“Now, then! Nottin’ ’Ill, sir. Room inside.”
Goddard turned away quickly. He could not go home. The thought of Lizzie, foul and drunken, caused a red cloud to pass before his eyes. In his present mood it would be well not to see her.
He made his way to his club, mounted to the quiet library, where he would be undisturbed by the chatter of acquaintances, and pulling up an arm-chair before a fire-place in a dark corner, gave himself up to the grim task of reconstructing his life. A new devastating element had come into his sphere—Lizzie. In the days before his friendship with Lady Phayre his wife had counted for little in his earnest life. He regretted her unhappiness, did what lay in his power to remedy the irremediable mistake of his marriage; but never desiring freedom, the bond scarcely troubled him. Even during the sweetness of his intercourse with Lady Phayre it had galled him but little. She was so far above him, the feelings with which he regarded her were so new to his almost original experience that he had not realised that he loved her after the common way of men. In the serenity of Lady Phayre’s atmosphere Lizzie counted for no more than the little bare top-room in which he had once lived, his early memories of hardship and struggle with poverty. But now when the idyll was over, when he felt the man’s fierce passion for the woman that was lost to him, the other woman who stood between counted as a terrible, resistless force.
He gazed with set features into the fire. It faded, and in its place rose the scene of that night when the two women had met. One face noble, intellectual, pure in outline; the other, sodden, coarse, and bestial. He gripped the arms of his chair, and a half groan came from his lips. A loathing of the woman to whom he was bound arose within him like a nausea.
Then anger shook him—anger at the folly of his marriage; anger at the coarse nature of his wife, at her father’s drunkenness, at the pretty baby face that had caught his raw fancy—anger, too, at Lady Phayre. Why had she sought him out? Why had she lured him on to enslave himself to her? Anger at her scorn of him, at her fine-lady sensitiveness that was revolted at the sight of a drunken shrew. Anger at her having led him into the fool’s paradise only to eject him ignominiously.
A slight tap on his shoulder aroused him. He started round: the anger that was hot within him turned against the disturber. It was Gleam.
“I have been looking round the club for some one to dine with. Come along,” he said in his friendly way.
But Goddard glowered at him. At that moment Gleam seemed to belong to the other side of the great gulf, and he hated him with the old class-hatred. He looked so spick and span with his evening dress, and gold eye-glass, and meticulously trimmed head. His manner was so easy, giving the impression of freedom from sordid cares. He had no foul drunken wife dragging him down. He could meet Lady Phayre on a level. He could offer her marriage, and she could but take the offer as a compliment. A sense of personal degradation filled Goddard’s soul, and he hated himself for hating Gleam. In a moment, however, he came to his senses, but not before Gleam had rallied him on his confusion.
“Caught you napping, eh? Well—will you dine?”
“No,” said Goddard, rising from his chair. “Not to-night. I ought to have got out of this half-an-hour ago.”