Most people, with the better sort of mind, withdrew and made efforts to recommence the interrupted games or to group themselves once more about the lawns and marquees.
Others remained to make fatuous suggestions, to wonder, or merely to look on with feelings approaching awe and fascination. There was something uncanny here—a soldier and athlete weeping and screaming and going into fits at the sight of a harmless grass-snake, probably a mere blind worm! Was he a hysterical, neurotic coward, after all—a wretched decadent?
Poor Lucille suffered doubly—every pang, spasm, and contortion that shook and wrung the body of her beloved, racked her own frame, and her mind was tortured by fear, doubts, and agony. “Oh, please go away, dear people,” she moaned. “It is a touch of sun. He is a little subject to slight fits—very rarely and at long intervals, you know. He may never have another.” A few of the remaining onlookers backed away a little shamefacedly. Others offered condolences while inwardly scoffing at the “sun” explanation. Did not de Warrenne bowl, bat, or field, bare-headed, throughout the summer’s day without thinking of the sun? Who had heard of the “fits” before? Why had they not transpired during the last dozen years or so? “Help me carry him indoors, somebody,” said the miserable, horrified Lucille. That would get rid of the silly staring “helpers” anyhow—even if it brought matters to the notice of Grumper, who frankly despised and detested any kind of sick person or invalid.
What would he say and do? What had happened to the glowing, glorious world that five minutes ago was fairy-land and paradise? Was her Dam a wretched coward, afraid of things, screaming like a girl at the sight of a common snake, actually terrified into a fit? Better be a pick-pocket than a…. Into the thinning, whispering circle came General Sir Gerald Seymour Stukeley, apoplectically angry. Some silly fool, he understood, had fainted or something—probably a puling tight-laced fool of a woman who starved herself to keep slim. People who wanted to faint should stay and do it at home—not come creating disturbances and interruptions at Monksmead garden-parties….
And then he saw a couple of young men and Lucille striving to raise the recumbent body of a man. The General snorted as snorts the wart-hog in love and war, or the graceful hippopotamus in the river.
“What the Devil’s all this?” he growled. “Some poor fella fainted with the exertions of putting?” A most bitter old gentleman.
Lucille turned to him and his fierce gaze fell upon the pale, contorted, and tear-stained face of Dam.
The General flushed an even deeper purple, and the stick he held perpendicularly slowly rose to horizontal, though he did not raise his hand.
He made a loud but wholly inarticulate sound.
Haddon Berners, enjoying himself hugely, volunteered the information.