"Lands ever bright, days ever fair,And yet we weep thatheis there."
"Lands ever bright, days ever fair,And yet we weep thatheis there."
he read. "You know that's really Good. That ought to be printed somewhere."
Mrs. Pope glanced sharply at her daughter's white face, and found an enigma. Then she looked at Mr. Magnet.
There was no mistake about Mr. Magnet. Marjorie had accepted him, whatever else she had felt or done.
§ 14
Marjorie's feelings for the rest of the day are only to be accounted for on the supposition that she was overwrought. She had a preposterous reaction. She had done this thing with her eyes open after days of deliberation, and now she felt as though she was caught in a trap. The clearest thing in her mind was that Mr. Magnet had taken hold of her and kissed her, kissed her on the lips, and that presently he would do it again. And also she was asking herself with futile reiteration why she had got into debt at Oxbridge? Why she had got into debt? For such silly little things too!
Nothing definite was said in her hearing about the engagement, but everybody seemed to understand. Mr. Pope was the most demonstrative, he took occasion to rap her hard upon the back, his face crinkled with a resolute kindliness. "Ah!" he said, "Sly Maggots!"
He also administered several resounding blowsto Magnet's shoulder blades, and irradiated the party with a glow of benevolent waggery. Marjorie submitted without an answer to these paternal intimations. Mrs. Pope did no more than watch her daughter. Invisible but overwhelming forces were busy in bringing Marjorie and her glowing lover alone together again. It happened at last, as he was departing; she was almost to her inflamed imagination thrust out upon him, had to take him to the gate; and there in the shadows of the trees he kissed her "good night" with passionate effusion.
"Madge," he said, "Madge!"
She made no answer. She submitted passively to his embrace, and then suddenly and dexterously disengaged herself from him, ran in, and without saying good-night to anyone went to her room to bed.
Mr. Pope was greatly amused by this departure from the customary routine of life, and noted it archly.
When Daffy came up Marjorie was ostentatiously going to sleep....
As she herself was dropping off Daffy became aware of an odd sound, somehow familiar, and yet surprising and disconcerting.
Suddenly wide awake again, she started up. Yes there was no mistake about it! And yet it was very odd.
"Madge, what's up?"
No answer.
"I say! you aren't crying, Madge, are you?"
Then after a long interval: "Madge!"
An answer came in a muffled voice, almost as if Marjorie had something in her mouth. "Oh shut it, old Daffy."
"But Madge?" said Daffy after reflection.
"Shut it.Doshut it! Leave me alone, I say! Can't you leave me alone? Oh!"—and for a moment she let her sobs have way with her—"Daffy, don't worry me. Old Daffy!Please!"
Daffy sat up for a long time in the stifled silence that ensued, and then like a sensible sister gave it up, and composed herself again to slumber....
Outside watching the window in a state of nebulous ecstasy, was Mr. Magnet, moonlit and dewy. It was a high serene night with a growing moon and a scattered company of major stars, and if no choir of nightingales sang there was at least a very active nightjar. "More than I hoped," whispered Mr. Magnet, "more than I dared to hope." He was very sleepy, but it seemed to him improper to go to bed on such a night—on such an occasion.
§ 1
For the next week Marjorie became more nearlyintrospective than she had ever been in her life before. She began to doubt her hitherto unshaken conviction that she was a single, consistent human being. She found such discords and discrepancies between mood and mood, between the conviction of this hour and the feeling of that, that it seemed to her she was rather a collection of samples of emotion and attitude than anything so simple as an individual.
For example, there can be no denying there was one Marjorie in the bundle who was immensely set up by the fact that she was engaged, and going to be at no very remote date mistress of a London house. She was profoundly Plessingtonian, and quite the vulgarest of the lot. The new status she had attained and the possibly beautiful house and the probably successful dinner-parties and the arrangements and the importance of such a life was the substance of this creature's thought. She designed some queenly dresses. This was the Marjorie most in evidence when it came to talking with her mother and Daphne. I am afraid she patronized Daphne, and ignored the fact that Daphne, who had begun with a resolute magnanimity, was becoming annoyed and resentful.
And she thought of things she might buy, and the jolly feeling of putting them about and making fine effects with them. One thing she told Daphne, she had clearly resolved upon; the house should be always full and brimming over with beautiful flowers. "I've always wished mother would have more flowers—andnot keep them so long when she has them...."
