I passed on. Evidently the best there was was none too good for Monsieur Arnaud, alias Arnold, alias Derwent Rose.
Tea was set out inside the pergola; Jennie herself placed little leaves round the sandwiches, begonia petals about the dishes of chocolate and nougat. Critically she paraded her mother's putty-coloured frock for inspection, touched the little darling hat deftly. She herself wore her pale gold silk jumper; her proud throat and small head issued from it like the little porcelain busts in the shop in the Rue Levavasseur—the Watteaus and Chardins and Fragonards that are made up into pincushions and cosies. She was a tremulous tender pout of anticipation and anxiety. A dozen times she moved the objects on the table, a dozen times moved them back again. Alec had dissociated himself from all this absurd fuss about a chance-met English youth with a French name, but he sat not far away, in the shade of the auracaria, behind the Paris Daily Mail.
Then, at four o'clock, there was the short soft slide of somebody alighting from a bicycle, and Derry stood by the wrought-iron gate, looking about him.
"This way—come straight down!" Madge called. "The bicycle will be all right there."
Rapidly as I knew Jennie's heart to be beating, I was hardly less excited myself. Now what was he going to do?
What he did was the simplest thing imaginable. As he advanced among the montbretias and begonias I noticed that he wore his English clothes. He took Madge's hand; he smiled simply at Jennie; and then, as Madge was about to present him to myself, he smiled and shook hands with me too.
"That's all right—we do know one another," he said. "Quite a long time. In London, eh, sir? And, as a matter of fact, I came here to see him the other night, but you were all so busy with the party——"
Beautifully, calmly disarming. He said it, too, just as Alec came up—for Alec may growl before his guests come, and growl again when they have gone, but he is their host as long as they are there. If Monsieur Arnaud had known Sir George Coverham in London the situation was more or less regularised. The growling might continue, but in a diminuendo. Growling is sometimes a man's duty to his own face.
"Well, let's have tea anyway," Alec said. "Tell them, Jennie."
The dark blue clothes—that had crossed the Channel in a motor-launch while their owner, thickly greased, had swum alongside in the night—fitted him quite passably well; I remembered the very suit. His boots and collar, however, were French, and apparently he had no English hat, for his head was uncovered. I remember a foolish fleeting wonder that the light chequer of shadow should pattern his clear and self-possessed face exactly as it did our own—and he the lusus naturæ he was! He stood there, modest and at ease, waiting for his seniors to seat themselves. I saw Alec's expert glance at his perfect build. I mentally gave the subject of athletics about ten minutes in which to crop up.