They met Carey at Victoria, the following Saturday. He came up just as the train was starting, and was execrated and dragged into the carriage unceremoniously by Trelawney. There was a babel of laughter and greetings as the train moved out of the station.
“I expected to see Jim got up like Corydon, with a smock frock and a crook, and an oaten pipe in his waistcoat pocket,” Carey declared. “It was entirely owing to my hesitation about my own apparel for this Arcadian festival that I was late. This is a delicious idea of yours, Miss Mansfield,” he said, turning to her. “I haven’t been into an English wood in spring for years.”
“He’s relying exclusively on this experience to provide him with lyrics for the next twelve months,” Trelawney explained. “He looks upon this day from a purely pecuniary standpoint, believe me. Helen, it’s an idyllic farmhouse; there is surrounding it an aura of butter and cream and new-laid eggs. And you get your tea for ninepence a-head.”
Bridget struck in with a laughing comment. At the sound of her voice Carey turned to her for the first time.
“It is ages since we met, Mrs. Travers,” he remarked.
“Is it?” she returned. “We have both been busy, I suppose. One doesn’t notice how the time goes when one is busy.”
She leant back, and watched the green fields they were whirling through, abstractedly. “We seem to have left the streets behind very quickly,” she said, presently. “How delicious the color of that grass is!—and see, the trees are in full leaf, almost!”
Carey was conscious of a coldness, a certain constraint, in her manner he had never noticed before. It had all at once become difficult to talk to her. The realization of this fell blankly, depressingly, upon him.
The impression did not wear off when they reached the little country station, and began to climb the hill, between white hedgerows, towards the farmhouse.
Helen and Trelawney walked on a little ahead. Bridget and he followed with the Professor and Miss Mansfield, and the conversation was general; yet through it all he intuitively felt the new distance in her manner towards him. Her words were gay enough. She stopped, every now and then, with a delighted exclamation, before a hawthorn bush, veiled in bridal white, and he cut blossom-laden branches for her till her arms were full.