Another Marjorie in the confusion of her mind was doing her sincerest, narrow best to appreciate and feel grateful for and return the devotion of Mr. Magnet. This Marjorie accepted and even elaborated his views, laid stress on his voluntary subjection, harped upon his goodness, brought her to kiss him.
"I don't deserve all this love," this side of Marjorie told Magnet. "But I mean to learn to love you——"
"My dear one!" cried Magnet, and pressed her hand....
A third Marjorie among the many was an altogether acuter and less agreeable person. She was a sprite of pure criticism, and in spite of the utmost efforts to suppress her, she declared night and day in the inner confidences of Marjorie's soul that she did not believe in Mr. Magnet's old devotion at all. She was anti-Magnet, a persistent insurgent. She was dreadfully unsettling. It was surely this Marjorie that wouldn't let the fact of his baldness alone, and who discovered and insisted upon a curious unbeautiful flatness in his voice whenever he was doing his best to speak from the heart. And as for this devotion, what did it amount to? A persistent unimaginative besetting of Marjorie, a growing air of ownership, an expansive, indulgent, smiling disposition to thwart and control. And he was always touching her! Whenever he came near her she would wince at the freedoms a large, kind hand might take with her elbow or wrist, at a possible sudden, clumsy pat at some erring strand of hair.
Then there was an appraising satisfaction in his eye.
On the third day of their engagement he began, quite abruptly, to call her "Magsy." "We'll endthis scandal of a Girl Pope," he said. "Magsy Magnet, you'll be—M.M. No women M.P.'s forus, Magsy...."
She became acutely critical of his intellectual quality. She listened with a new alertness to the conversations at the dinner-table, the bouts of wit with her father. She carried off utterances and witticism for maturer reflection. She was amazed to find how little they could withstand the tests and acids of her mind. So many things, such wide and interesting fields, he did not so much think about as cover with a large enveloping shallowness....
He came strolling around the vicarage into the garden one morning about eleven, though she had not expected him until lunch-time; and she was sitting with her feet tucked up on the aged but still practicable garden-seat reading Shaw's "Common Sense of Municipal Trading." He came and leant over the back of the seat, and she looked up, said "Good morning. Isn't it perfectly lovely?" and indicated by a book still open that her interest in it remained alive.
"What's the book, Magsy?" he asked, took it out of her slightly resisting hand, closed it and read the title. "Um," he said; "Isn't this a bit stiff for little women's brains?"
All the rebel Marjories were up in arms at that.
"Dreadful word, 'Municipal.' Idon'tlike it." He shook his head with a grimace of humorous distaste.
"I suppose women have as good brains as men," said Marjorie, "if it comes to that."
"Better," said Magnet. "That's why they shouldn't trouble about horrid things like Municipal and Trading.... On a day like this!"
"Don't you think this sort of thing is interesting?"
"Oh!" he said, and flourished the book. "Come! And besides—Shaw!"
"He makes a very good case."
"But he's such a—mountebank."
"Does that matter? He isn't a mountebank there."
"He's not sincere. I doubt if you had a serious book on Municipal Trading, Magsy, whether you'd make head or tail of it. It's a stiff subject. Shaw just gets his chance for a smart thing or so.... I'd rather you read a good novel."
He really had the air of taking her reading in hand.
"You think I ought not to read an intelligent book."
"I think we ought to leave those things to the people who understand."
"But we ought to understand."
He smiled wisely. "There's a lot of thingsyouhave to understand," he said, "nearer home than this."
Marjorie was ablaze now. "What a silly thing to say!" she cried, with an undergraduate's freedom. "Really, you are talking nonsense! I read that book because it interests me. If I didn't, I should read something else. Do you mean to suggest that I'm reading like a child, who holds a book upside down?"
She was so plainly angry that he was taken aback. "I don't mean to suggest—" he began, and turned to greet the welcome presence, the interrogative eye of Mrs. Pope.
"Here we are!" he said, "having a quarrel!"
"Marjorie!" said Mrs. Pope.
"Oh, it's serious!" said Mr. Magnet, and addedwith a gleam: "It's about Municipal Trading!"
Mrs. Pope knew the wicked little flicker in Marjorie's eye better than Mr. Magnet. She had known it from the nursery, and yet she had never quite mastered its meaning. She had never yet realized it was Marjorie, she had always regarded it as something Marjorie, some other Marjorie, ought to keep under control. So now she adopted a pacificatory tone.
"Oh! lovers' quarrels," she said, floating over the occasion. "Lovers' quarrels. You mustn't askmeto interfere!"
