Joyce 'phoned to the garage where I hired cars occasionally, and ordered something to come at ten o'clock next morning. For me to take this joy ride meant throwing over a whole day's engagements like so many ninepins. But I didn't care a rap!
I could see when I was ready to start that Joyce was even more excited than I. No doubt she was thinking that, when I came back, I might bring news of him. We spoke, however, only of the duchess.
To me, a harmless, necessary fib isn't much more vicious than a cat of the same description; that is, if the fib is for the benefit of a friend. But I'd rather tell the truth if it can be managed, so I really intended to call on the Duchess. The village of Stanerton—on the outskirts of which Lorillard lived—happened to be on my way to Pergolas. I couldn't help that, could I? So I told my chauffeur to ask for River Orchard Cottage—the address on Robert's note introducing Miss Arnold.
Everyone seemed to know the place. It was half a mile out of the village, and you went to it up a side road: a very old cottage altered and modernized. The name was old, too: it really was an orchard, and it was really on the river. That was what half a dozen people informed us in a breath, and they would have added much information about Lorillard himself if I'd cared to hear. But all I wanted to learn about him from them was whether he had gone away. He hadn't. He had been seen out walking the day before.
"I told you so!" I said to myself.
As the car slowed down and stopped before a white gate I seemed to lose my identity for a moment. It became merged with that of Joyce Arnold. I felt as if she—the real Joyce—had raced here in some winged vehicle of thousand-spirit power, travelling far faster than any road-bound earthly car, and, having waited for me, now slipped into my skin.
The sight of that gate made my heart beat as it must have made hers beat every day when she came in the morning to work. Yes! As I laid my hand on the latch I wasn't my somewhat blasée and sophisticated self: I was the girl to whom this place was Paradise.
The white gate was flanked by two tall clipped yews. Inside, a wide path of irregular paving-stones, with grass and flowers sprouting between, led to a low thatched cottage—oh, but a glorified cottage: a cottage that looked as if it had died and gone to heaven! The flagged path had tubs on either side. In them grew funny little Dutch treelets shaped like birds and animals of different sorts; and the lawn kept all the noble, gnarled giants that once had made it an orchard. The cottage was yellow, like cottages in Devonshire, and the old thatch had the gray satin sheen of chinchilla. A huge magnolia was trained over the front, and climbing roses and wisteria, all in the sere and yellow leaf or bare now; but I could picture the place in spring, when the diamond-paned bow windows sparkled through a canopy of flowers, when the great apple trees were like a pink-and-white sunrise of blossom, and underneath spread a carpet of forget-me-nots and tulips.
How sweet must have been the air then, how blue the river background, and how melodious the low song of a distant weir!
To-day, the air was faintly acrid with the scent of bonfire smoke—the odour of autumn; and the sounds of wind and water over the weir were sad as a song of homesickness.