CHAPTER XXVII.
Brancepeth, like Hurstmanceaux, was sincerely unhappy through her, for a woman whom men love much, despite her faults and caprices, has an almost unlimited power of worrying and of torturing their less complex and more kindly natures. The breaking of a habit is always painful, and he had an affectionate soul. To have the door of Stanhope Street shut in his face hurt him as it hurts a kind-hearted St. Bernard dog to be shut out of an accustomed house and left to pine on the area pavement.
She swept past him in her carriage with a distant bow which cut him to the quick. Pride kept him from calling at her residence, but he could not help haunting the street to see the little black forms and golden heads of the children trotting off on their noonday walk, or Jack, in solitary manhood, riding with his groom.
There was no one to whom he could appeal.
Her sister, Carrie Wisbeach, the only one of her family who had ever liked him, had been three months away on a yachting journey round the world; and he felt, without ever hearing it said, that her people and her set approved the conduct of the Duchess of Otterbourne in having broken with him; they approved her more than if she had married him.
“Mammy’s took away my Punch, Harry—the beautiful Punch you giv’d me,” said Jack, in woebegone accents; it had been a real Punch, show box, puppets, a Toby that squeaked, and a set of pandean pipes—a delicious toy with which Jack could make believe to be “the man in the street” to his great ecstasy.
“She says I’m a little beast ’cos I have everythin’. What have I got? She’s even tooked away the Punch. I haven’t got anything,” said the poor little man with tragic intensity.
“Taken away the Punch? Oh, lord! That is real mean,” said Brancepeth, with his face growing very dark. “Merely because I gave it you? What devils women are!”
“I always telled you, Harry,” said Jack solemnly. “I always telled you that mammy could be nasty. You’ve set her back up, that’s what you’ve done.”
Jack was sitting astride of an Exmoor pony with his left hand resting on the crupper, and his face turned full on his friend in melancholy reproach. Harry was on the pedestrians’ side of the rails and had stopped the rider under a tree in full fresh leaf. This was the only way now in which he could see the children, when they were out walking or riding, and he managed to waylay them. The nursery doors were closed against him, and he felt his exile as bitterly as the cast-out Peri of the poem.