Marjorie, already a little ashamed of her heat, thought for an instant she ought to stand that, and then decided abruptly with a return to choler that she would not do so. She stood up, and held out her hand for her book.
"Mr. Magnet," she said to her mother with remarkable force and freedom as she took it, "has been talking unutterable nonsense. I don't call that a lovers' quarrel—anyhow."
Then, confronted with a double astonishment, and having no more to say, she picked up her skirt quite unnecessarily, and walked with a heavenward chin indoors.
"I'm afraid," explained Mr. Magnet, "I was a little too free with one of Magsy's favourite authors."
"Which is the favourite author now?" asked Mrs. Pope, after a reflective pause, with a mother's indulgent smile.
"Shaw." He raised amused eyebrows. "It's just the age, I suppose."
"She's frightfully loyal while it lasts," said Mrs. Pope. "No one dare say a word against them."
"I think it's adorable of her," said Mr. Magnet—with an answering loyalty and gusto.
§ 2
The aviation accident occurred while Mrs. Pope, her two eldest daughters, and Mr. Magnet were playing golf-croquet upon the vicarage lawn. It was a serene, hot afternoon, a little too hot to take a game seriously, and the four little figures moved slowly over the green and grouped and dispersed as the game required. Mr. Magnet was very fond of golf-croquet, he displayed a whimsical humour and much invention at this game, it was not too exacting physically; and he could make his ball jump into the air in the absurdest manner. Occasionally he won a laugh from Marjorie or Daffy. No one else was in sight; the pseudo-twins and Theodore and Toupee were in the barn, and Mr. Pope was six miles away at Wamping, lying prone, nibbling grass blades and watching a county cricket match, as every good Englishman, who knows what is expected of him, loves to do.... Click went ball and mallet, and then after a long interval, click. It seemed incredible that anything could possibly happen before tea.
But this is no longer the world it was. Suddenly this tranquil scene was slashed and rent by the sound and vision of a monoplane tearing across the heavens.
A purring and popping arrested Mr. Magnet in mid jest, and the monster came sliding up the sky over the trees beside the church to the east, already near enough to look big, a great stiff shape, big buff sails stayed with glittering wire, and with two odd little wheels beneath its body. It drove up the sky, rising with a sort of upward heaving, until the croquet players could see the driver and a passenger perched behind him quite clearly. It passed a little to the right of the church tower and only a few yards above the level of the flagstaff, there wasn't fifty feet of clearance altogether, and as it did so Marjoriecould see both driver and passenger making hasty movements. It became immense and over-shadowing, and every one stood rigid as it swept across the sun above the vicarage chimneys. Then it seemed to drop twenty feet or so abruptly, and then both the men cried out as it drove straight for the line of poplars between the shrubbery and the meadow. "Oh, oh, OH!" cried Mrs. Pope and Daffy. Evidently the aviator was trying to turn sharply; the huge thing banked, but not enough, and came about and slipped away until its wing was slashing into the tree tops with a thrilling swish of leaves and the snapping of branches and stays.
"Run!" cried Magnet, and danced about the lawn, and the three ladies rushed sideways as the whole affair slouched down on them. It came on its edge, hesitated whether to turn over as a whole, then crumpled, and amidst a volley of smashing and snapping came to rest amidst ploughed-up turf, a clamorous stench of petrol, and a cloud of dust and blue smoke within twenty yards of them. The two men had jumped to clear the engine, had fallen headlong, and were now both covered by the fabric of the shattered wing.
It was all too spectacular for word or speech until the thing lay still. Even then the croquet players stood passive for awhile waiting for something to happen. It took some seconds to reconcile their minds to this sudden loss of initiative in a monster that had been so recently and threateningly full of go. It seemed quite a long time before it came into Marjorie's head that she ought perhaps to act in some way. She saw a tall young man wriggling on all fours from underneath the wreckage of fabric. He stared at her rather blankly. She went forward with a vague idea of helping him. He stood up,swayed doubtfully on his legs, turned, and became energetic, struggling mysteriously with the edge of the left wing. He gasped and turned fierce blue eyes over his shoulder.
"Help me to hold the confounded thing up!" he cried, with a touch of irritation in his voice at her attitude.
Marjorie at once seized the edge of the plane and pushed. The second man, in a peculiar button-shaped head-dress, was lying crumpled up underneath, his ear and cheek were bright with blood, and there was a streak of blood on the ground near his head.
"That's right. Can you hold it if I use only one hand?"
