A Man of Forty (12 page)

“Good gracious, no,” said Adam. “ Let me sit at your feet.” He dropped on to the grass and smiled up at her, perceiving
that his attentions gave her a modest pleasure. With a flush in her cheeks she was almost pretty. You saw—if you had an eye—her possibilities. But, though his glance rested on her for a measurable moment, his thoughts did not stay so long : the latter end of his smile was tribute to another face than Eleanor's.

“Where's young Paul?”

“He's gone off with his little friend Flora,” said Eleanor. “ To Sunday School, you know. Have you forgotten already?”

“Completely,” said Adam, with the ready candour which people found so charming in him. “ I've had two thoughts and a dream since then. It's aeons ago.”

“So
you
'
ve
been asleep, have you?”

Magically, Eleanor found herself at ease with this young man, whom she had met a score of times and never before talked with. She had, indeed, instinctively avoided conversational encounters with him, being convinced that anyone so witty and charming as he was must inevitably find her tedious.

“No, mine were daydreams too,” said Adam, contriving to give to the confession a specious significance and an air of intimacy;

We've something in common after all, thought Eleanor. We're both dreamers. But he is more than that. He is intellectual and artistic and
does
things.

“You don't believe in Sunday Schools, Adam, do you?”

“Believe in them?” Her ingenuousness was staggering. “ I shouldn't know how to begin, my dear Eleanor. Apropos of which, by the way, David will be pretty sick if his son and heir gets religion.”

He won't do that,” said Eleanor. “ It'll only be a few more fairy-tales added to his stock.”

He looked at her in surprise. “ Did David say that, or is it your own?” Before she could either resent or answer the question he said quickly : “ Tell me about yourself, Eleanor.”

“Myself?” The blush began again. She glanced away. Her left hand slipped from her lap and began plucking at the turf.

“Yes,” he insisted. “ We've never had a proper talk, you and I.”

“But there's nothing to tell.”

“Well, for a start,” said Adam, “ tell me about your friends. “ People you know in the neighbourhood, I mean.”

“ I don't know a great many. A few neighbours of course. I ... we don't go out much. I think not going to church prevents one meeting people much. Churches are useful in that way, don't you think? Of course I do go sometimes, but not often enough to join in the social part of it.”

It flashed into Adam's mind, as he watched her, that her way of speaking was attractive so long as you paid no attention to what she said. Perhaps attractive was putting it too strongly, but certainly there was more S.A. in her than he had supposed. It occurred to him too—the same thought had cropped up on other occasions—that with a word, a touch, he could put an end to this talk and create an entirely new and exciting situation. When a pretty girl insisted on talking too much, there was one infallible way of stopping her. Without unkindness, moreover. Far from it. Kiss the girl that's nearest, though she's dull at whiles. And so brighten her up.

“What you said about David not liking it if Paul got interested in religion,” said Eleanor. “ I expect you were joking. David's not bigoted, you know. I wouldn't even call him an unbeliever.”

“Wouldn't you?” Adam began to find something touching in this simplicity.

“No. Not exactly. I think his feeling is that things are better if they're not put into words.”

Adam nodded gravely. She was even more simple-minded than Lily Elver, he decided. That wasn't necessarily against her : not by any means. But, though his curiosity was tickled, it was inconceivable that he should listen much longer to this nursery stuff.

“And you?” he said gently. “ It was you I asked you to talk about.”

“My friends, you said,” she answered, with a touch of demureness that made her suddenly seem a different girl. “ David's a friend, isn't he?”

Certainly she had unexpectedness, this queer, quiet girl.

“He doesn't count : he's family,” Adam retorted. “ When we were on the downs this morning we met some people riding.”

“Someone we know?”

“David knew them. An old man and a girl.”

“Was it Dr. Hinksey, I wonder?”

Adam said carefully : “ I believe that
was
the name. He wanted to know the earliest thing we could remember.”

“Then it
was
Dr. Hinksey. He's a lovely person. Very unconventional, of course. A great talker, and always interesting.”

