The Solution
As Sir Charles was walking back from the Reeves' house, he met Anne Yeo
in Piccadilly. She had just taken the telegram from Eugenia. He greeted
her warmly and asked her to walk a little way with him, to which she
agreed, silently giving him credit for so heroically concealing his
consciousness of her odd appearance. She herself was well aware that in
her mackintosh, driving-gloves, and eternal golf-cap she presented a
sufficiently singular effect, and that there were not many people in
London at three o'clock on a sunny afternoon who would care to be found
dead with her.
'I've just seen Hyacinth,' he said.
'Then you know about the trouble?'
'What trouble?'
'As if she could help telling you! However, it's going to be all right.'
'Do you think so?'
'I'm certain.'
'I never thought him good enough for her,' Sir Charles said.
'Who is?' she asked.
'Has he really been--philandering?'
'Probably. Don't all men?'
'You're as great a cynic as ever, I see,' he laughingly said.
'And you're as noble as ever. But I won't tax your chivalry too far.
Good-bye,' and she abruptly left him.
She was on her way to Cook's. She had suddenly decided to emigrate.
Sir Charles wondered why Anne was so sure, but her words had comforted
him. He believed her. He not only thought that she must be right, but he
instinctively felt certain that she had taken some steps in the matter
which would result in success. Some people liked Anne, many detested
her, but she inspired in both friends and enemies a species of trust.
At half-past seven that evening Cecil turned the key in the door and
went into the house. It was the first time he had ever come home with a
feeling of uneasiness and dread; a sensation at once of fear and of
boredom. Until now he had always known that he would receive a delighted
welcome, all sweetness and affection. He had always had the delicious
incense of worshipping admiration swung before him in the perfumed
atmosphere of love and peace. Had he held all this too cheaply? Had he
accepted the devotion a little pontifically and condescendingly? Had he
been behaving like a pompous ass? He had really enjoyed his wife's
homage the more because he had liked to think that he still yearned for
the impossible, that he had been deprived by Fate of his ideal, that
absence and distance had only raised higher in his thoughts the one
romantic passion of his life. What a fool he had been! All he felt at
this moment about Eugenia was impatient annoyance. There is a great deal
of the schoolboy in an Englishman of thirty. Cecil just now regarded her
simply as the person who had got him into a row. Why had she taken him
for that imprudent drive?
As he went into the little boudoir it happened that Hyacinth was turning
her back to him. It was usually a part of their ritual that she came to
meet him. So this seemed to him an evil omen.
She stood looking out of the window, very tall, very slender, her brown
hair piled in its dense mass on her small head. When she turned round he
saw she held a telegram in her hand.
'What is the meaning of this?' she said, as she held it out to him.
He took it from her and sat down to read it, feeling as he did so
unpleasantly heavy, stupid, and stolid in contrast to the flash of her
blue eyes and the pale tragedy in her face. It was the first time he had
ever felt her inferior. As a rule the person found out in a betrayal of
love holds, all the same, the superior position of the two. It is the
betrayed one who is humiliated.
'What does it mean?' he said. 'Why it means that they have to put us
off. They are evidently going away. What it means is fairly obvious.'
'Ah, _why_ have they put us off? You have been to see her! You must have
arranged this. Yes, you have given me away to her, Cecil; you have let
her know I was jealous! It is worse than anything else! I shall never
forgive you for this.'
He gave her back the telegram with an air of dazed resignation.
'My dear girl, I give you my solemn word of honour that I know nothing
whatever about it.'
'Really? Well, it is very strange. It is most extraordinary! She says
she is writing. I suppose we shall hear.'
'Are we going to have dinner?'
'You agree to what I suggested this morning, Cecil?'
'No, I don't.'
'Very well, then; I shan't dine with you.'
'Oh, confound it! I don't want to go out again.'
'Pray don't. I shall dine in my room,' and she walked to the door. As
she left the room she turned round and said--
'Oh, to think how that creature must be enjoying it!' and went upstairs.
'If she isn't enjoying it any more than I am, she isn't having much of a
time,' said Cecil aloud to himself. He then dined in solemn silence,
Hyacinth (with a headache) being served in her own room.
When dinner was over he was glancing through the paper, wondering how he
should spend the evening, when a note arrived by a messenger. He saw it
was for Hyacinth, and in Eugenia's handwriting.
A few minutes later she came down, holding it in her hand.
'Cecil, she has written to me. She says they're going for a long
yachting cruise, that they won't be back in their house for a year.'
'Well, have you any objection?'
'Have you?' she asked, looking at him narrowly.
'No, I'm only too glad!'
'Did you ask her to do this?'
'Don't be idiotic. How could I ask her? I've neither seen nor
communicated with her.'
'Then how do you account for it, Cecil?'
'I don't account for it. Why should I? It isn't the first time Uncle
Ted's gone yachting. Though he hasn't done it for some years. He was
always saying he wanted to go to Crete, Samos, and the Ionian Islands.
He used to talk a good deal about wanting to see the Leucadian Rock.'
'What's that?' She spoke suspiciously.
'A place that some woman threw herself into the sea from.'
'Lately, do you mean?'
'Oh, no--some time ago. Anyhow, he wanted to see it I'm sure _I_ don't
know why. But that was his idea.'
'Well, she _says_ they're going to Greece, so perhaps you're right. And
are you really, really not sorry that she's going?'
'Not at all, if I'm going to have a little peace now.'
'Oh, Cecil,' she implored, 'have I been unfair to you?'
'Horribly unfair.'
'I'm very, very sorry. I see I was wrong. Oh, how could I be so horrid?'
'You _were_ down on me! Why, you wanted to go away! You did make me
pretty miserable.'
'Oh, poor boy! Then you don't care a bit for that woman, really?'
'Do you mean Eugenia? Not a straw!'
'And, oh, Cecil, if I'm _never_ so horrid and bad-tempered again, will
you forgive me?'
'Well, I'll try,' said Cecil.