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‘Oh, hush, hush——’ besought Mrs. Luke, hurrying down to him.
‘Hush, eh?’
‘Jocelyn——’
She glanced fearfully along the passage to the backdoor.
‘He’s arrived,’ said Mr. Thorpe, not hushing at all. ‘Know that. Saw his—well, you can hardly call it a car, can you—his contraption, outside the gate.’
‘But I haven’t had time yet to tell him——’
‘That he’s been a fool?’ interrupted Mr. Thorpe.
‘Come in here,’ said Mrs. Luke, taking him by the arm and pressing him into the parlour, the door of which she shut.
‘Brought you this,’ said Mr. Thorpe, holding up a fish-basket, a big one, in front of her face. ‘Salmon. Prime cut. Thought it would be a bit of something worth eating for your—well, you don’t have dinner, do you—meal, then, to-night. Came back early from the City on purpose to get it here soon enough.’
‘How kind, how kind,’ murmured Mrs. Luke distractedly.
‘Plenty of it, too,’ said Mr. Thorpe, slapping the basket.
‘Too much, too much,’ murmured Mrs. Luke, not quite sure whether it were the salmon she was talking about.
‘Too much? Not a bit of it,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘I hate skimp.’
And he was going to put down his present on the nearest chair and then, she knew, fold her in one of those strong hugs that scrunched, when she bent forward and hastily took the basket from him. She couldn’t, she simply couldn’t, on this occasion be folded—not with Jocelyn sitting out there, all unsuspecting, under the cedar.
‘Never mind the basket,’ said Mr. Thorpe, who felt he had deserved well of Margery in this matter of the fish.
‘I must take it to the kitchen at once,’ said Mrs. Luke, evading his wide-opened arms, ‘or it won’t be ready in time for supper.’
‘What? No thanks, eh?’
‘Yes, yes—afterwards,’ said Mrs. Luke, slipping away to the door. ‘Jocelyn doesn’t know yet. About us, I mean. I haven’t had time——’
‘Time, eh? Not had time to tell him, you’ve netted me?’
Mr. Thorpe took out his watch. ‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘Two would be enough, but I’ll give you five. Trot along now, and come back to me sharp in five minutes. If you don’t, I’ll fetch you. Trot along.’
Trot along....
Mrs. Luke, shutting him into the parlour, asked herself, as she went down the passage bearing the heavy basket in both her delicate hands, how long it would take after marriage to weed out Mr. Thorpe’s language. To be told to trot along, however, was so grotesque—she to trot, she, surely the most dignified of South Winch’s ladies!—that it seemed to restore her composure. She would not trot. Nor would she, in the emotional sphere, do anything that corresponded to it. She would neither trot nor hurry; neither physically, nor spiritually. She declined to be bound by five minutes, and a watch in Edgar’s hand. Really he must, somehow, come up more to her level, and not be so comfortably certain that she was coming down to his. And what a way to speak of their marriage—that she had netted him!
Frozen, then, once more into calm by Mr. Thorpe’s words, she proceeded down the passage with almost more than her usual dignity, and as she passed the kitchen door she held out the fish-basket to the little maid, who came out of the shady corner where the sink was with reluctance, merely saying, ‘Boil it.’ Then, with her head held high as the heads of those are held who face the inevitable, she went out into the garden, and crossed the grass to where Jocelyn was waiting for her on the seat beneath the cedar.
This took her one minute out of the five. In another four Mr. Thorpe would come out too into the garden, to see why she didn’t return. Let him, thought Mrs. Luke, filled with the courage of the cornered. This thing couldn’t be done in five minutes; it couldn’t be fired off at Jocelyn’s head like a pistol. Foolish Edgar.