HALCYON WEATHER
Mrs. Morres was looking benignantly, for her, at Sir Robin Drummond.
"Well, I must say I'm pleased to see you," she said. "It's very handsome
of you, too, to give up the affairs of the nation for an old woman like
me. How do you suppose things are getting on without you?"
"The House is not sitting this afternoon. You know it rises for the
Easter vacation to-morrow."
"On Thursday I go down to Hazels. I wanted that bad person, Mary Gray,
to come with me. She says she has to work at her book. Did you ever hear
such stuff and nonsense? As though the world can't get on without one
young woman's book. I told her she could do it at Hazels. She says she
couldn't--that she'll have to be out all day long. London will not tempt
her out, she says. Is she to go bending her back and dimming her eyes
while the lambs are at play in the fields and the primroses thick in the
woods?"
"She's an obstinate person, Mrs. Morres. When she has made up her mind
to do a thing----"
"Ah! you know her pretty well."
"We first met about nine years ago."
"Dear me! I had no idea that you were such old friends. I thought you
met first in this house."
"Lady Anne Hamilton, the old lady who adopted Miss Gray, was my mother's
friend."
He said nothing about the fact that twelve hours ago he had not known
Mary Gray for the child he had played with for one afternoon, nor of the
long gap between that occasion and their next meeting. Not from any
disingenuousness; but he had a feeling that he liked to keep that
meeting of long ago to himself.
"Dear me, to be sure you would be interested in Mary. You would know a
good deal about her. Nine years--it is a long time."
If he had been the most consummate plotter he could not better have
paved the way for the suggestion he was about to make.
"Put off your return to Hazels till Saturday morning. I want to take you
and Miss Gray into the country for a day on Thursday."
"Indeed, young man! And wait for the Saturday crowd of holiday-makers! A
nice figure I should be struggling among them."
"I will be at Victoria to see you off."
"Oh, you needn't do that." Mrs. Morres turned about with the
inconsequence of her sex. "I've brought one of the maids up with me. She
will take care of me better than most men. She is alarming, this good
Susan, to the people who don't know her. But I thought you were going
abroad?"
"So I am. Saturday morning will do me very well."
"How did you know I was in town? No one is supposed to. All the blinds
are down in front and will be till her Ladyship returns."
"Miss Gray told me. I saw her yesterday."
She looked at him sharply. His honest, plain face reassured her. A
friendship of nine years, too. What trouble could there possibly arise
after a friendship of nine years? Mary must know that he was all but
engaged to his cousin.
"Does she approve of the country trip?"
"I have not asked her. I left that to you to do. She has been shut up in
London all the winter. She needs a breath of country air."
"So she does. She shows the London winter, though you may not see it.
Very well, you shall take us both into the country on Thursday. Mary
will not dream of refusing me."
"That is it. She means to spend those six days between Thursday and
Wednesday toiling at her book. I have heard her say that she will spend
Thursday at the British Museum."
"Stuff and nonsense, she shan't! The world will do just as well without
the book. She must come to Hazels on Saturday. You will help me to
persuade her?"
"I will do my best. How did you leave Hazels?"
"Lovely. For the rest, a wilderness of despairing dogs. They will
forgive me if I bring back Mary. By the way, what have you got for me to
do on Friday? If you will keep me in town when all the shops are shut!
Not that it matters. I've finished all my shopping. But am I to spend my
Good Friday here, in this room? London streets are no place for a poor
woman on Good Friday."
"Will you go to church? There is a service at a church near here, with
Bach's Passion music."
"I should like to, of all things. Afterwards, perhaps, Mary would give
us tea at her eyrie. You and she must dine with me. She is coming this
evening to dinner. Come back to dinner at half-past seven and help me to
persuade her. I can only give you a chop. Some mysterious person in the
lower region cooks for me. She is the plainest of the plain."
"It will be a banquet, with you."
Sir Robin was not a young man who paid compliments easily. When he did
pay one it had always an air of sincerity. Mrs. Morres looked pleased.
She was very fond of Robin Drummond.
When he and Mary met at the door a few hours later he made a jest about
their dining together again so soon, and they laughed about it--to be
sure, that dinner at the restaurant was a secret, something that did not
belong to the conventional life. There was the air of a little
understanding between them when they presented themselves to Mrs. Morres
in the book-room which she used for all purposes of a sitting-room
during her flying visit to town. It was a pleasant room, with book-cases
all round it filled with green glass in a lattice of brass-work. The
books were hidden by the glass, but it reflected every movement of a
bird or a twig or a cloud outside like green waters. The ceiling was
domed like a sky and painted in sunny Italian scenery. It was not dull
in the book-room on the dullest day.
