Neither life nor the lawn-tennis club was so full at Natterley that the
news of Harry Sterling's return had not some importance.
He came back, moreover, to assume a position very different from his
old one. He had left Harrow now, departing in the sweet aroma of a
long score against Eton at Lord's, and was to go up to Oxford in
October. Now between a schoolboy and a University man there is a gulf,
indicated unmistakably by the cigarette which adorned Harry's mouth as
he walked down the street with a newly acquiescent father, and
thoroughly realized by his old playmates. The young men greeted him as
an equal, the boys grudgingly accepted his superiority, and the girls
received him much as though they had never met him before in their
lives and were pressingly in need of an introduction. These features
of his reappearance amused Mrs. Mortimer; she recollected him as an
untidy, shy, pretty boy; but mind, working on matter, had so
transformed him that she was doubtful enough about him to ask her
husband if that were really Harry Sterling.
Mr. Mortimer, mopping his bald head after one of his energetic failures
at lawn tennis, grunted assent, and remarked that a few years more
would see a like development in their elder son, a remark which
bordered on absurdity; for Johnny was but eight, and ten years are not
a few years to a lady of twenty-eight, whatever they may seem to a man
of forty-four.
Presently Harry, shaking himself free from an entangling group of the
Vicarage girls, joined his father, and the two came across to Mrs.
Mortimer.
She was a favorite of old Sterling's, and he was proud to present his
handsome son to her. She listened graciously to his jocosities,
stealing a glance at Harry when his father called him "a good boy."
Harry blushed and assumed an air of indifference, tossing his hair back
from his smooth forehead, and swinging his racket carelessly in his
hand. The lady addressed some words of patronizing kindness to him,
seeking to put him at his ease. She seemed to succeed to some extent,
for he let his father and her husband go off together, and sat down by
her on the bench, regardless of the fact that the Vicarage girls were
waiting for him to make a fourth.
He said nothing, and Mrs. Mortimer looked at him from under her long
lashes; in so doing she discovered that he was looking at her.
"Aren't you going to play any more, Mr. Sterling?" she asked.
"Why aren't you playing?" he rejoined.
"My husband says I play too badly."
"Oh, play with me! We shall make a good pair."
"Then you must be very good."
"Well, no one can play a hang here, you know. Besides I'm sure you're
all right, really."
"You forget my weight of years."
He opened his blue eyes a little, and laughed. He was, in fact,
astonished to find that she was quite a young woman. Remembering old
Mortimer and the babies, he had thought of her as full middle-aged.
But she was not; nor had she that likeness to a suet pudding, which his
newborn critical faculty cruelly detected in his old friends, the
Vicarage girls.
There was one of them--Maudie--with whom he had flirted in his
holidays; he wondered at that, especially when a relentless memory told
him that Mrs. Mortimer must have been at the parties where the thing
went on. He felt very much older, so much older that Mrs. Mortimer
became at once a contemporary. Why, then, should she begin, as she now
did, to talk to him, in quasi maternal fashion, about his prospects?
Men don't have prospects, or, anyhow, are spared questionings thereon.
Either from impatience of this topic, or because, after all, tennis was
not to be neglected, he left her, and she sat alone for a little while,
watching him play. She was glad that she had not played; she could not
have rivaled the activity of the Vicarage girls. She got up and joined
Mrs. Sterling, who was presiding over the club teapot. The good lady
expected compliments on her son, but for some reason Mrs. Mortimer gave
her none. Very soon, indeed, she took Johnnie away with her, leaving
her husband to follow at his leisure.
In comparing Maudie Sinclair to a suet pudding, Harry had looked at the
dark side of the matter.
The suggestion, though indisputable, was only occasionally obtrusive,
and as a rule hushed almost to silence by the pleasant good nature
which redeemed shapeless features. Mrs. Mortimer had always liked
Maudie, who ran in and out of her house continually, and had made of
herself a vice-mother to the little children.
The very next day she came, and, in the intervals of playing cricket
with Johnnie, took occasion to inform Mrs. Mortimer that in her opinion
Harry Sterling was by no means improved by his new status and dignity.
She went so far as to use the term "stuck-up." "He didn't use to be
like that," she said, shaking her head; "he used to be very jolly."
Mrs. Mortimer was relieved to note an entire absence of romance either
in the regretted past or the condemned present. Maudie mourned a
friend spoiled, not an admirer lost; the tone of her criticisms left no
doubt of it, and Mrs. Mortimer, with a laugh, announced her intention
of asking the Sterlings to dinner and having Maudie to meet them. "You
will be able to make it up then," said she.
"Why, I see him every day at the tennis club," cried Maudie in surprise.
The faintest of blushes tinged Mrs. Mortimer's cheek as she chid
herself for forgetting this obvious fact.
The situation now developed rapidly. The absurd thing happened: Harry
Sterling began to take a serious view of his attachment to Mrs.
Mortimer. The one thing more absurd, that she should take a serious
view of it, had not happened yet, and, indeed, would never happen; so
she told herself with a nervous little laugh. Harry gave her no
opportunity of saying so to him, for you cannot reprove glances or
discourage pressings of your hand in fashion so blunt.
And he was very discreet: he never made her look foolish. In public he
treated her with just the degree of attention that gained his mother's
fond eulogium, and his father's approving smile; while Mr. Mortimer,
who went to London at nine o'clock every morning and did not return
till seven, was very seldom bothered by finding the young fellow
hanging about the house. Certainly he came pretty frequently between
the hours named, but it was, as the children could have witnessed, to
play with them. And, through his comings and goings, Mrs. Mortimer
moved with pleasure, vexation, self-contempt, and eagerness.
One night she and her husband went to dine with the Sterlings. After
dinner Mr. Mortimer accepted his host's invitation to stay for a smoke.
He saw no difficulty in his wife walking home alone; it was but half a
mile, and the night was fine and moonlit. Mrs. Mortimer made no
difficulty either, but Mrs. Sterling was sure that Harry would be
delighted to see Mrs. Mortimer to her house.
She liked the boy to learn habits of politeness, she said, and his
father eagerly proffered his escort, waving aside Mrs. Mortimer's
protest that she would not think of troubling Mr. Harry; throughout
which conversation Harry said nothing at all, but stood smiling, with
his hat in his hand, the picture of an obedient, well-mannered youth.
There are generally two ways anywhere, and there were two from the
Sterlings' to the Mortimers': the short one through the village, and
the long one round by the lane and across the Church meadow. The path
diverging to the latter route comes very soon after you leave the
Sterlings', and not a word had passed when Mrs. Mortimer and Harry
reached it. Still without a word, Harry turned off to follow the path.
Mrs. Mortimer glanced at him; Harry smiled.
"It's much longer," she said.
"There's lots of time," rejoined Harry, "and it's such a jolly night."
The better to enjoy the night's beauty, he slackened his pace to a very
crawl.
"It's rather dark; won't you take my arm?" he said.
"What nonsense! Why, I could see to read!"
"But I'm sure you're tired."
"How absurd you are! Was it a great bore?"
"What?"
"Why, coming."
"No," said Harry.
In such affairs monosyllables are danger signals. A long protestation
might have meant nothing: in this short, sufficient negative Mrs.
Mortimer recognized the boy's sincerity. A little thrill of pride and
shame, and perhaps something else, ran through her. The night was hot
and she unfastened the clasp of her cloak, breathing a trifle quickly.
To relieve the silence, she said, with a laugh:
"You see we poor married women have to depend on charity. Our husbands
don't care to walk home with us. Your father was bent on your coming."
Harry laughed a short laugh; the utter darkness of Mr. Sterling's
condition struck through his agitation down to his sense of humor.
Mrs. Mortimer smiled at him; she could not help it: the secret between
them was so pleasant to her, even while she hated herself for its
existence.
They had reached the meadow now, halfway through their journey. A
little gate led into it and Harry stopped, leaning his arm on the top
rail.
"Oh, no! we must go on," she murmured.
"They won't move for an hour yet," he answered, and then he suddenly
broke out:
"How--how funny it is! I hardly remembered you, you know."
"Oh, but I remembered you, a pretty little boy;" and she looked up at
his face, half a foot above her. Mere stature has much effect and the
little boy stage seemed very far away. And he knew that it did, for he
put out his hand to take hers. She drew back.
"No," she said.
Harry blushed. She took hold of the gate and he, yielding his place,
let her pass through. For a minute or two they walked on in silence.
"Oh, how silly you are!" she cried then, beginning with a laugh and
ending with a strange catch in her throat. "Why, you're only just out
of knickerbockers!"
"I don't care, I don't care, Hilda----"
"Hush, hush! Oh, indeed, you must be quiet! See, we are nearly home."
He seized her hand, not to be quelled this time, and, bending low over
it, kissed it. She did not draw it away, but watched him with a
curious, pained smile. He looked up in her face, his own glowing with
excitement. He righted himself to his full stature and, from that
stooping, kissed her on the lips.
"Oh, you silly boy!" she moaned, and found herself alone in the meadow.
He had gone swiftly back by the way they had come, and she went on to
her home.
"Well, the boy saw you home?" asked Mr. Mortimer when he arrived half
an hour later.
"Yes," she said, raising her head from the cushions of the sofa on
which he found her lying.
"I supposed so, but he didn't come into the smoking-room when he got
back. Went straight to bed, I expect. He's a nice-mannered young
fellow, isn't he?"
"Oh, very!" said Mrs. Mortimer.