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Page 118
Indignation at the injustice of Fate in causing her to give her
heart to a man and then changing him into another and quite
different man fought with a cold terror, which grew as she realized
more and more clearly the magnitude of the mistake she had made.
She felt that she must escape. And yet how could she escape? She
had definitely pledged herself to this man. ("Ah!" cried Geoffrey
gaily, as the pats of butter arrived. "That's more like it!" He
began to smear the toast. Maud averted her eyes.) She had told him
that she loved him, that he was the whole world to her, that there
never would be anyone else. He had come to claim her. How could she
refuse him just because he was about thirty pounds overweight?
Geoffrey finished his meal. He took out a cigarette. ("No smoking,
please!" said the distressed gentlewoman.) He put the cigarette
back in its case. There was a new expression in his eyes now, a
tender expression. For the first time since they had met Maud
seemed to catch a far-off glimpse of the man she had loved in
Wales. Butter appeared to have softened Geoffrey.
"So you couldn't wait!" he said with pathos.
Maud did not understand.
"I waited over a quarter of an hour. It was you who were late."
"I don't mean that. I am referring to your engagement. I saw the
announcement in the Morning Post. Well, I hope you will let me
offer you my best wishes. This Mr. George Bevan, whoever he is, is
lucky."
Maud had opened her mouth to explain, to say that it was all a
mistake. She closed it again without speaking.
"So you couldn't wait!" proceeded Geoffrey with gentle regret.
"Well, I suppose I ought not to blame you. You are at an age when
it is easy to forget. I had no right to hope that you would be
proof against a few months' separation. I expected too much. But it
is ironical, isn't it! There was I, thinking always of those days
last summer when we were everything to each other, while you had
forgotten me--Forgotten me!" sighed Geoffrey. He picked a fragment
of cake absently off the tablecloth and inserted it in his mouth.
The unfairness of the attack stung Maud to speech. She looked back
over the months, thought of all she had suffered, and ached with
self-pity.
"I hadn't," she cried.
"You hadn't? But you let this other man, this George Bevan, make
love to you."
"I didn't! That was all a mistake."
"A mistake?"
"Yes. It would take too long to explain, but . . ." She stopped. It
had come to her suddenly, in a flash of clear vision, that the
mistake was one which she had no desire to correct. She felt like
one who, lost in a jungle, comes out after long wandering into the
open air. For days she had been thinking confusedly, unable to
interpret her own emotions: and now everything had abruptly become
clarified. It was as if the sight of Geoffrey had been the key to a
cipher. She loved George Bevan, the man she had sent out of her
life for ever. She knew it now, and the shock of realization made
her feel faint and helpless. And, mingled with the shock of
realization, there came to her the mortification of knowing that
her aunt, Lady Caroline, and her brother, Percy, had been right
after all. What she had mistaken for the love of a lifetime had
been, as they had so often insisted, a mere infatuation, unable to
survive the spectacle of a Geoffrey who had been eating too much
butter and had put on flesh.
Geoffrey swallowed his piece of cake, and bent forward.
"Aren't you engaged to this man Bevan?"
Maud avoided his eye. She was aware that the crisis had arrived,
and that her whole future hung on her next words.
And then Fate came to her rescue. Before she could speak, there was
an interruption.
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