"Exactly!" It was for her sort of "taste" that ample provision was made in the feuilleton of a certain paper.
Hermione was not a bit dashed. "_You_ may look for romance in bottles if you like. For my part ..." she stuck out her chin.
"Well, oblige the company by telling us what you look for in a story?"
"Orange blossoms," says she promptly; "not little bits of brain."
He laughed with the rest of us at that, and he knocked the ash out of his pipe against the arm of the garden chair. Lord Helmstone, he said, would be waiting for his foursome.
A day or two after, Hermione accused him to his face of "story-telling."
"You said you were only going to stay three weeks."
To our astonishment he answered: "I don"t think I said "only" three weeks. I said three weeks. Three weeks certainly."
"----and all the while arranging to settle down and live here."
I looked from Eric, slightly annoyed, to Hermione, mocking, and to Lady Barbara, rolling large pale eyes and smiling self-consciously.
"What makes you think I"m going to settle down?" he demanded.
"Well, isn"t that the intention of most people who put up a cottage in the country?"
"Oh! you mean my penny bungalow." He picked up his golf clubs. "n.o.body in this country "settles down" in a bungalow," he said.
As though she had some private understanding of the matter, Lady Barbara seemed to speak for him. "----just to live in for a while," she said quite gently.
"Not to live in at all." Eric threw the strap of the canvas golf-bag over his shoulder, and made for the front-door.
"What do you want a bungalow _for_, then?" Hermione"s teasing voice followed after him.
"----mere harmless eccentricity." He was "like that," he said. He turned round at Hermione"s laugh, and I saw him looking at the expression on Lady Barbara"s face. Very gentle and happy; almost pretty. And I had never thought Lady Barbara the least pretty before.
Eric, too, seemed to be struck. "I find I"ve got to have a place to put things," he said more seriously, and then he went on out. "Must have some place to keep one"s traps," he called back.
Lady Barbara stood leaning against the door and looking out at the retreating figure, still with that expression that made the plain face almost beautiful.
I felt that Eric had come lamely out of the encounter. What did it all mean? For he had said nothing whatever to us (who thought ourselves his special friends) about this curious project of putting up a bungalow.
A hideous little ready-made house, with a roof of corrugated iron, painted a.r.s.enic green, it came down from London in sections, and was set up in a field adjoining Big Klaus"s orchard.
The field belonged to Lord Helmstone.
Eric continued to eat and to sleep at Big Klaus"s, but he used to go over to the Bungalow and shut himself up to work.
As the days went on, and he showed no sign of increased intimacy with the Helmstones I clutched at the idea that perhaps he had found he couldn"t work very well in the midst of farmyard noises. He had spoken of the melancholy moo-ing of cows waiting for meadow-bars to be let down; of the baa-ing and grunting and the eternal barking that went on.
And those noises--which he was, strangely, still more sensitive to--produced by Big Klaus"s c.o.c.ks and hens underneath Eric"s window; and by the ducks and geese hissing and clacking on the pond between the house and the stables. I was not likely to forget how he had mocked at "country quiet" or the samples he gave us of the academic calm that reigned at Big Klaus"s. I think I never heard my mother laugh so much as on that first day he "did" the peaceful country life for us--Eric rather out of temper, presenting his grievance with great spirit:
"----wretched man sits up addling his brains till two in the morning. At four, this kind of thing----" In a quiet, meditative way he would begin clucking. Then quacking, almost sleepily at first; then with more and more fervour till he would leave the ducks and soar away on the ecstasy of a loud, exuberant crow. All this not the least in the sketchy, impressionist way that most people who try will imitate those humble noises, but with a precision and vigour that first startled you, and then made you feel that you were being given, not only an absolutely faithful reproduction of the sound those creatures make, but in the oddest way given their point of view as well. We laughed the more, I think, because the comedy seemed to come out of the revelation of the immense seriousness of the animals. Eric"s commentary seemed so fair. It seemed to admit that the importance to ducks and c.o.c.ks and hens of _their_ goings on was at least as great as the importance of peace and quiet to him. With an air of doing it against the grain, he gave you (with a rueful kind of honesty) the duck"s sentiments in a series of depressed little quacks that hardly needed the translation: ""Been all over this repulsive pond; turned myself and all my family upside down for hours. Nothing!"" Then indignant quacks, and: ""Silly new servant can"t tell time. Past five o"clock, and no sharps!"" Then a single jubilant ""Quack! There she is----"" and a rising chorus, till anyone not in the room would be ready to swear we kept as many ducks as Big Klaus. A moment"s silence, and in his own person Eric would say with a sigh: "_Now_, perhaps, I can tackle that German review." ""Buck! Buck!
Buck!""--or rather a series of sounds that defies the alphabet. Then the interruption: ""My-wife"s-laid-an-egg!"" and the shrill rapture of a loud crow of great authority.
The Bungalow was out of earshot of all that. We heard orders were given that no letters or telegrams were ever to be taken to the Bungalow. When Eric was there, "no matter what happened," n.o.body was to disturb him.
And when he wasn"t there the Bungalow was shut and locked.
I think I have said that Hermione was the most daring girl imaginable.
She went one day ("Well, doesn"t the field belong to us?") and looked in at first one window and then another. She said there was nothing but a stove and packing-cases in the room she could see into. And she brought back a bewildering account of what had been done to the windows of the other room. There were no curtains and no blinds, but thick brown paper had been pasted over the gla.s.s of each lower sash. You could no more see in than you could see through the wall.
The top sashes were down, and Hermione naturally thought he must be there. So she called "Mr. Annan!" quite loud. But he wasn"t there after all, she said.
Of course, the next time she met him on the links she began to tease him about papering up his windows. "And how can you see?"
"Oh, quite well, thank you."
"Well, anyhow, I don"t believe you read all the time. n.o.body could read the whole day and half the night."
No, he didn"t read all the time.
"What do you do then?"
Ah, there was no telling.
And that was true. There was no getting Eric to tell you anything he didn"t want to.
Hermione announced that she had been to call.
"Yes," he said, "I heard you call."
She stared.
"You don"t mean to say you were in there all the time?"
"Yes, I was there," he said, going on with his putting practice quite at his ease.
Hermione was speechless for a moment, and that was the only time in my life I ever saw Hermione blush.
"What a monster you were not to come out when you heard me!"
"Sorry, but I was too busy," he said. "I always _am_ busy when I"m at the Bungalow."
She was still rather red, but laughing, too. "I suppose, then, you heard me try the door?" (She hadn"t told us she had gone as far as that.)
"Yes, I heard you try the door."