“When?” I asked.
She dealt in chords. “I wish I _could_ play this!” she said.
“Midnight.”
She gave her attention to the music for a time.
“You may have to wait.”
“I’ll wait.”
She brought her playing to an end by—as school boys say—“stashing it
up.”
“I can’t play to-night,” she said, standing up and meeting my eyes. “I
wanted to give you a parting voluntary.”
“Was that Wagner, Beatrice?” asked Lady Osprey looking up from her
cards. “It sounded very confused.”
I took my leave. I had a curious twinge of conscience as I parted from
Lady Osprey. Either a first intimation of middle-age or my inexperience
in romantic affairs was to blame, but I felt a very distinct objection
to the prospect of invading this good lady’s premises from the garden
door. I motored up to the pavilion, found Cothope reading in bed, told
him for the first time of West Africa, spent an hour with him in
settling all the outstanding details of Lord Roberts β, and left that
in his hands to finish against my return. I sent the motor back to Lady
Grove, and still wearing my fur coat—for the January night was damp and
bitterly cold—walked to Bedley Corner. I found the lane to the back of
the Dower House without any difficulty, and was at the door in the wall
with ten minutes to spare. I lit a cigar and fell to walking up and
down. This queer flavour of intrigue, this nocturnal garden-door
business, had taken me by surprise and changed my mental altitudes. I
was startled out of my egotistical pose and thinking intently of
Beatrice, of that elfin quality in her that always pleased me, that
always took me by surprise, that had made her for example so instantly
conceive this meeting.
She came within a minute of midnight; the door opened softly and she
appeared, a short, grey figure in a motor-coat of sheepskin, bareheaded
to the cold drizzle. She flitted up to me, and her eyes were shadows in
her dusky face.
“Why are you going to West Africa?” she asked at once.
“Business crisis. I have to go.”
“You’re not going—? You’re coming back?”
“Three or four months,” I said, “at most.”
“Then, it’s nothing to do with me?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Why should it have?”
“Oh, that’s all right. One never knows what people think or what people
fancy.” She took me by the arm, “Let’s go for a walk,” she said.