It was about half-past three in the afternoon of the next day, and house
and garden alike wore a rather uncomfortable air of heat fatigue and
somnolence. The blinds were down in all the windows that faced south and
west, with the object, no doubt, of keeping them cool--a most desirable
condition of things, but one, on the present occasion, but imperfectly
realized. Nor were things much better to the east of the house, where
ran the deep verandah in which they had sat and from which Daisy had
strayed the evening before; for the heat came no longer from the honest
and scorching rays of the sun, but through a thick blanket of grey
cloud, which all morning had been gradually forming over and obscuring
the sky. Southwards there was rather an ugly glare in the day, a tawny,
coppery-coloured light that spread from low on the horizon, where clouds
of thicker and more palpable texture were piled together--clouds with
hard edges and angry lights in them. It was certain there was going to
be a storm somewhere, and that would be no bad thing, for the air was
horribly sultry, and quite distinctly needed clearing.
Daisy was always susceptible to atmospheric conditions, and she had
gone upstairs after lunch to her room, on the plea, a fairly true one,
of thunder-headache. Aunt Jeannie had been eager with sympathy,
smelling-salts, and offers to read, but Daisy had quietly rejected all
these, saying that it was merely a question of thunderstorm. When the
storm broke she would be better; till then smelling-salts would not
help her.
"It's quite darling of you, Aunt Jeannie," she had forced herself to say
at the end, with a cordiality that was somewhat hard to put into her
voice; "but, really, I would sooner be alone. It isn't a bad headache
either--only just a thunder one."
There was a window-seat in her room, well lined with cushions, and
looking over the river, and it was here that Daisy was rather uneasily
reclining herself. She had first tried lying on her bed, but the room
was too airless except close by the window to be tolerable. Partly that,
partly (half an hour ago) the sound of voices outside, had made her come
over here, and it was to see what was happening to those whom she had
heard talking, as well as to get what air there was, that kept her here
now.
A breath-holding immobility lay over river and garden; no quiver moved
in the aspens or shook the leaf-clad towers of the elms and chestnuts.
It was as if, instead of being clad in soft and sensitive foliage,
they were cast in iron. No note of birds came from the bushes, no
ripple broke the metallic hardness of the river, and the reflections
of the loose-strife and tall grasses along its edges, and the clump
of chestnuts on the little promontory at the corner of the garden,
were as clear-cut and unwavering as if they had been enamelled on
steel. There was no atmosphere in the day; no mist or haze, in spite
of the heat, shrouded or melted the distances; the trees and
house-roofs of Maidenhead a mile away seemed as if a stretched-out
finger could be laid on them. They were of Noah's Ark size; it was
only minuteness that showed their remoteness.
There was a punt underneath these chestnuts at the corner of the garden,
partly concealed by the low sweep of the boughs. Half an hour ago Daisy
had heard Aunt Jeannie's voice below her window saying, "Yes, with
pleasure. But we shall be wise not to go far, as I am sure there will be
a storm." It was at that that Daisy had left her bed and come across to
the window-seat, to see with whom Aunt Jeannie was not going far. But
before she had got there another voice had told her who it was. They had
not gone far; they had gone about fifty yards from the boathouse.
She could see the lines of the punt among the leaves; there was a great
pile of crimson cushions and a woman's figure dressed in grey. In front
of it sat a man's figure in flannels, with shirt-sleeves rolled up to
the elbows. Even as Daisy looked, Aunt Jeannie passed him a couple of
cushions, and he too sat down on the floor of the punt, close to and
facing her. Daisy had said her headache was not bad, and that it was
only thunder-headache. Neither of these assertions was quite true. Her
headache was bad, and it was not, in the main, thunder-headache at all;
it was headache born of trouble and perplexity and struggle. She did not
in the least understand what was happening.
She had got up early that morning and had gone out before breakfast.
Very likely she was out of sorts, and a row on the river in the coolness
of the day was exactly the right thing to correct morbid and suspicious
impressions, which were founded, so she told herself, not on facts, but
on her own bilious interpretation of facts. And, indeed, in the fresh
dewy morning she found, when she went out, that her imagination, which
had been fairly busy most of the night fitting together, like a Chinese
puzzle, the rather disturbing events of the day before, had been riotous
and sensational. Lord Lindfield, for instance, it was true, had not come
down here early yesterday, as he had suggested, but had gone with Aunt
Jeannie to a concert. Clearly his coming down alone to spend the day
with two (especially one) girls in the country would have been highly
unconventional, and he was very wise not to. So that was disposed of.
