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Her shy brown eyes were penetrative, and often saw more than one would have imagined, and at last they believed that they had seen through the philosophic indifference of Lady Garnett's shrug, the gentle irony of Rainham's perpetual smile, the various masks of tragic comedians on a stage where there is no prompter, where the footlights are most pitiless, and where the gallery is only too lavish of its cat-calls at the smallest slip.
Eve had spent the week which followed the afternoon upon which her husband had stunned her with the news of Philip Rainham's death almost in solitude. Lightmark had been obliged to pay a hasty visit to Berlin, on business connected with an International Art Congress, and his wife at the last moment decided, somewhat to his relief, that she would not accompany him.
Perhaps something of Rainham's own lethargy had infected her, after a scene so feverish; or perhaps she could not but feel dimly, and in a manner not to be analysed, how that, distant and apart as they two seemed, yet within the last hour, by Rainham's action, between her life and his a subtile, invisible chord had been stretched, so that the order of her going might well rest with him.
Lady Garnett arched her eyebrows pensively; Charles looked surprised, displeased; Mary hastened to explain, blushing a little: "I beg your pardon! the phrase is Mr. Rainham's. I believe it is the only political principle he has." Charles's displeasure at the maxim cooled to lofty disdain of its author. "Ah, yes! pretty, but cynical, as I should say most of Mr. Rainham's principles were."
Margot was already provided for, even handsomely: in that respect, at least, her first adopted father had left no void for his successor to fill. So again he shrugged his shoulders. And upon that evening, for the first time since Rainham's death, he dined, more solitary and more silent than ever, at his familiar table at Brodonowski's.
If Philip Rainham's name, during that long, hard winter and ungracious spring near the close of which he turned his face, with the least little sigh of regret, to the wall was not often mentioned in the house in Parton Street, at whose door he had formerly knocked so often, it must not be supposed that by its occupants it had been in any way forgotten.
Oswyn derived the impression from them that, while his friend's body had been failing, his mind had never been more vigorous; that, during these long nights and days, when he had lain so motionless, in so continued a silence, it had only been because he was thinking with redoubled intensity. Presently, as Rainham's lips moved slightly, he drew nearer, and bent his head over him.
"Kitty!" That word might explain so much Rainham's long sojourns away from his business, for example. Charles looked at Eve and frowned. Decidedly, thought the young moralist, the old intimacy must be discouraged.
The tubes and buses are that crowded it's no catch to take a child about with you." In moments of excitement Mrs. Rainham's English was apt to slip from her. At other times she cultivated it carefully, assisted by a dramatic class, which an enthusiastic maiden lady, with leanings towards the stage, conducted each winter among neighbouring kindred souls.
He certainly knew nothing to Lightmark's discredit, nothing which could have justified him in interfering, even if interference could have prevailed. The two had fallen in love with one another, and, the man not being visibly bad, the marriage had come about; was there more to say? And yet Rainham's ill-defined uneasiness still questioned and explored.
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