Marjorie gasped "Yes," with a terrific weight as it seemed suddenly on her wrists.
"Right O," and the tall young man had thrust himself backwards under the plane until it rested on his back, and collared the prostrate man. "Keep it up!" he said fiercely when Marjorie threatened to give way. He seemed to assume that she was there to obey orders, and with much grunting and effort he had dragged his companion clear of the wreckage.
The man's face was a mass of blood, and he was sickeningly inert to his companion's lugging.
"Let it go," said the tall young man, and Marjorie thanked heaven as the broken wing flapped down again.
She came helpfully to his side, and became aware of Daffy and her mother a few paces off. Magnet—it astonished her—was retreating hastily. But he had to go away because the sight of blood upset him—so much that it was always wiser for him to go away.
"Is he hurt?" cried Mrs. Pope.
"We both are," said the tall young man, and then as though these other people didn't matter and he and Marjorie were old friends, he said: "Can we turn him over?"
"I think so." Marjorie grasped the damaged man's shoulder and got him over skilfully.
"Will you get some water?" said the tall young man to Daffy and Mrs. Pope, in a way that sent Daffy off at once for a pail.
"He wants water," she said to the parlourmaid who was hurrying out of the house.
The tall young man had gone down on his knees by his companion, releasing his neck, and making a hasty first examination of his condition. "The pneumatic cap must have saved his head," he said, throwing the thing aside. "Lucky he had it. He can't be badly hurt. Just rubbed his face along the ground. Silly thing to have come as we did."
He felt the heart, and tried the flexibility of an arm.
"That'sall right," he said.
He became judicial and absorbed over the problems of his friend's side. "Um," he remarked. He knelt back and regarded Marjorie for the first time. "Thundering smash," he said. His face relaxed into an agreeable smile. "He only bought it last week."
"Is he hurt?"
"Rib, I think—or two ribs perhaps. Stunned rather. Allthis—just his nose."
He regarded Marjorie and Marjorie him for a brief space. He became aware of Mrs. Pope on his right hand. Then at a clank behind, he turned round to see Daphne advancing with a pail of water. The two servants were now on the spot, and the odd-job man, and the old lady who did out the church, and Magnet hovered doubtfully in the distance. Suddenlywith shouts and barks of sympathetic glee the pseudo-twins, Theodore and Toupee shot out of the house. New thoughts were stirring in the young aviator. He rose, wincing a little as he did so. "I'm afraid I'm a little rude," he said.
"I do hope your friend isn't hurt," said Mrs. Pope, feeling the duty of a hostess.
"He's not hurtmuch—so far as I can see. Haven't we made rather a mess of your lawn?"
"Oh, not at all!" said Mrs. Pope.
"We have. If that is your gardener over there, it would be nice if he kept back the people who seem to be hesitating beyond those trees. There will be more presently. I'm afraid I must throw myself on your hands." He broke into a chuckle for a moment. "I have, you know. Is it possible to get a doctor? My friend's not hurt so very much, but still he wants expert handling. He's Sir Rupert Solomonson, from"—he jerked his head back—"over beyond Tunbridge Wells. My name's Trafford."
"I'm Mrs. Pope and these are my daughters."
Trafford bowed. "We just took the thing out for a lark," he said.
Marjorie had been regarding the prostrate man. His mouth was a little open, and he showed beautiful teeth. Apart from the dry blood upon him he was not an ill-looking man. He was manifestly a Jew, a square-rigged Jew (you have remarked of course that there are square-rigged Jews, whose noses are within bounds, and fore-and-aft Jews, whose noses aren't), with not so much a bullet-head as a round-shot, cropped like the head of a Capuchin monkey. Suddenly she was down and had his head on her knee, with a quick movement that caught Trafford's eye. "He's better," she said. "His eyelids flickered. Daffy, bring the water."
She had felt a queer little repugnance at first withthis helpless man, but now that professional nurse who lurks in the composition of so many women, was uppermost. "Give me your handkerchief," she said to Trafford, and with Daffy kneeling beside her and also interested, and Mrs. Pope a belated but more experienced and authoritative third, Sir Rupert was soon getting the best of attention.
"Wathall..." said Sir Rupert suddenly, and tried again: "Wathall." A third effort gave "Wathall about, eh?"
"If we could get him into the shade," said Marjorie.
"Woosh," cried Sir Rupert. "Weeeooo!"
"That's all right," said Trafford. "It's only a rib or two."
"Eeeeeyoooo!" said Sir Rupert.
