"Then," answered Bagot, quite simply, "I'm sorry to say unpleasant things. But I think Lady Oates led a dog's life--and so does everybody."
"That's just what I wanted to be sure of," said Sir Hildebrand, rising. He bent his head courteously. "Good night, Bagot," and he went away with dreary dignity.
A cloud settled on Sir Hildebrand's mind through which he saw immediate things murkily. He passed days of unaccustomed loneliness and inaction. He walked the familiar streets of London like one in a dream. One afternoon he found himself gazing with unspeculative eye into the window of a small Roman Catholic Repository where crucifixes and statues of the Virgin and Child and rosaries and religious books and pictures were exposed for sale. Until realisation of the objects at which he had been staring dawned upon his mind, he had not been aware of the nature of the shop. The shadow of a smile passed over his face. He entered. An old man with a long white beard was behind the counter.
"Do you keep scourges?" asked Sir Hildebrand.
"No, sir," replied the old man, somewhat astonished.
"That's unfortunate--very unfortunate," said Sir Hildebrand, regarding him dully. "I'm in need of one."
"Even among certain of the religious orders the Discipline is forbidden nowadays," replied the old man.
"Then scourges are procurable. I will ask you to get one--or have one made according to religious pattern. I will pay fifteen shillings for it."
"It could not possibly cost that--a mere matter of wood and string."
"I will pay neither more nor less," said Sir Hildebrand, laying on the counter the cheque which he had endorsed and his card. "I--I have made a vow. It's a matter of conscience. Kindly send it to the club address."
He walked out of the shop somewhat lighter of heart, his instinct for the scrupulous satisfied. The abominable cheque no longer burned through letter-case and raiment and body and corroded his soul. He had devoted the money to the purpose for which it was ear-marked. The precision was soothed. In puzzling darkness he had also taken an enormous psychological stride.
The familiar club became unbearable, his fellow-members abhorrent. Friends and acquaintances outside--and they were legion--who, taking pity on his loneliness, sought him out and invited him to their houses, he shunned in a curious terror. He was forever meeting them in the streets. Behind their masks of sympathy he read his wife's deadly accusation and its confirmation which he had received from Haversham and Bagot. When the scourge arrived--a business-like instrument in a cardboard box--he sat for a long time in his club bedroom drawing the knotted cords between his fingers, lost in retrospective thought.... And suddenly a scene flashed across his mind. Venice. The first days of their honeymoon. The sun-baked Renaissance façade of a church in a Campo bounded by a canal where their gondola lay waiting. A tattered, one-legged, be-crutched beggar holding out his hat by the church door.... He, Hildebrand, stalked majestically past, his wife following. Near the _fondamenta_ he turned and discovered her in the act of tendering from her purse a two-lire piece to the beggar who had hobbled expectant in her wake. Hildebrand interposed a hand; the shock accidentally jerked the coin from hers. It rolled. The one-legged beggar threw himself prone, in order to seize it. But it rolled into the canal. An agony of despair and supplication mounted from the tatterdemalion's eyes.