“Risks! I’ve got her in hand—all right. Besides, the only driving that’s worth while is fast driving.”
“So it seems.”
He was laconic, but feeling far less laconic than he appeared. He had to stiffen himself against flinching. Confound it, he could not let a damned girl put the wind up him.
But she did. It was on the return journey after lunch, when she was driving on a cocktail and half a bottle of white wine. Oberammergau became a mere dream village left sleeping in its valley among the hills. She drove scandalously, recklessly, with an utter disregard of anything that might be on the road, and Ferrers sat rigid. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her she was hogging, and in a country that was too beautiful for such beastliness.
He might have told her so had he not begun to suspect that she was both showing off and trying to show him up. There was an edge of mischievous malice in her smile. “What ho, old thing, sit tight.” He sat tight; he kept himself wedged against the side of the car; he was trying not to keep his body from squirming, despite inward qualms.
About two miles from Tutzing they had their thrill, a corner, a farm cart well in the middle of the road, and the Bentley doing fifty. Ferrers drew up his knees.
“My God, look out!”
How she got by that cart and its frightened, furious and blue-eyed driver he did not know, but get by it she did, and it seemed to him that the near wheels were in the hedge. They bumped on something, bounced, skidded slightly and were clear.
She gave two hoots on the horn.
“Bit of a squeeze, that!”
And then she looked at him and appreciated the whiteness of his face.
“Guess—I put the wind up you, old thing.”
When he got out of the car at the hotel he knew that he hated her, her youth and its mockery. All her sensuous softness was an illusion. She was just a young savage, and her beauty so much war-paint. His greying hair was a mere “scalp”; he supposed she thought she had it at her girdle.
He smiled a little twisted smile.
“Thanks, we’ve hogged it pretty thoroughly. I feel we owe every flower an apology.”
She drove off to the hotel garage, waving a hand.
“Bye-bye. You’ll feel better after tea.”
Meanwhile another visitor had arrived, and was unpacking her luggage in bedroom Number Twelve, and when Ferrers went to his room he gathered that he had a neighbour. He was feeling on edge and ready to resent the occupation of Number Twelve, for Number Eleven had been so pleasantly silent with no adventitious noises from next door. He heard the ringing of a bell, and then Frau Blick’s voice in the corridor. Frau Blick was speaking in English, and the other voice was English.
“Can I have some tea brought up here? I’m rather tired.”
Ferrers, standing by the window, turned a startled head. The English voice next door was disturbingly familiar. It was like a soft hand drawing aside the curtain of time and revealing the past in the actual present.
Where had he heard that voice before? But of course——! Yet the coincidence seemed incredible.
A strange excitement stirred in him. He went down to the terrace, strolled across to the balustrade, turned and looked towards the window of Number Twelve. He could see someone moving about the room, the outline of a head, but the figure was too indistinct for him to be sure. And yet—somehow—he was sure. She—too—had come to this place in June, but whether her inspiration matched his—he could not say.
Then it was that he heard that other voice, the voice of youth. It arrived singing, and he was conscious of sudden exasperation, as though some irresponsible child was about to throw a stone into the still waters of a magic pool.
She hailed him, “Hallo, uncle, what do I owe you for damage to nerves?”
He strolled across the terrace with his hands in his pockets. He said, “By the way, I’d like to quote you something from ‘Bitter-Sweet.’ ‘You young things understand nothing but speed and noise.’ ”
She laughed.
“You fretful old gentleman.”
“Supposing we leave it at that.”
He turned and walked to the other end of the terrace, and she sat down under one of the lime trees and Franz brought her her tea. She lit a cigarette.
“O, Franz, I’m pushing off to-morrow. I shall want you to make me up some lunch.”
Franz bowed to her, and was hailed by Mr. Ferrers.
“Franz, bring me some tea over here, will you?”
So they took tea at separate tables and at a distance of twenty yards, and the other woman, sitting at the window of Number Twelve, was poised between the past and the present.
