“Do you remember my surprise when you asked Dick Mayne to the house?”
It was true,—that, and more than that. He winced as he thought of all that had been at least tacitly included in his invitation to the man whose presence he now resented. He looked back upon it as one recalls a fit of half-remembered delirium.
How madly, in those days, he had loved Philippa! How she had filled for him heaven and earth, so that he would have risked anything, stooped to any baseness, to make her as fully his as he longed to make her! And now? He scarcely knew whether he loved her at all. He had been enraged at the sight of Nevern, certainly, but was it because he loved her? Wasn’t it rather blind resentment against the suspicion of betrayal, by Philippa at least, since Cecily no longer cared; a mad determination not to be abandoned, cast off by both women? He felt like a gambler who always loses, while his fellow-gamblers have all the luck. Lady Wilmot’s chatter beat through his brain incessantly. “Mayne, of course.” So people were really talking! He raged to know with how much truth. Then came the remembrance of her incessant harping upon his wife’s success, and its effect upon his vanity. Shame at his own lack of generosity struggled in vain with the knowledge that Lady Wilmot was right. With whatever injustice, with whatever lack of generosity, he did resent it, even though the resentment was touched with admiration and an odd sort of pride. Robert had never achieved self-analysis quite so free from self-deception, as during that short walk under the dreaming trees.
The keeper on the other side of the Park was waiting to shut the gate as he reached Hyde Park Corner, and a glance at the clock showed him that it wanted a minute to twelve. Mechanically, seeing nothing, he walked down Grosvenor Road, and on into Victoria Street, where, though the omnibuses had ceased to run, cabs still wandered, or passed one another at full speed, while an occasional motor-car shot amongst them. As he turned out of the street into the stillness of Carlisle Place, his eyes fell upon the Cathedral tower, majestic against the night sky sown with stars. Like Cecily, he felt its quietude, but only as something which accentuated the restless, uneasy tumult of his thoughts. Upstairs, when he reached the flat, the light was burning in the hall. Cecily had not returned. He felt vaguely relieved as he went straight to his room and shut the door.
CHAPTER XVIII
BY the next morning Robert had determined to leave town for a week or two, and take a holiday. He felt ill and nervous; his work was suffering; he would take advantage of a standing invitation from some friends at Maidenhead. A fortnight’s idling on the river would do him no harm, and relieve him from the necessity of meeting either his wife or Philippa. Quite early, he despatched two telegrams, and leaving a note for Cecily, he was on his way to Paddington before eleven o’clock. Cecily received the curt intimation of his departure with a sense of great relief. She was bitterly angry. Through a sleepless night she had followed again and again, with growing contempt, all the links in the chain of events which had preceded Robert’s outburst of the previous evening. Her anger burned the more fiercely with the memory of the impulse of tenderness which her husband’s words had quenched. She had thought herself so indifferent, she had so trained herself to forget, to ignore him, that it was with a sort of wonder she had felt her heart stirred lately by the sight of his obvious depression. Often she had longed to try to comfort him, and had found herself scornfully wondering what Philippa was about, to be unable to render this first aid to the wounded. She had been by no means displeased to find that Philippa did not understand him.
Now all her pity for him was forgotten in indignation. All night she had been anticipating their meeting and the inevitable renewal of their broken conversation. What would be its result? And now, for the present at least, she might leave that consideration. Rose Summers was coming for a fortnight’s visit. There was comfort in the thought that she should have her to herself.
“Well, lioness!” was her friend’s greeting when she arrived at the well-chosen tea-hour. She kissed Cecily and held her at arm’s length, nodding approval. “A very well-favored animal,” she remarked. “I congratulate you, my dear.”
Cecily laughed. “I’ve taken great pains with the grooming,” she said. “Do you groom lionesses, by the way?”