“I don’t make it difficult,” he said. “I only want to find out just what you are after. But you don’t really know yourself. You want to take time: get away and look at it. I don’t blame you. I think you’re wise. You may prefer to stay mistress of Wragby. I don’t blame you. I’ve no Wragbys to offer. In fact, you know what you’ll get out of me. No, no, I think you’re right! I really do! And I’m not keen on coming to live on you, being kept by you. There’s that too.”
She felt, somehow, as if he were giving her tit for tat.
“But you want me, don’t you?” she asked.
“Do you want me?”
“You know I do. That’s evident.”
“Quite! And when do you want me?”
“You know we can arrange it all when I come back. Now I’m out of breath with you. I must get calm and clear.”
“Quite! Get calm and clear!”
She was a little offended.
“But you trust me, don’t you?” she said.
“Oh, absolutely!”
She heard the mockery in his tone.
“Tell me, then,” she said flatly; “do you think it would be better if I don’t go to Venice?”
“I’m sure it’s better if you do go to Venice,” he replied in the cool, slightly mocking voice.
“You know it’s next Thursday?” she said.
“Yes!”
She now began to muse. At last she said:
“And we shall know better where we are when I come back, shan’t we?”
“Oh, surely!”
The curious gulf of silence between them!
“I’ve been to the lawyer about my divorce,” he said, a little constrainedly.
She gave a slight shudder.
“Have you!” she said. “And what did he say?”
“He said I ought to have done it before; that may be a difficulty. But since I was in the army, he thinks it will go through all right. If only it doesn’t bring her down on my head!”
“Will she have to know?”
“Yes! she is served with a notice: so is the man she lives with, the corespondent.”
“Isn’t it hateful, all the performances! I suppose I’d have to go through it with Clifford.”
There was a silence.
“And of course,” he said, “I have to live an exemplary life for the next six or eight months. So if you go to Venice, there’s temptation removed for a week or two, at least.”
“Am I temptation!” she said, stroking his face. “I’m so glad I’m temptation to you! Don’t let’s think about it! You frighten me when you start thinking: you roll me out flat. Don’t let’s think about it. We can think so much when we are apart. That’s the whole point! I’ve been thinking, I must come to you for another night before I go. I must come once more to the cottage. Shall I come on Thursday night?”
“Isn’t that when your sister will be there?”
“Yes! But she said we would start at teatime. So we could start at teatime. But she could sleep somewhere else and I could sleep with you.”
“But then she’d have to know.”
“Oh, I shall tell her. I’ve more or less told her already. I must talk it all over with Hilda. She’s a great help, so sensible.”
He was thinking of her plan.
“So you’d start off from Wragby at teatime, as if you were going to London? Which way were you going?”
“By Nottingham and Grantham.”
“And then your sister would drop you somewhere and you’d walk or drive back here? Sounds very risky, to me.”
“Does it? Well then, Hilda could bring me back. She could sleep at Mansfield, and bring me back here in the evening, and fetch me again in the morning. It’s quite easy.”
“And the people who see you?”
“I’ll wear goggles and a veil.”
He pondered for some time.
“Well,” he said. “You please yourself, as usual.”
“But wouldn’t it please you?”
“Oh, yes! It’d please me all right,” he said a little grimly. “I might as well smite while the iron’s hot.”
“Do you know what I thought?” she said suddenly. “It suddenly came to me. You are the ‘Knight of the Burning Pestle’!”
“Ay! And you? Are you the Lady of the Red-Hot Mortar?”
“Yes!” she said. “Yes! You’re Sir Pestle and I’m Lady Mortar.”
“All right, then I’m knighted. John Thomas is Sir John, to your Lady Jane.”
“Yes! John Thomas is knighted! I’m my-lady-maidenhair, and you must have flowers too. Yes!”
She threaded two pink campions in the bush of red-gold hair above his penis.
“There!” she said. “Charming! Charming! Sir John!”
And she pushed a bit of forget-me-not in the dark hair of his breast.
“And you won’t forget me there, will you?” she kissed him on the breast, and made two bits of forget-me-not lodge one over each nipple, kissing him again.
“Make a calendar of me!” he said. He laughed, and the flowers shook from his breast.
“Wait a bit!” he said.
He rose, and opened the door of the hut. Flossie, lying in the porch, got up and looked at him.
“Ay, it’s me!” he said.
The rain had ceased. There was a wet, heavy, perfumed stillness. Evening was approaching.
He went out and down the little path in the opposite direction from the riding. Connie watched his thin, white figure, and it looked to her like a ghost, an apparition moving away from her.
When she could see it no more, her heart sank. She stood in the door of the hut, with a blanket round her, looking into the drenched, motionless silence.
But he was coming back, trotting strangely, and carrying flowers. She was a little afraid of him, as if he were not quite human. And when he came near, his eyes looked into hers, but she could not understand the meaning.
He had brought columbines and campions, and new-mown hay, and oak-tufts and honeysuckle in small bud. He fastened fluffy young oak-sprays round her breasts, sticking in tufts of bluebells and campion: and in her navel he poised a pink campion flower, and in her maidenhair were forget-me-nots and woodruff.
“That’s you in all your glory!” he said. “Lady Jane, at her wedding with John Thomas.”
And he stuck flowers in the hair of his own
