“I suppose not,” replied Harroway, drily.
They shook hands and parted. Gerard took a long breath as soon as he reached the open air, and the look of dignified sorrow vanished from his face. He walked through Lincoln’s Inn Fields with a step that was almost jaunty—greatly pleased by his visit.
If there had been anything mean or cruel in his proposed action, Harroway would have protested bluntly, for flabbiness of expression was not one of his characteristics. Obviously it was the only thing to be done. The sooner the better. As he turned into Chancery Lane a child held up to him a basket of violets. He bought a bunch, stuck it in his buttonhole, a thing which he had not done for years, being a man neglectful of spruceness in attire. He felt exhilarated, in holiday mood, experiencing a sensation of freedom from chafing constraints.
Two weeks had passed since his furious interview with Irene. He had spent them at his friend Weston’s place, alone, for the owner was absent, where he fished, and, between the rises, meditated on his wrongs. He had spoken to Irene in violent indignation and hatred, brutally, as the coarse-grained man does when he feels himself to be injured. Instinct, that explosion of a long-laid train of a thousand tiny sensations, had directed his blow against her most vital spot—her idealisation of himself. He had left her in passionate anger. It was well that he did not encounter Hugh that day. In the calm of the country life his anger cooled down, but it had engendered a crop of sentiments which, when he examined them, turned out to be not altogether disagreeable. As he was not the man to have his senses long led captive by the same woman, the honeymoon fervour of his attachment to Irene had grown cold for some years. The glowing passion of love, therefore, had not been outraged. As a matter of fact, he was tired of her, like thousands of men at the present moment, whom habit and sloth and kind integrity keep dully affectionate to their wives. He was tired of her effusiveness, of her strenuousness, of the high plane of feeling on which she seemed to live, and of her unremitting efforts to drag him thither. He had never felt at ease with her, had been forced to practise a thousand deceptions; to live, in short, a life alien to his nature. In the daily unconscious struggle between two individualities, the stronger and more finely tempered wins. Gerard had yielded simply because he had been afraid to resist. The subconsciousness of this moral flabbiness had always been present. It acted now as a forcing-bed for the above-mentioned crop of sentiments.
The violets in his buttonhole typified their bursting into riotous bloom. He walked across the Strand and down westward along the embankment, his veins tingling. The fresh breeze blowing against the tide raised a myriad ripples that sparkled in the sunshine. A gull that had strayed up river was hovering snow-white against the blue sky. The steamers, with their illusory air of crowded merriment, shot swiftly by, and gave a queer sense of the rushing life of liberty. Every man has certain moments of sensitiveness to external surroundings. With Gerard they were rare; but this was one. Life was holding out her promise, the world was before him. He felt magnanimous towards Hugh; almost grateful to him for having given him this opportunity of re-starting his existence. He was young still, only five-and-thirty. A recent legacy had put him beyond the necessity of working at an irksome and unremunerative profession. He leaned over the parapet by Somerset House, and in the factories across the water saw the wide stretching veldt and the lumbering bullock-carts and all the joys of the longed-for hunter’s life. A lingering respectability no longer sought to disguise the fact; he was heartily glad to be freed from Irene.
And so it happened that, some days afterwards, while Cahusac was sitting with Hugh before their hotel at Avignon, and opening the letters which the swarthy waiter had just brought, he was astonished to see Hugh start to his feet, and, white and trembling with passion, stare at a communication which he dashed presently upon the table.
“The villain—the damned villain!”
Cahusac queried mutely through his gold spectacles. “He is bringing an action for divorce—for divorce against her—do you understand?”
“Don’t shout so, man, and sit down,” said Cahusac, quietly. Hugh obeyed mechanically, tore at his great moustache, and went on in a voice rendered hoarse by his effort to keep it within conversational tones: