The doctor arrived after tea, with a bag and a stethoscope in a small
coffin-like box, and the Popes and Mr. Magnet withdrew while Sir Rupert
was carefully sounded, tested, scrutinized, questioned, watched and
examined in every way known to medical science. The outcome of the
conference was presently communicated to the Popes by Mr. Trafford and
the doctor. Sir Rupert was not very seriously injured, but he was
suffering from concussion and shock, two of his ribs were broken and his
wrist sprained, unless perhaps one of the small bones was displaced. He
ought to be bandaged up and put to bed....
"Couldn't we--" said Mrs. Pope, but the doctor assured her his own house
was quite the best place. There Sir Rupert could stay for some days. At
present the cross-country journey over the Downs or by the South Eastern
Railway would be needlessly trying and painful. He would with the Popes'
permission lie quietly where he was for an hour or so, and then the
doctor would come with a couple of men and a carrying bed he had, and
take him off to his own house. There he would be, as Mr. Trafford said,
"as right as ninepence," and Mr. Trafford could put up either at the Red
Lion with Mr. Magnet or in the little cottage next door to the doctor.
(Mr. Trafford elected for the latter as closer to his friend.) As for
the smashed aeroplane, telegrams would be sent at once to Sir Rupert's
engineers at Chesilbury, and they would have all that cleared away by
mid-day to-morrow....
The doctor departed; Sir Rupert, after stimulants, closed his eyes, and
Mr. Trafford seated himself at the tea-things for some more cake, as
though introduction by aeroplane was the most regular thing in the
world.
He had very pleasant and easy manners, an entire absence of
self-consciousness, and a quick talkative disposition that made him very
rapidly at home with everybody. He described all the sensations of
flight, his early lessons and experiments, and in the utmost detail the
events of the afternoon that had led to this disastrous adventure. He
made his suggestion of "trying the thing" seem the most natural impulse
in the world. The bulk of the conversation fell on him; Mr. Magnet, save
for the intervention of one or two jests, was quietly observant; the
rest were well disposed to listen. And as Mr. Trafford talked his eye
rested ever and again on Marjorie with the faintest touch of scrutiny
and perplexity, and she, too, found a curious little persuasion growing
up in her mind that somewhere, somehow, she and he had met and had
talked rather earnestly. But how and where eluded her altogether....
They had sat for an hour--the men from the doctor's seemed never
coming--when Mr. Pope returned unexpectedly from his cricket match,
which had ended a little prematurely in a rot on an over-dry wicket. He
was full of particulars of the day's play, and how Wiper had got a most
amazing catch and held it, though he fell; how Jenks had deliberately
bowled at a man's head, he believed, and little Gibbs thrown a man out
from slip. He was burning to tell all this in the utmost detail to
Magnet and his family, so that they might at least share the retrospect
of his pleasure. He had thought out rather a good pun on Wiper, and he
was naturally a little thwarted to find all this good, rich talk
crowded out by a more engrossing topic.
At the sight of a stranger grouped in a popular manner beside the
tea-things, he displayed a slight acerbity, which was if anything
increased by the discovery of a prostrate person with large brown eyes
and an expression of Oriental patience and disdain, in the shade of a
bush near by. At first he seemed scarcely to grasp Mrs. Pope's
explanations, and regarded Sir Rupert with an expression that bordered
on malevolence. Then, when his attention was directed to the smashed
machine upon the lawn, he broke out into a loud indignant: "Good God!
What next?"
He walked towards the wreckage, disregarding Mr. Trafford beside him. "A
man can't go away from his house for an hour!" he complained.
"I can assure you we did all we could to prevent it," said Trafford.
"Ought never to have had it to prevent," said Mr. Pope. "Is your friend
hurt?"
"A rib--and shock," said Trafford.
"Well--he deserves it," said Mr. Pope. "Rather than launch myself into
the air in one of those infernal things, I'd be stood against a wall and
shot."
"Tastes differ, of course," said Trafford, with unruffled urbanity.
"You'll have all this cleared away," said Mr. Pope.
"Mechanics--oh! a complete break-down party--are speeding to us in fast
motors," said Trafford. "Thanks to the kindness of your domestic in
taking a telegram for me."
"Hope they won't kill any one," said Mr. Pope, and just for a moment the
conversation hung fire. "And your friend?" he asked.
"He goes in the next ten minutes--well, whenever the litter comes from
the doctor's. Poor old Solomonson!"
"Solomonson?"
"Sir Rupert."
"Oh!" said Mr. Pope. "Is that the Pigmentation Solomonson?"
"I believe he does do some beastly company of that sort," said Trafford.
"Isn't it amazing we didn't smash our engine?"
Sir Rupert Solomonson was indeed a familiar name to Mr. Pope. He had
organized the exploitation of a number of pigment and bye-product
patents, and the ordinary and deferred shares of his syndicate has risen
to so high a price as to fill Mr. Pope with the utmost confidence in
their future; indeed he had bought considerably, withdrawing capital to
do so from an Argentine railway whose stock had awakened his distaste
and a sort of moral aversion by slumping heavily after a bad wheat and
linseed harvest. This discovery did much to mitigate his first asperity,
his next remark to Trafford was almost neutral, and he was even asking
Sir Rupert whether he could do anything to make him comfortable, when
the doctor returned with a litter, borne by four hastily compiled
bearers.