“Everything will come right. I see... D’you think your man would like to send a message to Lashmar to say I shan’t be down to-night?”
He walked into Oxford Street and through Hyde Park to Piccadilly. Once before, after bidding Barbara good-bye, he had bade good-bye to London, wandering from his flat to the theatre, from the theatre to, his club, almost pinching himself in the effort to remember that he was seeing them all for the last time. One could never reproduce an emotion in its first breathless perfection; though he went through the same emotions, the earlier shock had numbed him protectively against any that might come later. And, as it proved, it was not the last time. In another two years he might return to find Ivy married to Gaymer, as he had found Barbara married to George Oakleigh; he would be two years older, twenty years more disillusionized, with a bitter heart for women and a dread of the blank emptiness before him.
Ivy was not to blame for meeting a force too strong for her; she was ready to risk everything, even what she fancied to be her own happiness, for loyalty and the honourable observance of her promise. If he felt sore, it was because he had come to love her; she had made him forget Barbara and had given him the hope of a new life. But throughout, from the first night when he discussed her with Gaisford, he had made her his spiritual anaesthetic; while there was an opportunity of offering her himself, his money and reputation, his devotion and care, he had looked with the eyes of a fanatic on this single act of sacrifice which was to give value and meaning to his life. In trying to face the future, it was the meaninglessness of life that appalled him....
He had been trying, ever since their talk in the morning, to banish himself in imagination to California and to consider what was best for her. Gaymer would ruin her life; he would be unfaithful after six months and brutal after a year. And she knew it. Should she be saved from that? Was it ever worth trying to save man or woman from the woman or man that they desired? Yet it was a poor proof of love to stand aside and let her go to certain misery. If he mounted guard over her, he could still keep her from Gaymer....
And from her phantom of happiness.
He turned into the Green Park and walked in the shade of the trees towards Lancaster House. A woman bowed to him; he returned the bow without seeing who she was, but there was a scrape of gravel under her heel as she stopped, and he heard his name called.
“I thought it was you, but you had your chin so much on your chest... Thinking out a new play?”
“Mrs. O’Rane? I hope you didn’t think I was trying to cut you! No, I hardly know what I was thinking about. How’s your husband?”
“If you go on for about a hundred yards, you’ll find him. I have to rush off to a committee. Good-bye!”
He shaded his eyes and looked down the pathway until he saw a Saint Bernard asleep with his head on his paws and the paws pressed in gentle protection against the feet of his master. Eric walked on and greeted O’Rane.