Craven stood for a moment without speaking. He was amazed, and felt as if he had received a blow. Finally, he said:
“Do you think she will be long away?”
“Her ladyship has gone for some time, sir, I believe.”
The young man’s face, firm, with rosy cheeks and shallow, blue eyes, was strangely inexpressive. Craven hesitated, then said:
“Do you know where her ladyship has gone? I—I wish to write a note to her.”
“I believe it’s some place near Monte Carlo, sir. Her ladyship gave orders that no letters were to be forwarded for the present.”
“Thank you.”
Craven turned away and walked slowly towards Mayfair. He felt startled and hurt, even angry. So this was friendship! And he had been foolish enough to think that Lady Sellingworth was beginning to value his company, that she was a lonely woman, and that perhaps his visits, his sympathy, meant something, even a great deal to her. What a young fool he had been! And what a humbug she must be! Suddenly London seemed empty. He remembered the coldness in the wording of the note she had sent him saying that she could not see him the day after the theatre party. She had put forward no excuse, no explanation. What had happened? He felt that something must have happened which had changed her feeling towards him. For though he told himself that she must be a humbug, he did not really feel that she was one. Perhaps she was angry with him, and that was why she had not chosen to tell him that she was going abroad before she started. But what reason had he given her for anger? Mentally he reviewed the events of their last evening together. It had been quite a gay evening. Nothing disagreeable had happened unless—Lady Wrackley and Mrs. Ackroyde came to his mind. He saw them before him with their observant, experienced eyes, their smiling, satirical lips. They had made him secretly uncomfortable. He had felt undressed when he was with them, and had realized that they knew of and were probably amused by his friendship for Lady Sellingworth. And he had hated their knowledge. Perhaps she had hated it too, although she had not shown a trace of discomfort. Or, perhaps, she had disliked his manner with Miss Van Tuyn, assumed to hide his own sensitiveness. And at that moment he thought of his intercourse with Miss Van Tuyn with exaggeration. It was possible that he had acted badly, had been blatant. But anyhow Lady Sellingworth had been very unkind. She ought to have told him that she was going abroad, to have let him see her before she went.
He felt that this short episode in his life was quite over. It had ended abruptly, undramatically. It had seemed to mean a good deal, and it had really meant nothing. What a boy he had been through it all! His cheeks burned at the thought. And he had prided himself on being a thorough man of the world. Evidently, despite his knowledge of life, his Foreign Office training, his experience of war—he had been a soldier for two years—he was really something of a simpleton. He had “given himself away” to Braybrooke, and probably to others as well, to Lady Wrackley, Mrs. Ackroyde, and perhaps even to Miss Van Tuyn. And to Lady Sellingworth!
What had she thought of him? What did she think of him? Nothing perhaps. She had belonged to the “old guard.” Many men had passed through her hands. He felt at that moment acute hostility to women. They were treacherous, unreliable, even the best of them. They had not the continuity which belonged to men. Even elderly women—he was thinking of women of the world—even they were not to be trusted. Life was warfare even when war was over. One had to fight always against the instability of those around you. And yet there was planted in a man—at any rate there was planted in him—a deep longing for stability, a need to trust, a desire to attach himself to someone with whom he could be quite unreserved, to whom he could “open out” without fear of criticism or of misunderstanding.