Part 11 (1/2)

She spoke in French, and the words had not the same sound as in English.

Something gay and Rhoda Polly-ish rang cheerfully in my heart.

”Really you should not swear!” said I. ”What would Miss Balfour-Lansdowne say to that at Selborne College?”

”Oh, sometimes we said a good deal worse than that on the hockey ground, or in the heat of an argument. Besides, if you did not want to hear, you need not have followed me.”

”Rhoda Polly,” I said, ”you know that I followed you because you made me a signal that you wanted to talk to me.”

”Yes, I know,” owned up Rhoda Polly, who scorned concealment. ”Well, what have you to tell me now that you are here? I let you go just now and unbosom yourself to the Paternal without complaining. That was only playing the game, but certainly you owe it to me to stand and deliver as soon as you got clear.”

”Well, and here I am, Rhoda Polly--which will you have--plain narrative--question and answer--the Socratic method, or a judicious mixture of the two?”

I knew the inquiry would resolve itself into the latter. Rhoda Polly went on with the potting of her Alan Richardson, biting her under lip at critical points, but ever and anon flas.h.i.+ng a pertinent query at me over the boxes of mould without once raising her head.

With the exception of my talks with Jeanne and the harmless little philandering we had indulged in to pa.s.s the time, I confided the whole of my day's adventures to Rhoda Polly. I told her also of the permission that her father had given that Hugh should go north and join the new armies with me.

Then at last Rhoda Polly did lift her eyes with a vividness of reproach in them.

”You cannot find enough to do here?” she said. ”You trust these men at the works? I tell you they are not to be trusted. I know them better than either you or my father, I have heard their women-folk talking, and I know what they mean to do.”

”I know what they _say_ they mean to do,” I retorted. ”I also have heard them in their cups, but it is only folly and emptiness.”

”Do not be too sure,” she said, patting the flowerpot round the edges and squinting down at it as if it were a work of art symmetrically finished. ”I warn you we may need you here sooner than you think, and then Gaston Cremieux may not be so friendly as he is to-day.”

I asked her why, but she only bent more over her work and shook her head. It had been clear to me from Cremieux's questions that he was in love with Rhoda Polly, and now from Rhoda Polly's prophecy of his future unfriendliness that she had made up her mind to reject him. But, in the meantime, it was my clear duty to go on and do what I could in the army.

We could not hope to defeat the Germans, but at least every additional man in the ranks added to the chance of withstanding them. If we could only hold them at bay till the politicians did their work, all this peaceful Southland would be spared the horrors of war and the more wearing pains of occupation and pillage.

I said this to Rhoda Polly and she could not help agreeing. Her a.s.sent, however, came from her clear head and trained intelligence, but her heart was still unconvinced that Hugh and I ought to go, leaving that houseful of women in Chateau Schneider. All this was perhaps natural enough, and certainly it made me feel warmer within to know that Rhoda Polly would regret me.

”I owe you a grudge,” she said, as she stood up and rubbed the black crumbly mould briskly from her hands, ”for without you we should at least have had Hugh. He would never have thought of going by himself.”

Rhoda Polly had finished with her roses. She set out the boxes in a row, and then stood up facing me. Her eyes were steady and level like a man's--I mean a man of the North. They did not droop and flutter like Jeanne's at the Ferry. Her breast did not heave nor her full throat swell. The pent-up emotion in Rhoda Polly's bosom found no such commonplace feminine vents. Only the firm lines about her mouth betrayed her, and perhaps a certain moist luminousness of eye.

”I would not hinder you, Angus Cawdor,” she said steadily, ”let a man do what he knows he ought. But at least you owe it to me to come back the very day the war is over. It is not till then that the storm here will break. I have it from the women. They advise us to go out of the country, but I have a better plan in my head. You must be here to help me carry it out.”

”I shall be here, Rhoda Polly, if I get through all right!”

”If you get through all right----?” The words fell uncertainly.

”If I live, Rhoda Polly.”

”Ah, if you live,” repeated the girl, mechanically holding out her hand.

And even as I looked, the bold bright look in her eyes was dimmed, as a pool greys over with the first coming of a breeze.

And thus I took my real farewell of Rhoda Polly. There was some of the black mould on my fingers as I went over to the shops to search for Hugh Deventer.

CHAPTER XIII