“What do you want me to do?” asked Dyke.
Mr. Verinder said he wanted Dyke to give her up altogether.
“Never!” Dyke roared at them now.
So the thing went on. Eustace was livid with rage, trembling. The colonel, unnoticed, chattered and fumed. Mr. Verinder felt possessed by that sensation of the dreamlike nature, the sheer fantasticness of it all—this quiet room, with the loud voices in it, servants probably listening on the stairs; yet also the awareness of the framework of society all round them still unbroken; his friends next door enjoying a little music after dinner in one of their drawing-rooms, or playing a rubber of whist for moderate points; a small evening-party at Number Ten; above everything, the Albert Hall such a little distance away, with a ballad concert as usual;—only in here this raging lunatic trying to turn the whole world upside down. But perhaps the colonel’s agitation and horror were even more painful than what his brother-in-law underwent. To him the thing was so appallingly obnoxious, so immeasurably far from the spirit of the game he worshipped. He continued to say it; and close to his lips, contained but certain to be released if the strain lasted, there hovered the crushing black-cap epithet—un-English.
“I shan’t give her up.”
Dyke was blustering fiercely as he moved here and there. Once he threatened Eustace, saying that if there was any attempt to bully Emmie, he would break every bone in his body. Finally he left them, mentally shattered.
He was gone, right out of the house.
Then, quite late, after eleven-thirty, there was a tremendous sustained ringing of the front-door bell. What could it be? The house on fire? Mr. Verinder, half unrobed, hurried down from his dressing-room to the first floor, and looked over the gilt balustrade into the hall. It was the man come back again—but altered, strange, in a totally different mood. He forced his way past the butler, past Eustace, past Gussie, and shouted upward.
“Verinder, I must talk to you. Verinder—my dear fellow—I can’t sleep to-night, until you and I have settled it.”