CHAPTER VIII
HOW WE MADE AN UNCONVENTIONAL JOURNEY TO TOWN
Very carefully, and wondering the while in a listless fashion why I should do so at all, I tore out the notice and put it carefully away in my pocketbook. I had the explanation now; I understood it all—the hidden ring at the end of the chain, and the shadow of which it was the symbol, the mystery and disturbance of the house, the continual pretexts to get rid of me, the effort to disguise any strangeness of appearance in the life of the family. And I understood why it was true that I must go away and utterly forget. And yet—was the explanation so perfect, after all? Mechanically I pulled the paper out of the drawer, and searched for the date. It was only three years back; but even that length of time would have made Lady a mere child when she was married. She could not be very far beyond twenty now, certainly not more than twenty-two or three. And in any case, why should the marriage be concealed and the husband retained as a member of the family, masquerading as a brother? And how, after the ordinary announcement in the press, could the marriage have become a secret at all? Then once more the whispers and pointings of a score of abnormal circumstances, uncertain, suggestive, indefinite, crowded in upon my understanding, like the confusion of simultaneous voices. It was no use. I could not imagine what it all meant, and for the moment I was too sick and weary to wonder. The bare fact was more than enough; she was married and beyond my reach, and I must go away.
I went through a pantomime of supper, making the discovery that my appetite was supplemented by an unquenchable thirst and an immeasurable desire for tobacco. After that I walked, read, made dull conversation with casual acquaintances—anything to kill the interminable time, and quiet for the moment that weary spirit of unrest which kept urging me to useless thought and unprofitable action, to examine my trouble as one irritates a trivial wound, to decide or do something where nothing was to be decided or to be done. An inhabitant of the nearest comfortless piazza chair contributed the only episode worth remembering.
"Say," he began, "do you remember that guinea that was here the other day and started the argument with the old gent out in front? Well, what did you make of that feller, anyway?"
"I don't know. He was drunk, I suppose, and got the wrong man."
"Well, now, you take it from me, there was more to it than that. Yes, sir, there's a shady story around there somewhere. You hear what I say."
"Is the man still around here?" I asked.
"Well, not now, he ain't. That's what I'm telling you. He hung about town for two or three days, I guess. Maybe he got after the old man some more. He was in here after a drink once, and the barkeep threw him out. He's a good mixer, Harry is, men or drinks; but he don't like guineas. Well, I don't go much on them foreigners, myself."
"Where does your shady story come in?"