Chapter XIX

1

When, very soon after, Turner received his master’s command to pack “things,” he did not delay; for though he had seen his master darkly furious before now, he did not remember ever to have seen him so very darkly furious.

“We go to Nasyngton by the next train,” Ivor told him shortly.

“It won’t be very tidy, sir,” Turner murmured.

“No matter,” said his master.

“And for how long, sir--for the packing?”

“Oh, for a few days, man! I don’t know....” Ivor impatiently drove him from the room; then called to him: “Tell Mrs. Hope she needn’t come down. We can manage.”

Ivor had lost his temper. He wanted now but one thing, and that violently--to get out of London, out of “all this”! What he would do then, he had not the faintest idea. He had no other thoughts, there was a furious jumble in his mind. Now and then he would see a white face, a very white little face with livid blue eyes. Caddish eyes.... He would think later, out of London! And his impatience dragged him and Turner to Paddington a good half-hour before a train was due to leave for Reading, Newbury, and Hungerford; and when at last it was in, it was passionately mobbed by the crowds going riverwards in the heat--but who stood a chance against the tall, one-armed young man with the straight eyebrows and the defiant nose? Turner breathlessly squeezed in after him, travelling “first” with a “third” ticket. “Get there somehow,” Turner muttered.

And thus to Nasyngton village, by The Swan’s Neck dog-cart from Hungerford: to the house of the Misses Cloister-Smiths beside the ancient bridge over the River Kennet, towards eight o’clock on a damp and sultry September evening. Turner had bought some eggs in Hungerford: having understood that his master had indicated eggs as the only possible food in such weather.

“Scramble them,” said Ivor, as they reached the house.

2

Of course, it was a little thing. Just a tiff.... His mind accused Virginia, but not resentfully: reasonably. Quite reasonably. And he thought of how he had first been angry when she had said to him, “You get on my nerves!” Good God, he thought, are there ever two people who don’t get on each other’s nerves sometimes! It’s an abominable thing, but it happens--but it’s ever so much more abominable when it’s expressed, in words! She’s got on my nerves before now, but I haven’t said anything; one doesn’t. It’s one’s own fault when some one gets on one’s nerves, and one must just let it pass in silence. One doesn’t tell the person--it’s one of those commonplace insults that are still the deepest. No restraint, Virginia dear, no restraint! Nor me, either, banging the door on you like that!... But that made him angry again, when he thought of what had driven him to that furious exit. That was such a grotesque insult.... He had been trying so hard to put the thing right! And then, suddenly, without a word to him, to turn to Tarlyon and ask him to dine with her! Of course the dinner didn’t matter, what was a dinner more or less? But to use _Tarlyon_ as a weapon of her sudden displeasure with him! Oh, it was childish, grotesque, caddish! Ivor wanted to laugh when he thought of it, but his slamming of that door on them got into his ears, and he couldn’t help retasting the fury of that moment. He tried to tell himself that the situation required a sense of humour....

The only trace of temper that Turner could find in Ivor in the morning was a little grimness added to his ordinary manner. Turner had scrambled eggs again for breakfast, and Ivor pointed out that he hadn’t meant him to go on doing it all the time.... There was the soft light of a hesitating sun over the morning.

“This morning,” he said, “we will fish, Turner. We will cast for trout so that we may catch grayling.” Ivor had acquired more than a mile of fishing rights with the house; he was not at all a good fisherman, but one must do something; one generally, however, banged a ball with a squash-racket against a wall.

“They’re rising pretty well, sir,” said Turner enthusiastically. He liked going out fishing with his master, for it meant that after a few impossible casts and a few poor ones his master would mutter something about arms and say he would try again later: and would spend the rest of the time prowling up and down while Turner cast for trout--which nearly always turned out to be grayling. His master’s capacity for pacing up and down anywhere and everywhere had never ceased to astonish Turner. Carpet or wet grass, all the same to ’im, thought Turner.

“Must walk miles!” he would tell Mrs. Hope. “Potterin’ up and down like that, one cigarette after another. And what ’e can find to think about all that time beats me.”

“Beats ’im too, I s’d think,” said Mrs. Hope sympathetically. “Pore lamb, the worried way ’is eyebrows get fixed!”

But Ivor was not doing very much thinking this morning as he paced up and down, just far enough behind the river-bank not to offend the fishes’ sensitive nerves. Get on _their_ nerves perhaps, he thought. He had come to a conclusion by the time he had fallen asleep last night; and his awakening had confirmed it. One quarrels, he thought, almost naturally, being human; and then, being human, one makes it up. But in a few days, not straight away! _I know_ what I want in this thing--and Virginia must get to know what she wants, or else we’re in a blind alley. There’s no sense in being nasty and then falling on each other’s necks without having got rid of all the nastiness. She simply must not be able to look at me like that in that horrible way. Caddish eyes.... And there was something so, well, blasphemous about those “caddish eyes” that he had to force his mind away from them, else the thought of them would make him angry again. There are rotten mysteries in us all....

The morning was not very eventful as to fishing. Perhaps there was too much light, Ivor vaguely suggested. The afternoon, however, very quickly put that all right, for the hesitating sun was quite obscured by three o’clock, and a little later it began to spit; and by four it was raining steadily, a wet and steady drizzle. They had passed to the farther side of the bridge, where Turner had seen “them rising”; and it was there that a telegraph boy, a very wet and sulky little boy who might have been any kind of boy but for the coloured envelope in his hand, found them. He had tried the house, he said sulkily. Turner quickly tore open the envelope and handed the wire to Ivor.

