The Affair at the Inn Part 3

So he recommended air and exercise--driving exercise by preference.

'I used to like the donkey-chairs at Tunbridge Wells,' Mrs. MacGill responded, 'but horses go so rapidly.'

However, after the doctor had gone she began to consider his advice.

'Shall I go to the stables and arrange for you to have a drive this afternoon?' I asked.

She demurred, for she never can make up her mind about anything.

'I can't decide just now,' she hesitated. 'I'll think it over.'

I took up the guide-book, and was allowed to read its thrilling pages for some ten minutes. Then Mrs. MacGill called me again.

'Perhaps if you go and select a _very_ quiet horse we might have a drive in the afternoon,' she said.

I went and saw the horse, and arranged for the drive, then returned to tell Mrs. MacGill of the arrangement. She was not pleased. Had I said that _perhaps_ we would drive out at three o'clock, it would have been more to her mind.

'Go back and tell the man that perhaps we'll go,' she said.

'But perhaps some one else will take out the horse, in that case,' I suggested, cross and weary with her fidgeting. All the rest of the forenoon was one long vacillation: she would go, or she would not go; it would rain, or it would not rain; she would countermand the carriage or she would order it. But by three o'clock the sun was s.h.i.+ning, so I got her bonneted and cloaked and led her down to the hall. The motor had come round at the same moment with our carriage.

Its owner was looking it over before he made a start, and I was not surprised to see that Miss Virginia Pomeroy was also at the door, and that she showed great interest in the tires of the motor. Had I been that young man I must have asked her to drive with me there and then, she looked so delightful; but he is rather a phlegmatic creature, surely, for he didn't seem to think of it. Just as we were preparing to step into the carriage, the motor gave out a great puff of steam, and the horse in our vehicle sprang up in the shafts and took a shy to one side. It was easily quieted down, but of course the incident was more than enough for Mrs. MacGill.

'Take it away,' she said to the driver. 'I won't endanger my life with such an animal--brown horses are always wild, and so are black ones.'

It was vain for me to argue; she just turned away and walked upstairs again, I following to take off her bonnet and cloak, and supply her again with her knitting. So there was an end of the carriage exercise, it seemed.

But there's a curious boring pertinacity in the creature, for after we had sat in silence for about ten minutes she remarked:--

'Cecilia, the doctor _said_ I was to have carriage exercise--Don't you think I could get a donkey-chair?'

'No,' I replied quite curtly. 'Donkey-chairs do not grow on Dartmoor.'

She never saw that I was provoked, and perhaps it was just as well.

'No,' she said after a pause for reflection. 'No, I dare say they do not, but don't you think if you walked to Stoke Babbage you might be able to get one for me?'

'I might be able to get a pony chaise and a quiet pony,' I answered, scenting the possibility of a five-mile walk that would give me an hour or two of peace.

'Well, will you go and try if you can get one?' she asked.

'If you don't mind being left alone for a few hours, I'll do what I can,' I said. She was beginning to object, when Virginia appeared, leading in her mother.

'Here's my mother come to keep you company, Mrs. MacGill,' she explained. 'She wishes to hear all about your chill, from the first s.h.i.+ver right on to the last cough.' She placed Mrs. Pomeroy in an armchair, and fairly drove me out of the room before her, pus.h.i.+ng me with both hands.

'Come! Run! Fly! Escape!' she cried. 'You are as white as b.u.t.ter with waiting on that woman's fads. I won't let you come in again under three hours. My mother's symptoms are good to last for two and a half hours, and then Mrs. MacGill can fill up the rest of the time with hers.'

Gaiety like Virginia's is infectious. I ran, yes, really ran downstairs along with her, quite forgetting my headache and weariness.

I almost turned traitor to Mrs. MacGill, and was ready to laugh at her with this girl.

'She wants a pony chaise, and I'm to go down to Stoke Babbage to choose it,' I said.

'Why, that's five miles away, isn't it?' she asked. 'You're not half equal to a walk like that.'

'Anything--anything for a respite from Mrs. MacGill!' I cried.

'Well, if you are fit for it, I reckon I am,' Virginia said, and with that we set off together down the road....

III

VIRGINIA POMEROY

GREY TOR INN

'The inn at the world's end. The inn at the world's end.' These words come into my mind every morning when I look out of my window at the barren moor with its clumps of blazing whin, the misty distance, and the outline of Grey Tor against the sky. That 'giant among rocks rising in sombre and sinister majesty athwart the blue' looks to my eye like an interesting stone on a nice, middle-sized hill. If only they would dwell more upon the strange sense of desolation and mystery it seems to put into the landscape, instead of being awed by its so-called size! I am fascinated by it, but refuse to be astounded.

This naughty conception of the colossus of the moor is the one link between Sir Archibald and me, for he has seen Ben Nevis and I the Yosemite crags. Geologically speaking, I admit that these moor rocks must be fascinating to the student, and certainly we at home are painfully dest.i.tute of 'clapper-bridges,' 'hut-circles,' and 'monoliths'; although I heard an imaginative fellow-countryman declare yesterday to a party of English trippers that we had so many we became tired to death of the sight of them, and the government ordered hundreds of them to be pulled down.

Every inn, even one at the world's end, is a little picture of life, and we have under our roof all sorts of dramas in process of unfolding.

Shall I always be travelling, I wonder, picking up acquaintances here and there, sometimes friends, now and then a lover perhaps! Imagine a hotel lover, a lodging-house suitor, a husband, whom one would remember afterwards was rented with an apartment! But if I had found only Cecilia Evesham in this bleak spot I could be thankful for coming. She is like a white thornbush in a barren field, and she is not plain either, as they all persist in thinking her. Life, Mrs.

