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“Perhaps he did not see you.”
“Or was it a stony Britisher?” I asked.
“He saw me,” declared Lettie, “or he wouldn’t have made such a babyish show of being delighted with Margaret Raymond.”
“It may have been no show — he still may not have seen you.”
“I felt at once that he had; I could see his animation was extravagant. He need not have troubled himself. I was not going to run after him.”
“You seem very cross,” said I.
“Indeed I am not. But he knew I had to walk all this way home, and he could take up Margaret, who has only half the distance.”
“Was he driving?”
“In the dog-cart.” She cut her toast into strips viciously. We waited patiently.
“It was mean of him, wasn’t it, Mother?”
“Well, my girl, you have treated him badly.”
“What a baby! What a mean, manly baby! Men are great infants.”
“And girls,” said Mother, “do not know what they want.”
“A grown-up quality,” I added.
“Nevertheless,” said Lettie, “he is a mean fop, and I detest him.”
She rose and sorted out some stitchery. Lettie never stitched unless she was in a bad humour. Mother smiled at me, sighed, and proceeded to Mr Gladstone for comfort; her breviary and missal were Morley’s Life of Gladstone.
I had to take a letter to Highclose to Mrs Tempest — from my mother, concerning a bazaar in process at the church. “I will bring Leslie back with me,” said I to myself.
The night was black and hateful. The lamps by the road from Eberwich ended at Nethermere; their yellow blur on the water made the cold, wet inferno of the night more ugly.
Leslie and Marie were both in the library — half a library, half a business office; used also as a lounge room, being cosy. Leslie lay in a great arm-chair by the fire, immune among clouds of blue smoke. Marie was perched on the steps, a great volume on her knee. Leslie got up in his cloud, shook hands, greeted me curtly, and vanished again. Marie smiled me a quaint, vexed smile, saying:
“Oh, Cyril, I’m so glad you’ve come. I’m so worried, and Leslie says he’s not a pastry-cook, though I’m sure I don’t want him to be one, only he need not be a bear.”
“What’s the matter?”
She frowned, gave the big volume a little smack and said:
“Why, I do so much want to make some of those Spanish tartlets of your mother’s that are so delicious, and of course Mabel knows nothing of them, and they’re not in my cookery book, and I’ve looked through page upon page of the encyclopaedia, right through ‘Spain’, and there’s nothing yet, and there are fifty pages more, and Leslie won’t help me, though I’ve got a headache, because he’s frabous about something.” She looked at me in comical despair.
“Do you want them for the bazaar?”
“Yes — for tomorrow. Cook has done the rest, but I had fairly set my heart on these. Don’t you think they are lovely?”
“Exquisitely lovely. Suppose I go and ask Mother.”
“If you would. But no, oh no, you can’t make all that journey this terrible night. We are simply besieged by mud. The men are both out — William has gone to meet Father — and Mother has sent George to carry some things to the vicarage. I can’t ask one of the girls on a night like this. I shall have to let it go — and the cranberry tarts too — it cannot be helped. I am so miserable.”
“Ask Leslie,” said I.
“He is too cross,” she replied, looking at him.
He did not deign a remark.
“Will you, Leslie?”
“What?”
“Go across to Woodside for me?”
“What for?”
“A recipe. Do, there’s a dear boy.”
“Where are the men?”
“They are both engaged — they are out.”
“Send a girl, then.”
“At night like this? Who would go?”
“Cissy.”
“I shall not ask her. Isn’t he mean, Cyril? Men are mean.”
“I will come back,” said I. “There is nothing at home to do. Mother is reading, and Lettie is stitching. The weather disagrees with her, as it does with Leslie.”
“But it is not fair —” she said, looking at me softly. Then she put away the great book and climbed down.
“Won’t you go, Leslie?” she said, laying her hand on his shoulder.
“Women!” he said, rising as if reluctantly. “There’s no end to their wants and their caprices.”
“I thought he would go,” said she warmly. She ran to fetch his overcoat. He put one arm slowly in the sleeve, and then the other, but he would not lift the coat on to his shoulders.
“Well!” she said, struggling on tiptoe, “you are a great creature. Can’t you get it on, naughty child?”
“Give her a chair to stand on,” he said.
She shook the collar of the coat sharply, but he stood like a sheep, impassive.
“Leslie, you are too bad. I can’t get it on, you stupid boy.” I took the coat and jerked it on.
“There,” she said, giving him his cap. “Now don’t be long.”
“What a damned dirty night!” said he, when we were out.
“It is,” said I.
“The town, anywhere’s better than this hell of a country.”
“Ha! How did you enjoy yourself?”
He began a long history of three days in the metropolis. I listened, and heard little. I heard more plainly the cry of some night birds over Nethermere, and the peevish, wailing, yarling cry of some beast in the wood. I was thankful to slam the door behind me, to stand in the light of the hall.
“Leslie!” exclaimed Mother, “I am glad to see you.”
“Thank you,” he said, turning to Lettie, who sat with her lap full of work, her head busily bent.
“You see I can’t get up,” she said, giving him her hand, adorned as it was by the thimble. “How nice of you to come! We did not know you were back.”
“But . . .!” he exclaimed, then he stopped.
“I suppose you enjoyed yourself,” she went on calmly. “Immensely, thanks.”
Snap, snap, snap went her needle through the new stuff. Then, without looking up, she said:
“Yes, no doubt. You have the air of a man who has been enjoying himself.”
“How do you mean?”
“A kind of guilty — or shall I say embarrassed — look. Don’t you notice it, Mother?”
“I do!” said my mother.
“I suppose it means we may not ask him questions,” Lettie concluded, always very busily sewing.
He laughed. She had broken her cotton, and was trying to thread the needle again.
“What have you been doing this miserable weather?” he enquired