"Oh, are they? Yes, it must be getting late. Thank you so much for coming to tell me," I said hurriedly. The two young men followed me out of the garden as I made my hasty way up to the house, fuming!
What could be more annoying, I ask you, than to be so "caught out"? Especially when one couldn't possibly explain the meaning of the little incident?
I could not turn round and say to the young man behind me on the path "Captain Holiday, I hope you won't misunderstand what you saw just now. Captain Markham was kissing my hand, and perhaps it did look as if it were an illustration to a magazine love-story! But it wasn't that sort of kiss! It wasn't that sort of thing at all! He and I have never been less in love with one another. Both of us happen to be hopelessly in love with somebody else! For the first time in our lives we were feeling genuinely fond of each other in a friendly way because we were sorry for one another's love tragedies. Nothing could have been more entirely platonic!"
No. I couldn't tell him this, true as it was. For one thing, even the best and simplest and truest explanations have a way of sounding "thin." Hence the golden rule "NEVER EXPLAIN." Following it, I reached the house with my two cavaliers and found that the whole party were gathered outside the porch waiting for us.
Our host was at the head of the horse in the dog-cart, where Muriel had already perched herself, and everybody was chattering over the great bunches of roses and sweetpeas given them by our hostess ... it was then that I realized that Sybil's new employers must be almost as hard up as we were ourselves. For how seldom it is that the gardens of the rich spare a single petal for the flowerless guest! But here the daughter of the house had stripped even her own window-boxes of black pansies to make into a posy for me. Muriel, sitting up in the cart, called, smiling, "Are you coming, Harry? I really must get back to poor dear Mother now. But if you want to walk," with a coquettish glance, "my cousin will drive me——"
I saw Dick Holiday's quick step forward on the gravel. He was only too anxious, I could see, to respond to this invitation. But already Harry was before him, poor Harry! his face lighting up because his lady who refused him always could still be got to throw him a smile.... It was an irony of the Fate that had made so many girls ready to hang on the smiles of a man like Harry Markham. He sprang up, took the reins.
She was driven away, her flower-face smiling over her other flowers, her little hand waving gaily; Disturber of the Peace that she was!
The walking-party—amidst a buzz of kindly farewells and "come agains" and a last call from the mistress of the house of "you won't forget that I should love a Land-girl's wedding from here?"—set off down the road back to our Camp.
I had been dreading the thought of a walk à deux with Captain Holiday; since Elizabeth would naturally stroll homewards at a snail's pace with her adored "Falconer" off a chocolate-box lid.
To my astonishment I found that I was to have this privilege! I found that somehow it was arranged that Captain Holiday was walking with Elizabeth, briskly, in front.