After running out through Portsmouth, I suggested stopping the car and mounting the downs above, on foot, for a look at the view. There are now five in our party, instead of three—not counting Young Nick, who has no stomach for views. At Ellaline's expressed wish, Mrs. Senter and Dick Burden have come on with us from Hayling Island, where they were staying. We met them at a dance on the Thunderer, which Starlin captains. They have been invited to be of the party for a fortnight or so.
I should rather have liked to watch Ellaline's face as she climbed the hill, her feet light on yielding grass, where the gold of buttercups and turquoise of harebells lay scattered—as she climbed, and as she reached the top, to see England spread under her eyes like a great ring. But that privilege was Burden's. I hope he appreciated it. Mine was to escort Mrs. Senter. I was glad she didn't chat. I hate women who chat, or spray adjectives over a view.
You remember it all, don't you? On one side, looking landward, we had a Constable picture: a sky with tumbled clouds, shadowed downs, and forests cleft by a golden mosaic of meadows. Seaward, an impressionist sketch of Whistler's: Southampton Water and historic Portsmouth Harbour; stretches of glittering sand with the sea lying in ragged patches on it here and there like great pieces of broken glass. Over all, the English sunshine pale as an alloy of gold and silver; not too dazzling, yet discreetly cheerful, like a Puritan maiden's smile; but not like Ellaline's. Hers can be dazzling when she is surprised and pleased.
I think I recall your talk with me on a height overlooking the harbour—perhaps the same height. We painted a lurid picture, to harrow our young minds, of the wreck of the Royal George. And we said, gazing across the Downs, that England looked almost uninhabited. Well, it appears no more populous now, luckily for the picture. I heard Ellaline saying to Dick Burden that the towns and villages might be playing at hide and seek, they concealed themselves so successfully. Also I heard her advise him to read "Puck of Pook's Hill," and was somewhat disappointed that she'd already had it, as I bought it for her in Southsea yesterday. Probably she won't care to read it again. Perhaps I had better give the book to Mrs. Senter, who is a more intellectual woman than you and I supposed when she was playing with us all in India. But one doesn't talk books with pretty women in the East.
You remember the day you and I walked to Winchester from Portsmouth, starting early in the morning, with our lunch in our pockets? Well, we came along the same way, past old William of Wykeham's Wickham, the queer mill built of the Chesapeake's timbers, and Bishops' Waltham, where the ruins of the Episcopal palace struck me as being grander than I had realized. Ellaline was astonished at coming upon such a splendid monument of the past by the roadside, and was delighted to hear of the entertainment Cœur de Lion was given in the palace after his return from the German captivity. Of course the story of the famous "Waltham Blacks" pleased her too. Women can always forgive thieves, provided they're young, gay, and well born.
When Mrs. Senter found that Ellaline and my sister were in the habit of sitting in the tonneau, Young Nick beside me, she asked, after a little hesitation, if she might take his place, leaving the chauffeur to curl himself up on the emergency seat at my feet. She said that half the fun of motoring was to sit by the man at the wheel and share his impressions, like being in the forefront of battle, or going to the first performance of a play, or being in at the death with a hunt. So now you can imagine me with an amusing neighbour, for naturally I consented to the change. Neither Ellaline nor Emily had suggested companioning me, and though I must say I had thought of proposing it to Ellaline, I hadn't found the courage. She would no doubt have been too polite to refuse, while perhaps disliking the plan heartily. Now, Burden has been allotted a place with her and my sister, which is probably agreeable to Ellaline.
Curious! Even the frankest of girls—and I believe Ellaline to be as frank as her sex allows—can be secretive in an apparently motiveless way. Why should she tell me one moment that she didn't like Burden, and the next (practically) ask me to invite him and his aunt to travel with us, because she "admires Mrs. Senter immensely"? Or perhaps it is that the child doesn't know her own mind. I am studying her with deepening interest, but am not likely to have as many opportunities now there are more of us. She and Burden, being the young girl and the young man of the party, will, of course, be much together, and Mrs. Senter will fall to my lot for any excursions which may not interest, or be too tiring for, Emily. This boy's presence makes me realize, as I didn't until I had a young man of twenty-one constantly under my eyes, that the knocking of the "younger generation" has already begun to sound on my door. I had better hearken, I suppose, or some one else will kindly direct my attention to the noise. I confess I don't like it, but it's best to know the worst, and keep the knowledge in the heart, rather than read it in the mockery of some pretty girl's eyes—a pretty girl to whom one is an "old boy," perhaps.
Jove, Pat, that sticks in my gorge! It's not a thought to take to bed and go to sleep with if one wants pleasant dreams. I'm stronger than I ever was, my health is perfect, I have few gray hairs, my back is straight. I feel as if the elixir of youth ran hot in my veins. Yet one sees headlines in the papers, "Too Old at Forty." And—one is forty. It didn't matter—that is, I didn't think of it, until the coming of this boy.
His very ideas and manners are different from mine. No doubt they're the approved ideas and manners of his generation, as we had ours at his age. I wear my hair short, and think no more of its existence except to wash and brush it; but this Dick parts his in the middle, and sleeks the long locks back, keeping them smooth as a surface of yellowish satin, with bear's grease or lard, or some appalling, perfumed compound. His look is a mixture of laziness and impudence, and half his sentences he ends up with "What?" or even "What-what?" His way with women is slightly condescending, and takes their approval for granted. There's no youthful shyness about him, and what he wants he expects to get; but with me he puts on an irritating, though, I fear, conscientious air of deference that relegates me to the background of an older generation; sets me on a pedestal there, perhaps; but I have no wish for a pedestal.
Still, to do him justice, the lad is neither ill-looking nor ill-mannered. Indeed, women may consider him engaging. His aunt seems devoted to him, and says he is irresistible to girls. I think if no "greenery yallery" haze floated before my eyes, I might see that he is rather a decent boy, extremely well-groomed, alert, with good, short features and bright eyes. When he walks with Ellaline he has no more than an inch the advantage of her in height, but he has a well-knit figure and a "Sandhurst bearing."