"Exactly. We're going to carry you out of the glare."
"Don't touch me," said Sir Rupert. "Gooo."
It took some little persuasion before Sir Rupert would consent to be moved, and even then he was for a time—oh! crusty. But presently Trafford and the two girls had got him into the shade of a large bush close to where in a circle of rugs and cushions the tea things lay prepared. There they camped. The helpful odd-job man was ordered to stave off intruders from the village; water, towels, pillows were forthcoming. Mr. Magnet reappeared as tentative assistance, and Solomonson became articulate and brave and said he'd nothing but a stitch in his side. In his present position he wasn't at all uncomfortable. Only he didn't want any one near him. He enforced that by an appealing smile. The twins, invited to fetch the doctor, declined, proffering Theodore. They had conceived juvenile passions for the tall young man, and did not want to leave him. He certainlyhad a very nice face. So Theodore after walking twice round the wreckage, tore himself away and departed on Rom's bicycle. Enquiry centred on Solomonson for a time. His face, hair and neck were wet but no longer bloody, and he professed perfect comfort so long as he wasn't moved, and no one came too near him. He was very clear about that though perfectly polite, and scrutinized their faces to see if they were equally clear. Satisfied upon this point he closed his eyes and spoke no more. He looked then like a Capuchin monkey lost in pride. There came a pause. Every one was conscious of having risen to an emergency and behaved well under unusual circumstances. The young man's eye rested on the adjacent tea-things, lacking nothing but the coronation of the teapot.
"Why not," he remarked, "have tea?"
"If you think your friend——" began Mrs. Pope.
"Oh!he'sall right. Aren't you, Solomonson? There's nothing more now until the doctor."
"Only want to be left alone," said Solomonson, and closed his heavy eyelids again.
Mrs. Pope told the maids, with an air of dismissal, to get tea.
"We can keep an eye on him," said Trafford.
Marjorie surveyed her first patient with a pretty unconscious mixture of maternal gravity and girlish interest, and the twins to avoid too openly gloating upon the good looks of Trafford, chose places and secured cushions round the tea-things, calculating to the best of their ability how they might secure the closest proximity to him. Mr. Magnet and Toupee had gone to stare at the monoplane; they were presently joined by the odd-job man in an interrogative mood. "Pretty complete smash, sir!"said the odd-job man, and then perceiving heads over the hedge by the churchyard, turned back to his duty of sentinel. Daffy thought of the need of more cups and plates and went in to get them, and Mrs. Pope remarked that she did hope Sir Rupert was not badly hurt....
"Extraordinary all this is," remarked Mr. Trafford. "Now, here we were after lunch, twenty miles away—smoking cigars and with no more idea of having tea with you than—I was going to say—flying. But that's out of date now. Then we just thought we'd try the thing.... Like a dream."
He addressed himself to Marjorie: "I never feel that life is quite real until about three days after things have happened. Never. Two hours ago I had not the slightest intention of ever flying again."
"But haven't you flown before?" asked Mrs. Pope.
"Not much. I did a little at Sheppey, but it's so hard for a poor man to get his hands on a machine. And here was Solomonson, with this thing in his hangar, eating its head off. Let's take it out," I said, "and go once round the park. And here we are.... I thought it wasn't wise for him to come...."
Sir Rupert, without opening his eyes, was understood to assent.
"Do you know," said Trafford, "The sight of your tea makes me feel frightfully hungry."
"I don't think the engine's damaged?" he said cheerfully, "do you?" as Magnet joined them. "The ailerons are in splinters, and the left wing's not much better. But that's about all except the wheels. One falls so much lighter than you might suppose—from the smash.... Lucky it didn't turn over. Then, you know, the engine comes on the top of you, andyou're done."
§ 3
The doctor arrived after tea, with a bag and a stethoscope in a small coffin-like box, and the Popes and Mr. Magnet withdrew while Sir Rupert was carefully sounded, tested, scrutinized, questioned, watched and examined in every way known to medical science. The outcome of the conference was presently communicated to the Popes by Mr. Trafford and the doctor. Sir Rupert was not very seriously injured, but he was suffering from concussion and shock, two of his ribs were broken and his wrist sprained, unless perhaps one of the small bones was displaced. He ought to be bandaged up and put to bed....
