“Turn round and see whether you dropped them in the road.”
“Dropped what?” asked Ben, his hand on the lever, making a black semicircle.
“Your manners,” said Stephen, and chuckled again.
“You go to thunder,” roared Ben, shooting ahead. “A poor, wretched bachelor like you instructing a married man how to treat his sister-in-law, and just because once upon a time I sat in your lecture room and let you bore me by the hour about protoplasms! Do you suppose I should dare admit to Polly that Deena is as handsome as she is? Why, man alive, a Russian warship off Port Arthur would be a place of safety compared to this automobile.”
Deena, laughing though embarrassed, was trying to cover the countenance that provoked the discussion with a veil, for her hat strained at its pins and threatened to blow back to Harmouth before the knotty point was settled as to who should pay for it.
They were flying between fields strewn with Michaelmas daisies and wooded banks gay with the first kiss of frost, and gradually Deena forgot everything but the exhilaration of rushing through the air, and their attitude of holiday-making. She was thoroughly at her ease with French; he was Simeon’s one intimate in the corps of professors, the only creature who was ever welcome at the Ponsonby table, the one discerning soul who found something to admire in Simeon’s harsh dealings with himself and the world. Their line of study naturally drew them together, but Stephen admired the man as well as the scholar; the purity of his scientific ambition, the patience with which he bore his poverty—for poverty seemed a serious thing to French, who was a man of independent fortune, and whose connection with the university was a matter of predilection only. With Ponsonby it was bread and butter, and yet he had ventured to marry with nothing but his splendid brain between his wife and absolute want. French stole a glance at Deena, who was looking more beautiful than he had ever seen her, and wondered whether she found her lot satisfactory; whether there were not times when Simeon’s absence was precious to her. Without disloyalty to his friend, he hoped so, for he had something to tell her before the day was over that might lead to a temporary separation, and he hated to think of those lovely eyes swimming in tears—all women were not Penelopes.
“She can’t care in that way,” he reflected. “Ponsonby is tremendous in his own line, of course, but no woman could love him.”
Perhaps he was mistaken—perhaps Mrs. Ponsonby loved her husband with all the fervor of passion, but she conveyed an impression of emancipation to-day, and of powers of enjoyment hitherto suppressed, that made Stephen doubt. She was like a child bubbling over with happiness, gay as a lark, as unlike her usual self in behavior as her modish appearance was unlike that of Simeon Ponsonby’s self-denying wife.
“Of course she won’t mind; why should she?” he decided, and yet determined to put off making his announcement till after lunch.
At Wolfshead they stopped at the little inn, found the one o’clock dinner smoking on the table, and sat down with the rest of the hungry company—employees of a branch railroad that had its terminus there; drummers in flashy shop-made clothes, and temporary residents in the little town. This jaunt had given them an appetite, and roast beef and apple tart disappeared at a rate that should have doubled their bill.