But not so lovely, not so interesting, as his granddaughter, thought Adam with exasperated irony. Why in the name of heaven can't you talk about
her,
dear Eleanor?”

“And the girl with him—who would she be?”

“Mary Wilton, I expect. A dark, good-looking girl, was it?”

“With a rather beautiful clear complexion,” said Adam, “ and an air of ... what?… breeding, I suppose you might call it.”

“Yes,” said Eleanor simply. “ Men always feel like that about her.”

“Does she live in her grandfather's house?”

“She's been there for some months now. I've heard no talk of her leaving.”

“Why should she leave?”

“If you've seen Mary, as I gather you have,” said Eleanor, “ you must know that she won't be content always to live a quiet country life. She doesn't fit in.”

“Really? I thought she went with the scenery rather well.” Adam noticed, and smiled at the thought, that at mention of Mary Wilton the milk-and-water Eleanor had seemed to change her character. On the whole he approved of the change. “ Besides,” he said, “ what about yourself? You seem to fit in all right, as you put it.”

“I'm different. There's just no comparison.” As if reproachful of what seemed like insincerity in him, she added quickly : “ That must be obvious even to you.”

“Why, even to me? Am I so obtuse?”

“Perhaps I ought to have said
especially
to you,” Eleanor said, with the gentlest smile. “ Why didn't you go out to Radnage this afternoon? They'd have been delighted to see you.”

“Radnage?” Adam wondered if she could possibly have guessed what had been half in his mind only an hour ago.

“Radnage Hollow. Dr. Hinksey's place. I'm sure you'd like him. When you first meet him he seems too good to be true. But he
is
true, and he gets better and better the more you know him.”

He looked at her and smiled, in a special way he had.

“You're laughing at me,” she said, unoffended.

“No, I'm looking at you,” he answered. “ It's not the same thing at all I was thinking how glad I am that I came down this week-end. And how glad that I plucked up courage to come and talk to you.”

He met her glance of surprise with a look that seemed more than kind. Her eyes faltered at sight of it, and a kind of terror seized her. She dared not believe the implication his words seemed to hold, did not suppose it possible that he could have the smallest interest in her. Yet why should Adam, whose candour was three parts of his famous charm, take the trouble to flatter her? Not, surely, for the sake of being liked; for he was liked already, and must know it.

She forced herself to say : “ Now you
are
laughing at me.”

The hint of sadness in her voice was not lost on him : he felt it as a challenge to his gallantry.

“Why did you say that, Eleanor?”

“Oh I don't mean anything unkind,” she said quickly, thinking she had detected hurt feelings in his tone. “ But for you to be
afraid
of anyone! Afraid of
anyone,
let alone a nonentity like me! You can't expect me to believe that.”

“I didn't mean quite that,” he conceded. “ I won't say I was afraid of you. Who could be afraid of anyone so… so gentle? But there was something so detached about you, so aloof. Your soul is like a star and dwells apart.”

He had used the line before, in a piece of copy advertising finger-nail varnish; and it came in quite nicely again. He did not feel able, however, to go on in this style : the hour was too bright and warm, and he was beginning to want his tea.

The return of Paul, with a new Odyssey on his lips, created a welcome diversion for everyone. Eleanor thought it might be nice to have tea in the garden, and with Adam gallantly hovering, pretending to help and sometimes actually helping, she began making the
necessary preparations. Lydia, because only by refusing to forget her unhappiness could she punish herself for David's sins, and because she feared that a tea-party in the sunlit garden might tempt her to such forgetfulness, declared first that she did not want any tea, and then that she would have it by herself in the house. To please Paul, however, who would not listen to her excuses,_she allowed herself to be persuaded. She brought her embroidery into the garden and sat in a straight-backed chair at a little distance from the table. Eleanor shall pour out the tea, she thought, and David will know why. She resolved that not even Paul's importunities should make her eat anything : even to seem to enjoy a piece of cake would look like moral surrender. She sat bent over her work, silently rehearsing this refusal, while the table was being laid; and she did not look up when David came diffidently into view. Paul, meanwhile, ran from group to group, talking at the top of his shrill young voice about his afternoon's adventure. Sunday School had been an unqualified success from his point of view. He had been made much of by everybody; had conceived a violent liking for his “ teacher,” Miss Gladding, thereby putting poor Flora's nose out of joint; and was now in retrospect, greatly excited about some children who had called after an old gentleman in the street, and a friend of the old gentleman, named God, had let loose two she-bears out of a wood, to tear them to pieces.