"Did you come together?" Mrs. Morres asked curiously.
"I swear we did not," Sir Robin replied, with mock intensity. "I came
from the east, Miss Gray from the west. We met on your doorstep."
"You looked as if you were enjoying a joke when you came in."
"There was time for one between the ringing of the bell and the opening
of the door."
"Ah, you see, the people downstairs are very old."
Mary allowed herself to be persuaded to the country expedition next day.
The spring had been calling to her, calling to her to come out of London
to the fields. More, she consented to go to Hazels on the Saturday. The
spring had disturbed her with a delicious disturbance. It was no use
trying to be dry-as-dust since the spring had got into her blood. The
book must wait till she came back.
On Thursday the exodus from town had not yet begun. They left soon after
breakfast. As Mary hurried from her Kensington flat to Paddington
Station she met the church-goers with their prayer-books in their hands.
It was Holy Thursday, to be sure--a day for solemn thought and
thanksgiving. She hoped hers would not be less acceptable because it was
made in the quietness of the fields.
It was an exquisite day of April--true Holy Week weather, with white
clouds, like lambs straying in the blue pastures of the sky, shepherded
by the south-west wind. The almond trees were in bloom. They had begun
to drop their blossoms on the pavements, making a dust of roses in
London streets. As they went down from Paddington the river-side
orchards and gardens were starred with the blossom of pear and plum.
Everywhere the birds were singing jocundly. The promise of spring a few
days earlier had been nobly fulfilled.
The sun shone powerfully as they left the country station and went down
a road set with bare hedges on either side. A week ago there had been
frost. Now there was a grateful odour from the millions and millions of
little spear-heads of grass that were pushing above the ground. On the
banks by the side of the road there were primroses and violets, while
there was yet a drift of last week's snow in the sheltered copses.
They found an inn by the side of the road. To the back of it lay a belt
of woods. In front was a great stretch of cornfield and pasturage. In
the distance a church-spire and yet other woods.
There was no village in sight. The village was, as a matter of fact,
lying about its green and velvety common just a little way down the
road. The place was full of the singing of the birds, and of another
sound as sweet, the rushing of waters. A little river ran down from the
higher country and passed through the inn-garden, turning a water-wheel
as it went. The picture on the old sign was of a water-wheel. The inn
was called the Water-Wheel.
"What a name to think upon!" said Mary, with a sigh, "in a torrid London
August! it sounds full of refreshment."
"Its patrons would no doubt prefer the Beer-Keg," said Mrs. Morres, and
was reproached for being cynical on such a day.
While they waited for a meal they explored the delightful inn-garden. It
was not Sir Robin's first visit, and he was able to point out to them
the lions of the place. There was the landlord's aviary of canary-birds,
so hardy that they lived in the open air all the year round. There were
the ferrets in a cage. Not far off, in a proximity which must have
profoundly interested the ferrets, there was an enclosure of white
rabbits. There was a wild duck which had been picked up injured in the
leg one cold winter, and had become tame and followed them about now
from place to place. There were a peacock and a peahen, a sty full of
tiny, squeaking black piglets, hives of bees, all manner of pleasant
country things. A lordly St. Bernard, with deep eyes of affection,
followed Sir Robin as a well-remembered friend.
"Out in the woods," Sir Robin said, "there is a pond which later will be
covered with water-lilies. The nightingales will have begun now. The
wood is a grove of them. The landlord owned up handsomely when I came
here first that 'they dratted things kept one awake at night.' I was
only sorry they did not keep me. But after the first I slept too
soundly."
"What did you find to do?" Mrs. Morres asked.
"Fish. There are plenty of trout in the upper reaches of the river."
They found their lunch of cold roast beef and salad, rhubarb tart and
cream, delicious. The landlord had some good old claret in his cellar
and produced it as though Sir Robin were an honoured guest. They sat to
the meal by an open window. There were wallflowers under the window. In
a bowl on the table were hyacinths and sweet-smelling narcissi.
After the meal Mrs. Morres was tired. "Let me rest," she said, "till
tea-time. What did you say was the train? Five-thirty? Will you order
tea for half-past four? It is half-past two now. Go and explore the
woods. I believe I shall go asleep if I'm allowed. The buzzing of the
bees out there is a drowsy sound."
Mary voted for walking up-stream, and confessed to a passion for
tracking rivers to their sources. They stepped out briskly. She was
wearing a long cloak of grey-blue cloth, which became her. Presently she
took it off and carried it on her arm. Her frock beneath repeated the
colour of the cloak. It had a soft fichu about the neck of yellowed
muslin, with a pattern of little roses. He looked at her with
admiration. He knew as little about clothes as most men, and, like most
men, he loved blue. She did well to wear blue on such a day. The grey of
her eyes took on the blue of her garments, a blue slightly silvered,
like the blue of the April sky.
