V
“How well you look, Henry! and so brown; why, you might be twenty instead of nearly thirty. Now what do you want to drink? claret, beer, cider.... Try a little of our cider, it’s home-made, last season’s brew, and I think we have got in exactly the right measure of wheat. It is so easy to make a mistake—to put in too little or too much—but I think last autumn we got it just right.”
But Henry did not care for cider; he preferred whisky and soda.
“Have what you like, of course, dear boy. Here are my keys, Sandford; get the bottle of whisky out of my cupboard, please, and bring it for Mr. Henry, and let me have the keys back. Dear me, Henry, we both have so much to say to one another that it makes us quite silent. I scarcely know where to begin. Never mind, it will all come out little by little, and we have plenty of time before us. I have made a great plan of all I want to show you this afternoon; you must come round to the farm after luncheon and speak to Lynes, and I daresay he will like to have a whole day with you, going over things, to-morrow or the day after that....”
She beamed at him where he sat opposite to her, at the end of the table, and he smiled back at her; she thought how nice-looking he was, with his lean, brown face and black hair. He had the look of hard health; she remembered how well he had always looked in the saddle. It had, indeed, been a great incentive to have this son to work for; to guard his interests, to build up the perfect little estate for him to inherit. The studious evenings she had spent had not been wasted; all that she had learnt, conscientiously—for she would never trust wholly to Lynes’ experience—about manures, the rotation of crops, the value of luzerne, the advantage of fat stock over dairy-produce, all that laboriously acquired knowledge, in the service of such a son, had not been useless. It wasn’t in the nature of women, she had decided long ago, to work solely for the sake of the work; and this was one of the things she often said, particularly when the subject of women’s emancipation was mentioned. How impressed he would be, after luncheon, when she took him out! He would expect her to know about the garden; the garden had always been her speciality; but he should find that she wasn’t a docile ignoramus about the farm, a mere writer of cheques to Lynes’ dictation. She beamed at him again, hugging her satisfaction to herself. She was glad that she had not been born a man, to work for work’s own cold, ungrateful sake, but a woman, to work for the warm appreciation in a fellow-being’s eyes.
And Henry was charming her, as she had expected to be charmed. He chaffed her a little, and she fell into a little confusion, not knowing whether to take him seriously, until she perceived that he was laughing and then she reproached him for teasing an old woman and they laughed happily together. He saw that he was being a success, and expanded under the flattery. He teased her about her old cloak; she found an exquisite thrill in the proprietary intimacy with which this man, who was like a stranger to her, was treating her. She blushed and bridled; and the more she bridled the more fondly he teased. His eyes were narrowed into laughing slits; he leant over to her as he might have leant, confidentially, over to any woman with whom he happened to be lunching. She thought, with a queer envy, of the future Mrs. Henry; and the thought made her ask, abruptly, “You’ve nothing to tell me about yourself? You’re not engaged, I mean, or thinking of it?”
Henry looked taken aback by the question; then he threw back his head and laughed.
“Good Lord, who to? You forget I’ve been in the heart of the Argentine for five years.”
“Oh no, I don’t forget,” she said softly, thinking how little she had forgotten, “but one finds old friends in London.... I don’t know....”
For a moment he seemed embarrassed; it passed.
“I’ve not been in London forty-eight hours and I had plenty of other things to do there.” He said it glibly, hoping she would not wonder what he had done with his evenings. She did not wonder, her imagination not readily extending to restaurants or dancing places, or the bare shoulders of women under a slipping opera cloak. She had forgotten about those things; it was so long since they had come her way, even remotely. And in spite of her benevolence towards Mrs. Henry she was conscious of a fugitive relief.
“Then I needn’t feel selfish about keeping you here,” she said, “and it will be a nice rest for you after your journey and all the business you had to do in London. Now if you have quite finished, we might go out? It gets dark so quickly.” They went out; already the fresh beauty of the day was passing, it was colder, and there was more grey and less gold between the trees. “Let us go up to the top of the garden,” said Mrs. Martin, who felt she could not bear to keep the secret of the three hundred acres to herself a moment longer.