Ferrers lit a pipe. He watched Miss Lingerman leave her table, walk to the terrace steps and disappear. Did the young wench expect him to follow her? He waited. He heard her voice singing down there in the wood, and since it was sufficiently distant he took his courage in his hands. He got up and walked along the terrace until he was under the window of Number Twelve. He stood there, looking up.
She appeared at the window, and to-day seemed to become yesterday. He would have said that she had changed hardly at all, save that she looked more mature. She had the same air of fair tranquillity, a kind of wise gentleness, the same steadfast eyes. And he marvelled at her, and at himself, and at that other fool self.
He said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t foresee—— But if I’m spoiling anything for you—I’ll clear out—at once.”
She seemed to smile.
“You were here first. Really—it’s up to me to go—if——”
Almost he looked frightened.
“No, please don’t do that. I’m not worth it. But I’d rather like—to be worth—a little of your tolerance.”
She looked towards the lake. She said, “Isn’t it strange? Do you still dine—under the trees?”
He nodded.
“Oh, yes—but dining alone. I’ve come to an age when—— Oh, well, you couldn’t possibly bring yourself—could you—to dine with me to-night?”
She hesitated.
“I might, just once—for old times’ sake.”
He looked pathetic.
“That’s great of you. It’s about all I deserve.”
So Miss Lola Lingerman arriving at her table under the lime trees found Mr. Ferrers dining with a lady, and at the moment he was deep in the wine list, with Franz at his elbow.
“Château Turgot 1899. Yes, that was it. Have you any left in the cellar, Franz?”
“No, sir. 1919 is the oldest we have, sir.”
Ferrers looked at his partner. The date had a significance for them both.
“I’m sorry. Can you tolerate that year?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“That’s magnanimous of you. A bottle of 1919, Franz.”
Miss Lingerman received a cursory glance and a nod from him. He did not introduce her to his companion. In fact he was so completely absorbed in talking to this other woman that youth was not even part of the triangle. And Rosamund Ferrers’ back was to the girl, and she seemed unaware of her presence.
Miss Lingerman, feeling vaguely provoked, was considering some intrusion at the end of the meal. She was quite capable of carrying her coffee cup and a cigarette to the next table, and of saying, “I’ll join you, uncle. Please introduce me,” but the opportunity was filched from her. Ferrers got up two minutes before she had finished her dessert, and stood looking down at the lady.
“Would you care to stroll down to the lake?”
She was lighting a cigarette. She rose.
“I’d love to.”
Miss Lingerman watched them descend the terrace steps and the youth in her refrained. After all, she was leaving Tutzing to-morrow.
She was packing, and a full moon was up when she heard their voices returning to the terrace. She went to her window and listened. She heard Mr. Ferrers say, “Even the moon’s just the same. Well, I suppose it would be.”
And she wanted to laugh. Sentimenta
l old ass!
She saw them but once again, and that was next morning, when her car passed them on the road, Ferrers carrying a basket and other impedimenta, his friend a camp-stool and a sunshade. The sunshade dated them, and Miss Lingerman swept on in a cloud of dust. She left them the dust, nor did she see them stop and look at the landscape until the dust had settled.
“Crude things, cars,” said Mr. Ferrers.
“I suppose it depends on how one drives them.”
They came to rest in one of those upland meadows where the June grass was a flower garden. There were flowers of every colour, rose, carmine, purple, gold, blue, and Ferrers stood and looked at this Bavarian hill-side.
He said, “One’s first feeling is that it can’t be true.”
She was unfolding a rug.
“But it is true.”
He wandered to and fro in the sunlight, listening to the shrilling of innumerable grasshoppers. Then he came back to the woman who had been his wife, and his face looked as though a hand had smoothed it out.
“All these flowers. Do you know the names of them?”
She gave him the names of many.
