"What happened to him?"
"Gideon!" cried a reproachful voice, followed by a fusillade of knocks on the study door which made Rampole jump. "Gideon! Tea!"
"Eh?" said Dr. Fell, looking up blankly.
Mrs. Fell stated a grievance. "Tea, Gideon! And I wish you'd let that horrible beer alone, though goodness knows the butter-cakes are bad enough, and it's so stuffy in there, and I see the rector and Miss Starberth coming up the road as it is." There was the sound of a deep breath being drawn, whereupon Mrs. Fell summed it up saying, "Tea!"
The doctor rose with a sigh, and they heard her fluttering down the passage, repeating, "Bother, bother, bother!" like the exhaust of an automobile.
"We'll save it," said Dr. Fell.
Dorothy Starberth was coming up the lane, moving with her free stride beside a large and bald-headed man who was fanning himself with his hat. Rampole felt a momentary qualm. Easy! — Don't act like a kid, now! He could hear her light, mocking voice. She was wearing a yellow jumper with a high neck, and some sort of brown skirt and coat into whose pockets her hands were thrust. The sun glimmered on her rich black hair, caught carelessly round her head; and as she turned her head from side to side you could see a clear profile, somehow as poised as a bird's wing. Then they were coming across the lawn, and the dark-blue eyes were fixed on him under long lashes…
"I think you know Miss Starberth," Dr. Fell was saying. "Mr. Saunders, this is Mr. Rampole, from America. He's staying with us."
Rampole found his hand grasped with the vigour of muscular Christianity by the large and bald-headed man. Mr. Thomas Saunders was smiling professionally, his shaven jowls gleaming; he was one of those clergymen whom people praise by saying that they are not at all like clergymen. His forehead was steaming, but his bland blue eyes were as alert as a scoutmaster's. Mr. Saunders was forty years old, and looked much younger. He served his creed, you felt, as clearly and unthinkingly as he had served Eton (or Harrow, or Winchester, or whatever it was) on the playing-fields. Round his pink skull a fringe of fair hair fluffed like a tonsure, and he wore an enormous watch-chain.
"I am delighted to make your acquaintance, sir," the rector boomed, heartily. "I — ah — was pleased to know many of your countrymen during the war. Cousins over the sea, you know; cousins over the sea!"
He laughed, lightly and professionally. This air of professional smoothness and ease irritated the American; he murmured something and turned towards Dorothy Starberth….
"How do you do?" she said, extending a cool hand. "It's jolly seeing you again! — How did you leave our mutual friends, the Harrises?"
Rampole was about to demand, "Who?" when he caught the expectant innocence of her glance and the half-smile which animated it.
"Ah, the Harrises," he said. "Splendid, thank you, splendid." With a startling burst of inspiration he added. "Muriel is cutting a tooth."
As nobody seemed impressed by this intelligence, and he was a trifle nervous about the ring of authenticity he had put into it, he was about to add further intimate details of the Harris household when Mrs. Fell suddenly shot out of the front door in another of her cuckoo-like appearances, to take charge of them all. She made a variety of unintelligible remarks which seemed to be chiefly concerned with beer, butter-cakes, and the dear thoughtfulness of the rector; and had he quite recovered from being drenched by that horrible water-sprinkler; and was he sure he hadn't got pneumonia? Mr. Saunders coughed experimentally, and said he hadn't.
"Dear me… bother!" said Mrs. Fell, walking into some plants. "So near-sighted, blind as a bat, dear Mr. Saunders… And my dear," whirling on the girl, "where is your brother? You said he'd be here."
Momentarily the shade was back on Dorothy Starberth's face, as Rampole had seen it last night. She hesitated, putting a hand to her wrist as though she would like to look at her watch; but taking it away instantly.
"Oh, he'll be here," she said. "He’s in the village-buying some things. He'll be along directly."
The tea table was set out in the garden behind the house; it was shaded by a large lime tree, and a singing stream ran a few yards away. Rampole and the girl lagged behind the other three on the way.
"Baby Eadwig," said Rampole, "is down with mumps―"
"Smallpox. Ugh, you beast! I thought you were going to give me away. And in a community like this-I say, how did they know we'd met?"
"Some old fool of a lawyer saw us talking on the platform. But I thought you were going to give me away."
At this extraordinary coincidence they both turned to look at each other, and he saw her eyes shining again. He felt exhilarated, but prickly. He said, "Ha!" rather like Dr. Fell, and noticed the dappling of shadows that trembled on the grass, and they both laughed. She went on in a low voice:
"I can't tell you-I was feeling desperately low last night, what with one thing and another. And London is so big, and everything was wrong. I wanted to talk to somebody. And then you bumped into me and you looked nice, so I did."
Rampole felt a desire to give somebody a joyous poke in the jaw. In imagination he lashed out triumphantly. He had a sensation as though somebody were pumping air into his chest.
He said, not wittily, but be honest with yourself, sneering peruser! — very naturally:
"I'm glad you did."
"So am I."
"Glad?"
"Glad."
"HAH!" said Rampole, exhaling the air in triumph.
From ahead of them rose Mrs. Fell's thin voice. "Azaleas, petunias, geraniums, hollyhocks, honeysuckle, and eglantine!" she shrilled, as though she ' were calling trains. "I can't see 'em, on account of being so nearsighted, but I know they're there." With a beaming if somewhat vague smile she grasped the newcomers and urged them into chairs. "Oh, Gideon, my love, you're not going after that horrible beer, are you?"
Dr. Fell was already bending over the stream. Puffing laboriously, he extracted several beaded bottles and hauled himself up on one cane.
"Notice, Mr. Rampole," said the rector, with an air of comfortable tolerance. "I often think," he continued, as though he were launching a terrible accusation but slyly smiling to mitigate it―"I often think that the good doctor can't be English at all. This barbarous habit of drinking beer at tea-time my dear sir! It isn't-well, it isn't English, you know!"
Dr. Fell raised a fiery face.
"Sir," he said, "it's tea that isn't English, let me inform you. I want you to look at the appendix of my book, Note 86, Chapter 9, devoted to such things as tea, cocoa, and that unmentionably awful beverage known as the ice-cream soda. Tea, you will find, came into England from Holland in 1666. From Holland, her bitter enemy; and in Holland they contemptuously called it hay-water. Even the French couldn't stand it. Patin calls tea l’impertinente nouveaute du siecle,' and Dr. Duncan, in his Treatise on Hot Liquors―"
"And in front of the rector, too!" said Mrs. Fell, wailing.
"Eh?" said the doctor, breaking off with some vague idea that she thought he was swearing. "What, my dear?" "Beer," said Mrs. Fell.
"Oh, hell!" said the doctor, violently. "Excuse me, excuse me." He turned to Rampole. "Will you have some beer with me, my boy?"
"Why, yes," the other answered, with gratitude. "Thanks, I will."
"— and coming out of that cold water, it'll probably give you both pneumonia," Mrs. Fell said, darkly. She seemed to have an idee fixe on the subject of pneumonia. "What it's coming to I don't know-more tea, Mr. Saunders, and there are the cakes beside you with everybody catching pneumonia the way they are, and that poor young man having to sit up in that draughty governor's place tonight; he'll probably have pneu — "
There was an abrupt silence. Then Saunders began talking very smoothly and easily about the flowers, pointing to a bed of geraniums; he seemed to be trying to alter their minds by altering the direction of their gaze. Dr. Fell joined in the discussion, glowering at his wife. She was quite unconscious of having opened that forbidden subject. But constraint had come upon the party under the lime tree, and would not go away.