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On slack days and they were always slack now loungers about the precincts of the dock often caught a glimpse of the child's fair hair above the low level of the dark bow-window which leaned outwards from Rainham's room; and the foreman had even gone so far as to suggest that his master was bringing her up to the business.
At the time of the Armistice he was attached to an Australian flying squadron, and for some months remained abroad; then he was sent back to England, and employed in training younger fliers at a Surrey aerodrome. This had its drawbacks in Mrs. Rainham's eyes, since he was often able to run up to London, and, to Bob, London merely meant Cecilia.
"I will come, sir, and and thank you!" she said, with a quaver in her voice. And then, in obedience to Rainham's playfully threatening gesture, she turned away. Rainham gazed after her until she had turned the corner. "I'm sorry to have treated you to this scene," he said apologetically, as he joined Oswyn, who was gazing over the narrow bridge.
His eyes, which were restless and extraordinarily brilliant, met Rainham's presently; and the latter was conscious of a certain fascination in their sustained gaze. In spite of the air of savagery which pervaded the man, it was a movement of sympathy which, on the whole, he experienced towards him.
She gave the shoes a final hurried rub, and then fell to cleansing her hands; arriving in the dining-room, pink and breathless, some minutes later, to find a dreary piece of tepid mutton rapidly congealing on her plate. "I think you might manage to be down in time for meals, Cecilia," was Mrs. Rainham's chilly greeting. Cecilia said nothing. She had long realized the uselessness of any excuses.
"It is not true," he said quietly, "if it is anything against your husband." The girl on the sofa, Kitty Crichton, rose; she made a step forward irresolutely, seemed on the point of speaking, but something in Rainham's eyes coerced her, and Eve was crying. He continued very fast and low, as though he told with difficulty some shameful story, learnt by rote. "I tell you it is not true.
He had never, indeed, been ignorant that his friend's hold on life was precarious; some such scene as this had often been in his mind before; only, insensibly, Rainham's own jesting attitude towards his disabilities had half imposed on him, and made that possibility appear intangible and remote.
Then, after glancing into the empty drawing-room, Lightmark preceded him up the thick carpeted stairs, on which their footsteps scarcely sounded, and stopped at the door of Eve's boudoir, through which a woman's voice, speaking rather rapidly, and, as it struck him, in a key of agitation, fell upon Rainham's ear with a certain familiarity, though he was sure it was not Eve's, and could not remember when or where he might have heard it.
And now all that was at an end; by his own confession he had finished it, admitting himself, with a frankness almost brutal, a man like other men, only with passions more sordid, and a temper more unscrupulous, in that he had ruined this wretched woman, whose coming there had left a trail of vileness over her own life. "Ah, yes, go!" she said, after a while, answering Rainham's exclamation.
She was so engrossed that she failed to notice a woman who passed her, and then, with an astonished stare, turned back. A heavy hand fell on her wrist. "Cecilia!" She turned, with a little cry. Mrs. Rainham's face, inflamed with sudden anger, looked into her own. The hard grasp tightened on her wrist. "What are you doing here, you wicked girl? You've run away."
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