"Couldn't we—" said Mrs. Pope, but the doctor assured her his own house was quite the best place. There Sir Rupert could stay for some days. At present the cross-country journey over the Downs or by the South Eastern Railway would be needlessly trying and painful. He would with the Popes' permission lie quietly where he was for an hour or so, and then the doctor would come with a couple of men and a carrying bed he had, and take him off to his own house. There he would be, as Mr. Trafford said, "as right as ninepence," and Mr. Trafford could put up either at the Red Lion with Mr. Magnet or in the little cottage next door to the doctor. (Mr. Trafford elected for the latter as closer to his friend.) As for the smashed aeroplane, telegrams would be sent at once to Sir Rupert's engineers at Chesilbury, and they would have all that cleared away by mid-day to-morrow....
The doctor departed; Sir Rupert, after stimulants,closed his eyes, and Mr. Trafford seated himself at the tea-things for some more cake, as though introduction by aeroplane was the most regular thing in the world.
He had very pleasant and easy manners, an entire absence of self-consciousness, and a quick talkative disposition that made him very rapidly at home with everybody. He described all the sensations of flight, his early lessons and experiments, and in the utmost detail the events of the afternoon that had led to this disastrous adventure. He made his suggestion of "trying the thing" seem the most natural impulse in the world. The bulk of the conversation fell on him; Mr. Magnet, save for the intervention of one or two jests, was quietly observant; the rest were well disposed to listen. And as Mr. Trafford talked his eye rested ever and again on Marjorie with the faintest touch of scrutiny and perplexity, and she, too, found a curious little persuasion growing up in her mind that somewhere, somehow, she and he had met and had talked rather earnestly. But how and where eluded her altogether....
They had sat for an hour—the men from the doctor's seemed never coming—when Mr. Pope returned unexpectedly from his cricket match, which had ended a little prematurely in a rot on an over-dry wicket. He was full of particulars of the day's play, and how Wiper had got a most amazing catch and held it, though he fell; how Jenks had deliberately bowled at a man's head, he believed, and little Gibbs thrown a man out from slip. He was burning to tell all this in the utmost detail to Magnet and his family, so that they might at least share the retrospect of his pleasure. He had thought out rather a good pun on Wiper, and he was naturally a little thwarted to find all this good, rich talk crowded outby a more engrossing topic.
At the sight of a stranger grouped in a popular manner beside the tea-things, he displayed a slight acerbity, which was if anything increased by the discovery of a prostrate person with large brown eyes and an expression of Oriental patience and disdain, in the shade of a bush near by. At first he seemed scarcely to grasp Mrs. Pope's explanations, and regarded Sir Rupert with an expression that bordered on malevolence. Then, when his attention was directed to the smashed machine upon the lawn, he broke out into a loud indignant: "Good God! What next?"
He walked towards the wreckage, disregarding Mr. Trafford beside him. "A man can't go away from his house for an hour!" he complained.
"I can assure you we did all we could to prevent it," said Trafford.
"Ought never to have had it to prevent," said Mr. Pope. "Is your friend hurt?"
"A rib—and shock," said Trafford.
"Well—he deserves it," said Mr. Pope. "Rather than launch myself into the air in one of those infernal things, I'd be stood against a wall and shot."
"Tastes differ, of course," said Trafford, with unruffled urbanity.
"You'll have all this cleared away," said Mr. Pope.
"Mechanics—oh! a complete break-down party—are speeding to us in fast motors," said Trafford. "Thanks to the kindness of your domestic in taking a telegram for me."
"Hope they won't kill any one," said Mr. Pope, and just for a moment the conversation hung fire. "And your friend?" he asked.
"He goes in the next ten minutes—well, wheneverthe litter comes from the doctor's. Poor old Solomonson!"
"Solomonson?"
"Sir Rupert."
"Oh!" said Mr. Pope. "Is that the Pigmentation Solomonson?"
"I believe he does do some beastly company of that sort," said Trafford. "Isn't it amazing we didn't smash our engine?"
Sir Rupert Solomonson was indeed a familiar name to Mr. Pope. He had organized the exploitation of a number of pigment and bye-product patents, and the ordinary and deferred shares of his syndicate has risen to so high a price as to fill Mr. Pope with the utmost confidence in their future; indeed he had bought considerably, withdrawing capital to do so from an Argentine railway whose stock had awakened his distaste and a sort of moral aversion by slumping heavily after a bad wheat and linseed harvest. This discovery did much to mitigate his first asperity, his next remark to Trafford was almost neutral, and he was even asking Sir Rupert whether he could do anything to make him comfortable, when the doctor returned with a litter, borne by four hastily compiled bearers.
