It was nice to be alone here now, quite alone.... The washing of the waves seemed presently to die away in my ears. The booming of the bees in those pink cushions of thyme seemed to grow fainter and fainter....
Then these sounds began to increase again in a sweet, and deep, and musical crescendo. Very pretty, that chorus of the bees!
I kept my eyes shut and I listened.
The refrain seemed actually to grow into a little rhythmic tune.
Then--surely those were words that were fitted to the tune? Yes! I caught the words of that tender old Elizabethan cradle song:
"Gol-den slum-bers kiss your eyes!"
For a second I imagined that the Serio-girl had stolen up, and, thinking I was asleep, had begun to sing me awake.
Then I realised that it was a man"s voice that crooned so close behind my ear.
Quickly I opened my eyes and turned.
I found myself looking straight into those absurdly brilliant, dark-blue eyes, fringed by those ridiculously long black lashes of Miss Million"s adored, the Hon. Jim. So he"d come!
Hastily I sat up, with my hands to my hair.
"It looks very nice as it is, Miss Lovelace," said the Hon. Jim gravely, with a curious twitch at the corners of his firmly cut mouth. "Tell me, now. Do you consider it a fair dispensation of Providence that all the domestic virtues should be of less avail to a girl in a sea-breeze than the natural kink in the chestnut hair of her?"
It is ridiculous, the way this young man always starts a conversation with some silly question to which there is absolutely no answer!
The only thing to be done was to ignore it! So I rose to my feet as primly as I could, and said: "Good afternoon! They will all be sorry that you came too late for the picnic. I believe Miss Vi Va.s.sity has gone down there, to the left"--here I pointed towards the grey-blue sweep of distance cut by the mast of a wireless station somewhere near.
"And Miss Million is with her."
The Hon. Jim said gently: "I was not really asking which way they had gone. What I really wanted to know is----"
Here he looked hard at me----"What has happened to--" here his voice changed again--"to the gentleman from the new, young, and magnificent country, where the girls are all peaches, and their lovers are real, virile, red-blooded, clean-limbed, splendid specimens of what the Almighty intended the young man to be, I guess?"
Try as I would, I could not keep my lips from quivering with laughter at the perfect imitation which Mr. Burke gave of the young man who was certainly worth ten of him in every way, even if he does not speak with the accent of those who have "come down" (and a good long way, too) from the Kings of Ireland.
"If you mean Mr. Jessop," I said distantly, "I think he went off with Miss Va.s.sity and his cousin."
"Ah!" said the Hon. Jim, on a long-drawn note. "Oh! the cousin of the little Million, is he? Is that it? Does that account for it?"
"Account for what?" I said rather snappishly; and then, feeling rather afraid that he might answer with something that had nothing to do with the matter in hand, I went on hastily: "I don"t think they can have gone more than about ten minutes. They will be so glad to see you! You will easily catch them up if you hurry, Mr. Burke----"
Mr. Burke allowed all the n.o.ble reproach of a hunger-striking suffragist to appear in those blue eyes of his as he looked down at me.
"Child, have you the heart of a stone?" he asked seriously. ""Hurry,"
says she! Hurry! To a starving man who has walked from the Refuge here on his flat feet, without so much as a crumb of lunch or the memory of a drink to fortify him! Hurry? Is that all you can think of?"
Well, then, of course----
One can"t let a man starve, can one? So----
I was simply forced to do what I could for this undeserving late-comer in the way of feeding him after his tramp across the downs.
I gave him a seat on the rug. I foraged in the re-packed luncheon baskets, and got him a clean plate, knives, forks, gla.s.s.... I brought out all that was left by the "Refuge" party of the hunter"s beef, the cold chicken, the ham, the steak-and-kidney pie, and the jam pasty that had been made by the Serio-girl, who is in her "off" moments a particularly good cook.
The Honourable Jim did appreciate the meal!
Also he seems to enjoy having a woman to wait hand and foot upon him.
In fact he "made errands" for me among the devastated luncheon baskets in the shadow of the car.
He demanded pepper (which had been forgotten).
He wanted more claret (when all had been finished).
Finally he demanded whole-meal bread instead of the ordinary kind.
"There isn"t any," I said.
"Why not?" he demanded, aggrieved.
I laughed at him across the big table-napkin that I had spread as a cloth, pinning it down with four of the irregular, sun-heated flints that lay loose on the turf all about us. I said: "I suppose you"re accustomed to have everything "there" that you happen to want?"
"I am not," said the Honourable Jim. "But I"m accustomed to getting it "there" one way or another."
"I see. Is there anything else that I ought to do for you that I"ve forgotten?"
"There is. You haven"t called me "Sir,"" said the Honourable Jim. "I like you to call me "Sir.""
Immediately I made up my mind that the word should never pa.s.s my lips to him again.
But he went on eating heartily, chattering away between the mouthfuls.... I scarcely know what the man said! But I suppose all kinds of worthless people have that gift of making themselves "at home" in any company they like, and of carrying on that flow of talk that they contrive to make sound amusing, although it looks perfectly silly written down....
One can"t imagine anybody really sterling (like my Mr. Brace, for example) exploiting a characteristic of this sort. The Honourable Jim is "at" it the whole time. Just to keep his hand in, of course!
(I never cease to see through him.)
At last he finished lunching. He pulled out a very pretty platinum cigarette-case.
(I wondered who he had "w.a.n.gled" that out of.)
"Miss Lovelace, you don"t smoke?"
"No, thank you. I don"t."
"Ah! That"s another pleasing thing about you, is it?"
This made me sorry I hadn"t taken one of his horrid fat cigarettes.
I said: "I suppose you would think it unwomanly of me if I smoked?"
He laughed. "Child," he said, "you have the prettiest obsolete vocabulary to be got anywhere outside Fielding. "Unwomanly," is it, to smoke? I don"t know; I only know that nine out of ten women do it so badly I want to take the cigarette out of their fingers and pitch it into the grate for them! Clouds of smoke they puff out straight into your face till you"d think "twas a fiery-breathing dragon in the room!