He was frightfully up against it. Till now, at least, he had been able to imagine that Dudley Leicester had at least a devouring passion for, a quenchless thirst to protect, his wife. It had been a passion so great and commencing so early that Grimshaw could claim really only half the credit of having made the match. Indeed, his efforts had been limited to such influence as he had been able to bring to bear upon Pauline’s mother, to rather long conversations in which he had pointed out how precarious, Mrs. Lucas being dead, would be Pauline’s lot in life. And he had told her at last that he himself was irretrievably pledged, both by honour and by passion, to Katya Lascarides. It was on the subsequent day that Pauline had accepted her dogged adorer.
His passion for Katya Lascarides! He hadn’t till that moment had any doubt about it. But by then he knew it was gone; it was dead, and in place of a passion he felt only remorse. And his longing to be perpetually with Pauline Leicester—as he had told Ellida Langham—to watch her going through all her life with her perpetual tender smile, dancing, as it were, a gentle and infantile measure; this, too, he couldn’t doubt. Acute waves of emotion went through him at the thought of her—waves of emotion so acute that they communicated themselves to his physical being, so that it was as if the thought of Katya Lascarides stabbed his heart, whilst the thought of Pauline Leicester made his hands toss beneath the sheets. For, looking at the matter formally, and, as he thought, dispassionately, it had seemed to him that his plain duty was to wait for Katya Lascarides, and to give Pauline as good a time as he could. That Pauline would have this with Dudley Leicester he hadn’t had till the moment of the meeting in Regent Street the ghost of a doubt, but now ...
He said: “Good God!” for he was thinking that only the Deity—if even He—could achieve the impossible, could undo what was done, could let him watch over Pauline, which was the extent of the possession of her that he thought he desired, and wait for Katya, which also was, perhaps, all that he had ever desired to do. The intolerable hours ticked on. The light shone down on him beside the bed. At the foot Peter slept, coiled up and motionless. At the head the telephone instrument, like a gleaming metal flower, with its nickel corolla and black bell, shone with reflected light. He was accustomed on mornings when he felt he needed a rest to talk to his friends from time to time, and suddenly his whole body stirred in bed. The whites of his eyes gleamed below the dark irises, his white teeth showed, and as he clasped the instrument to him he appeared, as it were, a Shylock who clutched to his breast his knife and demanded of the universe his right to the peace of mind that knowledge at least was to give him.
He must know; if he was to defend Pauline, to watch over her, to brood over her, to protect her, he must know what was going on. This passionate desire swept over him like a flood. There remained nothing else in the world. He rang up the hotel which, tall, white, and cold, rises close by where he had seen Etta Stackpole spring from the cab. He rang up several houses known to him, and, finally, with a sort of panic in his eyes he asked for Lady Hudson’s number. The little dog, aroused by his motions and his voice, leapt on to the bed, and pattering up, gazed wistfully at his face. He reached out his tongue to afford what consolation he could to the master, whom he knew to be perturbed, grieved, and in need of consolation, and just before the tinny sound of a voice reached Grimshaw’s ears Grimshaw said, his lips close to the mouthpiece, “Get down.” And when, after he had uttered the words, “Isn’t that Dudley Leicester speaking?” there was the click of the instrument being rung off, Robert Grimshaw said to himself grimly, “At any rate, they’ll know who it was that rung them up.”
But Dudley Leicester hadn’t known; he was too stupid, and the tinny sound of the instrument had destroyed the resemblance of any human voice.
Thus, sitting before Pauline Leicester in her drawing-room, did Robert Grimshaw review his impressions. And, looking back on the whole affair, it seemed to present himself to him in those terms of strong light, of the unreal sound of voices on the telephone, and of pain, of unceasing pain that had never “let up” at any rate from the moment when, having come up from the country with Katya’s kisses still upon his lips, he had found Pauline in his dining-room, and had heard that Dudley Leicester didn’t know.
He remained seated, staring, brooding at the carpet just before Pauline’s feet, and suddenly she said: “Oh, Robert, what did you do it for?”
He rose up suddenly and stood over her, and when he held both her small hands between his own, “You’d better,” he said—“it’ll be better for both you and me—put upon it the construction that shows the deepest concern for you.”
And suddenly from behind their backs came the voice of Katya Lascarides.
“Well,” she said, “Robert knows everything. Who is the man that rang up 4,259 Mayfair?”