‘I have, anyway. I’ve been an infernal cad—I tell you I have,’ he said, turning on his mother. ‘It’s no good your telling me I haven’t—I have.’
And he drove off, leaving her at the gate pressing her cold hands together, and staring after him with wide-open eyes.
But his coming back was worse than his going. It was after six before he got home, tired and dusty, at the fag end of the terrible party.
Mrs. Luke hadn’t seen how not to have the party, and had told her friends—ah, how much she shrank from them—when they trooped in punctually at half-past four, eager to see Jocelyn’s bride, that her daughter-in-law very unfortunately had had to go that morning to her father, who had suddenly fallen ill.
‘An old man,’ said poor Mrs. Luke—after dreary and painful thought she had come to the conclusion that if she said it was Sally who had fallen ill, Hammond would be sure sooner or later to give her away,—‘an old man, I’m afraid, and liable to—liable to——’
What was he liable to? Mrs. Luke’s brain wouldn’t work. Her lips, forced into the continual smile of the hostess, trembled. She wanted to cry. How badly, how badly she wanted just to sit down in a corner alone, and cry.
Then Jocelyn came back. There were still the Walkers there, and Miss Cartwright, and old Mrs. Pugh. Why wouldn’t they go? Why did they hang on, and hang on, and never, never go?
They all heard the car. They all knew it was his, because it made so much more noise than anybody else’s, and they all knew, because Mrs. Luke had told them, that he had motored his wife himself that morning to her sick father.
‘Ah. Now we shall have the bulletin,’ said the Canon cheerfully; for the illness, probably slight, of an unknown young lady’s almost certainly inglorious father couldn’t be regarded, he felt, as an occasion for serious gloom. ‘No doubt it is a good one, and Jocelyn has been able to bring his wife back with him.’
‘I’ll go and see,’ said Mrs. Luke, getting up quickly, and almost running out of the room.