“It’s too bad of you, Tony. I asked you never to remind me of all that—never to speak of it to anybody.”
“Only to Cairns. Such a real true pal as old Cairns!”
“Well, I’m blessed,” said Cairns, when he had heard the story; and he looked at her with the deepest admiration. “That was grit, and no mistake. Whips out a revolver, and—”
“Mr. Cairns,” said Miss Verinder, pulling on her black suède gloves and speaking rather primly, “please forget this nonsense. You know Tony’s way. In order to make out that I did something remarkable, he is led into exaggerations. Good-night. It has been so pleasant to see you, and I hope we shall meet again before very long.”
After five or six days spent in this manner Dyke would disappear from the flat and give himself to the public. There were interviews in the newspapers; he delivered his lecture, asked for financial support, visited his publisher, was seen at his club, attended one or two public dinners. Some time was spent with his father at that old house called Endells. Then perhaps he was secreted at the flat again. Then once more he was gone from England; and Miss Verinder, shopping with Mrs. Bell at Knightsbridge, or taking a walk by herself in Kensington Gardens, felt that she herself, all that was real and solid in her, had gone too.
It was she who had decided on the necessity of this long-sustained concealment of their love, and not he. Truly she was not a woman to shirk consequences—she had proved that handsomely; but not for nothing had she been born at Prince’s Gate and reared in the Verinder tradition. She knew her England, which never really changes, however much people talk of change. She knew that to this day, just as in the time of Parnell, no public man is allowed to have an unauthorized intimacy with a person of different sex—in other words, if he cannot show his wife, he must not show anybody else. And more especially would this be so in the case of a man appealing to the public for money to carry on his public work. Had the fact been discovered, it would have meant an extinguishing cap (of the requisite size—very big) over the head of Anthony Dyke.
It had been necessary to hide him, and she had hidden him. With regard to this achievement one may perhaps for a moment consider how excessively difficult it is for a woman to hide a man in a life that to all appearances is being conducted on a conventional pattern, a life that seems open to observation by every curious person; and one may further remark that of all men Anthony Dyke was obviously the most difficult to hide, because of his large proportions, his loud voice, his terrific explosiveness—not to mention the fact that he was, if not yet as famous as he desired, at any rate sufficiently so to be a well-known, closely-marked public character; some one worth following by newspaper reporters, always remunerative for a chatty interview, and of market value as a snap-shot, take him how or where you would.
Nevertheless she had done it. If the truth must be owned, since there was but a single aim to her existence, she had welcomed as likely to aid her, the very hardships under which she was supposed to be suffering acutely; such as, the loss of reputation, ostracism by near relatives, coldness at the hands of friends.