“This is glorious!” he cried. “I can hardly believe it! I never dreamed of it. You must stay to supper. No, I’m not my own cook; I’d starve if I were. There’s a Cornish char here somewhere. I’ll tell her.”
He rushed off, and they heard him giving excited and confused directions in the kitchen. Then he rushed back.
“I’m going to send the car away. It’s only a mile to the inn. I’ll walk back with you after supper. You’re angels from heaven, both of you. There’s only fish and eggs and cheese. Can you bear that?”
Judy saw a new Chip—a happy, hopeful one. Excitement and wholly unexpected pleasure gave him confidence. He asked a hundred questions. He made Judy take off her hat and coat and carried them away into his room. He replenished the fire and hurled into it some papers that had been lying on the table.
“I was trying to write a letter,” he explained. Judy thought she saw her name on a blackening sheet before it puffed into flame. Another letter, to her? Was he dissatisfied, perhaps, with the letter he had written her before leaving London? How little he had guessed, while writing it, that he would be interrupted half way through it, and by her. His eyes shone, and his undisciplined hair stood up at the back like a schoolboy’s. He didn’t know or care. He was happy.
There in that cottage room, Judy felt the influence of the woman who had furnished it. She had put into it all the little personal odds and ends that she had loved. There was her work table, there her favorite chair. There was the writing table where she had sat penning the novels that had educated her son. Novels, Chip had said, that she would have hated. But he was wrong. There, on the mantelpiece with its tasseled, red velvet draping, were pictures of Chip as a baby, as a schoolboy, as a youth at Sandhurst, where he had acquired that absurd nickname of his, and as a First Lieutenant about to take his part in the South African war, from which campaign he had returned to find her gone. He had left everything as she had left it, and Judy was disposed to love him for it. Books were scattered about the room, and it had the air of being much lived in and much worked in.
It was easy enough for him to talk to-day. His reserve seemed to have melted away from him. Had he heard anything more from Helen about meeting influential people, Judy asked? No, he hadn’t. She had forgotten all about it, no doubt. He was rather relieved that she had.
“People have no time for failures,” Chip said, “and quite right too. A man who has reached the age of forty-four without accomplishing anything is a failure.”
“That’s tosh!” said Noel. “Every one’s a failure at some time of their lives. The thing is to see that it isn’t chronic.”
The old Cornish woman came in and laid the table for supper, bringing with her an extra lamp. She seemed very pleased that the Major had company, and looked approvingly at Judy. They sat down presently to a savory meal, and she waited on them with enthusiasm, putting in a word now and then.