They were at Hampton before noon, and on the river in the fierce golden sunlight, when Hampton Church clock struck the hour, Eve leaning back in her cushioned seat, gazing dreamily at the lazy rower midships. They had the current to help them, so there was no need for strenuous toil. The oars dipped gently; the church and village, Garrick’s Temple, the gaily decked house-boats with gardens on their roofs and bright striped awnings, barracks, bridge, old Tudor Palace, drifted by like shadows in a dream. Eve did not open De Musset, though the ribbon marked a page where passion hung suspended in tragic possibilities; a crisis which might well have stimulated curiosity. She was too happy to be curious about anything. It was her first holiday on the river, they two alone.
“If this is your idea of resting let us rest very often,” said Eve.
She would not hear of landing at Kingston for luncheon. She wanted nothing but the river, and the sunshine, and his company, all to herself. She would have some tea, if he liked, later; and seeing an open-air tea-house a little lower down the river, and a garden where at this early hour there were no visitors, Vansittart pushed the nozzle of his skiff in among the reeds, and they landed, and ordered tea and eggs and bread and butter to be served in a rustic arbour close by the glancing tide.
“I dare say there are water-rats about,” said Eve, gathering her pale pink frock daintily round her ankles, “but I feel as if I should hardly mind one to-day.”
They both enjoyed this humble substitute for their customary luncheon. It was a relief to escape the conventional menu—the everlasting mayonnaise, the cutlets hot or cold, the too familiar chicken and lamb. The tea and eggs in this vine-curtained bower had the most exquisite of all flavours—novelty.
“I am so happy,” cried Eve, “that I think, like Miss de Bourgh in ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I could sing—if I had learnt.”
“Your face is my music,” said her husband, his face reflecting her happy smile; “your laughter is better than singing.”
“Oh, you mustn’t, you really mustn’t talk like that; at least, not till our silver wedding,” protested Eve. “You will have to make a speech, perhaps, on that anniversary, and you might incorporate that idea in it. ‘What, ladies and gentlemen, in returning thanks for your kind compliments and this truly magnificent epergne, can I say of my wife of five and twenty blissful years, except that I love her, I love her, I love her? Her face is my music; her laughter is better than singing.’ How would that do, Jack?”
Her clear laugh rang out in the still summer air. No female of the great Bounder tribe could have enjoyed herself more frankly. Vansittart would hardly have been surprised if she had offered to exchange hats with him.
“Five and twenty years! A quarter of a century,” she said musingly. “I wonder what we shall be like, three and twenty years hence—what the world will be like—what kind of frocks will be worn?”