"Her husband"s a big coal-owner at Cardiff. But she"s a niece or something of the governor of Dartmoor prison, and she"s apparently helping to keep house for dear uncle just now. They"ll take us over the prison before tennis. It"s awfully interesting. Harry and I have been once."
"Oh!" murmured Hilda, staggered.
"Now about this "ere woire," said Harry. "What price this?" He handed over the message which he had just composed. It was rather long, and on the form was left s.p.a.ce for only two more words.
Hilda could not decipher it. She saw the characters with her eyes, but she was incapable of interpreting them. All the time she thought:
"I shall go to that prison. I can"t help it. I shan"t be able to keep from going. I shall go to that prison. I must go. Who could have imagined this? I am bound to go, and I shall go."
But instead of objecting totally to the despatch of the telegram, she said in a strange voice:
"It"s very nice of you."
"You fill up the rest of the form," said Harry, offering the pencil.
"What must I put?"
"Well, you"d better put "Countersigned, Hilda." That"ll fix it."
"Will you write it?" she muttered.
He wrote the words.
"Let poor mummy see!" Alicia complained, seizing the telegraph-form.
Harry called out:
"Leeks!"
A shirt-sleeved gardener half hidden by foliage across the garden looked up sharply, saw Harry"s beckoning finger, and approached running.
"Have that sent off for me, will you? Tell Jos to take it," said Harry, and gave Leeks the form and a florin.
"Why, Hilda, you aren"t eating anything!" protested Alicia.
"I only want tea," said Hilda casually, wondering whether they had noticed anything wrong in her face.
II
Edwin, looking curiously out of the carriage-window as the train from Plymouth entered Tavistock station early on the Monday, was surprised to perceive Harry Hesketh on the platform. While, in the heavenly air of the September morning, the train was curving through Bickleigh Vale and the Valley of the Plym and through the steeper valley of the Meavy up towards the first fastnesses of the Moor, he had felt his body to be almost miraculously well and his soul almost triumphant. But when he saw Harry--the remembered figure, but a little stouter and coa.r.s.er--he saw a being easily more triumphant than himself.
Harry had great reason for triumph, for he had proved himself to possess a genius for deductive psychological reasoning and for prophecy. Edwin had been characteristically vague about the visit. First he had telegraphed that he could not come, business preventing. Then he had telegraphed that he would come, but only on Sunday, and he had given no particulars of trains. They had all a.s.sured one another that this was just like Edwin. "The man"s mad!" said Harry with genial benevolence, and had set himself to one of his favourite studies--Bradshaw. He always handled Bradshaw like a master, accomplishing feats of interpretation that amazed his wife. He had announced, after careful connotations, that Edwin was perhaps after all not such a chump, but that he was in fact a chump, in that, having chosen the Bristol-Plymouth route, he had erred about the Sunday night train from Plymouth to Tavistock. How did he know that Edwin would choose the Bristol-Plymouth route? Well, his knowledge was derived from divination, based upon vast experience of human nature. Edwin would "get stuck" at Plymouth. He would sleep at Plymouth--staying at the Royal (he hoped)--and would come on by the 8.1 a.m. on Monday, arriving at 8.59 a.m., where he would be met by Harry in the dog-cart drawn by Joan. The telegraph was of course closed after 10 a.m. on Sunday, but if it had been open and he had been receiving hourly despatches about Edwin"s tortuous progress through England, Harry could not have been more sure of his position. And on the Monday Harry had risen up in the very apogee of health, and had driven Joan to the station. "Mark my words!" he had said. "I shall bring him back with me for breakfast." He had offered to take Hilda to the station to witness his triumph; but Hilda had not accepted.
And there Edwin was! Everything had happened according to Harry"s prediction, except that, from an unfortunate modesty, Edwin had gone to the wrong hotel at Plymouth.
They shook hands in a glow of mutual pleasure.
"How on earth did you know?" Edwin began.
