Here, as if some spirit of nervous unrest had suddenly beset him, he turned round on his heel, motioned the superintendent to follow, and brushing by the awed and staring Mr. Ephraim Nippers, whisked open the door and passed briskly out into the hush and darkness of the night.
The footpath which led through the grounds to the gate and thence to the long lonely way back to Dollops and the caravan lay before him. He swung into it with a curious sort of energy and forged away from the house at such speed that Narkom's short, fat legs were hard put to it to catch up with him before he came to the path's end.
"My dear chap, are you going into training for a match with that Sir Ralph What's-his-name of whom Miss Renfrew spoke?" he wheezed when he finally overtook him. "You long, lean beggars are the very old boy for covering the ground. But wait until you get to be _my_ age, by James!"
"Perhaps I shan't. Perhaps they won't let me!" threw back Cleek, in a voice curiously blurred, as if he spoke with his teeth hard shut. "Donkeys do die, you know--that little bit of tommyrot about the absence of their dead bodies to the contrary."
"That I've been as big an ass as any of the thistle-eating kind that ever walked. Gad! such an indiscretion! Such an example of pure brainlessness! And the worst of it is that it's all due to my own wretched vanity--my own miserable weakness for the theatrical and the spectacular! It came to me suddenly--while I was standing there explaining things to Miss Renfrew--and I could have kicked myself for my folly."
"'What folly?' What? Good heavens, man, use your wits! Isn't it enough for me to be a blockhead without you entering the lists along with me?" said Cleek, irritably. "Or, no! Forgive that, dear friend. My nerves were speaking, not my heart. But in moments like this--when we had built a safe bridge, and my own stupidity has hacked it down--Faugh! I tell you I could kick myself. Didn't you hear? Didn't you see?"
"I saw that for some special reason you were suddenly obsessed with a desire to get out of the house in the midst of your talking with Miss Renfrew, if that's what you refer to--is it?"
"Not altogether. It's part of it, however. But not the worst part, unfortunately. It was at that moment then the recollection of my indiscretion came to me and I realized what a dolt I had been--how completely I had destroyed our splendid security, wrecked what little still remains of this glorious holiday--when I couldn't let 'George Headland' have the centre of the stage, but needs must come in like the hero of a melodrama and announce myself as Cleek. To Nosworth and his wife! To Nippers! To all that gaping crowd! You remember that incident, surely?"