Dinner, the late June sunset and the moon seemed to bring them together again. Almost harmoniously he was able to suggest that he should get up very early the next morning, pursue and capture Bealby and return for lunch.
“You’d get up at dawn!” she cried. “But how perfectly Splendid the midsummer dawn must be.”
Then she had an inspiration. “Dot!” she cried, “I will get up at dawn also and come with you.... Yes, but as you say he cannot be more than thirteen miles away we’d catch him warm in his little bed somewhere. And the freshness! The dewy freshness!”
And she laughed her beautiful laugh and said it would be “Such Fun!” entering as she supposed into his secret desires and making the most perfect of reconciliations. They were to have tea first, which she would prepare with the caravan lamp and kettle. Mrs. Geedge would hand it over to her.
She broke into song. “A Hunting we will go-ooh,” she sang. “A Hunting we will go....”
But she could not conquer the churlish underside of the Captain’s nature even by such efforts. She threw a glamour of vigour and fun over the adventure, but some cold streak in his composition was insisting all the time that as a boy hunt the attempt failed. Various little delays in her preparations prevented a start before half-past seven, he let that weigh with him, and when sometimes she clapped her hands and ran—and she ran like a deer, and sometimes she sang, he said something about going at an even pace.
At a quarter past one Mrs. Geedge observed them returning. They were walking abreast and about six feet apart, they bore themselves grimly, after the manner of those who have delivered ultimata, and they conversed no more....
In the afternoon Madeleine kept her own room, exhausted, and Captain Douglas sought opportunities of speaking to her in vain. His face expressed distress and perplexity, with momentary lapses into wrathful resolution, and he evaded Judy and her leading questions and talked about the weather with Geedge. He declined a proposal of the Professor’s to go round the links, with especial reference to his neglected putting. “You ought to, you know,” said the Professor.
About half-past three, and without any publication of his intention, Captain Douglas departed upon his motor bicycle....
Madeleine did not reappear until dinner-time, and then she was clad in lace and gaiety that impressed the naturally very good observation of Mrs. Geedge as unreal.