MacGill, and the village dressmaker have for the moment placed her under a total eclipse; but she will s.h.i.+ne yet, this poor little sunny beam, all put out of countenance by fierce lights and heavy shadows.

To-day is her birthday, and mamma, who has taken a great fancy to her, gave her a long, wide scarf of creamy tambour lace. I presented a little violet brooch and belt-buckle of purple enamel, and by hard labour extracted from Mrs. MacGill a hideous little jug of Aller Vale pottery with 'Think of Me' printed on it. Think of her, indeed! One can always do that without having one's memory jogged, or jugged. Sir Archibald joined in the affair most amiably, and offered a red-bound Dartmoor Guide which he chanced to have with him. When we made our little gifts and I draped Miss Evesham in her tambour scarf, she looked only twenty-seven and a half by the clock! I wanted to put a flower in her hair, but she shook her head, saying, 'Roses are for young and lovely people like you, Virginia, who have other roses to match in their cheeks.' I was pleased that Sir Archibald was so friendly about the simple birthday festivities. I can forgive being snubbed a little myself, or if not exactly snubbed, treated as a mysterious (and inferior) being from another planet; but if he had been condescending or disagreeable with Miss Evesham I should have hated him. As it is I am quite grateful for him as a distinct addition to our dull feminine party. He is a new type to me, I confess it, and I had not till to-day made much headway in understanding him. When a man has positively no shallows one always credits him (I dare say falsely) with immeasurable depths. His unlikeness to all the men I've known increases his charm. He seems to attach such undue importance to small attentions, as if they meant not only a loss of dignity to the man, but an unwise feeding of the woman's vanity as well. He gave me the Black Watch ribbon for my banjo with as much inward hesitation and fear as Breck Calhoun would feel in asking me to share his future on nothing a year. He didn't grudge the ribbon, not he! but he was awfully afraid it might prove too encouraging a symptom for me to bear humbly and modestly.

Then that little affair of yesterday--was there ever anything more characteristic or more unexpected! I am certain he followed me into the lane for a walk, and would have joined me if Madam Spoil-Sport had not been my companion. Then came the stampede of the hill ponies, which may or may not have been a frightful and dangerous episode. I can only say it seemed so terrifying that I should have fainted if I hadn't been so surprised at Sir Archibald's behaviour; and I'm not at all a fainting sort of person, either.

Mrs. MacGill never looked more shapeless and stupid, and having been uncommonly selfish and peevish that day, was even less worth preserving than usual. I don't know what the etiquette is in regard to life-saving. No doubt the (worthy) aged should always have the first chance, but in any event I should think a man would evince some slight regret at seeing a young and lovely creature, just on the threshold of life, stamped into jelly by a herd of snorting ponies! But Sir Archibald apparently did not care what happened to me so long as he could rescue his countrywoman. I waited quite still in that awful moment when the clattering herd was charging down upon us, confident that a man of his strength and coolness would look out for us both.

But he s.n.a.t.c.hed the sacred person of the Killjoy, threw her against a gate, stood in front of her, and with out-stretched arms defied the oncoming foe. His gesture, his courage, the look in his eye, would have made the wildest pony quail. It did more,--it made me quail; but in the same instant he shouted to me, 'Look out for yourself and be sharp! s.h.i.+n up that bank! Look alive!'

s.h.i.+nning was not my customary att.i.tude, but it was not mine 'to make reply.' I s.h.i.+nned; that is all there is to say about the matter. I _was_ 'sharp' and I _did_ 'look alive,' being deserted by my natural protector. I, Virginia Pomeroy, aged twenty-two, native of Richmond, U.S.A., clambered up one of those steep banks found only in Devons.h.i.+re lanes,--a ten or twelve foot bank, crowned with a straggling, ragged hedge of thorn. I dug my fingers and toes into the earth and clutched at gra.s.s tufts, roots, or anything clutchable, and ended by tumbling into a thicket of freshly cut beechen twigs. I was as angry as I had breath to be, but somehow I was awed by the situation: by Mrs.

MacGill's trembling grat.i.tude; by Sir Archibald's presence of mind; by his imperious suggestion as to my way of escape, for I could never have climbed that sheer wall of earth unless I had been ordered to in good set terms. Coming down from my heights a few minutes later, looking like an intoxicated lady who has resisted the well-meant advice of a policeman, I put Mrs. MacGill together and shook Sir Archibald's hand. I am sure I don't know why; he did precious little for me, but he had been something of a hero, nevertheless.

'_s.h.i.+n up that bank and look alive!_' I was never spoken to in that way before, in all my life. I wish Breck Calhoun could have heard him!

MRS. MACGILL

_Sat.u.r.day afternoon_

I have had a terrible experience, which has upset me completely and damaged my right knee, besides agitating me so much that I can scarcely remember how it happened. I have read that a drowning man sees his whole life before him in a flash of time. It is different with women perhaps. I saw no flash of anything, and thought only of myself,--remembering a horrible story I read somewhere about a horse in the Crimea that bit the faces of the enemy. Sir Archibald _flung_ me against a gate. The intention was kind, I dare say, but even then I could just hear the beads ripping off my mantle as I fell against the bars. The lane seemed full of ponies, all screaming, as I didn't know horses could scream, and kicking like so many gra.s.shoppers.

'It's all right! Nothing has happened!' he called to the girl, when the herd receded.