There was Aunt Evelyn, talking to Mrs. Shotney. She certainly didn’t look half bad when you compared her with other people. And old Squire Maundle, nodding and smiling by the door, as he watched his little granddaughter twirling round and round with a yellow ribbon in her hair. And General FitzAlan with his eyeglass—he looked a jolly decent old chap. … He’d been in the Indian Mutiny. … The music stopped and the dancers disappeared in quest of claret-cup and lemonade. “I wonder what sort of ices there are,” speculated my partner. There was a note of intensity in her voice which was new to me.
“Oh, do come on, Denis, the music’s begun,” cried a dark, attractive girl with a scarlet sash—tugging at the arm of a boy who was occupied with an ice. When he turned to follow her I recognized the rider of the chestnut pony. From time to time as the evening went on I watched him enjoying himself with the conspicuous Dumborough Park contingent, which was dominating the proceedings with a mixture of rowdiness and hauteur. Those outside their circle regarded them with envious and admiring antagonism. By a miracle I found myself sitting opposite Denis Milden at supper, which was at one long table. He looked across at me with a reserved air of recognition.
“Weren’t you out last Saturday?” he asked. I said yes.
“Rotten day, wasn’t it?” I said yes it was rather.
“That’s a nice cob you were on. Jumped a bit too big for you at that fence outside Hoath Wood, didn’t she?” He grinned good-humouredly. I went red in the face, but managed to blurt out a confused inquiry after the health of his chestnut pony. But before he could reply the Dumborough boy had shouted something at him and I was obliged to pay attention again to the little girl alongside of me.
“Do you hunt much?” she inquired, evidently impressed by what she had overheard. Rather loftily I replied that I hunted whenever I got the chance, inwardly excusing myself with the thought that it wasn’t my own fault that I’d only had one chance so far. …
I was now positively enjoying the party, but shortly afterwards Aunt Evelyn came gliding across the dark polished floor at the end of polka and adroitly extricated me from the festivities. … “Really, darling, don’t you think it’s almost time we went home?”
I wished she wouldn’t call me darling in public, but I fetched my overcoat and followed obediently down to the draughty entrance hall. Denis happened to be sitting on the stairs with his partner. He jumped up politely to allow my aunt to pass. I shot a shy glance at his face.
“Coming to Heron’s Gate on Tuesday?” he asked. Deeply gratified, I said I was afraid it was too far for me.
“You ought to try and get there. They say it’s one of their best meets.” He sat down again with a nod and a smile.
“Wasn’t that young Milden—the nice-mannered boy you spoke to as we went out?” asked Aunt Evelyn when our rattle-trap conveyance was grinding briskly down the road to the lodge-gates.
“Yes,” I replied; and the monosyllable meant much.
VII
Next morning I was a rather inattentive pupil, but Mr. Star rightly attributed this to the previous night’s gaities and was lenient with me, though my eyes often wandered through the window when they ought to have been occupied with sums, and I made a bad mess of my dictation. Mr. Star was still great on dictation, though I ought to have been beyond such elementary exercises at the age of twelve. “Parsing” was another favourite performance of his.
The word “parse” always struck me as sounding slightly ridiculous: even now it makes me smile when I look at it; but it conjures up for me a very clear picture of that quiet schoolroom: myself in a brown woollen jersey with my elbows on the table, and my tutor in his shabby tailcoat, chalking up on the blackboard for my exclusive benefit the first proposition of Euclid. Above the bookcase (which contained an odd assortment of primers, poetry, and volumes of adventure) hung a map of the world—a shiny one, which rolled up. But the map of the world was too large for me that morning, and I was longing to look at the local one and find out how far it was to Heron’s Gate (and where it was).
As soon as Mr. Star had gone home to his little house in the village I slyly abstracted the ordnance map from the shelf where my aunt kept it (she was rather fond of consulting the map), and carried it back to the schoolroom with a sensation of gloating uncertainty. Heron’s Gate was hard to find, but I arrived at it in the end, marked in very small print with Windmill
right up against it and a big green patch called Park Wood
quite near. I wondered what it would look like, and at once visualized a large, dim bird sitting on a white gate. …
