"Spoil everything," he repeated, rather like a small boy who learns an unpalatable lesson.
For a time Sir Richmond, exhausted by moral effort, lay staring at the darkness.
"It has to be done.I believe I can carry her through with it if I can carry myself.She's a finer thing than I am....
On the whole I am glad it's only one more day.Belinda will be about....Afterwards we can write to each other....
If we can get over the next day it will be all right.Then we can write about fuel and politics--and there won't be her voice and her presence.We shall really SUBLIMATE....
First class idea-- sublimate!....And I will go back to dear old Martin who's all alone there and miserable; I'll be kind to her and play my part and tell her her Carbuncle scar rather becomes her....And in a little while I shall be altogether in love with her again.
"Queer what a brute I've always been to Martin.""Queer that Martin can come in a dream to me and take the upper hand with me.
"Queer that NOW--I love Martin."
He thought still more profoundly."By the time the Committee meets again I shall have been tremendously refreshed."He repeated:--"Put things on the Higher Plane and keep them there.Then go back to Martin.And so to the work.That's it...."Nothing so pacifies the mind as a clear-cut purpose.Sir Richmond fell asleep during the fourth recapitulation of this programme.
Section 3
When Miss Grammont appeared at breakfast Sir Richmond saw at once that she too had had a restless night.When she came into the little long breakfast room of the inn with its brown screens and its neat white tables it seemed to him that the Miss Grammont of his nocturnal speculations, the beautiful young lady who had to be protected and managed and loved unselfishly, vanished like some exorcised intruder.Instead was this real dear young woman, who had been completely forgotten during the reign of her simulacrum and who now returned completely remembered, familiar, friendly, intimate.
She touched his hand for a moment, she met his eyes with the shadow of a smile in her own.
"Oranges!" said Belinda from the table by the window.
"Beautiful oranges."
She had been preparing them, poor Trans-atlantic exile, after the fashion in which grape fruits are prepared upon liners and in the civilized world of the west."He's getting us tea spoons," said Belinda, as they sat down.
"This is realler England than ever," she said."I've been up an hour.I found a little path down to the river bank.It's the greenest morning world and full of wild flowers.Look at these.""That's lady's smock," said Sir Richmond."It's not really a flower; it's a quotation from Shakespeare.""And there are cowslips!"
"CUCKOO BUDS OF YELLOW HUE.DO PAINT THE MEADOWS WITHDELIGHT.All the English flowers come out of Shakespeare.Idon't know what we did before his time."
The waiter arrived with the tea spoons for the oranges.
Belinda, having distributed these, resumed her discourse of enthusiasm for England.She asked a score of questions about Gloucester and Chepstow, the Severn and the Romans and the Welsh, and did not wait for the answers.She did not want answers; she talked to keep things going.Her talk masked a certain constraint that came upon her companions after the first morning's greetings were over.
Sir Richmond as he had planned upstairs produced two Michelin maps."To-day," he said," we will run back to Bath--from which it will be easy for you to train to Falmouth.We will go by Monmouth and then turn back through the Forest of Dean, where you will get glimpses of primitive coal mines still worked by two men and a boy with a windlass and a pail.
Perhaps we will go through Cirencester.I don't know.Perhaps it is better to go straight to Bath.In the very heart of Bath you will find yourselves in just the same world you visited at Pompeii.Bath is Pompeii overlaid by Jane Austen's England."He paused for a moment."We can wire to your agents from here before we start and we can pick up their reply at Gloucester or Nailsworth or even Bath itself.So that if your father is nearer than we suppose--But I think to-morrow afternoon will be soon enough for Falmouth, anyhow."He stopped interrogatively.
Miss Grammont's face was white."That will do very well," she said.
Section 4, They started, but presently they came to high banks that showed such masses of bluebells, ragged Robin, great stitchwort and the like that Belinda was not to be restrained.She clamoured to stop the car and go up the bank and pick her hands full, and so they drew up by the roadside and Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont sat down near the car while Belinda carried her enthusiastic onslaught on the flowers up the steep bank and presently out of earshot.
The two lovers said unheeded things about the flowers to each other and then fell silent.Then Miss Grammont turned her head and seemed deliberately to measure her companion's distance.Evidently she judged her out of earshot.
"Well, said Miss Grammont in her soft even voice."We love one another.Is that so still?""I could not love you more."
"It wasn't a dream?"
"No."
"And to-morrow we part?"
He looked her in the eyes."I have been thinking of that all night," he said at last.
"I too."
"And you think--?"
"That we must part.Just as we arranged it when was it? Three days or three ages ago? There is nothing else in the world to do except for us to go our ways....I love you.That means for a woman--It means that I want to be with you.But that is impossible....Don't doubt whether I love you because Isay--impossible...."
