I had gone far beyond that initial stage; I had had two smashes and a
broken rib which my aunt nursed with great energy, and was getting some
reputation in the aeronautic world when, suddenly, as though she had
never really left it, the Honourable Beatrice Normandy, dark-eyed, and
with the old disorderly wave of the hair from her brow, came back into
my life. She came riding down a grass path in the thickets below Lady
Grove, perched up on a huge black horse, and the old Earl of Carnaby
and Archie Garvell, her half-brother, were with her. My uncle had been
bothering me about the Crest Hill hot-water pipes, and we were
returning by a path transverse to theirs and came out upon them
suddenly. Old Carnaby was trespassing on our ground, and so he hailed
us in a friendly fashion and pulled up to talk to us.
I didn’t note Beatrice at all at first. I was interested in Lord
Carnaby, that remarkable vestige of his own brilliant youth. I had
heard of him, but never seen him. For a man of sixty-five who had
sinned all the sins, so they said, and laid waste the most magnificent
political debut of any man of his generation, he seemed to me to be
looking remarkably fit and fresh. He was a lean little man with
grey-blue eyes in his brown face, and his cracked voice was the worst
thing in his effect.
“Hope you don’t mind us coming this way, Ponderevo,” he cried; and my
uncle, who was sometimes a little too general and generous with titles,
answered, “Not at all, my lord, not at all! Glad you make use of it!”
“You’re building a great place over the hill,” said Carnaby.
“Thought I’d make a show for once,” said my uncle. “It looks big
because it’s spread out for the sun.”
“Air and sunlight,” said the earl. “You can’t have too much of them.
But before our time they used to build for shelter and water and the
high road.”
Then I discovered that the silent figure behind the earl was Beatrice.
I’d forgotten her sufficiently to think for a moment that she hadn’t
changed at all since she had watched me from behind the skirts of Lady
Drew. She was looking at me, and her dainty brow under her broad
brimmed hat—she was wearing a grey hat and loose unbuttoned coat—was
knit with perplexity, trying, I suppose, to remember where she had seen
me before. Her shaded eyes met mine with that mute question....
It seemed incredible to me she didn’t remember.
“Well,” said the earl and touched his horse.
Garvell was patting the neck of his horse, which was inclined to
fidget, and disregarding me. He nodded over his shoulder and followed.
His movement seemed to release a train of memories in her. She glanced
suddenly at him and then back at me with a flash of recognition that
warmed instantly to a faint smile. She hesitated as if to speak to me,
smiled broadly and understandingly and turned to follow the others. All
three broke into a canter and she did not look back. I stood for a
second or so at the crossing of the lanes, watching her recede, and
then became aware that my uncle was already some paces off and talking
over his shoulder in the belief that I was close behind. I turned about
and strode to overtake him. My mind was full of Beatrice and this
surprise. I remembered her simply as a Normandy. I’d clean forgotten
that Garvell was the son and she the step-daughter of our neighbour,
Lady Osprey. Indeed, I’d probably forgotten at that time that we had
Lady Osprey as a neighbour. There was no reason at all for remembering
it. It was amazing to find her in this Surrey countryside, when I’d
never thought of her as living anywhere in the world but at Bladesover
Park, near forty miles and twenty years away. She was so alive—so
unchanged! The same quick warm blood was in her cheeks. It seemed only
yesterday that we had kissed among the bracken stems....
“Eh?” I said.
“I say he’s good stuff,” said my uncle. “You can say what you like
against the aristocracy, George; Lord Carnaby’s rattling good stuff.
There’s a sort of _Savoir Faire_, something—it’s an old-fashioned
phrase, George, but a good one there’s a Bong-Tong.... It’s like the
Oxford turf, George, you can’t grow it in a year. I wonder how they do
it. It’s living always on a Scale, George. It’s being there from the
beginning.”...
“She might,” I said to myself, “be a picture by Romney come alive!”
“They tell all these stories about him,” said my uncle, “but what do
they all amount to?”
“Gods!” I said to myself; “but why have I forgotten for so long? Those
queer little brows of hers, the touch of mischief in her eyes—the way
she breaks into a smile!”
“I don’t blame him,” said my uncle. “Mostly it’s imagination. That and
leisure, George. When I was a young man I was kept pretty busy. So were
you. Even then—!”
What puzzled me more particularly was the queer trick of my memory that
had never recalled anything vital of Beatrice whatever when I met
Garvell again that had, indeed, recalled nothing except a boyish
antagonism and our fight. Now when my senses were full of her, it
seemed incredible that I could ever have forgotten....