Gaymer leaned down and picked up his cane.
“Won’t you come round?,” he asked again. “I want to hear the whole story. You mayn’t believe it, but I’m very fond of Ivy....”
Before he appreciated that he was yielding, Eric found himself being helped to his feet and led towards Buckingham Gate. Gaymer walked with an uncertain lurch, bumping into him at rhythmic intervals and saying nothing till they were seated on the divan in his smoking-room and he was collecting himself to order dinner. No sooner was his housekeeper out of the room than he poured himself nearly half a tumbler of brandy and drank it in two practised gulps.
“That’s better,” he murmured.
“You’ll find yourself laid out with D. T., if you go on like that,” Eric commented.
“I wonder... I’ve got a head like wood and, ever since I was wounded, I’ve needed the devil of a lot to keep me going... But I can ride or run or shoot or swim with any one you like to put up against me... Well, Lane, it’s not much use my apologizing for anything I may have said, because I’ve never felt particularly friendly towards you from the first day we met, which is some years ago now, and I always very strongly resented your butting in where Ivy was concerned. I enjoyed riling you. But I do at least see that you had better reason for butting in than I thought. I honestly didn’t think... I wonder if you’d mind telling me your version of the business from the beginning.”
Starting sketchily from his first meeting in New York, Eric described his relations with Ivy from the night when he found her walking home alone from the Vaudeville. When he came to their Maidenhead expedition, he paused long in search of a formula.
“She admitted a little; the rest I managed to guess. I said I’d see her through,” he told Gaymer.
There was a second pause, but Gaymer sat swinging the empty tumbler between his knees and staring blankly into the empty fire-place. Eric continued his story to the point where Gaisford came into the library to explain what was the matter with Ivy.
“That’s all,” he concluded.