§ 4
Some brightness seemed to vanish when the buoyant Mr. Trafford, still undauntedly cheerful, limped off after his more injured friend, and disappeared through the gate. Marjorie found herself in a world whose remaining manhood declined to see anything but extreme annoyance in this gay, exciting rupture of the afternoon. "Good God!" said Mr. Pope. "What next? What next?"
"Registration, I hope," said Mr. Magnet,—"andrelegation to the desert of Sahara."
"One good thing about it," said Mr. Pope—"it all wastes petrol. And when the petrol supply gives out—they're done."
"Certainly we might all have been killed!" said Mrs. Pope, feeling she had to bear her witness against their visitors, and added: "If we hadn't moved out of the way, that is."
There was a simultaneous movement towards the shattered apparatus, about which a small contingent of villagers, who had availed themselves of the withdrawal of the sentinel, had now assembled.
"Look at it!" said Mr. Pope, with bitter hostility. "Look at it!"
Everyone had anticipated his command.
"They'll never come to anything," said Mr. Pope, after a pause of silent hatred.
"But theyhaveto come to something," said Marjorie.
"They've come to smash!" said Mr. Magnet, with the true humorist's air.
"But consider the impudence of this invasion, the wild—objectionableness of it!"
"They're nasty things," said Mr. Magnet. "Nasty things!"
A curious spirit of opposition stirred in Marjorie. It seemed to her that men who play golf-croquet and watch cricket matches have no business to contemn men who risk their lives in the air. She sought for some controversial opening.
"Isn't the engine rather wonderful?" she remarked.
Mr. Magnet regarded the engine with his head a little on one side. "It's the usual sort," he said.
"There weren't engines like that twenty years ago."
"There weren't people likeyoutwenty yearsago," said Mr. Magnet, smiling wisely and kindly, and turned his back on the thing.
Mr. Pope followed suit. He was filled with the bitter thought that he would never now be able to tell the history of the remarkable match he had witnessed. It was all spoilt for him—spoilt for ever. Everything was disturbed and put out.
"They've left us our tennis lawn," he said, with a not unnatural resentment passing to invitation. "What do you say, Magnet? Now you've begun the game you must keep it up?"
"If Marjorie, or Mrs. Pope, or Daffy...?" said Magnet.
Mrs. Pope declared the house required her. And so with the gravest apprehensions, and an insincere compliment to their father's energy, Daffy and Marjorie made up a foursome for that healthy and invigorating game. But that evening Mr. Pope got his serve well into the bay of the sagging net almost at once, and with Marjorie in the background taking anything he left her, he won quite easily, and everything became pleasant again. Magnet gloated upon Marjorie and served her like a missionary giving Bibles to heathen children, he seemed always looking at her instead of the ball, and except for a slight disposition on the part of Daffy to slash, nothing could have been more delightful. And at supper Mr. Pope, rather crushing his wife's attempt to recapitulate the more characteristic sayings and doings of Sir Rupert and his friend, did after all succeed in giving every one a very good idea indeed of the more remarkable incidents of the cricket match at Wamping, and made the pun he had been accustomed to use upon the name of Wiper in a new and improved form. A general talk about cricket and the Immense Good of cricket followed. Mr. Pope saidhe would make cricket-playing compulsory for every English boy.
Everyone it seemed to Marjorie was forgetting that dark shape athwart the lawn, and all the immense implication of its presence, with a deliberate and irrational skill, and she noted that the usual move towards the garden at the end of the evening was not made.
§ 5
In the night time Marjorie had a dream that she was flying about in the world on a monoplane with Mr. Trafford as a passenger.
Then Mr. Trafford disappeared, and she was flying about alone with a curious uneasy feeling that in a minute or so she would be unable any longer to manage the machine.
Then her father and Mr. Magnet appeared very far below, walking about and disapproving of her. Mr. Magnet was shaking his head very, very sagely, and saying: "Rather a stiff job for little Marjorie," and her father was saying she would be steadier when she married. And then, she wasn't clear how, the engine refused to work until her bills were paid, and she began to fall, and fall, and fall towards Mr. Magnet. She tried frantically to pay her bills. She was falling down the fronts of skyscrapers and precipices—and Mr. Magnet was waiting for her below with a quiet kindly smile that grew wider and wider and wider....
She woke up palpitating.
§ 6
Next morning a curious restlessness came upon Marjorie. Conceivably it was due to the absence of Magnet, who had gone to London to deliver his longpromised address on The Characteristics of English Humour to theLiteratiClub. Conceivably she missed his attentions. But it crystallized out in the early afternoon into the oddest form, a powerful craving to go to the little town of Pensting, five miles off, on the other side of Buryhamstreet, to buy silk shoelaces.
