Part 13 (1/2)
”My good Rickie, if you knew the deathly dullness of Sawston--every one saying the proper thing at the proper time, I so proper, Herbert so proper! Why, weirdness is the one thing I long for! Do arrange something.”
”I'm afraid there's no opportunity. Ansell goes some vast bicycle ride this afternoon; this evening you're tied up at the Hall; and tomorrow you go.”
”But there's breakfast tomorrow,” said Agnes. ”Look here, Rickie, bring Mr. Ansell to breakfast with us at Buoys.”
Mrs. Lewin seconded the invitation.
”Bad luck again,” said Rickie boldly; ”I'm already fixed up for breakfast. I'll tell him of your very kind intention.”
”Let's have him alone,” murmured Agnes.
”My dear girl, I should die through the floor! Oh, it'll be all right about breakfast. I rather think we shall get asked this evening by that shy man who has the pretty rooms in Trinity.”
”Oh, very well. Where is it you breakfast, Rickie?”
He faltered. ”To Ansell's, it is--” It seemed as if he was making some great admission. So self-conscious was he, that he thought the two women exchanged glances. Had Agnes already explored that part of him that did not belong to her? Would another chance step reveal the part that did?
He asked them abruptly what they would like to do after lunch.
”Anything,” said Mrs. Lewin,--”anything in the world.”
A walk? A boat? Ely? A drive? Some objection was raised to each. ”To tell the truth,” she said at last, ”I do feel a wee bit tired, and what occurs to me is this. You and Agnes shall leave me here and have no more bother. I shall be perfectly happy snoozling in one of these delightful drawing-room chairs. Do what you like, and then pick me up after it.”
”Alas, it's against regulations,” said Rickie. ”The Union won't trust lady visitors on its premises alone.”
”But who's to know I'm alone? With a lot of men in the drawing-room, how's each to know that I'm not with the others?”
”That would shock Rickie,” said Agnes, laughing. ”He's frightfully high-principled.”
”No, I'm not,” said Rickie, thinking of his recent s.h.i.+ftiness over breakfast.
”Then come for a walk with me. I want exercise. Some connection of ours was once rector of Madingley. I shall walk out and see the church.”
Mrs. Lewin was accordingly left in the Union.
”This is jolly!” Agnes exclaimed as she strode along the somewhat depressing road that leads out of Cambridge past the observatory. ”Do I go too fast?”
”No, thank you. I get stronger every year. If it wasn't for the look of the thing, I should be quite happy.”
”But you don't care for the look of the thing. It's only ignorant people who do that, surely.”
”Perhaps. I care. I like people who are well-made and beautiful. They are of some use in the world. I understand why they are there. I cannot understand why the ugly and crippled are there, however healthy they may feel inside. Don't you know how Turner spoils his pictures by introducing a man like a bolster in the foreground? Well, in actual life every landscape is spoilt by men of worse shapes still.”
”You sound like a bolster with the stuffing out.” They laughed. She always blew his cobwebs away like this, with a puff of humorous mountain air. Just now the a.s.sociations he attached to her were various--she reminded him of a heroine of Meredith's--but a heroine at the end of the book. All had been written about her. She had played her mighty part, and knew that it was over. He and he alone was not content, and wrote for her daily a trivial and impossible sequel.
Last time they had talked about Gerald. But that was some six months ago, when things felt easier. Today Gerald was the faintest blur.
Fortunately the conversation turned to Mr. Pembroke and to education.
Did women lose a lot by not knowing Greek? ”A heap,” said Rickie, roughly. But modern languages? Thus they got to Germany, which he had visited last Easter with Ansell; and thence to the German Emperor, and what a to-do he made; and from him to our own king (still Prince of Wales), who had lived while an undergraduate at Madingley Hall. Here it was. And all the time he thought, ”It is hard on her. She has no right to be walking with me. She would be ill with disgust if she knew. It is hard on her to be loved.”
They looked at the Hall, and went inside the pretty little church. Some Arundel prints hung upon the pillars, and Agnes expressed the opinion that pictures inside a place of wors.h.i.+p were a pity. Rickie did not agree with this. He said again that nothing beautiful was ever to be regretted.