Eustace said no, it did not matter. He felt that he ought to have guessed, after all his father had told him. But it was so far worse than one could imagine. He went away feeling profoundly disgusted. To dress like that, in London, at half past three p.m., with the season at its apotheosis!
Anthony Dyke had, in fact, dressed like that only because he was going for a walk. He felt that, yielding to civilization’s enticements, he had been for some time sitting too much, eating too much, above all else sleeping too much, and he needed a walk. He had therefore slipped on what seemed to him very suitable attire for the purpose, gone to the club coffee-room to fill his wallet with some fruit and a few rolls of bread—and now was off. Naturally, with the hero of the Andes, a walk meant a walk. He would go straight ahead, over Hampstead Heath into Hertfordshire, round that county and any other counties adjacent; he would walk all night, and probably all day to-morrow; then he would come back, have a bath, and feel thoroughly refreshed—the limbs loosened by gentle exercise, civilization’s rust rubbed out of his joints and the mind clarified by avoidance of slumber.
CHAPTER V
RATHER less than a week after this Dyke came to Prince’s Gate by appointment. All the preliminaries for the interview had been completed by letters and in the most courteous manner on both sides. Greatly as the Verinders hated him, they felt that there was no other way of doing things. Mr. Verinder, then, politely expressing a wish to see Mr. Dyke for the purpose of discussing “certain matters,” Mr. Dyke had replied that he was entirely at Mr. Verinder’s service and begged that place and time should be named. Mr. Verinder named his own house and nine o’clock in the evening; choosing an evening on which Emmeline could be conveniently banished from the premises.
Mrs. Verinder had taken her to dine quietly with Mrs. Bell in Queen’s Gate, and afterwards they and their hostess were going to a concert given by an elderly widower. The widower had hired the Grosvenor Gallery for his concert; it would be a grand and a late affair; thus Mr. Verinder need not apprehend the return of his ladies until long after midnight. The docility with which Emmeline agreed to these arrangements had made him wonder suspiciously if she had received confirmative instructions from the enemy. He trusted, however, that this was not so.
It was now a quarter to nine, and he and Eustace and Mrs. Verinder’s brother, Colonel Gussie Pollard, were seated at the dinner table finishing their dessert. The presence of their brother-in-law and uncle bothered Mr. Verinder, but there had seemed to be no way of avoiding it; for his own convenience he was staying in the house, he now had learned all about their trouble, and his sister said she thought he would add weight to their side of the discussion.
“I should not scruple myself to tell him it isn’t cricket,” said Colonel Gussie, beginning to peel a second nectarine.
He was one of those very large, radiantly smooth elderly men who take inordinate pains in cleaning, polishing, and decorating their persons. The dress-suit of Colonel Gussie, his white waistcoat, his jewelled buttons, studs, and little chains, suggested that he felt he could never do quite enough for himself; and, as if for this reason, his face was garnished with every small blob of white hair that can be grown on a face—moustache, whisker, imperial, even something under the plump chin, but each sample small and nicely trimmed, and all of it neatly divided. Through the white hair his complexion showed with the silvery pinkness of an uncooked salmon. For the rest, he had a genial yet grand manner, was not disposed to think evil of anybody, and when compelled to censure knew no worse verdict than to say that a thing was not cricket.