"What's that for?" she said disdainfully.
"Some Canadian creditors of mine got wind of me—worse luck. I had to change my quarters, and drop the old name—for a bit. However—what's in a name?" He laughed, and held out his hand.
"Going to shake hands, Edie? You used to be awfully fond of me, when you were small."
She stood, apparently unmoved, her hands hanging. The pathetic note had been tried on her too often.
"Good-night, Roger. Nannie will show you out."
The door closed on him, and Lady Winton dropped on a sofa by the fire, her face showing white and middle-aged in the firelight. She was just an ordinary woman, only with a stronger will than most; and as an ordinary woman, amid all her anger and fear, she was not wholly proof against such a spectacle as that now presented by her once favourite brother. It was not his words that affected her—but a hundred little personal facts which every time she saw him burnt a little more deeply into her consciousness the irreparableness of his personal ruin—physical and moral. Idleness, drink, disease—the loss of shame, of self-respect, of manners—the sense of something vital gone for ever—all these fatal things stared out upon her, from his slippery emaciated face, his borrowed clothes, his bullying voice—the scent on him of the mews in which he lived!
She covered her face with her hands and cried a little. She could remember when he was the darling and pride of the family—especially of his father. How had it happened? He had said to her once, "There must have been a black drop somewhere in our forbears, Edie. It has reappeared in me. We are none of us responsible, my dear, for our precious selves. I may be a sinner and a loafer—but that benevolent Almighty of yours made me."
That was wicked stuff, of course; but there had been a twist in him from the beginning. Had she done her best for him? There were times when her conscience pricked her.
The clock struck seven. The sound brought her to her feet. She must go and dress. Richard would be home directly, and they were dining out, to meet a distinguished General, in London for a few days' leave from the front. Dick must, of course, know nothing of Roger's visit; and she must hurriedly go and look up the distinguished General's career in case she had to sit next him. Vehemently she put the preceding hour out of her mind. The dinner-party to which she was going flattered her vanity. It turned her cold to think that Roger might some day do something which would damage that "position" which she had built up for herself and her husband, by ten years' careful piloting of their joint lives. She knew she was called a "climber." She knew also that she had "climbed" successfully, and that it was Roger's knowledge of the fact, combined with a horrid recklessness which seemed to be growing in him, that made the danger of the situation.
Meanwhile Delane stepped out into the fog, which, however, was lifting a little. He made his way down into Piccadilly, which was crowded with folk, men and women hurrying home from their offices, and besieging the omnibuses—with hundreds of soldiers too, most of them with a girl beside them, and smart young officers of every rank and service—while the whole scene breathed an animation and excitement, which meant a common consciousness, in the crowd, of great happenings. All along the street were men with newspapers, showing the headlines to passers-by. "President Wilson's answer to the German appeal expected to-morrow." "The British entry into Lille."