Jimmy promised. He did not really want to take Christine out. He did not really want to do anything. He talked to Mrs. Wyatt while Christine put on her hat and coat. When they left the hotel he asked if she would like a taxi.
Christine laughed.
"Of course not. I love walking."
"Do you?" said Jimmy. He was faintly surprised. Cynthia would never walk a step if she could help it. He pondered at the difference in the two women.
They went to the Park. It was a fine, sunny afternoon, cold and crisp.
Christine wore soft brown furs, just the colour of her eyes, Jimmy Challoner thought, and realised that her eyes would be very beautiful to a man who liked dark eyes in preference to blue, but--thoughts of Cynthia came crowding back again. If only he were with her instead of this girl; if only---- Christine touched his arm.
"Oh, Jimmy, look! Isn"t that--isn"t that Miss Farrow?"
Her voice was excited. She was looking eagerly across the gra.s.s to where a woman and a man were walking together beneath the trees.
Jimmy"s heart leapt to his throat; for a moment it seemed to stop beating.
Yes, it was Cynthia right enough; Cynthia with no trace of the headache with which she had excused herself to him only that morning; Cynthia walking with--with Henson Mortlake.
Christine spoke again, breathlessly.
"Is it? Oh, is it Miss Farrow, Jimmy?"
"Yes," said Jimmy hoa.r.s.ely.
Cynthia had turned now. She and the man at her side were walking back towards Jimmy and Christine.
As they drew nearer Cynthia"s eyes swept the eager face and slim figure of the girl at Jimmy"s side. There was the barest flicker of her lids before she raised them and smiled and bowed.
Jimmy raised his hat. He was very pale; his mouth was set in unsmiling lines.
"Oh, she is lovely!" said Christine eagerly. "I think she is even prettier off the stage than she is on, don"t you? Actresses so seldom are, but she--oh, don"t you think she is beautiful, Jimmy?"
"Yes," said Challoner. He hated himself because he could get nothing out but that monosyllable; hated himself because of the storm of emotion the sight of Cynthia had roused in his heart.
She had looked calm and serene enough; he wondered bitterly if she ever thought of the hours they had spent together, the times he had kissed her, the future they had planned. He set his teeth hard.
And apparently the fact that her husband still lived was no barrier to her walking with Mortlake. He hated the little bounder. He----
"Who was that with her?" Christine asked. "I didn"t like the look of him very much. I do hope she isn"t going to marry him."
"She"s married already," said Jimmy. He felt a sort of impatience with Christine; she was so--so childish, so--so immaturish, he thought.
"And do you know her husband?" she asked. She turned her beautiful eyes to his pale face.
"I"ve never seen him," said Jimmy. "But I should think he"s a brute from what I"ve heard about him. He--he--oh, he treated her rottenly."
"What a shame!" Christine half turned and looked after Cynthia Farrow"s retreating figure. "Jimmy, wouldn"t you be proud of such a beautiful wife?"
Jimmy laughed, rather a mirthless laugh.
"Penniless beggars like me don"t marry beautiful wives like--like Miss Farrow," he said with a sort of savagery. "They want men with pots and pots of money, who can buy them motor-cars and diamonds, and all the rest of it." His voice was hurt and angry. Christine looked puzzled.
She walked on a little way silently. Then:
"I shouldn"t mind how poor a man was if I loved him," she said.
Jimmy looked down at her. Her face was half-hidden by the soft brown fur she wore, but he could just get a glimpse of dark lashes against her pale cheek, and the dainty outline of forehead and cheek.
"You won"t always think that," he told her cynically. "Some day, when you"re older and wiser than you are now, you"ll find yourself looking at the L. s. d. side of a man, Christine."
"I never shall," she cried out indignantly. "Jimmy, you are horrid!"
But Jimmy Challoner did not smile.
"Women are all the same," he told her darkly.
Oh, he was very, very young indeed, was Jimmy Challoner!
CHAPTER IV
JIMMY GETS NEWS
There was a letter from the "Great Horatio" on Jimmy"s plate the following morning. Jimmy looked at the handwriting and the foreign stamp and grimaced.
The Great Horatio seldom wrote unless something were the matter. He was a good many years older than Jimmy, and Jimmy held him in distinct awe.
He finished his breakfast before he even thought of breaking the seal, then he took up the letter and carried it over with him to the fire.
Jimmy Challoner was breakfasting in his dressing-gown. It was very seldom that he managed to get entirely dressed by the time breakfast was ready. He sat down now in a big chair and stuck his slippered feet out to the warmth.
He turned his brother"s letter over and over distastefully. What the deuce did the old chap want now? he wondered. He gave a sigh of resignation, and broke open the flap.
He and the Great Horatio had not met for two years.
Horatio Ferdinand Challoner, to give him his full name, was a man whose health, or, rather, ill-health, was his hobby.
All his life he had firmly believed himself to be in a dying state; all his life he had lived more or less at Spas, or on the Riviera, or at health resorts of some kind or another.
He was a nervous, irritable man, as unlike Jimmy as it is possible for two brothers to be.
For the past two years he had been living in Australia. He had undertaken the voyage at the suggestion of some new doctor whose advice he had sought, and he had been so ill during the six weeks" voyage that, so far, he had never been able to summon sufficient pluck to start home again.
Jimmy had roared with laughter when he heard; he could so well imagine his brother"s disgust and fear. As a matter of fact, it suited Jimmy very well that the head of the family should be so far removed from him. He hated supervision; he liked to feel that he had got a free hand; that he need not go in fear of running up against Horatio Ferdinand at every street corner.
He read his brother"s closely written pages now with a long-suffering air. Jimmy hated writing letters, and he hated receiving them; most things bored him in these days; he had been drifting for so long, and under Cynthia Farrow"s tuition he would very likely have finally drifted altogether into a slack, nothing-to-do man about town, very little good to himself or anyone else.