“You know it's only a story, Paul, don't you?” said Eleanor earnestly.

“Yes, like William the Conqueror,” said Paul.

Catching Adam's satirical eye, Eleanor shrugged her shoulders and said : “ Oh, if you like.” She smiled at Adam over the child's head, warmed and excited by the feeling of sharing a point of view with him.

With an answering smile the more prompt and brilliant because he was thinking of someone else, Adam said : “ What else did you do this afternoon, Paul?”

Flattered and very friendly, Paul answered : “ Let's walk round the garden, Adam, just you and me. And I'll tell you about the hymns and prayers and things.”

“That'll be fine,” said Adam, taking the child's outstretched hand. “ See you later, people!”

There was more than amusement in Eleanor's soft eyes as she watched them go off together, Adam enjoying his good nature, Paul confiding and important. The look was not lost on Adam, and it occurred to him to wish that another person had been present, to see him in this attractive light, the circuitous approach being sometimes the more effective. For nearly five minutes he was able to listen with lazy pleasure to Paul's animated discursion. He liked Paul, and enjoyed making himself agreeable to him, and on rejoining the group at the tea-table he enjoyed the unspoken approval that rewarded him. Even Lydia gave him a wan smile.

The mysterious happiness of the afternoon, a happiness which she tried in vain to dissociate from Adam, stayed with Eleanor into the evening. When Paul's bedtime arrived, Adam was again in request : nothing would satisfy the child but that Adam should come and talk to him while he undressed, and it was taken for granted that Eleanor, the indispensable companion, should also be of the party. It was queer to Eleanor, and queerly happy, to be sharing with this debonair young man, whom she had only just begun to know, the amusing fuss and palaver of getting Paul to bed : her dreaming fancy, despite the stern judgment of common sense, could not altogether evade the implications of the scene. At the moment she had little thought to spare for the further queerness, the aloofness of the parents from these domestic sociabilities. Both, however, were in due course summoned to the nursery, for Paul was in an imperious mood, gaily resolved to have his own way in everything while the good time lasted. So David and Lydia came to pay their good-night devoirs, each glad that Adam was present to blunt the occasion's awkwardness.

When the ceremony was over, Adam followed the parents out of the room, leaving Eleanor to outstay them all and do the final tucking-up. What a commotion about one seven-year-old child, he thought, going into his room. He lingered at the dressing-table for a few moments, and by chance, or perhaps not entirely by chance, came out of the room just as Eleanor was passing it, on her way downstairs. His head was full of a bright new motion. He saw Eleanor half-turn at the sound of his door opening. She gave him a quick shy smile and continued on her way. A faint suggestion of flight in her attitude provoked him to pursue. He overtook
her in five strides and put an arm round her slim drooping shoulders. Making no effort to elude him she turned her face to him in a gesture at once questioning and trustful. He kissed her; and, because in the dim light it was easy to fancy her someone else, kissed her again, surprised by the warmth of her response.

She stood beside him in the half-darkness, waiting for him to speak; then slipped out of his embrace, leaving him to wonder. By the time her retreating footsteps had died away, however, he had dismissed her from his mind, which had more ambitious things to occupy it. In pursuance of his new little plan he turned back into his bedroom. Having there made sure that he had brought a supply of his own admirably printed notepaper with him, he brushed his hair for a third time and went downstairs to drink sherry with David and await suppertime.