“It’s perfectly sweet of you,” she said, her voice trembling a little. “I felt that you would understand. I cannot tell you how it has helped me, this little talk of ours. Now I suppose we ought to be going back or they’ll be wondering where we are.”
And he stood thanking God for a wonderful world. At last there were people who wanted him, Tony and Mrs. Lester; and at the same time he had begun to see everything with new eyes. It was his view! They talked of life being over at forty; why, it had never begun for him until now!
They walked back to the tent, and he talked to her gravely about helping others and the real meaning of life. “He can,” she thought, “be most awfully dull, but he’s a dear old thing.”
The expedition in search of a church had scarcely been a success, and when one considers the members of it there is little room to wonder. Tony had been right about the gods. They had seen fit to play their games round the tent on the gorse, and the smiles with which they had regarded the luncheon-party speedily changed to a malicious twinkle. Everyone had been too pleasant to be true, and, after the meal was over, the atmosphere became swiftly ominous. For one thing, Tony had departed with Maradick for a bathe, and his absence was felt. Lady Gale had a sudden longing for sleep, and her struggles against this entirely precluded any attempt at keeping her guests pleasantly humoured. Mrs. Maradick was never at her best after a meal, and now all her former irritation returned with redoubled force. She had been far too pleasant and affable to these people; she could not think what had induced her to chatter and laugh like that at lunch, she must be on her dignity. Mr. Lester’s remark about her clothes and the gorse also rankled. What impertinence! but there, these writing people always did think that they could say anything to anybody! Novelist, forsooth! everyone was a novelist nowadays. Mrs. Lawrence didn’t make things any better by an interminable telling of one of her inconclusive stories. Mrs. Maradick bristled with irritation as she listened. “. . . So there poor Lady Parminter was, you know—dreadfully stout, and could scarcely walk at all—with her black poodle and her maid and no motor and raining cats and dogs. It was somewhere near Sevenoaks, I think; or was it Canterbury? I think perhaps it was Canterbury, because I know Mr. Pomfret said something about a cathedral; although it might have been Sevenoaks, because there was a number in it, and I remember saying at the time . . .”