CHAPTER XX
UNITY watched the beloved being as only a woman can watch man or a sailor can watch sea and sky. To each, signs and portents are vital matters. She noted every shadow on his face, every deepening line, every trick of his eyes, every mouthful that he ate, and the very working of his throat as he swallowed. She noted the handwriting on envelopes and unfinished manuscript, the ashes knocked out of pipes, the amount of evening whisky consumed, and the morning muddle of pillow and bedclothes. She was alive to his every footstep in the house. She knew, without entering the study, whether he was working, or sitting morose in his old leather arm-chair, or pacing the room. She knew whether he slept or was restless of nights.
One day she made a discovery, and in consequence took the first opportunity of private use of the telephone, and rang up Herold. She was anxious about her guardian. Could she see Herold as soon as possible without Aunt Gladys or guardian knowing? They arranged a meeting just inside the park, by the Marble Arch.
Herold, who knew Unity to be a young woman of practical common sense, had readily assented to her proposal, and in considerable perturbation of mind started from his home in Kensington. He arrived punctually at the Marble Arch end of the park, but found her already there, a patient, undistinguished little figure in her tartan blouse and nondescript hat adorned with impossible roses. The latter article of attire was her best hat. She had bought it already trimmed for seven-and-six, which had seemed a reckless expenditure of her guardian's money.
She was sitting on a bench of the broad carriage-drive, watching with a London child's interest, despite her preoccupation, the gorgeous equipages, carriages, and automobiles transporting the loveliest ladies (save one) in the world, ravishingly raimented, from one strange haunt of joyousness to another. For it was half-past three of the clock on a beautiful day in the height of the London season, and, as everybody knows, Hyde Park is a royal park, and along that stretch of road from Hyde Park Corner to the marble arch no cart or omnibus or hackney cab or pretentious taxi is allowed under penalty of instant annihilation. Only the splendour (in eyes such as Unity's) of plutocratically owned vehicles meets the enraptured vision. Pedestrian fashion, however, does not haunt that end of the road, which is mostly given up to nurse-maids and drab members of the proletariat; but the flowerbeds make compensation by blazing with colour, and the plane-trees wave their greenery over everything.
Herold raised his hat, shook hands, and sat down by Unity's side.
“It was good of you to come, Mr. Herold. I scarcely dared ask you, but—”
“What's gone wrong?” he asked, with a smile.
She began her tale: how her guardian neither ate nor slept, how he tore up page after page of copy,—he who used to write straight ahead; she found the pieces in the waste paper basket,—how he was growing gloomy and haggard and ill. Her woman's mind laid pathetic stress on these outward and visible signs.