“You give me hope—the ghost of a hope—I mean the hope of a ghost. I expected half a dozen at least; but one sees, on reflection, that that would be unreasonable. I’ll be content with one if you throw the tiny shoes into the bargain.”
“I’m afraid that you’ll have to be contented with comfort and a surveyor’s certificate,” said Priscilla.
“What I am thinking is, who will give us a certificate that we have been reasonably engaged when we return home,” remarked Rosa, when they were rising from the table—he did not offer them cigarettes.
“Do you really think it possible that your people will be uneasy?” said he, with some concern in his voice. “It’s still raining. Will they not be certain that you took shelter somewhere? If there’s any doubt, I’ll send a message by my motor.”
“You have brought a motor, and yet you looked for ghosts and things?” said Priscilla.
“I came from Barwellstone in it this morning. A nice run. I tried a railway guide for trains, and found that with luck I could do the journey in eight hours.”
“And you did it in twenty minutes by motor?”
“Twenty-five, in addition to three hours. It’s just ninety-two miles. So this is the drawing-room? Very nice, I’m sure.”
They had walked across the hall and had passed through a very fine mahogany door into another big square room, with exquisite plaster decorations on the walls and ceiling and mantelpieces, of which there were two. The eighteenth century furniture was mahogany and upholstered in faded red damask. The chairs were all uncovered, though the curtains remained tied up in such a way as caused each to reproduce with extraordinary clearness the figure of Mrs. Pearce. The transparent cabinets all round the room were filled with specimens of the art of Josiah Wedgwood—blue and green and buff and black—beautiful things.
“This is the Wedgwood drawing-room,” said Priscilla. “It is considered one of the most perfect things of its kind in the country.”
“Why the Wedgwood room? Was there a Mr. Wedgwood who planned it?” asked the owner.
“There was a Mr. Wedgwood who supplied the china,” said Priscilla.
“Local—a local man, I suppose—Framsby, or is it Southam?”
“Oh, no, Wedgwood was not a local man by any means,” replied Priscilla, wondering in what circles this young man had spent the earlier years of his life that he had never heard of Wedgwood.
“Anyhow, it’s quite nice to look at; and here comes the coffee,” said he. “It’s a queer room—gives even an ignorant chap like me a feeling that it’s all right—furnished throughout, and not on the hire-purchase system.”
Then he drank his coffee and looked about him, and then at his visitors—first at one and then at the other. They were standing together at one of the oval windows looking out upon a flagged terrace with a balustrade and piers and great stone vases of classical design.
“A really nice room,” he said, as if he were summing up the result of his survey of the young women. “I think, you know, that I make its acquaintance in rather happy circumstances,” he added. “I hope I may consider that you have left cards on me so that I may ask you to dinner or something. I went into the dining-room the first thing, and then down to the cellar. I don’t think that the dining-room looks so finished as this room. I felt a bit uneasy, you know, to see all those frames with hand-painted ancestors grinning down at me. They seemed to be winking at one another and whispering, ‘Lord, what a mug!’ I didn’t feel at all at home among them—pretty bounders they were to make their remarks—silk coats and satin embroidered waistcoats and powdered hair worn long! Bounders to a man! I felt a bit lonely among them, and that’s why I told the woman I should have my plate laid in the library. I didn’t want any of their cheek. I was thinking what a rather dismal homecoming it was for me—not a soul to say a word of welcome to a chap. I felt a bit down on my luck, and I suppose that’s why I fell into that doze. Only five minutes I could have slept, and when I opened my eyes—I give you my word I had a feeling—that halfwaking feeling, you know—that it was the ghosts of two of the nicest of my ancestors come back to say a word of encouragement to me to make up for the bad manners of those satin-upholstered ones. I do hate the kind of chap that gets painted in fancy dress!”
The notion of the Georgian portraits being in fancy dress sent the young women into a peal of laughter; and then he laughed too.
“That’s like coming home,” he said a minute later. “That’s what I looked for, and if I didn’t feel grateful to you both——”
“Grateful to the rain, the thunder and lightning,” suggested Rosa.
“All right, thunder and lightning and rain and all the rest. I’ll have a greater respect for them in the future; but all the same the gratitude will go to you. You have turned a failure into a success, and no other girls would have been able to do so much. They would have giggled and gone the moment they caught sight of me. Yes, I’m grateful.”
“And we are glad,” said Priscilla, gently. “And we’re quite sorry that the rain is over so that we have no excuse for—for—oh, yes, trespassing on your hospitality.”
“But you have only shown me one of the rooms, and there are about forty others, I believe. Think of me getting lost in a rabbit warren of bedrooms and dressing-rooms and still rooms and sparkling! Wouldn’t it be on your conscience if you heard of that happening?”
“Our conscience—Mr. Wingfield takes it for granted that we have only one conscience between us,” said Priscilla.
“And perhaps he thinks that he’s generous,” said Rosa.
They did it very nicely, he thought. They were really very charming—not a bit like any other girls he had ever met.
“You don’t need a conscience, I’ll bet,” he said. “What do you ever do to keep it up to its work?”
“If we stay here another five minutes it will be working overtime,” laughed Priscilla. “Good-bye, Mr. Wingfield, and receive our thanks for shelter, and a—a—most unusual afternoon.”
“Good-bye. You have done a particularly good turn to a chap to-day, and don’t you forget it. I’ll go to the door with you.”
He walked with them to the pillared porch and said another good-bye in a different key.
They heard him close the hall door, and they knew that he would have to go to a window of the dining-room if he wished to watch them departing on the carriage drive.
They wondered—each of them on her own account—if he had hurried to that particular window.
“He is not so silly as he promised to be the first five minutes we came upon him,” said Rosa, when they were approaching the entrance gates.
“Not nearly. As a matter of fact I found him entertaining.”
“Not intellectually.”
“Perhaps not. I’m not sure that I am entertained by intellectual entertainment. He is a man in the clay stage. I’m not sure that that isn’t the most interesting—it certainly is the most natural. He might be anything that a woman might choose to make him.”
“Of course we’ll tell them at home what happened,” said Rosa, after a long pause.
“Why should we not? We would do well to be an hour or two in advance of Mrs. Pearce,” said Priscilla.
They got upon the road, and were forced to pay attention to its condition of muddiness rather than to the delight of breathing