There was ever so slight an emphasis on the last few words, and David flashed into sudden anger.
“Mind your own business, and be damned to you, Skeffington,” he cried.
Tom Skeffington shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, certainly,” he said, and made haste to be gone.
Blake in this mood was quite impracticable. He had no mind for a scene.
David sat on, with a tumbler at his elbow. So they wanted him out of the way. That was the third person who had told him he needed a change—the third in one week. Edward was one, and old Dr. Bull, and now Skeffington. Yes, of course, Skeffington would like him out of the way, so as to get all the practice into his own hands. Edward too. Was it this morning, or yesterday morning, that Edward had asked him when he was going to take a holiday? Now he came to think of it, it was yesterday morning. And he supposed that Edward wanted him out of the way too. Perhaps he went too often to Edward’s house. David began to get angry. Edward was an ungrateful hound. “Damned ungrateful,” said David’s muddled brain. The idea of going to see Mary began to present itself to him. If Edward did not like it, Edward could lump it. He had been told to come whenever he liked. Very well, he liked now. Why shouldn’t he?
He got up and went out into the cold. Then, when he was half-way up the High Street he remembered that Edward had gone away for a couple of days. It occurred to him as a very agreeable circumstance. Mary would be alone, and they would have a pleasant, friendly time together. Mary would sit in the rosy light and play to him, not to Edward, and sing in that small sweet voice of hers—not to Edward, but to him.
It was a cold, crisp night, and the frosty air heightened the effect of the stimulant which he had taken. He had left his own house flushed, irritable, and warm, but he arrived at the Mottisfonts’ as unmistakably drunk as a man may be who is still upon his legs.
He brushed past Markham in the hall before she had time to do more than notice that his manner was rather odd, and she called after him that Mrs. Mottisfont was in the drawing-room.
David went up the stairs walking quite steadily, but his brain, under the influence of one idea, appeared to work in a manner entirely divorced from any volition of his.