it!
Why needed he to be so startled by the sight? Had he not known the whole before? Had he not pitied the man's weakness, heartily sympathising with the wife and child? Had not his first wish been, in asking Emmie, to save her from the pressure of that family sorrow? All the while, he had known that this might happen again—that any day Captain Lucas might be vanquished.
He had known, but he had not realised. Kind friendliness and sympathy from him to them had been pleasant to give. But—he, Sir Cyril Devereux, to have for father-in-law a man who might at any time drown his senses in drink from sheer infirmity of purpose! His father-in-law to be seen perhaps rolling helplessly through Dutton, the finger of scorn pointed at him from every side! Cyril's benevolence snapped under the pull of this test.
If he loved Emmie—there lay the balancing-pull. Like a half drowned man catching at a straw, as he strode over the muddy marshland, Cyril turned to the thought of Emmie's little face, soft and dark, rosy and childlike, as it had haunted him of late.
Strange! He could not so much as see it! Emmie's face refused to rise at his bidding. Instead, Jean's pale and even features came between, the calm eyes looking at him reproachfully.