He stole upstairs. Not daring to have a bath, or shave (besides, the
water would be cold), he changed his clothes and packed stealthily
all he could. It was hard to leave so many shining boots, but one must
sacrifice something. Then, carrying a valise in either hand, he stepped
out onto the landing. The house was very quiet--that house where he had
begotten his four children. It was a curious moment, this, outside the
room of his wife, once admired, if not perhaps loved, who had called him
'the limit.' He steeled himself with that phrase, and tiptoed on; but
the next door was harder to pass. It was the room his daughters slept
in. Maud was at school, but Imogen would be lying there; and moisture
came into Dartie's early morning eyes. She was the most like him of the
four, with her dark hair, and her luscious brown glance. Just coming
out, a pretty thing! He set down the two valises. This almost formal
abdication of fatherhood hurt him. The morning light fell on a face
which worked with real emotion. Nothing so false as penitence moved him;
but genuine paternal feeling, and that melancholy of 'never again.' He
moistened his lips; and complete irresolution for a moment paralysed his
legs in their check trousers. It was hard--hard to be thus compelled to
leave his home! "D---nit!" he muttered, "I never thought it would come
to this." Noises above warned him that the maids were beginning to get
up. And grasping the two valises, he tiptoed on downstairs. His cheeks
were wet, and the knowledge of that was comforting, as though it
guaranteed the genuineness of his sacrifice. He lingered a little in the
rooms below, to pack all the cigars he had, some papers, a crush hat,
a silver cigarette box, a Ruff's Guide. Then, mixing himself a stiff
whisky and soda, and lighting a cigarette, he stood hesitating before a
photograph of his two girls, in a silver frame. It belonged to Winifred.
'Never mind,' he thought; 'she can get another taken, and I can't!' He
slipped it into the valise. Then, putting on his hat and overcoat, he
took two others, his best malacca cane, an umbrella, and opened the
front door. Closing it softly behind him, he walked out, burdened as
he had never been in all his life, and made his way round the corner to
wait there for an early cab to come by.
Thus had passed Montague Dartie in the forty-fifth year of his age from
the house which he had called his own.
When Winifred came down, and realised that he was not in the house,
her first feeling was one of dull anger that he should thus elude the
reproaches she had carefully prepared in those long wakeful hours. He
had gone off to Newmarket or Brighton, with that woman as likely as
not. Disgusting! Forced to a complete reticence before Imogen and the
servants, and aware that her father's nerves would never stand the
disclosure, she had been unable to refrain from going to Timothy's that
afternoon, and pouring out the story of the pearls to Aunts Juley and
Hester in utter confidence. It was only on the following morning that
she noticed the disappearance of that photograph. What did it mean?
Careful examination of her husband's relics prompted the thought that he
had gone for good. As that conclusion hardened she stood quite still in
the middle of his dressing-room, with all the drawers pulled out, to try
and realise what she was feeling. By no means easy! Though he was 'the
limit' he was yet her property, and for the life of her she could not
but feel the poorer. To be widowed yet not widowed at forty-two; with
four children; made conspicuous, an object of commiseration! Gone to the
arms of a Spanish Jade! Memories, feelings, which she had thought quite
dead, revived within her, painful, sullen, tenacious. Mechanically she
closed drawer after drawer, went to her bed, lay on it, and buried her
face in the pillows. She did not cry. What was the use of that? When she
got off her bed to go down to lunch she felt as if only one thing could
do her good, and that was to have Val home. He--her eldest boy--who
was to go to Oxford next month at James' expense, was at Littlehampton
taking his final gallops with his trainer for Smalls, as he would have
phrased it following his father's diction. She caused a telegram to be
sent to him.