Chapter Nine.
An Encounter in Force.
It is three months since we came to Pastimes, and until last week the days have slipped by happily and peacefully enough, but without any happenings worthy of record. We returned the Vicar’s call, and were asked to tea to meet ourselves, when Mrs Merrivale took the opportunity to ask me the address of my dressmaker! Two staid dames, who lived in small villa residences, left cards at the door, an attention which we duly returned in kind. The important people in the neighbourhood have left us severely alone, whirling past our gates to pay assiduous calls on General Underwood. He is the local hero, and we are the hard-hearted strangers who did Something—nobody knows precisely what—but Something mean, and underhand, and altogether unwomanly about a lease, and so forced the poor dear General to endure draughts and cold rooms, and seriously retarded his progress towards health! It’s no use pretending that I am not sorry about it, for I am; but all the same, they have been happy months. Charmion has seemed so much brighter and more contented, and that itself means much to me, and we have been as happy as bees in our beloved garden, bullying our one man into preparing what he considers absolutely mad effects, and working with him to keep him up to the mark. We have flagged one path, and turfed over another, raised some beds, and sunk others, and contrived a really glorious hot-weather arbour, a good six yards in diameter, and open on three sides, to secure plenty of fresh air and an absence of flies.
Charmion has hardly gone out of the gate, except to church on Sundays, but I take a constitutional every day, and scour the country-side.
My first encounter with the Squire came off about the third week we were here, and my imaginings were wrong in all but two unimportant points. Mrs Maplestone wears voluminous sables and clothes of antique cut; but they look quite charming and appropriate, for—she is antique herself!
She is the Squire’s mother, not his wife. He hasn’t got a wife; never has had one, and never will. Hates all women and their ways. Avoids feminine society, and has never been known to pay a girl five minutes’ attention in his life! Such is the village verdict as repeated to me through Bridget, who has a flair for gossip, and is one of those wonderful people who cannot walk half a mile along a solitary country lane, without hearing, or seeing, or mentally absorbing some interesting item about the lives of her fellow-creatures!
Every night when she brushes my hair she recounts these items to me, and I pretend to be uninterested, and listen with all my ears.
In any case, Mr Maplestone seems very kind and attentive to his mother. I met them (as fancy painted!) when I was coming home from a trudge along the damp lanes, and was looking considerably blown and dishevelled. They were getting out of their car just outside the gates of Uplands—a most malapropos position!—but without the least hesitation he lifted his hat, and bowed, so that I was spared the troubled uncertainty which I had imagined.