I nearly jumped out of my skin.
"Miss Oliphant! Where?"
"In the drawing-room, sir."
In five seconds I was through the study and half-way downstairs. The drawing-room is a cool, low-ceilinged apartment at the farther end of the house. It has windows on two of its sides, those to the north green with brushing leaves and a ferny bank, the others glazed doors that that morning stood wide open. As I entered I heard mingled laughter.
They both stood there.
They were silhouetted against the sunny opening, laughing like a couple of children. Perhaps the joke was that Julia only had been announced. I stood watching them for a moment; then I advanced.
"Good morning," I said.
Julia gave a swift turn. The next moment she had pushed Derry forward.
"You explain--I wash my hands of it," she laughed.
She wore thick shoes and a walking-costume, and on her head was a little felt hat with a pheasant"s feather. He had on an old tweed jacket and grey flannel bags. He held out his hand.
"Hope we"re not dragging you from your work, George," he laughed. "Do you good anyway. I felt like a day off, so I dug out Julia. "Down tools, Julia," I said; "no work to-day. Where shall we go? Shall we give George Coverham a surprise?" So here we are, to lunch, please. By Jove, there"s a kingfisher!"
He sprang out on to the terrace to see where the electric-blue flash had whistled off to.
Swiftly I glanced at Julia. In her eyes was the old deep shining. But Derry called over his shoulder:
"That was a young one, wasn"t it? Is there a nest? How many hatched out?
Do they go for the fish?"
He seemed splendidly fit, perfectly happy. He seemed so happy that suddenly I wondered what I had been making myself so miserable about. A weight seemed to lift all at once from my mind. Too much London had oppressed me, I supposed. Cambridge Circus is not the place for a country-living man to stay too long in. It bred too many fancies. Much better for the Circus-dweller to come into the country.
"It went over by that bank," Derry was saying, still peering after the kingfisher; and I stepped out.
"Yes. The nest"s right in the bank. Six of them hatched. You"ll see another in a minute."
But at that moment his eyes fell on the punt. Quickly he turned to Julia.
"Years since I"ve had a punt-pole in my hand!" he exclaimed. "Is it in working order, George? Come along----"
"You go, Julia," I said; and I returned into the house to see about lunch.
What had happened? Had he really brought her out for the day on his own account, as formerly he had used to do? Or was she allowing him to think that he had? Was he repeating himself even textually, in those words "Down tools, Julia, no work to-day"? I must know. It was essential that I should know. Yet already something in his manner told me that I should not learn it from him. He was here not to talk about himself, but to enjoy, keenly and vividly, every moment of his day. Whatever my own megrims had been, he showed none. Not he, but Julia, would have to explain matters.
Suddenly I took a resolution. I pushed at a baize door.
"Mrs Moxon!" I called.
My housekeeper appeared.
"Would it be upsetting your arrangements if I asked my visitors to stay for the week-end?" I asked.
She considered a moment; then she thought it could be managed. But she seemed puzzled.
"It _is_ Mr Rose, isn"t it?" she said.
Derry, I may say, had been to my house twice or thrice before.
"Of course."
"I thought it was, sir, but they told me only to say Miss Oliphant."
"Oh, that was their little surprise for me," I replied. "Very well, Mrs Moxon. Lunch, and I"ll ask them to stay for the week-end. My sister left a few things, didn"t she?"
"That"ll be all right, sir. I"ll see to Miss Oliphant."
I came out of the house again and sought the lake. They were out in the middle of it, lying down in the punt together with their heads over the side. They were watching the trout. I was on the point of hailing them when I refrained. Something dramatic in their juxtaposition pulled me up short.
Their heads were together, their laughter came across the water. She _was_ having her summer again. But what would it cost her? Her unchanging adoration--and his affectionate indifference! He had never cared, he never would care. To-morrow he would have forgotten all about it. But she would have still another day"s memories to add to those others when he had jumped five-barred gates with his pipe in his mouth and his stick in his hand--memories of my punt and pond and the greening oaks and the silvery willows.... Yet she was laughing as carelessly as he. They were playing a game. A willow-leaf had floated like a fairy shallop towards them, and he was blowing it her way, she blowing it back again.
Then a dragonfly caught their attention, and they forgot the willow-leaf, as instantly as children forget.
At lunch I sat with my back to the open windows, they where they could look out. Apparently he had completely forgotten that night, only three days ago, when he had told me that I was the only one of his old acquaintances to whom he dared reveal himself. He called her Julia, she him Derry, and to both of them I was George. We laughed, joked, said anything that came into our heads; but beneath it all I was in an extreme of curiosity. _How_ had they come together? _What_ had happened that there was now a second person in the world to whom he could p.r.o.nounce his name?
Half-way through lunch I made my proposal that they should remain for a couple of days. His brow suddenly clouded. I watched him carefully, and I knew that Julia was watching him as carefully as I.
"Awfully good of you, George," he said in a suddenly altered voice, "but I really don"t think I can spare the time. I only downed tools for one day, you know. I really must get back."
"But to-morrow"s Sat.u.r.day. I promise to let you go on Sunday evening if you really must."
"I"m so fearfully busy, you see," he said uneasily.
Under the table I felt Julia"s foot touch mine. She spoke.
"Fancy Derry talking like a minor novelist about being busy!" she laughed. "Why, you always used to say that if it was as hard work as all that something was wrong and ought to be seen to!"
His brow instantly cleared again. "That"s so," he said. "Did I say that?
I"d forgotten. Busyness is all bunk, of course; made for duffers. A thing either does itself or it doesn"t.... Right, George, I"ll stop if Julia will. I hope you won"t mind if I go to bed rather early though. I really have been hard at it, and I need a lot of sleep."
"This air"ll make you sleep," I a.s.sured him. I did not add that if he wished to go to bed early lest he should sink into abysmal sleep in the middle of a sentence he should have his wish. Razors and a spirit-lamp were going to be put into his room. A little teapot and caddy would also be placed there. I intended to tell Mrs Moxon that he was faddy about his early-morning tea. He might then use his hot water for any purpose he wished.
We took coffee outside, and then went for a stroll round my few acres.
In the kitchen-garden he had a new idea. Over a hedge at one end of it, well out of the way, was a rather unsightly dump of old household rubbish--tins, burst buckets, old zinc baths, broken utensils of every kind. A few spadefuls of earth are thrown over these from time to time, and a handful of nasturtium-seeds once in a while helps to mitigate the eyesore.
"You want an incinerator, George," he announced. "Here"s all your stuff ready. Hammer this old junk out flat, get the blacksmith to cut a few rods, a cartload of stones and a few barrowloads of clay, and there you are. Lots of fine ash for your beds too, though I shouldn"t think this soil needed much. Got a pencil? I"ll show you----"
He made rough sketches of the incinerator on the back of an envelope.