She decided to go in the donkey cart. She communicated her intention to her mother, but she did not communicate an equally definite intention to be reminded suddenly of Sir Rupert Solomonson as she was passing the surgery, and make an inquiry on the spur of the moment—it wouldn't surely be anything but a kindly and justifiable impulse to do that. She might see Mr. Trafford perhaps, but there was no particular harm in that.
It is also to be remarked that finding Theodore a little disposed to encumber her vehicle with his presence she expressed her delight at being released from the need of going, and abandoned the whole expedition to him—knowing as she did perfectly well that if Theodore hated anything more than navigating the donkey cart alone, it was going unprotected into a shop to buy articles of feminine apparel—until he chucked the whole project and went fishing—if one can call it fishing when there are no fish and the fisherman knows it—in the decadent ornamental water.
And it is also to be remarked that as Marjorie approached the surgery she was seized with an absurd and powerful shyness, so that not only did she not call at the surgery, she did not even look at the surgery, she gazed almost rigidly straight ahead, telling herself, however, that she merely deferred that kindly impulse until she had bought her laces. And so it happened that about half a mile beyond the end of Buryhamstreet she came round a corner uponTrafford, and by a singular fatality he also was driving a donkey, or, rather, was tracing a fan-like pattern on the road with a donkey's hoofs. It was a very similar donkey to Marjorie's, but the vehicle was a governess cart, and much smarter than Marjorie's turn-out. His ingenuous face displayed great animation at the sight of her, and as she drew alongside he hailed her with an almost unnatural ease of manner.
"Hullo!" he cried. "I'm taking the air. You seem to be able to drive donkeys forward. How do you do it? I can't. Never done anything so dangerous in my life before. I've just been missed by two motor cars, and hung for a terrible minute with my left wheel on the very verge of an unfathomable ditch. I could hear the little ducklings far, far below, and bits of mould dropping. I tried to count before the splash. Aren't you—white?"
"But why are you doing it?"
"One must do something. I'm bandaged up and can't walk. It hurt my leg more than I knew—your doctor says. Solomonson won't talk of anything but how he feels, andIdon't care a rap how he feels. So I got this thing and came out with it."
Marjorie made her inquiries. There came a little pause.
"Some day no one will believe that men were ever so foolish as to trust themselves to draught animals," he remarked. "Hullo! Look out! The horror of it!"
A large oil van—a huge drum on wheels—motor-driven, had come round the corner, and after a preliminary and quite insufficient hoot, bore down upon them, and missing Trafford as it seemed by a miracle, swept past. Both drivers did wonderful things with whips and reins, and found themselves alone in theroad again, with their wheels locked and an indefinite future.
"I leave the situation to you," said Trafford. "Or shall we just sit and talk until the next motor car kills us?"
"We ought to make an effort," said Marjorie, cheerfully, and descended to lead the two beasts.
Assisted by an elderly hedger, who had been taking a disregarded interest in them for some time, she separated the wheels and got the two donkeys abreast. The old hedger's opinion of their safety on the king's highway was expressed by his action rather than his words; he directed the beasts towards a shady lane that opened at right angles to the road. He stood by their bridles while Marjorie resumed her seat.
"It seems to me clearly a case for compromise," said Trafford. "You want to go that way, I want to go that way. Let us both gothisway. It is by such arrangements that civilization becomes possible."
He dismissed the hedger generously and resumed his reins.
"Shall we race?" he asked.
"With your leg?" she inquired.
"No; with the donkeys. I say, thisisrather a lark. At first I thought it was both dangerous and dull. But things have changed. I am in beastly high spirits. I feel there will be a cry before night; but still, I am——I wanted the companionship of an unbroken person. It's so jolly to meet you again."
"Again?"
"After the year before last."
"After the year before last?"
"You didn't know," said Trafford, "I had met you before? How aggressive I must have seemed! Well,Iwasn't quite clear. I spent the greater part of last night—my ankle being foolish in the smallhours—in trying to remember how and where."
"I don't remember," said Marjorie.
"I remembered you very distinctly, and some things I thought about you, but not where it had happened. Then in the night I got it. Itisa puzzle, isn't it? You see, I was wearing a black gown, and I had been out of the sunlight for some months—and my eye, I remember it acutely, was bandaged. I'm usually bandaged somewhere.