“Oh, it’s a waste of time to go indoors,” she said. “When I am in the country I like to be out. I wonder if Aline would take me into Cambridge. Ah, there she is.”
Mr. Boyton had a sense of having been snubbed; he had made humorous though sub-acid remarks about sitting in the lift or the cooling-room which had been received without appreciation, and he had spoken in praise of his hostess’s vitality and power of self-detachment from disagreeable events. No one could have accused him of a double meaning, unless the second of the meanings was not floating about in his mind ready to crystallize. He felt, no doubt, that there was some such crystallization in Lady Grote’s mind: otherwise she would have endorsed his praise of Aline’s vitality. But if there was, why did she not respond, and let their private suspicions rub noses together? Instead, she failed to see humour in his fun, and professed by her silence a blank ignorance of crystals. A failure in these little social successes was always bitter to him, since they constituted the joy of life to him, and with the ill-breeding that always jumped out if he was scratched, he proceeded to be petulant and embarrassing.
“Dear lady,” he said to Aline, “your two guests were singing a hymn of praise in honour of your vitality and control. Never, we decided, were you inspired with a more charming animation than this morning, though you, like us, must have been so terribly depressed by the bad news. What is your secret for this magnificent power of isolation? We come as despondent neophytes to you.”
It was craftily done: he had put Lady Grote in a difficult position, for she could scarcely dissociate herself from these compliments or from the innuendo that underlay them. That was his method of “punishing” those who appeared to snub him. He had not had occasion to punish Lady Grote before, and was rather surprised at his own audacity. He was punishing his hostess as well for being allied by birth to the nation which had spoiled his autumn plans, and for having high spirits in the morning.
His calculation miscarried. Helen Grote merely stepped forward between him and Aline, and took Aline’s arm.
“Take me up to the nursery to see the children, Aline,” she said. “I’ve fallen in love with Freddy. Let’s go at once, may we? And while you’re doing your flowers, I have some letters to write.”
Mr. Boyton remained planted on the flagged path....
The inauspicious days went by, days flooded with summer sun, refreshed by the calmest breath of autumn, cushioned by all that wealth could supply of material comfort, and curtained from the blasts of war by the miles of sleepy country. But never had Helen passed hours so uneasy, nor made a scheme of which the execution so frustrated the design.
Instead of finding peace in this withdrawn corner, she had been finding only an infinitely greater dreariness than even in the work-rooms of Gracie Massingberd; instead of capturing forgetfulness, she was seized with an unremitting restlessness that would not allow her placidly to enjoy. Whether she read or talked, it was as if some remote telephone kept sounding that she knew brought a summons to her. Twenty times a day she resolved to devote herself entirely to anything that amused or interested her; but no sooner had she tried to fix her mind on it, than the penetrating tinkle diverted her attention again. And would her projected retirement to Grote, she asked herself, be productive of any better results than this? Would Mr. Boyton and his perennial flow of slightly ill-natured comment be any more amusing there than here? She began to wonder whether she would spend October at Grote after all. She could not see herself there, and yet in her present mood she could see herself nowhere.
She longed to taste the sharp, sweet savour of life again, and had thought it would return to her palate if only she could shut out the things that in London reminded her every moment of the war. She was eager to be alive again, but her eagerness found nothing on which it could fasten. She longed to get her teeth into life, but the old topics, the old interests, were like dust or like cotton-wool in her mouth.