The careful-casual answer rounded off Harry"s triumph. And Edwin thought: "Why, he"s just like a grown-up boy!" But he was distinguished; his club-necktie in all its decay was still impressive; and his expansive sincere goodwill was utterly delightful. Also the station, neat, clean, solid--the negation of all gimcrackery--had an aspect of goodwill to man; its advertis.e.m.e.nts did not flare; and it seemed to be the expression of a sound and self-respecting race. The silvern middle-aged guard greeted Harry with deferential heartiness and saluted Edwin with even more warmth than he had used at Plymouth. On the Sunday Edwin had noticed that in the western country guards were not guards (as in other parts of England), but rather the cordial hosts of their trains. As soon as the doors had banged in a fusillade and the engine whistled, a young porter came and, having exchanged civilities with Harry, picked up Edwin"s bag. This porter"s face and demeanour showed perfect content. His slight yet eager smile and his quick movements seemed to be saying: "It is natural and proper that I should salute you and carry your bag while you walk free. You are gentlemen by divine right, and by the same right I am a railway porter and happy."
To watch the man at his job gave positive pleasure, and it was extraordinarily rea.s.suring--rea.s.suring about everything. Outside the station, the groom stood at Joan"s head, and a wonderful fox-terrier sat alert under the dog-cart. Instantly the dog sprang out and began to superintend the preparations for departure, rushing to and fro and insisting all the time that delay would be monstrous, if not fatal. The dog"s excellence as a specimen of breeding was so superlative as to accuse its breeder and owner of a lack of perspective in life. It was as if the entire resources of civilization had been employed towards the perfecting of the points of that dog.
"Balanced the cart, I suppose, Jos?" asked Harry, kindly.
"Yes, sir," was all that Jos articulated, but his bright face said: "Sir, your a.s.sumption that I have already balanced the cart for three and a bag is benevolent and justified. You trust me. I trust you, sir.
All is well."
The bag was stowed and the porter got threepence and was so happy in his situation that apparently he could not bring himself to leave the scene.
Harry climbed up on the right, Edwin on the left. The dog gave one short bark and flew madly forward. Jos loosed Joan"s head, and at the same moment Harry gave a click, and the machine started. It did not wait for young Jos. Jos caught the back step as the machine swung by, and levered himself dangerously to the groom"s place. And when he had done it he grinned, announcing to beholders that his mission in life was to do just that, and that it was a grand life and he a lucky and enviable fellow.
Harry drove across the Tavy, and through the small grey and brown town, so picturesque, so clean, so solid, so respectable, so content in its historicity. A policeman saluted amiably and firmly, as if saying: "I am protecting all this,--what a treasure!" Then they pa.s.sed the Town Hall.
"Town Hall," said Harry.
"Oh!"
"The Dook"s," said Harry.
He put on a certain facetiousness, but there nevertheless escaped from him the conviction that the ownership of a town hall by a Duke was a wondrous rare phenomenon and fine, showing the strength of grand English inst.i.tutions and traditions, and meet for honest English pride. (And you could say what you liked about progress!) And Edwin had just the same feeling. In another minute they were out of the town. The countryside, though bleak, with its spare hedges and granite walls, was exquisitely beautiful in the morning light; and it was tidy, tended, mature; it was as though it had nothing to learn from the future.
Beyond rose the slopes of the moor, tonic and grim. An impression of health, moral and physical, everywhere disengaged itself. The wayfarer, st.u.r.dy and benign, invigorated by his mere greeting. The trot of the horse on the smooth winding road, the bounding of the dog, the resilience of the cart-springs, the sharp tang of the air on the cheek, all helped to perfect Edwin"s sense of pleasure in being alive. He could not deny that he had stood in need of a change. He had been worrying, perhaps through overwork. Overwork was a mistake. He now saw that there was no reason why he should not be happy always, even with Hilda. He had received a short but nice and almost apologetic letter from Hilda. As for his apprehensions, what on earth did it matter about Dartmoor being so near? Nothing! This district was marvellously rea.s.suring. He thought: "There simply is no social question down here!"
"Had your breakfast?" asked Harry.
"Yes, thanks."
"Well, you just haven"t, then!" said Harry. "We shall be in the nick of time for it."
"When do you have breakfast?"
"Nine thirty."
"Bit late, isn"t it?"
"Oh no! It suits us.... I say!" Harry stared straight between the horse"s ears.
"What?"
Harry murmured:
"No more news about Johnnie, I suppose?"
(Edwin glanced half round at the groom behind. Harry with a gesture indicated that the groom was negligible.)
"Not that I"ve heard. Bit stiff, isn"t it?" Edwin answered.