“A blue campanula, a kind of cornflower, purple orchis, yellow rattle, forget-me-not, white and yellow daisies, campion, thalyctrum, a blue salvia, a pink flower that looks like betony.”
He stood smiling.
“Marvellous.”
He remembered that youth had painted these flowers without knowing the names of them. Just jolly old flowers. Yes, that was youth.
He sat down on the rug beside his wife.
MR. VERULAM’S WEEK-END
Mr. Paul Verulam’s car, after sundry spittings and detonations, came to rest half-way up Bilbury Hill, and Mr. Verulam, having given sundry angry and ineffectual jabs to the self-starter button, descended from his seat. It was a Friday afternoon in June, and hot at that, and Bilbury Hill was about a mile and three furlongs in length, and though Mr. Verulam did not know the name of the hill he could appreciate its sinuosities and its steepness. Moreover his infernal machine had elected to go on strike at a spot where the full glare of the afternoon sun beat down upon the chalk hills in a little pocket between two ridges. A hundred yards or so to the south and the north two groves of beech trees offered a pleasant shade, but that accursed chariot had not considered Mr. Verulam’s comfort.
He raised a bonnet flap, and almost immediately he began to perspire, for Paul Verulam perspired upon the slightest provocation. He was one of those large, red, bald-headed men, with a chin like the toe of a boot, and of an adipose habit. He was travelling to Melfont Abbey to stay for the week-end with the Duchess of Leinster. Mr. Verulam had written about duchesses, but this was the first occasion upon which he had been invited to stay with one. Hence the barbarity of this break-down.
Mr. Verulam began to fiddle with things. He had but little knowledge of the inwardness of cars. The overheated engine breathed in his face. Inadvertently touching a metal surface with his wrist the metal surface burned him.
He swore.
“Damn your oily soul.”
Which was quite a good swear, and yet the car with its grinning radiator had the laugh of him. Unknown to him it had decorated Mr. Verulam’s grey felt hat with a big blob of black oil from the inner surface of the bonnet flap.
Mr. Verulam stood up very straight and perspired. He gazed north and he gazed south. His supposition was that Melfont Abbey lay about seven miles away in a valley beyond these chalk hills. The desolation of these polished, grassy slopes was supreme, and the road offered him nothing but a shimmer of heat. Mr. Verulam’s rather full and fierce blue eyes stared through pince-nez at the car. What was the matter with the damned thing?
Yes, just what?
He could not be out of petrol, and he reassured himself by scrutinizing the gauge. Vaguely he knew that there was a contraption called a carburettor, a brass pot that breathed life into the engine. There were accessories called sparking-plugs and he saw six of them in a row; hot, oily-looking objects with various insulated wires adding to his perplexity. But what—exactly—was the matter with the damned thing? And should he unearth the book of words from a tool-locker, and peruse it, and make experiments, and foul his nice literary fingers? And in this heat?
In the world of letters Mr. Verulam was supposed to be something of a potentate. He issued decretals, and he thundered. He was an adept at producing venomous and witty phrases for the chastisement of other people who dared to write books while remaining beyond the shadow of Mr. Verulam’s historic patronage, but in the case of this recalcitrant car he was less than himself.
He determined that something should be done, and he sacrificed a pair of wash-leather gloves to the doing of it. He got out a roll of tools, and extracted spanners and a screwdriver, and attacked the carburettor. He had heard of the existence of a little orifice that sometimes became plugged with extraneous matter, but in beginning to dismantle the carburettor he forgot to turn off the petrol. He had to make a dash for the tap under the scuttle, and the incident added to his sense of anger and of heat.
Of Mr. Verulam’s adventures with the carburettor much might be written, but the results were unhelpful. He dropped a fibre washer into the grimy depths below the sump, and by the time he had recovered it his gloves and arms and shirt sleeves had suffered, but when the carburettor was reassembled the engine refused to start. Mr. Verulam stood off and stared at it. He and his indignation perspired in chorus. He looked south and he looked north.
