He felt exhilarated, but prickly. He said, 'Ha!' rather like Dr. Fell, and noticed the dappling of shadows that trembled on the grass, and they both laughed. She went on in a low voice:
'I can't tell you-I was feeling desperately low last night, what with one thing and another. And London is so big, and everything was wrong. I wanted to talk to somebody. And then you bumped into me and you looked nice, so I did.'
Rampole felt a desire to give somebody a joyous poke in the jaw. In imagination he lashed out triumphantly. He had a sensation as though somebody were pumping air into his chest.
He said, not wittily, but be honest with yourself, sneering peruser! — very naturally:
'I'm glad you did.'
'So am I.'
'Glad?'
'Glad.'
'HAH!' said Rampole, exhaling the air in triumph.
From ahead of them rose Mrs. Fell's thin voice. 'Azaleas, petunias, geraniums, hollyhocks, honeysuckle, and eglantine!' she shrilled, as though she ' were calling trains. 'I can't see 'em, on account of being so nearsighted, but I know they're there.' With a beaming if somewhat vague smile she grasped the newcomers and urged them into chairs. 'Oh, Gideon, my love, you're not going after that horrible beer, are you?'
Dr. Fell was already bending over the stream. Puffing laboriously, he extracted several beaded bottles and hauled himself up on one cane.
'Notice, Mr. Rampole,' said the rector, with an air of comfortable tolerance. 'I often think,' he continued, as though he were launching a terrible accusation but slyly smiling to mitigate it?'I often think that the good doctor can't be English at all. This barbarous habit of drinking beer at tea-time my dear sir! It isn't-well, it isn't English, you know!'
Dr. Fell raised a fiery face.
'Sir,' he said, 'it's tea that isn't English, let me inform you. I want you to look at the appendix of my book, Note 86, Chapter 9, devoted to such things as tea, cocoa, and that unmentionably awful beverage known as the ice-cream soda. Tea, you will find, came into England from Holland in 1666. From Holland, her bitter enemy; and in Holland they contemptuously called it hay-water. Even the French couldn't stand it. Patin calls tea l’impertinente nouveaute du siecle,' and Dr. Duncan, in his Treatise on Hot Liquors?'
'And in front of the rector, too!' said Mrs. Fell, wailing.
'Eh?' said the doctor, breaking off with some vague idea that she thought he was swearing. 'What, my dear?' 'Beer,' said Mrs. Fell.
'Oh, hell!' said the doctor, violently. 'Excuse me, excuse me.' He turned to Rampole. 'Will you have some beer with me, my boy?'
'Why, yes,' the other answered, with gratitude. 'Thanks, I will.'
'— and coming out of that cold water, it'll probably give you both pneumonia,' Mrs. Fell said, darkly. She seemed to have an idee fixe on the subject of pneumonia. 'What it's coming to I don't know-more tea, Mr. Saunders, and there are the cakes beside you with everybody catching pneumonia the way they are, and that poor young man having to sit up in that draughty governor's place tonight; he'll probably have pneu — '
There was an abrupt silence. Then Saunders began talking very smoothly and easily about the flowers, pointing to a bed of geraniums; he seemed to be trying to alter their minds by altering the direction of their gaze. Dr. Fell joined in the discussion, glowering at his wife. She was quite unconscious of having opened that forbidden subject. But constraint had come upon the party under the lime tree, and would not go away.
A soft pink afterglow had crept across the garden, though it would be yet light for several hours. In silver flakes through the tree branches the west glowed clear and warm. All of them, even Mrs. Fell, were silent, staring at the tea-service. A wicker chair creaked. Distantly they could hear the clank and jangle of bells; and Rampole pictured the cows, somehow lonely in a vast meadow, being driven home through mysterious dusk. A deeper hum pulsed in the air.
Dorothy Starberth rose suddenly.
'Stupid of me!' she said. 'I'd almost forgot. I must go in to the village and get some cigarettes before the tobacconist closes.' She smiled at them, with an affected ease which deceived nobody; the smile was like a mask. She glanced with elaborate carelessness at her watch. 'It's been divine being here, Mrs. Fell. You must come over to the Hall soon. I say,' with an air of inspiration, to Rampole,
'wouldn't you like to walk along with me? You haven't seen our village yet, have you? We've rather a good early Gothic church, as Mr. Saunders would tell you.'
'Yes, indeed.' The rector seemed to hesitate, looked at them in a heavily paternal way, and waved his hand. 'Go along, do. I'll have another cup of tea, if Mrs. Fell doesn't mind. It's so comfortable here,' he beamed on his hostess; 'makes one ashamed of being lazy.'
He sat back with a smug air, as of one who murmurs, 'Ah, I was young once!' but Rampole had the impression that he didn't like it at all. It suddenly struck the American that this patronizing old bald-head (sic, in Rampole's inflamed thoughts) had a more than clerical interest in Dorothy Starberth. Why, damn the man-! Come to think of it, the way he had hung over her shoulder, smoothly, as they walked down the lane….
'I had to get out of there,' the girl said, half breathlessly. Their quick footsteps rustled in the grass. 'I wanted to walk, fast.'
'I know.'
'When you're walking,' she explained, in that same breathless voice, 'you feel free; you don't feel you have to keep things in the air, like a juggler, and strain yourself not to drop one Oh!'
They were going down the shadowed lane, where the grass muffled their footsteps. Its junction with the road was hidden by the hedgerows, but they became aware of feet scuffling in the dust out there, and a murmur of conversation. Abruptly one voice rose. It came twitching through the soft air, alive and ugly.
'You know the word for it right enough,' the voice said. 'The word is
The voice laughed. Dorothy Starberth stopped, and her face-sharp against the dark-green hedge-was a face of fear.
Chapter 4
'I shall have to hurry to catch that tobacconist,' the girl declared, instantly. Her small voice was raised, insistent to be heard. 'Good Lord! it's past six o'clock! — But then he always reserves a box of my special brand, every day, and if I'm not there… I say! Hullo, Martin!'
She stepped out into the road, motioning Rampole to follow. The murmur of voices had frozen. Standing in the middle of the road, still with his hand half lifted, a slightly built young man had twisted round to face her. He had the spoiled, self-conscious face of one who generally gets his way with women, with dark hair and a contemptuous mouth; and he was a little drunk. He swayed a little now. Behind him Rampole could see a crooked track in the white dust to show his progress.
'Hello, Dot!' he said, abruptly. 'You can certainly sneak up on a fellow. What's the idea?'
He spoke with a strong attempt at an American accent. Laying a hand on the arm of the person with him, he assumed dignity. This latter was obviously a relation; his features were blunt where the other's were delicate, his clothes rode high on him, and his hat did not have the same careless curve as Martin Starberth's, but there was an undeniable resemblance. He looked embarrassed, and his hands seemed too big.
'Been — been in to tea, Dorothy?' he asked, fumbling. 'Sorry we're late. We — we were detained.'
'Of course,' the girl said, impassively. 'May I present: Mr. Rampole, Mr. Martin Starberth, Mr. Herbert Starberth. Mr. Rampole's a countryman of yours, Martin.'
'You an American?' demanded Martin, in a brisk manner. 'That's good. Whereya from? New York? That's good. I just left there. I'm in the publishing business. Whereya staying? — Fell's? That old codger. Look here, come on up to the house and I'll give you a little drink.'
'We're going to tea, Martin,' Herbert said, with a sort of stolid patience.