They had missed their train and motored down instead, arriving half-way
through dinner. What of that? Unless she was prepared to aver that there
had been no breakdown, what was there to build on here? So that was
disposed of. They had played two games of billiards together last
night--the second fifty, so it appeared, had been doubled--but why not?
Before each game Daisy had been asked if she would not play, and had
refused. Then he had said, as they parted on the landing, that he had
never enjoyed a day more. And what of that? Did not Daisy herself have
"the most heavenly evening I have ever spent" about seven times a week?
Like the sensible girl she was, she took her trouble to bits in that
early morning row, as one may take the mechanism of a clock to bits, and
found there was something faulty in every individual piece of its
working. Clearly, therefore, the whole thing, when pieced together
again, could not reasonably be considered a reliable clock, since there
was something wrong with every single piece of it. But--here was the
trouble of it--it seemed to her, when reconstructed and made into one,
to keep excellent time, to be thoroughly dependable. Yet, since all its
pieces were wrong, she would not accept the whole, and, tossing it
overboard, so to speak, settled down for a spell of demon-dispersing
exercise. It was still only a little after seven. She had two clear
hours to get rid of her blues--for they already had become substantial
enough to take this depressing colour--before breakfast.
She had returned, it must be confessed, in far more equable spirits;
physical exercise had disposed her to a broader and more out-of-door
attitude, while her determined effort not to be suspicious and
maliciously constructive had done more.
Of all people in the world Aunt Jeannie was the least mean or
ignoble-minded, and Daisy told herself that she had been measuring her
actions by a standard so crooked that it would not lie straight along
them. There should be no more such attempts, and no more looking from
the dark into windows to see unseen what people were doing inside.
Flushed and exhilarated by her row, Daisy's cheeks burnt a shade
brighter that moment at the thought that it was indeed she who had
done that.
It was still half an hour to breakfast-time when she got back to the
boat-house, but already the heat of the day was begun, and the smell of
the damp coolness of the night dried up. She strolled along the outside
of the thick hedge that faced the river, and then, turning the corner,
saw in front of her, not twenty yards distant, two figures standing
alone together. The woman's two hands clasped those of the man, holding
them against her breast. She was speaking softly and eagerly, smiling
into his face.
Quick as a lizard, Daisy popped back behind the hedge before either
seemed to have seen her, and went swiftly to the house. But this was
more inexplicable yet--for the two figures she had seen were those of
Aunt Jeannie and Victor Braithwaite. There was no questioning the
intimacy of their attitude. Yet here again she had seen something she
had not been meant to see; she would be a lamentable creature if she let
her mind dwell on it, or try to construct its meaning and significance.
It was not for her. But if the man's figure had been Lord Lindfield's
she would have been less surprised.
She had earned an inactive morning by her expedition before breakfast,
and announced her set determination to go no further than the elm-trees
beyond the rose-garden, and when arrived there to do nothing whatever.
From the other side of the table Lord Lindfield rose at this.
"Jove, Miss Daisy," he said. "I've been wondering since I got up, what's
the matter with me, and now I know it's the need of sitting under a tree
and doing nothing. I'll join your party, if you'll let me. Is talking
allowed?"
"Yes, but nobody need answer. I usually shan't."
Jim Crowfoot got up.
"I'm not sure if I shall come or not," he said. "I think not. I feel
rather inclined for conversation to-day."
"Better not come then, old chap," said Lindfield. "There's not much
conversation usually when I'm with you. I never get a word in. Nor
anybody else."
It was impossible to take offence at even this, so pure and friendly was
the chaff. It may be said to Jim's credit that he did not even attempt
to do so.
"What am I to do, then?" he asked. "I can't converse alone.--Mrs.
Halton, will you talk to me?"
"No, Mrs. Halton's going to write letters all the morning," said
Lindfield. "She told me so."
Just for a second Daisy allowed herself to think "So he already knew
that," but it was but momentary. This mood of drawing inferences from
infinitesimal data in other people's conduct was altogether detestable;
she must not allow herself to do it.
"Yes, I'm going to be a virtuous woman," said Aunt Jeannie.--"Alice
dear, will you get a nice dog-chain and fasten me down to a
writing-table till I swear to you that I have written to everybody who
ever writes to me?"
"If you wish, but if I chain you down you sacrifice the fineness of your
virtue. You make a virtue of necessity."
"No," said Jeannie, "I make a necessity of virtue. I shan't be able to
get up. Or is it the same thing?"
"You're clearly going to make a morning of it," remarked Lindfield.
Jeannie sighed.
"An afternoon as well," she said, "If my recollection of the size of a
certain packet neatly labelled 'Unanswered' is at all correct."
"Shouldn't make a packet of unanswered letters," said Lindfield. "I burn
them. Then you can start afresh."