There is something soothing even in hotel tobacco, I suppose, so I was
better, though still feeling decidedly blue, later in the day at
Widdington, when I came up to the inn door and began overhauling the
motor as it stood in the yard. There was nothing particularly cheering
in finding several long cuts in the tires, and I was probing them to
get the grit out, when I heard a little cough behind me. I turned to
see Miss Virginia standing in the doorway, looking at me rather
doubtfully. Now of course I had been rather short, not to say nasty,
but somehow it's a fact that you cannot be sharp with a woman without
at once being put in the wrong, though she may really have been the
sinner all the time. It was Miss Virginia who had brought me out on
this show, who had cost me about forty pounds in tires, and Heaven
knows how much in other ways, but it was I who felt a beast now. Yet
she looked at me in a way which seemed to say she was sorry I was
vexed. She was rubbing her hands together and shivering a little. Of
course she was cold in that ridiculous dress.
'A nice day it has turned out, hasn't it!' I said rather spitefully.
'Oh, I'll never, never ask for a picnic again!' cried she, with a
comical look. She came and began to look at the cuts in the tires
herself.
'Oh, they _are_ bad,' she exclaimed, 'and I suppose you love that old
motor better than anything on earth, don't you?' she inquired.
'I get a good deal more pleasure out of it,' I truthfully replied,
'than I do out of the society of most human beings.' She gave a little
laugh.
'I expect I had better go inside after that!' she said, and of course
I felt rather a brute. I hadn't really meant to be rude or send her
away. I hunted under the tarpaulin that covered the motor for my
fur-lined coat, and then I followed her into the inn.
'Look here,' I said, 'better put this on; you're horribly cold.' She
seemed half inclined to refuse, but finally let me put the coat over
her shoulders and run her arms into the sleeves.
'You're pretty damp,' I observed.
''Deed I am!' she shivered. 'Miss Evesham and I went for a walk and
got caught in the rain as usual. My hair's all wet too!'
'Better dry it,' I suggested.
She ran off to some room or other, and when she reappeared she had two
plaits of dark hair, as thick as bellropes, hanging down her back.
With that and my motor coat, Miss Virginia cut a pretty queer figure.
I cannot say she looked plain, however; her spirits had come back, and
so had mine, strange to say, for the day was far from finished.
There was a parlour in the inn, so low in the ceiling that I could
not stand up straight in it, and was for ever knocking my head against
the rafters. When we went in, this place was as full of women as it
could hold, all fighting like cats,--Mrs. MacGill, Mrs. Pomeroy, Miss
Evesham,--and all wondering how they were to get home. The place was
simply steaming with tea.
Mrs. MacGill, it appeared, utterly refused to go home in the pony trap
unless it were driven by me. Needless to say I declined this honour
with a firmness equal to hers. Finally it was arranged, chiefly by
Miss Evesham's management, that the two old ladies and herself were to
go home in the motor with Johnson, while Miss Virginia and I
negotiated the pony and trap. This was pretty thick, considering I had
refused point-blank to drive Mrs. MacGill, but Miss Evesham seemed to
make it sound all right,--clever sort of young woman in her way. As
the weather threatened to get worse immediately, the motor party was
packed off without loss of time, and Miss Virginia and I had a
comfortable tea by ourselves before starting for home.
It was not late in the afternoon, but the little inn parlour was
almost dark, chiefly because the church tower overshadowed the house,
and the window was so small. Presently the bells began ringing (it was
a saint's day, Miss Virginia said), and my word, what a din they made!
The whole house shook and the very teacups rattled. Miss Virginia
seemed to like it, however, and sat listening with her chin on her
hand. She had been strumming on an old spinet sort of thing that stood
in the corner of the room, and I asked her if she would sing a little
before we set off.
'I will,' said she, 'if you'll smoke a little,' an invitation I
accepted with alacrity.
'You deserve something,' she remarked, 'to make up for the wretched
time you've been having to-day. It was partly my fault. I am sorry.'
'Oh, don't mention it!' was all I could say, of course, and Miss
Virginia began to sing before I could speak another word.
There is a tremendous charm in her singing: her style is so simple;
her voice is so fresh; you can hear every word she says, and she
always sings the right songs. How this sort of singing makes a man
think! I can't describe the effect it had upon me. As Miss Virginia
touched the tinny, stringy old notes and went from song to song,--now
an Irish melody, now a nigger one, now an English ballad,--I forgot
all about the day's worries; I forgot the motor and the cut tires and
the bad weather and the beastly picnic--it was a kind of heaven. If I
marry, it must be some one who can sing like this. I have been
changing my preferences for blonde women lately. No doubt they look
very nice when young, but they don't wear well, I feel sure, and get
purple and chilblainy in cold weather. Of course the dark ones are apt
to turn drab and mottled, but not when they have as much colour as
Miss Virginia. All sorts of scraps of thoughts and ideas chased each
other through my mind as she sang. She had got on to a thing she had
sung in the hotel several times,--a plantation Christmas carol she
called it, the sort of thing you cannot forget once you have heard it,
either the words or the music.
'Oh, dat star's still shinin' dis Chrismus Day,
Rise, O sinner, and foller!
Wid an eye o' faith you c'n see its ray,
Rise, O sinner, and foller!
Leave yo' fader,
Leave yo' mudder,
Leave yo' sister,
Leave yo' brudder,
An' rise, O sinner, and foller!'