As the ground ascended, the stream brawled and leaped over little
boulders green with the water-stain and lichens. There were quiet pools
beside the boulders. As they stood by one they saw the fin of a trout in
the obscurity.
They met no one. Presently they were higher than the woods and out on a
green hillside. When they first appeared the place was alive with
rabbits, who hurried to their burrows with a flash of white scuts.
"If we sit down on the hillside we can see the valley," Sir Robin said.
"We can look down into the valley at our leisure. It is filled with a
golden haze. This good sun is drawing out the winter damps. You shall
have my coat to sit on. Wasn't I far-seeing to bring it?"
He spread the coat, which he had been carrying on his arm, for Mary, and
she sat down on the very edge of the incline. The St. Bernard laid his
silver and russet head on her skirt. They had lost sight of the river
now. It had retired into the woods. When they sat down Sir Robin
consulted his watch, and found that they might stay for nearly an hour.
There was a bruised sweetness in the atmosphere about them, which they
discovered presently to be wild thyme. They were sitting on a bed of it.
He thought of it afterwards as one of the sweetnesses that must be
always associated with Mary Gray, like the smell of violets. The full
golden sun poured on them, warming them to the heart. The bees buzzed
about the wild thyme and the golden heads of gorse. Little blue moths
fluttered on the hillside. The rabbits, lower down the hill, came out of
their burrows again and gambolled in the sunshine.
"How sweet it all is!" Mary said impulsively. "I shall always remember
this day."
"And I."
He plucked idly at the wild thyme and the little golden vetches among
the coarse grass of the hillside. A fold of the blue dress lay beside
him. He touched it inadvertently, and the colour came to his cheek:
unobserved, because he had his hat pulled down over his eyes, and Mary
was sketching for him in detail the plan of her book. It interested him
because it was hers. Her voice sounded like poetry. He had not wanted
poetry. Blue-books and statistics had satisfied him very well, hitherto.
But, to be sure, he had read poetry in his Oxford days. Lines and tags
of it came into his mind dreamily as he listened to her voice. He did
not touch that fold of her gown again. If he was sure--but he was not
quite sure. And there was Nelly. He supposed Nelly cared for him if she
was willing to marry him. If Nelly cared--why, then, he had no right to
think of other possibilities.
Something had gone out of the glory and enchantment of the day as they
went back down the hillside. Those lambs of clouds had suddenly banked
themselves up into grey fleeces which covered the sun. The wind blew a
little cold.
"It is the capriciousness of April," said Mary, unconscious of any
change in the mental atmosphere.
He stopped on the downhill path, took her cloak from her arm, and with
kind carefulness laid it about her shoulders. As he arranged it he
touched one of the soft curls that lay on her white neck, and again a
thrill passed through him. He began to wish that he had not planned this
country expedition, after all. He ought really to have started this
morning for the Continent. Going on Saturday, he would have very little
time to stay.
On the homeward way Mrs. Morres reproached him with his dulness. What
had come to him?
He hesitated, glancing at Mary in her corner. Mary had enjoyed her day
thoroughly, and was wearing an air of great content. She was carrying a
bunch of the wild thyme. She had taken off her hat and her cloudy hair
seemed blown about her head like an aureole. She had a delicate, wild,
elusive air. He withdrew his glance abruptly.
"It is a guilty conscience," he said. "I ought not to come back and dine
with you to-night. I ought to put you into a cab and myself into
another, go home for my bag and take the night-express to Paris. The
House only rises for ten days and I have to be in my place on the
opening night."
Mary looked up at him with a friendly air of being disappointed. She was
engaged in putting the wild thyme into a bunch, stalk by stalk. Mrs.
Morres began to protest--
"Well, of all the deceitful persons! After luring me to spend a Good
Friday in town. To be sure, I shall have Mary. Will you come to the Good
Friday service at St. Hugh's with me, Mary?"
"I should love to come."
"Very well, then. Have your bag packed and come back with me to sleep.
We shall get off the earlier on Saturday morning. So we shan't miss you
at all, Sir Robin."
He looked at her with great contrition.
"My mother--" he began.
"To be sure, your mother has first claim. To say nothing of another."
He coloured. Mary was looking at him with kind interest. Mrs. Morres
sent him a quick glance--then looked away again.
"To be sure, you must go, Sir Robin," she said, in a serious voice. "I
was only jesting. Ah! here we are! So it is good-bye."
"Au revoir," he corrected.
"Well, au revoir. I hope you'll have a very happy time at Lugano. But
you are sure to."
A moment later they had gone off in their cab, and he was feeling the
blank of their absence.