Part 16 (1/2)

Mrs. Snell often spoke to her husband about ”Miss Rita.” ”If that there Hands could be got rid of,” she would say, ”then it would be ever so much better. Poor silly thing that he is, with his face like the underside of a Dover sole! And two hundred a year for doing nothing more than what Miss Rita tells him! He calls her 'Miss'--as I'm sure he should, her being a Commander's daughter and him just a dirty Birmingham clerk! Miss Rita ought to have his two hundred a year, and him her thirty-five s.h.i.+llings a week. Thirty-five s.h.i.+llings! what is it for an officer's daughter, that was born at Malta too! I'd like to give that old Podley a piece of my mind, I would!”

”In the first place he never comes here. In the second place he's not a gentleman himself, so that don't mean nothing to him,” Snell would say on such occasion of talk.

He had been at the Bombardment of Alexandria and could not quite forget it... . ”Now if it was Lord Charles what had started this--'--Magneta--' library, then _'e_ could 'a' been spoke to--Podley!”

It was four o'clock on the afternoon of the day after the Amberleys'

dinner-party. Hands was away, staying beside his sick wife, and Rita Wallace proposed to close the library.

She had just got rid of the curate from a neighbouring church, who had discovered the deserted place--and her. Snubbed with skill the boy had departed, and as no one else would come--or if they did what would it matter?--Rita was about to press the b.u.t.ton of the electric bell upon her table and summon Snell.

The afternoon sunlight poured in upon the books from the window in the dome.

The place was cool and absolutely silent, save for the note a straying drone-bee made as his diapason swept this way and that.

Even here, as the sunlight fell upon the dusty gold and crimson of the books, summer was calling. The bee came close to Rita and settled for a moment upon the sulphur-coloured rose that stood in a specimen-gla.s.s upon her writing-table.

He was a big fellow, and like an Alderman in a robe of black fur, bearing a gold chain.

”Oh, you darling!” Rita said, thinking of summer and the outside world.

She would go to Kensington Palace Gardens where there were trees, green gra.s.s and flowers. ”Oh, you darling! You're a little jewel with a voice, a bit of the real country! I believe you've actually been droning over the hop-fields of Kent!”

She looked up suddenly, her eyes startled, the perfect mouth parted in vexation. Some one was coming, she might be kept any length of time--for the rare visitors to the Podley Library were generally bores.

... That silly curate might have returned!

The outer swing doors thudded in the hall, there was the click of a latch as the inner door was pushed open and Gilbert Lothian entered.

The girl recognised him at once, as he made his way under the dome towards her, and her eyes grew wide with wonder. Lothian was wearing a suit of grey flannel, his hair as he took off his straw hat was a little tumbled, his face fresh and clear.

”How do you do,” he said, with the half-shy deference that came into his voice when he spoke to women. ”It was such a lovely afternoon that I thought I might venture to bring back your copy of 'Surgit Amari'

myself.”

Rita Wallace flashed her quick, humorous smile at him--the connection between the weather and his wish was not too obvious. But her smile had pleasure of another kind in it also--he had wanted to see her again.

Lothian laughed boyishly. ”I wanted to see you again,” he said, in the very words of her thought.

The girl was flattered and delighted. There was not the slightest hint of self-consciousness in her manner, and the flush that came into her cheeks was one of pure friendliness.

”It is very kind of you to take so much trouble,” she said in a voice as sweet as singing. ”I was so disappointed when you had to go away so early from the Amberleys' last night.”

She did not say the conventional thing about how much his poems had meant to her. Girls that he met--and they were not many--nearly always did, and he always disliked it. Such things meant nothing when they came as part of ordinary greetings. They jarred upon the poet's sensitive taste and he was pleased and interested to find that this girl said nothing of the sort.

”Well, here's the book,” he said, putting it down upon Rita's table.

”And I've written in it as you asked. Do you collect autographs then?”

She shook her head. ”Oh, dear me no,” she answered. ”I think it's silly to collect anything that isn't beautiful. But, in a book one values, and with which one has been happy, the author's autograph seems to add to the book's personality. But I hate crazes. There are lots of girls that wait outside stage doors to make popular actors write in their books. Did you know that, Mr. Lothian?”

”No, I didn't! Little donkeys! Hard lines on the actors. Even I get a few alb.u.ms now and then, and it's a fearful nuisance. I put off writing in them and they lie about my study until they get quite a battered and dissipated look.”