She swung round.
“Good night,” she called over her shoulder.
He could hear her laughing as she went down the road.
XX
In the smoking-room of Lady Wetherby’s house, chewing the dead stump of a once imposing cigar, Dudley Pickering sat alone with his thoughts. He had been alone for half an hour now. Once Lord Wetherby had looked in, to withdraw at once coldly, with the expression of a groom who has found loathsome things in the harness room. Roscoe Sherriff, good, easy man, who could never dislike people no matter what they had done, had come for a while to bear him company; but Mr. Pickering’s society was not for the time being entertaining. He had answered with grunts the press agent’s kindly attempts at conversation, and the latter had withdrawn to seek a more congenial audience. And now Mr. Pickering was alone, talking things over with his subconscious self.
A man’s subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour. Mr. Pickering’s rare interviews with his subconscious self had happened until now almost entirely in the small hours of the night, when it had popped out to remind him, as he lay sleepless, that all flesh was grass and that he was not getting any younger. Tonight, such had been the shock of the evening’s events, it came to him at a time which was usually his happiest, the time that lay between dinner and bed. Mr. Pickering at that point of the day was generally feeling his best. But tonight was different from the other nights of his life.
One may picture Subconscious Self as a withered, cynical, malicious person standing before Mr. Pickering and regarding him with an evil smile. There has been a pause, and now Subconscious Self speaks again.
“You’ll have to leave tomorrow. Couldn’t possibly stop on after what’s happened. Now you see what comes of behaving like a boy.”
Mr. Pickering writhed.
“Made a pretty considerable fool of yourself, didn’t you, with your revolvers and your hidings and your trailings? Too old for that sort of thing, you know. You’re getting on. Probably have a touch of lumbago tomorrow. You must remember you aren’t a youngster. Got to take care of yourself. Next time you feel an impulse to hide in shrubberies and take moonlight walks through damp woods, perhaps you will listen to me.”
Mr. Pickering relit the stump of his cigar defiantly and smoked in long gulps for a while. He was trying to persuade himself that all this was untrue, but it was not easy. The cigar became uncomfortably hot, and he threw it away. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and produced a diamond ring, at which he looked pensively.
“A pretty thing, is it not?” said Subconscious Self, like a disembodied Eddie Foy.
Mr. Pickering sighed. That moment when Claire had thrown the ring at his feet and swept out of his life like an offended queen had been the culminating blow of a night of blows, the knockout following on a series of minor punches. Subconscious Self seized the opportunity to become offensive again.
“You’ve lost her, all through your own silly fault,” it said, discarding Eddie Foy and adopting in preference the conversational methods of the late Bildad the Shuhite. “How on earth you can have been such a perfect fool beats me. Running round with a gun like a boy of fourteen! Well, it’s done now and it can’t be mended. Countermand the order for cake, send a wire putting off the minister, dismiss the bridesmaids, tell the organist he can stop practicing ‘The Voice That Breathed O’er Eden‘—no wedding bells for you. For Dudley Damfool Pickering, Esquire, the lonely hearth forevermore. Little feet pattering about the house? Not on your life! Childish voices sticking up the old man for half a dollar to buy candy? No, sir! Not for D. Bonehead Pickering, the amateur trailing arbutus!”
Subconscious Self may have had an undesirable way of expressing itself, but there was no denying the truth of what it said. Its words carried conviction. Mr. Pickering replaced the ring in his pocket and, burying his head in his hands, groaned in bitterness of spirit.
He had lost her. He must face the fact. She had thrown him over. Never now would she sit at his table, the brightest jewel of Detroit’s glittering social life. She would have made a stir in Detroit. Now that city would never know her. Not that he was worrying much about Detroit. He was worrying about himself. How could he ever live without her?
This mood of black depression endured for a while, and then Mr. Pickering suddenly became aware that Subconscious Self was sneering at him.
“You’re a wonder!” said Subconscious Self.
“What do you mean?”
“Why, trying to make yourself think that at the bottom of your heart you aren’t tickled to death that this has happened. You know perfectly well that you’re tremendously relieved that you haven’t got to marry the girl, after all. You can fool everybody else, but you can’t fool me. You’re delighted, man, delighted!”
The mere suggestion revolted Mr. Pickering. He was on the point of indignant denial, when quite abruptly there came home to him the suspicion that the statement was not so preposterous after all. It seemed incredible and indecent that such a thing should be, but
