In the end, when it came, he hadn"t to do any of these things. It happened very quietly and simply, early on a Sunday evening after he had got back from Eltham. He had dined with Drayton and his people on Sat.u.r.day, and stayed, for once, over-night, risking it.
Desmond was sitting on a cushion, on the floor, with her thin legs in their grey stockings slanting out in front of her. She propped her chin on her hands. Her thin, long face, between the great black ear-bosses, looked at him thoughtfully, without rancour.
"Nicky," she said, "Alfred Orde-Jones slept with me last night."
And he said, simply and quietly, "Very well, Desmond; then I shall leave you. You can keep the flat, and I or my father will make you an allowance. I shan"t divorce you, but I won"t live with you."
"Why won"t you divorce me?" she said.
"Because I don"t want to drag you through the dirt."
She laughed quietly. "Dear Nicky," she said, "how sweet and like you.
But don"t let"s have any more chivalrous idiocy. I don"t want it. I never did." (She had forgotten that she had wanted it very badly once.
But Nicky did not remind her of that time. No matter. She didn"t want it now). "Let"s look at the thing sensibly, without any rotten sentiment.
We"ve had some good times together, and we"ve had some bad times. I"ll admit that when you married me you saved me from a very bad time.
That"s no reason why we should go on giving each other worse times indefinitely. You seem to think I don"t want you to divorce me. What else do you imagine Alfred came for last night? Why we"ve been trying for it for the last three months.
"Of course, if you"ll let _me_ divorce _you_ for desertion, it would be very nice of you. That," said Desmond, "is what decent people do."
He went out and telephoned to his father. Then he left her and went back to his father"s house.
Desmond asked the servant to remember particularly that it was the fifteenth of June and that the master was going away and would not come back again.
As Nicky walked up the hill and across the Heath, he wondered why it had happened, and why, now that it had happened, he cared so little. He could have understood it if he hadn"t cared at all for Desmond. But he had cared in a sort of way. If she had cared at all for him he thought they might have made something of it, something enduring, perhaps, if they had had children of their own.
He still couldn"t think why it had happened. But he knew that, even if he had loved Desmond with pa.s.sion, it wouldn"t have been the end of him.
The part of him that didn"t care, that hadn"t cared much when he lost his Moving Fortress, was the part that Desmond never would have cared for.
He didn"t know whether it was outside him and beyond him, bigger and stronger than he was, or whether it was deep inside, the most real part of him. Whatever happened or didn"t happen it would go on.
How could he have ended _here_, with poor little Desmond? There was something ahead of him, something that he felt to be tremendous and holy. He had always known it waited for him. He was going out to meet it; and because of it he didn"t care.
And after a year of Desmond he was glad to go back to his father"s house; even though he knew that the thing that waited for him was not there.
Frances and Anthony were happy again. After all, Heaven had manipulated their happiness with exquisite art and wisdom, letting Michael and Nicholas go from them for a little while that they might have them again more completely, and teaching them the art and wisdom that would keep them.
Some day the children would marry; even Nicky might marry again. They would prepare now, by small daily self-denials, for the big renunciation that must come.
Yet in secret they thought that Michael would never marry; that Nicky, made prudent by disaster, wasn"t really likely to marry again. John would marry; and they would be happy in John"s happiness and in John"s children.
And Nicky had not been home before he offered to his parents the spectacle of an outrageous gaiety. You would have said that life to Nicholas was an amusing game where you might win or lose, but either way it didn"t matter. It was a rag, a sell. Even the preceedings, the involved and ridiculous proceedings of his divorce, amused him.
It was undeniably funny that he should be supposed to have deserted Desmond.
Frances wondered, again, whether Nicky really had any feelings, and whether things really made any impression on him.
XVI
It was a quarter past five on a fine morning, early in July. On the stroke of the quarter Captain Frank Drayton"s motor-car, after exceeding the speed limit along the forlorn highway of the Caledonian Road, drew up outside the main entrance of Holloway Gaol. Captain Frank Drayton was alone in his motor-car.
He had the street all to himself till twenty past five, when he was joined by another motorist, also conspicuously alone in his car. Drayton tried hard to look as if the other man were not there.
The other man tried even harder to look as if he were not there himself.
He was the first to be aware of the absurdity of their compet.i.tive pretences. He looked at his watch and spoke.
"I hope they"ll be punctual with those doors. I was up at four o"clock."
"I," said Drayton, "was up at three."
"I"m waiting for my wife," said the other man.
"I am _not_," said Drayton, and felt that he had scored.
The other man"s smile allowed him the point he made.
"Yes, but my wife happens to be Lady Victoria Threlfall."
The other man laughed as if he had made by far the better joke.
Drayton recognized Mr. Augustin Threlfall, that Cabinet Minister made notorious by his encounters with the Women"s Franchise Union. Last year Miss Maud Blackadder had stalked him in the Green Park and lamed him by a blow from her hunting-crop. This year his wife, Lady Victoria Threlfall, had headed the June raid on the House of Commons.
And here he was at twenty minutes past five in the morning waiting to take her out of prison.
And here was Drayton, waiting for Dorothea, who was not his wife yet.
"Anyhow," said the Cabinet Minister, "we"ve done them out of their Procession."
"What Procession?"
All that Drayton knew about it was that, late last night, a friend he had in the Home Office had telephoned to him that the hour of Miss Dorothea Harrison"s release would be five-thirty, not six-thirty as the papers had it.
"The Procession," said the Cabinet Minister, "that was to have met "em at six-thirty. A Car of Victory for Mrs. Blathwaite, and a bodyguard of thirteen young women on thirteen white horses. The girl who smashed my knee-cap is to be Joan of Arc and ride at the head of "em. In armour.
Fact. There"s to be a banquet for "em at the Imperial at nine. We can"t stop _that_. And they"ll process down the Embankment and down Pall Mall and Piccadilly at eleven; but they won"t process here. We"ve let "em out an hour too soon."
A policeman came from the prison-yard. He blew a whistle. Four taxi-cabs crept round the corner furtively, driven by visibly hilarious chauffeurs.
"The triumphant procession from Holloway," said the Cabinet Minister, "is you and me, sir, and those taxi-cabs."
On the other side of the gates a woman laughed. The released prisoners were coming down the prison-yard.
The Cabinet Minister cranked up his engine with an unctuous glee. He was boyishly happy because he and the Home Secretary had done them out of the Car of Victory and the thirteen white horses.
The prison-gates opened. The Cabinet Minister and Drayton raised their caps.
The leaders, Mrs. Blathwaite and Angela Blathwaite and Mrs.