Then it was that help appeared upon the horizon. He saw a car climbing the hill, a bright blue car with white wheels. Mr. Verulam stood in the middle of the road and semaphored, and as the car approached he saw that its solitary occupant was a woman.
She pulled in to the side of the road, and opened a door. She was young, and as much in the fashion as her sports-model coupé. She had an air. She appeared to Mr. Verulam as a dark and rather decisive young woman with a large mouth and a nose that suggested a sense of humour. She had looks, and obviously her taste in clothes and her expenditure upon them were in sympathy.
Mr. Verulam, in the heat and the pomposity of the moment, raised his hat, adding other stains to its dignity.
“Sorry to trouble you, but if you would leave a message at some garage for me——”
Her dark eyes narrowed as she looked at him. There were little glimmers of light in them.
“What’s wrong?”
He stood largely and sententiously beside his car. Apparently it did not occur to him that a young woman in a Paris model could be of any assistance to the exuberant male. The matter was too technical.
“The engine refuses to function. I have investigated the carburettor. Some slight misadjustment somewhere, I suppose.”
She was amused, and he was so unconscious of the pleasure he gave her. He, Mr. Verulam, a figure of fun! Even with a soiled hat, and a flaring, dewy face, and his condescending towards life and the machine! She gave him an oblique and humorous glance, and turned to the car.
“Ignition all right?”
Mr. Verulam could give her no opinion. He said that his London garage was paid to keep the car in running order. A celebrity could not be expected to fiddle with machinery. Always he was conscious of being a celebrity, and of waiting for the world to recognize his large red face and his pince-nez and his bulbous chin and his ruff of hair.
The girl scrutinized the car. Then, without so much as asking for leave, she went and fetched a tool-roll from her coupé, and unrolling it on the running-board of Mr. Verulam’s car, she took charge of the crisis.
“I know something about B.J.’s. If you’ll turn the starting-handle for me I’ll test the plugs.”
Mr. Verulam looked a little surprised, but he went and unearthed the starting-handle, and inserted it and stooped.
“Turn slowly.”
His bulk laboured. His hat fell off, uncovering a shiny baldness. He was not an adept at turning handles, and he was feeling that his dignity was suffer
ing eclipse. This young woman was a bit too autocratic.
“That’s right. Turn.”
He turned, with jerks and heavy breathing.
“She’s not sparking.”
“Is that so?”
She concentrated her attention and her deft fingers upon some other contraption. She said: “I guess your distributor’s dirty. Probably it wants filing up.”
He stood hot and huge by the radiator as though in accusing his distributor of being unclean she had offended against his dignity.
“I have no time to descend to these details.”
She said nothing. She was investigating. She detached things, and made a little grimace.
“Yes, your distributor—is—dirty.”
She took a piece of rag and a small file, and with lips compressed set about rectifying the foulness. She was conscious of his looming silence, of something waiting to be recognized and saluted.
She spoke.
“Going far?”
“Melfont Abbey.”
“So am I. Due for tea. Time to give Pat a bathe.”
Mr. Verulam’s blue eyes stared. Was she referring to Patricia—Duchess of Leinster—as Pat? He boomed:
“Singular coincidence. I’m there for the week-end. My name is——”
But a glance from her interposed.
“Yes, I think I’ve recognized you.”
He seemed to emit a delicate simper, a kind of adipose tremor.
“Oh, possibly.”
“Mr. Verulam, isn’t it?”
He bent at the hips. He was pleased.
“You have perspicacity.”
What a peach of a word, and rather like his face! She made a little grimace.
“My name’s Hyde. But that won’t convey anything to you.”
Most obviously it didn’t.
But that she should dirty her dainty fingers in his service became comprehensible to Mr. Verulam, for he was one of the archangels of the literary world and he wore his vanity like a halo. From that moment he stood and watched with a genial condescension the activities of this handmaiden, and with a gentle playfulness he praised her efficiency, for in five minutes she had his engine running obediently.
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