“Mind? Why should I?” (After all, he still had another week.)
“Well, you want to forget about it when you’re on your holiday.”
Fancy her knowing that.
“And are you on your holiday too?”
She gave a long deep sigh of content.
“Yes,” she said.
He looked at her with more interest. There was colour in her face; her eyes were bright; in her tweed skirt she looked more of a country girl than he would have expected.
“Let’s sit down,” he said. “I thought you always went to Mar—to Cliftonville for your holiday?”
“I always go to my aunt’s there in the summer. It isn’t really a holiday; it’s more to help her; she has a boarding-house too. And it really is Cliftonville—only, of course, it’s silly of mother to mind having it called Margate. Cliftonville’s much worse than Margate really. I hate it.”
(This can’t be Gertie Morrison, thought George. It’s a dream.)
“When did you come here?”
“I’ve been here about ten days. A girl friend of mine lives near here. She asked me suddenly just after you’d gone—I mean about a fortnight ago. Mother thought I wasn’t looking well and ought to go. I’ve been before once or twice. I love it.”
“And do you have to wander about the country by yourself? I mean, doesn’t your friend—I say, I’m asking you an awful lot of questions. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right. But, of course, I love to go about alone, particularly at this time of year. You understand that.”
Of course he understood it. That was not the amazing thing. The amazing thing was that she understood it.
He took his sandwiches from his pocket.
“Let’s have lunch,” he said. “I’m afraid mine are only beef.”
“Mine are worse,” she smiled. “They’re only mutton.”
A sudden longing to tell her of his great adventure of five years ago came to George. (If you had suggested it to him in March!)
“It’s rather funny,” he said, as he untied his sandwiches—“I was down here five years ago——”
“I know,” she said quietly.
George sat up suddenly and stared at her.
“It was you!” he cried.
“Yes.”
“You. Good Lord!... But your name—you said your name was—wait a moment—that’s it! Rosamund!”
“It is. Gertrude Rosamund. I call myself Rosamund in the country. I like to pretend I’m not the”—she twisted a piece of grass in her hands, and looked away from him over the hill—“the horrible girl of the boarding-house.”
George got on to his knees and leant excitedly over her.
“Tell me, do you hate and loathe and detest Traill and the Fossetts and Ransom as much as I do?”
She hesitated.
“Mr. Ransom has a mother in Folkestone he’s very good to. He’s not really bad, you know.”
“Sorry. Wash out Ransom. Traill and the Fossetts?”
“Yes. Oh yes. Oh yes, yes, yes.” Her cheeks flamed as she cried it, and she clenched her hands.
George was on his knees already, and he had no hat to take off, but he was very humble.
“Will you forgive me?” he said. “I think I’ve misjudged you. I mean,” he stammered—“I mean, I don’t mean—of course, it’s none of my business to judge you—I’m speaking like a prig, I—oh, you know what I mean. I’ve been a brute to you. Will you forgive me?”
She held out her hand, and he shook it. This had struck him, when he had seen it on the stage, as an absurdly dramatic way of making friends, but it seemed quite natural now.
“Let’s have lunch,” she said.
They began to eat in great content.
“Same old sandwiches,” smiled George. “I say, I suppose I needn’t explain why I called myself Geoffrey Carfax.” He blushed a little as he said the name. “I mean, you seem to understand.”
She nodded. “You wanted to get away from George Crosby; I know.”
And then he had a sudden horrible recollection.
“I say, you must have thought me a beast. I brought a terrific lunch out with me the next day, and then I went and lost the place. Did you wait for me?”
Gertie would have pretended she hadn’t turned up herself, but Rosamund said, “Yes, I waited for you. I thought perhaps you had lost the place.”
“I say,” said George, “what lots I’ve got to say to you. When did you recognise me again? Fancy my not knowing you.”
“It was three years, and you’d shaved your moustache.”
“So I had. But I could recognise people just as easily without it.”
She laughed happily. It was the first joke she had heard him make since that day five years ago.
“Besides, we’re both different in the country. I knew you as soon as I heard your voice just now. Never at all at Muswell Hill.”
“By Jove!” said George, “just fancy.” He grinned at her happily.
After lunch they wandered. It was a golden afternoon, the very afternoon they had had five years ago. Once when she was crossing a little stream in front of him, and her foot slipped on a stone, he called out, “Take care, Rosamund,” and thrilled at the words. She let them pass unnoticed; but later on, when they crossed the stream again lower down, he took her hand and she said, “Thank you, Geoffrey.”
They came to an inn for tea. How pretty she looked pouring out the tea for him—not for him, for them; the two of them. She and he! His thoughts became absurd....
Towards the end of the meal something happened. She didn’t know what it was, but it was this. He wanted more jam; she said he’d had enough. Well, then, he wasn’t to have much, and she would help him herself.
He was delighted with her.
She helped him ... and something in that action brought back swiftly and horribly the Gertie Morrison of Muswell Hill, the Gertie who sat next to Algy and helped him to cabbage. He finished his meal in silence.
She was miserable, not knowing what had happened.
He paid the bill and they went outside. In the open air she was Rosamund again, but Rosamund with a difference. He couldn’t bear things like this. As soon as they were well away from the inn he stopped. They leant against a gate and looked down into the valley at the golden sun.
“Tell me,” he said, “I want to know everything. Why are you—what you are, in London?”
And she told him. Her mother had not always kept a boarding-house. While her father was alive they were fairly well off; she lived a happy life in the country as a young girl. Then they came to London. She hated it, but it was necessary for her father’s business. Then her father died, and left nothing.
“So did my father,” said George under his breath.
She touched his hand in sympathy.
“I