“Seen anything?” the boy cheekily asked Turner.

Turner looked sharply at him and then down at the basket. The boy thoughtfully examined the three grayling in the basket and remarked that they would be getting wet in the rain.

“No answer,” a voice told him; and the little boy ploughed sulkily back through the sodden grass to his bicycle against the bridge.

“Getting too wet now,” Ivor remarked; and long strides took him towards the bridge and the house. Turner followed slowly; he would have liked another cast or two, but Turner never fished alone, for the unwritten law of Turner’s fishing was that his master was going to have “another go in a minute.”

Within the house Ivor had another look at the wire. “Come back.” That’s all! Dear Virginia! She must have rung up his flat and heard where he was from Mrs. Hope.

But one either does a thing or one doesn’t. One can’t go dashing about the country because of whims and wires. It’s no good our being babies about this, Virginia, he thought. We must get sensible, somehow--find out what we want and then not mess about with it like this. “Come back.” Of course he would go back, he had never intended otherwise. But in a day or two--say the day after to-morrow, when our minds are rested from the folly of the thing and we’ll never need to speak of it again. Of course he didn’t want to attach too much importance to childishness--but still ... those eyes! He couldn’t entirely forgive those strangely livid eyes, they had startled and hurt him frightfully, and they kept on coming into his mind. Caddish.... The day after to-morrow, he thought firmly. Not going back until I’ve forgotten that look.

After dinner he read the _Life of Disraeli_, the third volume. And once, when he looked up, he caught a vivid glimpse of a lovely grave face between golden “Swan and Edgar.” And at that very moment he almost went to London, to run to the heart of that “mausoleum.”

3

Now Ivor was not fool enough to confound his weakness with his principles: not entirely. And he had never had any principles in love but love. And so the next afternoon, as he was prowling about the river-bank in preparation for “another go in a minute,” he reasoned between his desire to go to Virginia there and then and the hitch that kept him back. Firstly and mainly, he candidly thought, it’s hurt pride. In fact, it’s only that. But it’s not resentment against her that keeps me from going until to-morrow--it’s just that I want to wipe away all trace of that hurt pride, so that I can meet her clean. Yes, clean.... I can’t go with a nasty secret in my heart. And although I want so much to see her to-day, I shall want to see her so much more to-morrow that the whole thing, hurt pride included, will bubble away in the rush. Oh, yes, oh, yes....

For all that, he spilled his after-dinner coffee. He spilled it by jumping up from his chair as Turner was at his elbow with it. And the cup broke on the table.

“Oh!” said Turner.

“Going to London to-night, Turner!” Ivor cried gaily. What was a coffee-cup?

“But there’s no train now, sir!”

And, having looked at the local guide, there was not.

“What about the car?” Ivor asked.

Turner looked very doubtful about the car.

“Well, we might look anyway,” Ivor said briskly. “Get the key and candle and come along....”

The Misses Cloister-Smiths had not kept a car, but there was a small shed to the right of the house in which such a “car” as Ivor’s could quite well be kept. It was a poor looking car, and it gained rather than lost in the light of the candle that Turner held to it. It was an American car. After the splendid two-seater, the “dear old Camelot car,” had been stolen--that epidemic of car stealing!--Ivor had bought this “off a man”: it was the kind of car that one does buy “off a man.” But Ivor didn’t care what it looked like, so long as it could “get about” and was easily driven with one arm. “It’ll do,” he had said with a grin, when he had first seen it. And it had done, so long as he used it constantly; but once out of commission for any length of time it seemed to retire within itself, and then to show a great disinclination ever to move again. It had now been in the shed for nearly six months, and looked it.

“Bit damp for it here,” said Turner. They looked at the car. Turner knew a “bit” about cars, but he hadn’t troubled to know much about this one. Turner despised this car--compared to that shining two-seater!

“Petrol,” said Ivor. And while Turner emptied a green tin, Ivor fiddled about with the switchboard--there wasn’t much to fiddle about with on that switchboard!--and then threw up the bonnet and pressed things thoughtfully.

Turner thought of the rain outside, and he looked at the car. Won’t get to London in this, he thought disgustedly.

“Come on, man!” cried Ivor! “It won’t start by staring at it. Give it a twist.”

Turner gave it several twists, for the American’s starting-handle was not one of those fierce ones that object to being twisted. Turner twisted furiously, but only the thinnest of gurgles resulted.

“It’s not going to-night,” Turner said. He was glad.

Ivor pressed the carburettor until it was wet with petrol.

“Let me,” he said; and he twisted furiously.

“There’s something wrong, sir,” said Turner. He was very glad.

And Ivor suddenly laughed. He had suddenly seen a picture of Turner and himself battling with that absurd and dirty old car in a ramshackle shed, trying to get to London and Virginia, and he laughed.

“All right,” he comforted Turner. “I’ll go up to-morrow morning by the nine-fifteen. You can come up later with the things. I won’t be coming back here for some time, I expect. Not for a long time.”

“I shall walk to Hungerford,” he said, “so call me early....”