Part 28 (2/2)

”I don't know. I don't do very much,” said Rendel, with an involuntary accent in the words that made Wentworth ponder over the undesirability of marrying a wife who is in mourning and depressed.

”You should go into the wood,” said Wentworth, ”as the Germans do. We found a lot of them the other day singing part-songs out of little books. There is a band of them here called the Society of the United Thrushes, composed of the most respectable and most middle-aged ladies of the district.”

”That sounds charming,” said Rendel.

”Look here,” said Wentworth, ”if you don't care to walk alone, do let's walk together. One can go up here and along the wood for miles. We'll have good long stretches as we used to at Oxford. What do you think, Mrs. Rendel? Don't you think it would be a good thing for him?”

”Very,” said Rachel with a smile. ”I think he ought to go and walk.”

”That's capital,” said Wentworth. ”Let's do that to-morrow, shall we?”

”I should like it very much,” said Rendel.

But the next day the weather broke, and was unsettled for three days. On the Tuesday morning, happily for the bazaar and the big tent in the grounds of the Casino, the sun shone out again, and everything was radiant as before. Wentworth turned up at the pavilion in the forenoon and persuaded Rendel to make a day of it. The two started off together through the wood, the scented air floating round them, and bringing to Rendel, as he strode along with a congenial companion, a sense of mental and physical relief as though the atmosphere of both kinds that he was breathing were as different from that which had weighed him down a fortnight ago as the scent of the aromatic pines was from the air of the London streets. Wentworth was full of talk, of a kind it must be confessed which left his hearer at the end without any very distinct impression of what it had been about, although it pa.s.sed the time agreeably and genially. He had his usual detached air, which Rendel had always been accustomed to find a relief as opposed to his own strenuous att.i.tude, of standing aloof as an amused spectator of human contingencies.

”I haven't seen you for ever so long,” Wentworth was saying. ”What became of you at the end of the season? You vanished somehow, didn't you?”

”We were in mourning, you know,” Rendel replied.

”Ah, to be sure, yes, Sir William Gore died,” said Wentworth, attuning his voice to what he considered a suitable key, on the a.s.sumption that Rendel would feel still more bound to be loyal to his father-in-law now than when, as he put it to himself, the ”old humbug” was alive. ”Poor Mrs. Rendel, she looks as if it had been a great blow to her.”

”Yes,” said Rendel, ”it was; and she has been ill besides.” And he told Wentworth briefly of what had happened to Rachel, and the condition she was in, and the rea.s.suring hopes held out by the doctors that she would almost certainly recover her normal state.

”I am very glad to hear that,” said Wentworth cheerily. ”Then you must come to London and start life again, Rendel, now you are free. Sir William Gore was rather a responsibility, I daresay.”

”Yes,” said Rendel, ”he was.”

”Let me see,” said Wentworth, ”it was just about when he died, I suppose, that Stamfordham published that sensational agreement with Germany?”

”Yes,” said Rendel, ”it was the day before he died.”

”Ah,” said Wentworth, ”the day before? Then of course you didn't realise the excitement it was. By Jove! of course you know I'm not 'in' all that sort of thing myself, but I must say I never saw such a fuss and fizz as it was. The way it was sprung on people too! It was an awfully bold thing to do, you know; but it turned up trumps after all, that's the point. Stamfordham isn't like any body else, and that's the fact.”

”What's that place we are coming to through the trees?” said Rendel.

”Why, that's it,” said Wentworth. ”That's where we shall get luncheon.

They always have something ready for people who drop in.”

”It isn't crowded, is it?” said Rendel.

”My dear fellow,” replied Wentworth, ”there is never anybody. I have been there twice since I came; once there was a German doctor, and once there was n.o.body.”

”All right,” said Rendel.

”You are sure to get veal,” Wentworth said. ”In Germany, whatever else is wanting, you can always get a veal cutlet to slake your thirst with, after the longest and hottest walk.”

”I shall be quite content,” said Rendel.

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