“My maid, you mean? She’s the niece of my old Breezy. Isn’t she charming? Such an honest little soul too. Does her job with the most utter neatness and nicety of touch and listens excellently. I rescued her from the stage,—I mean, of course, the chorus. A good deed in a naughty world.” That’s how she liked to put it, her memory being a little hazy. “I don’t know what will become of her. Of course, she can’t be my maid forever. Judging from the way in which my male friends look at her whenever they get the chance, I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if one of these days she eloped with a duke. It would fill me with joy to meet her in her husband’s ancestral home all covered with the family jewels and do my best to win a gracious smile. Or else she’ll marry Simpkins, who is, I hear, frightfully mashed on her, and retire to a village pub, there to imitate the domestic cat and litter the world with kittens. I dunno. Anything may happen to a girl like that. But whatever it is, it will be one of these two extremes. I hate to think about it because I like her. It’s very nice to have her about me.”
Rip Van Winkle smiled. “To parody a joke in last week’s La Vie Parisienne, I am not so old as I look, my dear.”
“You dare,” said Feo. But she laughed too. “Good Lord, Father, don’t go and do a thing like that. If I had to call that girl Mother, I think that even my sense of humor would crack.”
“A little joke, Feo,” said Rip. “Nothing more. I can’t even keep myself, you see.”
Whereupon, having left the village, the brake turned into the road that ran up to Whitecross at an angle of forty-five. The old man slowed the horses down to a walk and waved his whip towards the screen of trees which hid Chilton Park from the public gaze. “It’s been a wonderful spring,” he said. “I have watched it with infinite pleasure. It has filled my old brain with poetry and very possibly with regrets. All the same, I’m glad you have come down. I’ve been rather lonely here. The evenings are long and ghosts have a knack of coming out and standing round my chair.—How is Edmund? I regret that I have forgotten to ask you about him before. One somehow always forgets to ask about Edmund, although I see that he is regarded by George Lytham and his crowd as the new Messiah.”
Feo laughed again, showing all her wonderful teeth. “I had a quaint few minutes with Edmund the other night on the steps of Langham Hall. He had taken his mother and Aunt Betsy to a symphony concert. Do you know, I rather think that George is right about Edmund? He has all the makings of a Messiah and of course all the opportunities. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he emerged from the present generation of second-raters and led England out of its morass. But he’ll only achieve this if he continues to remain untouched by any feminine hand. Of course, he’s absolutely safe so far as I’m concerned, but there was a most peculiar look in his face the other night which startled me somewhat. I thought he’d fallen in love with me,—which would have been most inconvenient. But I was wrong.—Well, here we are at the old homestead. How it reeks of Fallaray and worthiness.”
III
But the party was not a success. Very shortly after lunch, during which Feo and Mrs. Malwood had put in good work in an unprecedented attempt to charm their new acquisitions, they all adjourned to the terrace,—that wonderful old terrace of weather-beaten stone giving on to a wide view of an Italian garden backed by a panorama of rolling hills and of the famous beech forest ten miles deep, under which, in certain parts, especially in the Icknield Way through which the Romans had passed, the leaves of immemorial summers, all red and dry, lay twenty feet deep.
Gilbert Jermyn, Feo’s brother, had dashed over on his motor bicycle from Great Marlow where he was staying with several friends, ex-flying men like himself and equally devoid of cash, trying to formulate some scheme whereby they might get back into adventure once more. Lord Amesbury had gone down to a pet place of his own to take a nap in the long grass with the sun on his face. Feo, who had been dancing until five o’clock that morning, was lying full stretch on a dozen cushions in the shadow of the house, Macquarie in attendance. Mrs. Malwood, petulant and disgruntled, was sitting near by with David Dowth. Gilbert Jermyn, who could see that he was superfluous, sat by himself on the balustrade gazing into the distance. His clean-cut face was heavy with despondency. He had forgotten to light his cigarette.
“You’re about the liveliest undertaker I’ve ever struck,” said Feo. “What the deuce is the matter with you?”