“And do you forget the fat partridges your Jaeger shot for you yesterday?” he asked.
As a matter of fact the keeper had shot them, but Sir Hermann had been out shooting, though without the success he so easily attained into other lines. He was dressed now in homespun and knickerbockers and stockings with a sort of frill round the tops which reminded the observer of the decoration of crackers.
“Are you going to shoot to-day?” she asked.
“No; cannot you see that I have my golfing clothes on? I have gaiters on when I shoot, and thick boots. I am going to see the bailiff now and after lunch I shall play golf. Upon my word, this English country life with plenty of exercise and good fruit like this from my own garden is just as beneficial to me as Marienbad. There is no longer a trace of acidity in all me! I am your sweet Hermann.”
Mr. Boyton, whether or no owing to the information that Lady Grote would be a fellow-guest, was delighted to reply favourably on the prepaid form his hostess provided him with, and the two arrived that evening, in an express that Sir Hermann had stopped for them at Ashmore Fen station. This was a privilege appertaining to the owner of Ashmore House, and it gave him considerable pleasure to exercise it, for it conveyed a sense of territorial rights. Aline went to the station to meet them (in the negligent country costume of a cotton dress and a tam-o’-shanter in which she occasionally hit the turf with a golf club), with the sables lying handy to put on in case she was chilly. True to her English policy, she was very voluble about the war, and her sympathies with regard to it.
“Dearest Helen,” she said, “it was too sweet of you to propose yourself; how-d’ye-do, Mr. Boyton, very pleased you were able to come. Have you brought a gun with you? No? Hermann will lend you one. And have you brought us the evening papers, Helen? We are so terribly out of the world here, just when one wants every moment to hear the latest possible news. I wish you had been able to bring Robin with you, but of course he is with his regiment now. How proud you must be of him. Sure you’ve got all your luggage out? because it will be whirled away to Lincoln if you haven’t, for the train doesn’t stop here unless Hermann sends an order. Oh, I must speak to the station master a moment. He had news yesterday that his son was killed, and I must tell him how sorry I am. Poor fellow, he was only eighteen! Is it not heart-breaking, though of course it’s wonderful to be young and fighting for your country.”
She bound up the broken-hearted with a few bright words, promised to send a brace of partridges to his wife, thought how wonderful she was, and rejoined the others.
“Prepare yourself for a humdrum life, Helen,” she said—“oh, yes, just give me my fur coat, Mr. Boyton, for I have only got a cotton frock on; yes, nice aren’t they? Hermann gave me them the other day—for there’s no one here but Hermann and the children, and yet somehow I’m as busy as ever I was in town. One has to read every word of the papers now-a-days, and the news is a little more encouraging, isn’t it? You never saw anyone so depressed as Hermann and I were during the retreat: how thankful you must have been that Robin was not in that. Yes, now we’re in the avenue: there’s the house at the end. I declare I feel as if I had been born here, there’s such a sense of home about it. I long for the war to be over: do you think we shall all be happy again by Christmas? It was touch and go, was it not, whether Paris fell?”
This was not precisely the kind of diversion for which Helen Grote had sought refuge in the country, and she tried to stem this flow of patriotism.
“My dear, what wonderful sables!” she said. “You do have the most beautiful things. They’re Russian, I suppose.”