Ivor had lost his temper. He wanted now but one thing, and that violently—to get out of London, out of “all this”! What he would do then, he had not the faintest idea. He had no other thoughts, there was a furious jumble in his mind. Now and then he would see a white face, a very white little face with livid blue eyes. Caddish eyes.... He would think later, out of London! And his impatience dragged him and Turner to Paddington a good half-hour before a train was due to leave for Reading, Newbury, and Hungerford; and when at last it was in, it was passionately mobbed by the crowds going riverwards in the heat—but who stood a chance against the tall, one-armed young man with the straight eyebrows and the defiant nose? Turner breathlessly squeezed in after him, travelling “first” with a “third” ticket. “Get there somehow,” Turner muttered.
And thus to Nasyngton village, by The Swan’s Neck dog-cart from Hungerford: to the house of the Misses Cloister-Smiths beside the ancient bridge over the River Kennet, towards eight o’clock on a damp and sultry September evening. Turner had bought some eggs in Hungerford: having understood that his master had indicated eggs as the only possible food in such weather.
“Scramble them,” said Ivor, as they reached the house.
2
Of course, it was a little thing. Just a tiff.... His mind accused Virginia, but not resentfully: reasonably. Quite reasonably. And he thought of how he had first been angry when she had said to him, “You get on my nerves!” Good God, he thought, are there ever two people who don’t get on each other’s nerves sometimes! It’s an abominable thing, but it happens—but it’s ever so much more abominable when it’s expressed, in words! She’s got on my nerves before now, but I haven’t said anything; one doesn’t. It’s one’s own fault when some one gets on one’s nerves, and one must just let it pass in silence. One doesn’t tell the person—it’s one of those commonplace insults that are still the deepest. No restraint, Virginia dear, no restraint! Nor me, either, banging the door on you like that!... But that made him angry again, when he thought of what had driven him to that furious exit. That was such a grotesque insult.... He had been trying so hard to put the thing right! And then, suddenly, without a word to him, to turn to Tarlyon and ask him to dine with her! Of course the dinner didn’t matter, what was a dinner more or less? But to use Tarlyon as a weapon of her sudden displeasure with him! Oh, it was childish, grotesque, caddish! Ivor wanted to laugh when he thought of it, but his slamming of that door on them got into his ears, and he couldn’t help retasting the fury of that moment. He tried to tell himself that the situation required a sense of humour....
The only trace of temper that Turner could find in Ivor in the morning was a little grimness added to his ordinary manner. Turner had scrambled eggs again for breakfast, and Ivor pointed out that he hadn’t meant him to go on doing it all the time.... There was the soft light of a hesitating sun over the morning.
“This morning,” he said, “we will fish, Turner. We will cast for trout so that we may catch grayling.” Ivor had acquired more than a mile of fishing rights with the house; he was not at all a good fisherman, but one must do something; one generally, however, banged a ball with a squash-racket against a wall.
“They’re rising pretty well, sir,” said Turner enthusiastically. He liked going out fishing with his master, for it meant that after a few impossible casts and a few poor ones his master would mutter something about arms and say he would try again later: and would spend the rest of the time prowling up and down while Turner cast for trout—which nearly always turned out to be grayling. His master’s capacity for pacing up and down anywhere and everywhere had never ceased to astonish Turner. Carpet or wet grass, all the same to ’im, thought Turner.
“Must walk miles!” he would tell Mrs. Hope. “Potterin’ up and down like that, one cigarette after another. And what ’e can find to think about all that time beats me.”
“Beats ’im too, I s’d think,” said Mrs. Hope sympathetically. “Pore lamb, the worried way ’is eyebrows get fixed!”