I got her round as well as I could. While I was fanning her with a doubled-up newspaper and trying to force brandy down her throat, I noticed the subtle refinements of her dress. And there was a haunting memory in that face. I thought that I must have seen it before, until I remembered Farthings Farm and the old woman who tended Mrs. Covey. I remembered, too, Jimmy’s flicker of animation when he had seen that woman—and I understood. There was the same peculiar, fascinating sweetness of expression; an expression which would lure you to any madness at the start and cloy you to death long before the finish.
I got her round. She went away, with beautifully expressed thanks—and not a flutter of her eyelids.
That is all. The key to Jimmy’s love affair—if he had one—lies with him at Finchley.
[GAME FEATHERS.]
JIMMY and I once spent a month in the country together. The doctor had ordered him fresh air and good diet. We went to Farthings Farm in Sussex and boarded with old Mrs. Covey. She was an extraordinary character—narrowly religious, as these half-educated rustics so often are. You could see hell fire in the hard lines of her mouth and the cunning screw of her little gray eyes. Yet she wasn’t a bad sort. Her pious cant was amusing and quite harmless. She talked seriously to Jimmy, knowing, as she must have done, that he had not long to live. She used to say, with a half-groaning, half-chuckling sort of breath:
“Ah! sir, I believe in the sacrifice in this world.”
Jimmy returned, very politely—he was always polite:
“I’m afraid I don’t quite gather your meaning.”
Mrs. Covey would look at him despairingly, raise her eyes to the ceiling, shake her head, and ejaculate a long, solemn “Ah—ah!” which was very convincing.