"But you see, Sarah," he said, "being only a locum tenens, I do not, fortunately, have to act."
"Don't disparage yourself, sir," advised Sarah, still disappointed, almost aggrieved. "And even if folks here have called you so, you won't be that to Miss Diana."
"Oh, no," said David, cheerfully. "I do not propose to be a locum tenens to Miss Diana!"
The motor glided up to the Rectory gate at seven o'clock, to the minute. David saw the flash of the acetylene lamps on his bedroom blind.
He ran down the stairs, filled with a delightful sense of holiday-making, and adventure.
His one clerical suit was carefully brushed, and Sarah had "pressed it," a mysterious process from which it emerged with a youthful, unwrinkled air, to which it had for long been a stranger. His linen was immaculate. He had shaved with extreme care. He felt so festive, that his lack of conventional evening clothes troubled him no longer. He slipped Sarah's Christmas card into his pocket. He knew Diana would appreciate the pathos and humour of those clasped hands and forget-me-nots.
Then he went down the garden path, and entered the motor. The footman arranged the fur rug over his knees, showed him how to switch off the electric lights if he preferred darkness, shut the door, took his seat beside the motionless chauffeur, and instantly they glided away down the lane, and turned into the high road leading to Riversmead.
It seemed wonderful to David to be flying along in Diana's sumptuous motor. He had never before been in a powerful noiseless Napier car, and he found it somewhat of an experience. Involuntarily he thought of the time when he had been so deadly weak from African fever, and his people had had somehow to get him to the coast; the rough little cart on wheels they made to hold him and his mattress, and tried to draw him along the apology for a road. But the shaking and bumping had been so absolutely unbearable, that he had eventually had to be slung and carried as far as the river. Even so, there had been the perpetual dread of the agonising jerk if one of his bearers stumbled over a stone, or stepped unexpectedly into a rut. And to all this he was so soon returning. And quite right, too. No man should glide through life on cushioned tyres. For a woman, it was quite otherwise. Her womanhood constituted a sufficient handicap, without any roughness or hardship being allowed to come her way. He liked to know that Diana would always—literally and metaphorically—glide through life in a noiseless Napier. This method of progression need be no hindrance to her following of the star.
He looked at his watch. In ten minutes they would reach Riverscourt.