"I opened the door," said MacWhirter, bowing again.
"It is not fair," said Beatrice. "I am clumsy now--clumsy. I once could play."
"You play excellently. Why that "once could"?" said MacWhirter.
"Ah, you are amiable. My old master would have said differently," she replied.
"We," said MacWhirter, "are humble amateurs, and to us you are more than excellent."
"Good old Monsieur Fanniere, how he would scold me! He said I would not take my talent out of the napkin. He would quote me the New Testament. I always think Scripture false in French, do not you?"
"Er--my acquaintance with modern languages is not extensive, I regret to say."
"No? I was brought up at a convent school near Rouen."
"Ah--that would be very interesting."
"Yes, but I was there six years, and the interest wears off everything."
"Alas!" a.s.sented MacWhirter, smiling.
"Those times were very different from these," said Beatrice.
"I should think so," said MacWhirter, waxing grave and sympathetic.
_Chapter 31_
In the same month of July, not yet a year after Siegmund"s death, Helena sat on the top of the tramcar with Cecil Byrne. She was dressed in blue linen, for the day had been hot. Byrne was holding up to her a yellow-backed copy of _Einsame Menschen_, and she was humming the air of the Russian folk-song printed on the front page, frowning, nodding with her head, and beating time with her hand to get the rhythm of the song.
She turned suddenly to him, and shook her head, laughing.
"I can"t get it--it"s no use. I think it"s the swinging of the car prevents me getting the time," she said.
"These little outside things always come a victory over you," he laughed.
"Do they?" she replied, smiling, bending her head against the wind. It was six o"clock in the evening. The sky was quite overcast, after a dim, warm day. The tramcar was leaping along southwards. Out of the corners of his eyes Byrne watched the crisp morsels of hair shaken on her neck by the wind.
"Do you know," she said, "it feels rather like rain."
"Then," said he calmly, but turning away to watch the people below on the pavement, "you certainly ought not to be out."
"I ought not," she said, "for I"m totally unprovided."
Neither, however, had the slightest intention of turning back.
Presently they descended from the car, and took a road leading uphill off the highway. Trees hung over one side, whilst on the other side stood a few villas with lawns upraised. Upon one of these lawns two great sheep-dogs rushed and stood at the brink of the, gra.s.sy declivity, at some height above the road, barking and urging boisterously. Helena and Byrne stood still to watch them. One dog was grey, as is usual, the other pale fawn. They raved extravagantly at the two pedestrians. Helena laughed at them.
"They are--" she began, in her slow manner.
"Villa sheep-dogs baying us wolves," he continued.
"No," she said, "they remind me of Fafner and Fasolt."
"Fasolt? They _are_ like that. I wonder if they really dislike us."
"It appears so," she laughed.
"Dogs generally chum up to me," he said.
Helena began suddenly to laugh. He looked at her inquiringly.
"I remember," she said, still laughing, "at Knockholt--you--a half-grown lamb--a dog--in procession." She marked the position of the three with her finger.
"What an a.s.s I must have looked!" he said.
"Sort of silent Pied Piper," she laughed.
"Dogs do follow me like that, though," he said.
"They did Siegmund," she said.
"Ah!" he exclaimed.
"I remember they had for a long time a little brown dog that followed him home."
"Ah!" he exclaimed.
"I remember, too," she said, "a little black-and-white kitten that followed me. Mater _would not_ have it in--she would not. And I remember finding it, a few days after, dead in the road. I don"t think I ever quite forgave my mater that."
"More sorrow over one kitten brought to destruction than over all the sufferings of men," he said.
She glanced at him and laughed. He was smiling ironically.
"For the latter, you see," she replied, "I am not responsible."
As they neared the top of the hill a few spots of rain fell.
"You know," said Helena, "if it begins it will continue all night. Look at that!"
She pointed to the great dark reservoir of cloud ahead.
"Had we better go back?" he asked.
"Well, we will go on and find a thick tree; then we can shelter till we see how it turns out. We are not far from the cars here."
They walked on and on. The raindrops fell more thickly, then thinned away.