The Yellow Book Volume II Part 18

"Well, from London, I think," he replied, almost briskly for him, though he stammered and tripped over the words. "He's a University chap; I used to hear he was clever--I don't know about that, I'm sure; he used to chaff me, I remember, but----"

"Chaff _you_? You have met him then?"

"Yes, my dear"--he was fast relapsing into his slow drawl again--"that is, I went to school with him, but it's a long time ago.

Brookfield--yes, that must be his name."

She waited a moment, then "When is he coming?" she inquired abruptly.

"Let me see--to-day's----"

"_Monday_," the word came swiftly between her set teeth.

"Ah, yes,--Monday--well," reflectively, "_next_ Monday, my dear."

Mrs. Drayton rose, and began to pace softly the narrow pa.s.sage between the table and the tent-wall, her hands clasped loosely behind her.

"How long have you known this?" she said, stopping abruptly. "Oh, John, you _needn't_ consider; it's quite a simple question. To-day?

Yesterday?"

Her foot moved restlessly on the ground as she waited.

"I think it was the day before yesterday," he replied.

"Then why in Heaven's name didn't you tell me before?" she broke out fiercely.

"My dear, it slipped my memory. If I'd thought you would be interested----"

"Interested?" She laughed shortly. "It _is_ rather interesting to hear that after six months of this"--she made a quick comprehensive gesture with her hand--"one will have some one to speak to--some one. It is the hand of Providence; it comes just in time to save me from----" She checked herself abruptly.

He sat staring up at her stupidly, without a word.

"It's all right, John," she said, with a quick change of tone, gathering up her work quietly as she spoke. "I'm not mad--yet.

You--you must get used to these little outbreaks," she added after a moment, smiling faintly, "and to do me justice, I don't _often_ trouble you with them, do I? I'm just a little tired, or it's the heat or--something. No--don't touch me," she cried, shrinking back, for he had risen slowly and was coming towards her.

She had lost command over her voice, and the shrill note of horror in it was unmistakable. The man heard it, and shrank in his turn.

"I'm so sorry, John," she murmured, raising her great bright eyes to his face. They had not lost their goaded expression, though they were full of tears. "I'm awfully sorry, but I'm just nervous and stupid, and I can't bear _any one_ to touch me when I'm nervous."

II

"Here's Broomhurst, my dear! I made a mistake in his name after all, I find. I told you _Brookfield_, I believe, didn't I? Well, it isn't Brookfield, he says; it's Broomhurst."

Mrs. Drayton had walked some little distance across the plain to meet and welcome the expected guest. She stood quietly waiting while her husband stammered over his incoherent sentences, and then put out her hand.

"We are very glad to see you," she said with a quick glance at the newcomer's face as she spoke.

As they walked together towards the tent, after the first greetings, she felt his keen eyes upon her before he turned to her husband.

"I'm afraid Mrs. Drayton finds the climate trying?" he asked. "Perhaps she ought not to have come so far in this heat?"

"Kathie is often pale. You _do_ look white to-day, my dear," he observed, turning anxiously towards his wife.

"Do I?" she replied. The unsteadiness of her tone was hardly appreciable, but it was not lost on Broomhurst's quick ears. "Oh, I don't think so. I _feel_ very well."

"I'll come and see if they've fixed you up all right," said Drayton, following his companion towards the new tent that had been pitched at some little distance from the large one.

"We shall see you at dinner then?" Mrs. Drayton observed in reply to Broomhurst's smile as they parted.

She entered the tent slowly, and moving up to the table, already laid for dinner, began to rearrange the things upon it in a purposeless mechanical fas.h.i.+on.

After a moment she sank down upon a seat opposite the open entrance, and put her hand to her head.

"What is the matter with me?" she thought wearily. "All the week I've been looking forward to seeing this man--_any_ man, _any one_ to take off the edge of this." She shuddered. Even in thought she hesitated to a.n.a.lyse the feeling that possessed her. "Well, he's here, and I think I feel _worse_." Her eyes travelled towards the hills she had been used to watch at this hour, and rested on them with a vague unseeing gaze.

"Tired, Kathie? A penny for your thoughts, my dear," said her husband, coming in presently to find her still sitting there.

"I'm thinking what a curious world this is, and what an ironical vein of humour the G.o.ds who look after it must possess," she replied with a mirthless laugh, rising as she spoke.

John looked puzzled.

"Funny my having known Broomhurst before, you mean?" he said doubtfully.

"I was fis.h.i.+ng down at Lynmouth this time last year," Broomhurst said at dinner. "You know Lynmouth, Mrs. Drayton? Do you never imagine you hear the gurgling of the stream? I am tantalised already by the sound of it rus.h.i.+ng through the beautiful green gloom of those woods--_aren't_ they lovely? And _I_ haven't been in this burnt-up spot as many hours as you've had months of it."

She smiled a little.

"You must learn to possess your soul in patience," she said, and glanced inconsequently from Broomhurst to her husband, and then dropped her eyes and was silent a moment.

John was obviously, and a little audibly, enjoying his dinner. He sat with his chair pushed close to the table, and his elbows awkwardly raised, swallowing his soup in gulps. He grasped his spoon tightly in his bony hand so that its swollen joints stood out larger and uglier than ever, his wife thought.

Her eyes wandered to Broomhurst's hands. They were well shaped, and though not small, there was a look of refinement about them; he had a way of touching things delicately, a little lingeringly, she noticed.

There was an air of distinction about his clear-cut, clean-shaven face, possibly intensified by contrast with Drayton's blurred features; and it was, perhaps, also by contrast with the grey cuffs that showed beneath John's ill-cut drab suit that the linen Broomhurst wore seemed to her particularly spotless.

Broomhurst's thoughts, for his part, were a good deal occupied with his hostess.

She was pretty, he thought, or perhaps it was that, with the wide dry lonely plain as a setting, her fragile delicacy of appearance was invested with a certain flower-like charm.

"The silence here seems rather strange, rather appalling at first, when one is fresh from a town," he pursued, after a moment's pause, "but I suppose you're used to it; eh, Drayton? How do _you_ find life here, Mrs. Drayton?" he asked a little curiously, turning to her as he spoke.

She hesitated a second. "Oh, much the same as I should find it anywhere else, I expect," she replied; "after all, one carries the possibilities of a happy life about with one--don't you think so? The Garden of Eden wouldn't necessarily make my life any happier, or less happy, than a howling wilderness like this. It depends on oneself entirely."

"Given the right Adam and Eve, the desert blossoms like the rose, in fact," Broomhurst answered lightly, with a smiling glance inclusive of husband and wife; "you two don't feel as though you'd been driven out of Paradise evidently."

Drayton raised his eyes from his plate with a smile of total incomprehension.