My one positive achievement lay in persuading him to resume the curious journal he had started at Brandon Court and continued in Oxford. I called—and still call—it the third volume of Rupert Chevasse's life, or, more accurately, "The Child of Misery"; for though it will never be published, its literary parentage is the same, and its elder brothers are Volumes One and Two. I count it one of the great tragedies of the book-world that—at least in his life-time—the third volume will never be given to the public; in my opinion—for what that is worth—it is the finest work Aintree has ever accomplished. At the same time I fully endorse his resolution to withhold it; it has been a matter of lasting surprise that even I was allowed to read the manuscript.
He worked a great many hours each day as soon as I had helped the flywheel over dead-point. Half-way through the morning I would wander into the library and find a neat manuscript chapter awaiting me; when I had finished reading, he would throw me over sheet after sheet as each was completed. It was an interesting experience to sit, as it were, by an observation hive and watch his vivid, hyper-sensitive mind at work. I had been present at half the scenes and meetings he was describing. I had heard large fragments of the dialogue and allowed my imagination to browse on the significance of each successive "soul-brush." Yet—I seemed to have heard and seen less than nothing! His insight enabled him to depict a psychological development where I had seen but a material friendship. It was one-sided, of course, and gave me only the impression that a vital, commanding spirit like Sylvia's would leave on his delicate, receptive imagination. When at a later date Sylvia took me into her confidence and showed me reverse and obverse side by side, I felt like one who has assumed a fourth dimension and looked down from a higher plane into the very hearts of two fellow-creatures. It was a curious experience to see those souls stripped bare—I am not sure that I wish to repeat it—there comes a point where a painful "study of mankind is man."
While the Seraph worked, I had plentiful excuse for playing truant. Decency ordained that after my twenty years' respite I should spend a certain amount of time with my brother and his wife, and since Sylvia's edict of banishment, I was the sole channel of communication between Cadogan Square and Adelphi Terrace. It was noticeable—though I say it in no carping spirit—that Philip sought my company a shade less assiduously when I ceased to watch over the welfare of Gladys. Finally, I devoted a portion of each day to Chester Square. Elsie adhered to her decision that the Seraph must be no more seen in company with her in public, and even a private call at the house was impossible so long as his face carried the marks of Sylvia's resentment.
The burden of the publicity-campaign fell on my shoulders, though it came to be relieved—to his honour be it said!—by Gartside. I gave him my views of Elsie's behaviour, brought the two of them together at dinner, and left his big, kind heart to do the rest. He responded as I knew he would, and his adhesion to our party was matter of grave offence to Elsie's detractors, for his name carried more weight with the little-minded than the rest of us put together. Culling enrolled himself for a while, but dropped away as he dropped out of most sustained efforts. Laziness brought about his defection more than want of faith or the pressure of orthodox friends; indeed I am not sure that his strongest motive in joining us was not a passing desire to confound Nigel Rawnsley. In this as in other things, we never treated him seriously; but with Gartside it was different. At a time when Carnforth's resignation of the Bombay Governorship was in the hands of the India Office—and it was an open secret that Gartside's name stood high on the list of possible successors—it required some courage to incur the kind of notoriety that without doubt we both of us did incur. He ought to have been lunching with Anglo-Indians and patting the cheeks of Cabinet Ministers' children, instead of trying to infect Society with his belief in a divorced woman's innocence.
In the course of the campaign I began to see a little, but only a little, more of Joyce than I had been privileged to do during the time when I was supposed to be watching over the destiny of Gladys. I am not sure that I altogether enjoyed my new liberty of access to her house; it worried me to see how overworked and tired she was beginning to look, though I had the doubtful satisfaction of knowing that nothing I could say or do would check her. She risked her health as recklessly as she had been risking her liberty since the inauguration of the New Militancy. I had to treat her politics like a cold in the head and allow them to run their nine days' course. Though I saw she was still cumbered with my scarab ring, we never referred to our meeting in Oxford. I am vain enough to think that she did not regard me even at this time with complete disfavour, but I will atone for my vanity by saying I dared do next to nothing to forward my suit. My foothold was altogether too precarious; an attempt to climb higher would only have involved me in a headlong fall.
And yet, before I had been a week at Adelphi Terrace, I made the attempt. Elsie telephoned one evening that she was going out, but would have to leave Joyce who was too tired to face a restaurant and theatre. She would be dining alone; if I had nothing better to do, would I look in for a few minutes and see if I could cheer her up? I had promised to dine with Nigel, but it was a small party and I managed to slip away before ten. Joyce was half asleep when I was shown into the drawing-room; she did not hear me announced, and I was standing within two feet of her before she noticed my presence.
"I've run you to earth at last," I said.
Then I observed a thing that made me absurdly pleased. Joyce was looking very white and tired, with dark rings round the eyes, and under either cheekbone a little hollow that ought not to have been there. When she opened her eyes and saw me, I could swear to a tiny flush of pleasure; the blue eyes brightened, and she smiled as children smile in their sleep.
"Very nearly inside it," she answered, with a woebegone shake of the head. "Oh, Toby, but I'm so tired! Don't make me get up."
I had no thoughts of doing so. Indeed, my mind was solely concerned with the reflection that she had called me Toby; it was the first time.