Mark was always docile before authority. He asked, “What’ll she do to me?”
“She can tell you anything you want to know and explain Winchester. The history of Winchester is the history of England,” Gail said, “and, of course, that’s the history of the world.”
Thus, in early June, Mark was driven through Winchester and landed at the door of a brick house painted plum colour. A grey wall continued on either side of the ruddy front and nameless vines waved on the coping. Mark’s head ached from a supper at Romano’s the night previous but he admired the house and the obvious romance of the curving lane stippled with sunshine in plaques of honey. He rang the bell, gave a fat parlour-maid his card and waited for Mrs. Ilden in stolid terror. The hall had white panels of an approved stage pattern and was dotted with photographs. Mark was looking at the face of a bearded man whose eyebrows had a diabolic slant when Olive Ilden came in from her garden.
She came in a bad temper, deserting the discussion of Chamberlain’s Imperial policy about her tea table. She was prepared for a repetition of her last paying pupil, the one son of a Rand millionaire, a cub who wore five rubies on one hand and who talked racing at four meals a day. Mark unsettled her by his wooden stare and the black decency of his dress. His clothes were English. He was always tanned. The scar of Cora Boyle’s curling irons lay in a thread along his left jaw. Olive revised a theory that Americans were short and looked up at him.
“I’ve some friends at tea,” she said, “Of course, I don’t wish to impose tea on a Yankee.”
“I think I’d like some,” Mark said miserably and followed her trailing, white skirts down an endless garden. He thought her gown distinctly bad and sloppy. She must be older than she looked or she wouldn’t be so careless. The girdle was crooked and the gauze across her shoulders was too tight. But it was a fine body, tall and proportionate. Her hair was a lustreless black. Meanwhile he had to think about this scene of an English garden. It phrased itself simply. Wall, rear. Tower of church, right background. Two small children playing with a kitten. Tea-table. Three ladies. Young man in tweeds. One clergyman.—It was like the garden set for the “Princess of Croy.” Mark braced himself, bowed and murmured in the manner of Mrs. LeMoyne, leaned on one of the limes in the manner of Herbert Kelcey, and drank his tea in the manner of Mr. Drew. The minor canon gave him a cigarette and Mark said, “Thanks so much.” The youth in tweeds asserted that it was beastly hot for June and Mark admitted, “Rather.” He stood sombre against the lime and the group was chilled by his chill. Two of the ladies fancied him a poet by the red curling of his hair. The guests withdrew. Olive Ilden fiddled with a teaspoon and frowned.
“I rather expected you on Tuesday.”
“Had to stay in London. Mr. Carlson wanted me to look at a couple of plays he’s thinkin’ of bringing over.”
“Really, I don’t see why you Yankees always import our nonsense. One hears of the Pinero rubbish playing for thousands of nights in the States. Why?”
“The women like it,” he wildly said, quoting Carlson. “Are those your kids?”