XI
COOL COMFORT
Saturday’s wonders, Sunday thrills—with her declared lover monumentally in the Rectory pew and his relatives all unconscious that they were soon to be hers (hers, Mary Middleham’s: O altitudo!)—did not release her, in her own mind, from the promise of Sunday afternoon. Not only had she promised, not only had she something to tell him, a solid base for her feet from which to regard him, and a sanctuary in which to hide, from which to emerge at will, ready for any encounter; not only so, but she must put herself right with him. He had seen her, must have seen her, in a delicate situation—nothing to him, of course, but somehow everything to her. She could not, she said, afford that he should deem her a girl of the sort—to be kissed in a doorway by anybody, gentleman or no gentleman. There were reasons—special reasons for it; and since, as the fact was, these reasons did not now seem as cogent as they had yesterday, there was nothing for it but to cry them over and over to herself. “Engaged to be married—engaged to be married—to Mr. Germain—to Mr. Germain of Southover House. And he loves me dearly—and I love him.” So she pedalled and sang.
Racing with her thoughts, the bicycle took her to the common of Mere that blazing Sunday afternoon. His eyes looked up from their work, twinkled and laughed at her. “So it’s you, then! I thought you wouldn’t come.” He was mending the sole of a shoe, and resumed his cheerful tap-tapping directly he had greeted her.
She stood leaning on her bicycle, watching his work. Her new estate sat in full possession of her eyes.
“Yes, I’ve come. I couldn’t come earlier.”
He paused, hammer in air. “It was as well you didn’t. I’ve been out lunching.”
She knew that very well, and with any other man would have pretended that she did not. Some pretty fishing would have followed—with him out of the question.
“At the Park?” she said—turning up the statement into a question by habit.
“Precisely there,” said he, and returned to his shoe. No fishing in such waters as his—but he looked up again presently with a laugh in his eyes. “I met your Mr. Germain,” he told her—and she flamed.
“I wanted to tell you—I felt that I must. I am—I was with him when you——”