Restraining with a great effort his inclination to kick him, Vane shook the proffered hand; and for about ten minutes he suffered a torrent of grandiloquence in silence. At the conclusion of the little man's first remark Vane had a fleeting vision of the cavalry-man slinking hurriedly round two bushes and then, having run like a stag across the open, going to ground in some dense undergrowth on the opposite side. And Vane, to his everlasting credit be it said, did not even smile. . . .
After a while the flood more or less spent itself, and Vane seized the occasion of a pause for breath to ask after old John.
"I see you've got a new lodge-keeper, Sir John. Robert tells me that the old man who was here under Lord Forres is in the village."
"Yes. Had to get rid of him. Too slow. I like efficiency, my boy, efficiency. . . . That's my motto." Sir John complacently performed three steps of his celebrated strut. "Did you know the Hearl?" Though fairly sound on the matter, in moments of excitement he was apt to counterbalance his wife with the elusive letter. . . .
Vane replied that he did—fairly well.
"A charming man, sir . . . typical of all that is best in our old English nobility. I am proud, sir, to have had such a predecessor. I number the Hearl, sir, among my most intimate friends. . . ."
Vane, who remembered the graphic description given him by Blervie—the Earl's eldest son—at lunch one day, concerning the transaction at the time of the sale, preserved a discreet silence.
"A horrible-looking little man, old bean," that worthy had remarked. "Quite round, and bounces in his chair. The governor saw him once, and had to leave the room. 'I can't stand it,' he said to me outside, 'the dam fellow keeps hopping up and down, and calling me His Grace. He's either unwell, or his trousers are coming off.'" Lord Blervie had helped himself to some more whisky and sighed. "I've had an awful time," he continued after a while. "The governor sat in one room, and Patterdale bounced in the other, and old Podmore ran backwards and forwards between, with papers and things. And if we hadn't kept the little blighter back by force he was going to make a speech to the old man when it was all fixed up. . . ."
At last Sir John left Vane to himself, and with a sigh of relief he sank into the chair so recently vacated by the cavalryman. In his hand he held a couple of magazines, but, almost unheeded, they slipped out of his fingers on to the grass. He felt supremely and blissfully lazy. The soft thud of tennis balls, and the players' voices calling the score, came faintly through the still air, and Vane half closed his eyes. Then a sudden rustle of a skirt beside him broke into his thoughts, and he looked up into the face of the girl whom Lady Patterdale had greeted as Joan.
"Why it's my bored friend of the photograph!" She stood for a moment looking at him critically, rather as a would-be purchaser looks at a horse. "And have they all run away and left you to play by yourself?" She pulled up another chair and sat down opposite him.
"Yes. Even Sir John has deserted me." As he spoke he was wondering what her age was. Somewhere about twenty-two he decided, and about ten more in experience.
"For which relief much thanks, I suppose?"
"One shouldn't look a gift host in the stockings," returned Vane lightly.
"I think it's very charming of him and his wife to have us here."
"Do you? It's hopelessly unfashionable not to do war work of some sort, and this suits them down to the ground. . . . Why the Queen visited Rumfold the other day and congratulated Lady Patterdale on her magnificent arrangements." There was a mocking glint in her eyes, otherwise her face was perfectly serious.
"You don't say so." Vane gazed at her in amazement. "And did you dress up as a nurse for the occasion?"
"No, I watched from behind a gooseberry bush. You see, I'm a very busy person, and my work can't be interrupted even for a Royal visit."
"Would it be indiscreet," murmured Vane, "to inquire what your work is?"
"Not a bit." The girl looked solemnly at him. "I amuse the poor wounded officers."
"And do you find that very hard?" asked Vane with becoming gravity.
"Frightfully. You see, they either want to make love to me, or else to confide that they love another. My chief difficulty as I wander from bush to bush is to remember to which class the temporary occupant belongs. I mean it's a dreadful thing to assure a man of your own undying devotion, when the day before you were sympathising with him over Jane not having written. It makes one appear of undecided intellect."
"Why don't you institute a little system of labels?" asked Vane. "Blue for those who passionately adore you—red for those who love someone else. People of large heart might wear several."
"I think that's quite wonderful." She leaned back in her chair and regarded Vane with admiration. "And I see that you're only a Captain. . . . How true it is that the best brains in the Army adorn the lower positions. By the way—I must just make a note of your name." She produced a small pocketbook from her bag and opened it. "My duties are so arduous that I have been compelled to make lists and things."
"Vane," he answered, "Christian—Derek."
She entered both in her book, and then shut it with a snap. "Now I'm ready to begin. Are you going to amuse me, or am I going to amuse you?"
"You have succeeded in doing the latter most thoroughly," Vane assured her.
"No—have I really? I must be in good form to-day. One really never can tell, you know. An opening that is a scream with some people falls as flat as ditch-water with others." She looked at him pensively for a moment or two, tapping her small white teeth with a gold pencil.
Suddenly Vane leaned forward. "May I ask your age, Joan?"
Her eyebrows went up slightly. "Joan!" she said.
"I dislike addressing the unknown," remarked Vane, "and I heard Lady
Patterdale call you Joan. But if you prefer it—may I ask your age, Miss
Snooks?"
She laughed merrily. "I think I prefer Joan, thank you; though I don't generally allow that until the fourth or fifth performance. You see, if one gets on too quickly it's so difficult to fill in the time at the end if the convalescence is a long one."
"I am honoured," remarked Vane. "But you haven't answered my question."
"I really see no reason why I should. It doesn't come into the rules—at least not my rules. . . . Besides I was always told that it was rude to ask personal questions."
"I am delighted to think that something you were taught at your mother's knee has produced a lasting effect on your mind," returned Vane. "However, at this stage we won't press it. . . . I should hate to embarrass you." He looked at her in silence for a while, as if he was trying to answer to his own satisfaction some unspoken question on his mind.
"I think," she said, "that I had better resume my official duties. What do you think of Rumfold Hall?"
"It would be hard in the time at my disposal, my dear young lady, to give a satisfactory answer to that question." Vane lit a cigarette. "I will merely point out to you that it contains a banqueting chamber in which Bloody Mary is reported to have consumed a capon and ordered two more Protestants to be burned—and that the said banqueting hall has been used of recent years by the vulgar for such exercises as the fox trot and the one step. Further, let me draw your attention to the old Elizabethan dormer window from which it is reported that the celebrated Sir Walter Raleigh hung his cloak to dry, after the lady had trodden on it. On the staircase can be seen the identical spot where the dog basket belonging to the aged pug dog of the eighteenth Countess of Forres was nightly placed, to the intense discomfiture of those ill-behaved and rowdy guests who turned the hours of sleep into a time for revolting debauches with soda water syphons and flour. In fact it is commonly thought that the end of the above-mentioned aged pug dog was hastened by the excitable Lord Frederick de Vere Thomson hurling it, in mistake for a footstool, at the head of his still more skittish spouse—the celebrated Tootie Rootles of the Gaiety. This hallowed