"I never did," said Soames. "Where's your seat? I shall go to mine. Fleur may be back there."
Having seen Winifred to her seat, he regained his own, conscious of small, white, distant figures running, the click of the bat, the cheers and counter-cheers. No Fleur, and no Annette! You could expect nothing of women nowadays! They had the vote. They were "emancipated," and much good it was doing them. So Winifred would go back, would she, and put up with Dartie all over again? To have the past once more—to be sitting here as he had sat in '83 and '84, before he was certain that his marriage with Irene had gone all wrong, before her antagonism had become so glaring that with the best will in the world he could not overlook it. The sight of her with that fellow had brought all memory back. Even now he could not understand why she had been so impracticable. She could love other men; she had it in her! To himself, the one person she ought to have loved, she had chosen to refuse her heart. It seemed to him, fantastically, as he looked back, that all this modern relaxation of marriage—though its forms and laws were the same as when he married her—that all this modern looseness had come out of her revolt; it seemed to him, fantastically, that she had started it, till all decent ownership of anything had gone, or was on the point of going. All came from her! And now—a pretty state of things! Homes! How could you have them without mutual ownership? Not that he had ever had a real home! But had that been his fault? He had done his best. And his reward—those two sitting in that Stand! And this affair of Fleur's!
And overcome by loneliness he thought: 'Shan't wait any longer! They must find their own way back to the hotel—if they mean to come!' Hailing a cab outside the ground, he said:
"Drive me to the Bayswater Road." His old aunts had never failed him. To them he had meant an everwelcome visitor. Though they were gone, there, still, was Timothy!
Smither was standing in the open doorway.
"Mr. Soames! I was just taking the air. Cook will be so pleased."
"How is Mr. Timothy?"
"Not himself at all these last few days, sir; he's been talking a great deal. Only this morning he was saying: 'My brother James, he's getting old.' His mind wanders, Mr. Soames, and then he will talk of them. He troubles about their investments. The other day he said: 'There's my brother Jolyon won't look at Consols'—he seemed quite down about it. Come in, Mr. Soames, come in! It's such a pleasant change!"
"Well," said Soames, "just for a few minutes."
"No," murmured Smither in the hall, where the air had the singular freshness of the outside day, "we haven't been very satisfied with him, not all this week. He's always been one to leave a titbit to the end; but ever since Monday he's been eating it first. If you notice a dog, Mr. Soames, at its dinner, it eats the meat first. We've always thought it such a good sign of Mr. Timothy at his age to leave it to the last, but now he seems to have lost all his self-control; and, of course, it makes him leave the rest. The doctor doesn't make anything of it, but"—Smither shook her head—"he seems to think he's got to eat it first, in case he shouldn't get to it. That and his talking makes us anxious."