"Which is why she lets him push off?" said George. "I see. And I suppose, if they'd hated one another like poison, they'd have been married by now. You know, this is too easy."
"Ah," said Betty, with a dazzling smile, "but then, you see, women adore irregularity."
Her husband, who was in the act of drinking, choked with emotion.
That the household was once more without a footman was a hard fact. Major Anthony Lyveden, D.S.O., was gone. His period of service at The Shrubbery had come to an abrupt end upon the previous day. His notice had not expired, but when he received an offer which was conditional upon his immediate departure from Hawthorne, he had laid the facts before Mr. Bumble and left two days later. All efforts to persuade him to leave an address were unavailing. This was a pity, for, ten minutes after he and Patch had left for the station, there had arrived for him a letter from a firm of solicitors that numbered many distinguished clients, and The Honourable Mr. Justice Molehill among them.
Since Anthony will never read that letter, neither will we. We will leave it where it is now, where it will lie, I dare say, until the crack of doom—behind the overmantel in the servants' parlour, gentlemen, with its back to the wall.
Anthony, then, was gone, and Patch with him. The Judge had been gone some time. Mr. Morgan also had left the neighbourhood, and was earning good money in the West End by the simple expedient of wearing the Mons medal, to which, never having seen "service," he was not entitled, and perambulating the gutters of South Kensington with a child in his arms. The child was heavy and cost him sixpence a day, but, as an incentive to charity, it left the rendering of "Abide with Me," upon which Mr. Morgan had previously relied, simply nowhere.
Lady Touchstone and Valerie were still at Bell Hammer. More than once the latter had revived her suggestion of a visit to the South of France. Each time Valerie had applauded the idea and then promptly switched the conversation on to another topic…. Women understand women, and with a sigh her aunt resigned herself to the prospect of a winter in Hampshire. Return to Town she would not. London was not what it had been, and the vanities of the metropolis fell dismally short of the old pre-War standard. You were robbed, too, openly, wherever you went. With tears in their eyes, shopkeepers offered you stones instead of bread, and charged you for fishes. Besides, unemployment was booming, routs were frequent, rioting was in the air…. Lady Touchstone decided that, if she was not to snuff the zephyrs of Nice, the smell of the woods of Bell Hammer was good enough for her nostrils.
If Lyveden had lost weight, Miss French had gained none. The blow that had fallen all but a month ago had hit her as hard as him. Yet, of the two, her plight was less evil. Each of them had dropped in their tracks, which is to say that, while Lyveden had fallen upon the rough ground of bare existence. Miss French had fallen into the lap of luxury.
I am prepared to be told that this should have made no difference—that creature comforts cannot minister to a broken heart. But, sirs, the flesh and the spirit are thicker than that. The iron must have entered uncommon deep into the soul for the body no longer to care whether the bath-water run hot or cold.
For all that, the girl was desperately unhappy. That she should have been bracketed with Anne was bad enough; that they should have been wooed in the same nest, to say the least, smacked more of business than of love: that it was her nest, of which, of her love, she had made the man free, was infamous. It was such treatment as she would not have expected at the hands of a counter-jumper—a deserter—a satyr. Possibly a satyr in a weak moment might have fallen so low. But Anthony was not a satyr. And deserters are not, as a rule, recommended for the D.S.O. To suggest that he was a counter-jumper was equally ridiculous. He was a most attractive gallant gentleman. This made his behaviour infinitely more discreditable. It was a sordid, demoralizing business….