When he informed her of this occult fact she laughed, "You know mighty well, Mouse, that you have a sneaking wish there were one Yankee stranger here to see our glory."
"I guess that's right."
"But maybe I'm just as bad."
For once their tones had not been those of teacher and pupil, but of comrades. They set out from the inn through the brightening morning like lively boys on a vacation tramp.
The sun crept out, with the warmth and the dust, and Istra's steps lagged. As they passed the outlying corner of a farm where a straw-stack was secluded in a clump of willows Istra smiled and sighed: "I'm pretty tired, dear. I'm going to sleep in that straw-stack. I've always wanted to sleep in a straw-stack. It's comme il faut for vagabonds in the best set, you know. And one can burrow. Exciting, eh?"
She made a pillow of her khaki jacket, while he dug down to a dry place for her. He found another den on the other side of the stack.
It was afternoon when he awoke. He sprang up and rushed around the stack. Istra was still asleep, curled in a pathetically small childish heap, her tired face in repose against the brown-yellow of her khaki jacket. Her red hair had come down and shone about her shoulders.
She looked so frail that he was frightened. Surely, too, she'd be very angry with him for letting her come on this jaunt.
He scribbled on a leaf from his address-book-religiously carried for six years, but containing only four addresses-this note:
Gone to get stuff for bxfst be right back.-W. W.
and, softly crawling up the straw, left the note by her head. He hastened to a farm-house. The farm-wife was inclined to be curious. O curious farm-wife, you of the cream-thick Essex speech and the shuffling feet, you were brave indeed to face Bill Wrenn the Great, with his curt self-possession, for he was on a mission for Istra, and he cared not for the goggling eyes of all England. What though he was a bunny-faced man with an innocuous mustache? Istra would be awakening hungry. That was why he bullied you into selling him a stew-pan and a bundle of faggots along with the tea and eggs and a bread loaf and a jar of the marmalade your husband's farm had been making these two hundred years. And you should have had coffee for him, not tea, woman of Essex.
When he returned to their outdoor inn the late afternoon glow lay along the rich fields that sloped down from their well-concealed nook. Istra was still asleep, but her cheek now lay wistfully on the crook of her thin arm. He looked at the auburn-framed paleness of her face, its lines of thought and ambition, unmasked, unprotected by the swift changes of expression which defended her while she was awake. He sobbed. If he could only make her happy! But he was afraid of her moods.
He built a fire by a brooklet beyond the willows, boiled the eggs and toasted the bread and made the tea, with cream ready in a jar. He remembered boyhood camping days in Parthenon and old camp lore. He returned to the stack and called, "Istra-oh, Is-tra!"
She shook her head, nestled closer into the straw, then sat up, her hair about her shoulders. She smiled and called down: "Good morning. Why, it's afternoon! Did you sleep well, dear?"
"Yes. Did you? Gee, I hope you did!"
"Never better in my life. I'm so sleepy yet. But comfy. I needed a quiet sleep outdoors, and it's so peaceful here. Breakfast! I roar for breakfast! Where's the nearest house?"
"Got breakfast all ready."
"You're a dear!"
She went to wash in the brook, and came back with eyes dancing and hair trim, and they laughed over breakfast, glancing down the slope of golden hazy fields. Only once did Istra pass out of the land of their intimacy into some hinterland of analysis-when she looked at him as he drank his tea aloud out of the stew-pan, and wondered: "Is this really you here with me? But you aren't a boulevardier. I must say I don't understand what you're doing here at all.... Nor a caveman, either. I don't understand it.... But you sha'n't be worried by bad Istra. Let's see; we went to grammar-school together."
"Yes, and we were in college. Don't you remember when I was baseball captain? You don't? Gee, you got a bad memory!"
At which she smiled properly, and they were away for Suffolk again.
"I suppose now it'll go and rain," said Istra, viciously, at dusk. It was the first time she had spoken for a mile. Then, after another quarter-mile: "Please don't mind my being silent. I'm sort of stiff, and my feet hurt most unromantically. You won't mind, will you?"
Of course he did mind, and of course he said he didn't. He artfully skirted the field of conversation by very West Sixteenth Street observations on a town through which they passed, while she merely smiled wearily, and at best remarked "Yes, that's so," whether it was so or not.
He was reflecting: "Istra's terrible tired. I ought to take care of her." He stopped at the wood-pillared entrance of a temperance inn and commanded: "Come! We'll have something to eat here." To the astonishment of both of them, she meekly obeyed with "If you wish."
It cannot be truthfully said that Mr. Wrenn proved himself a person of savoir faire in choosing a temperance hotel for their dinner. Istra didn't seem so much to mind the fact that the table-cloth was coarse and the water-glasses thick, and that everywhere the elbow ran into a superfluity of greasy pepper and salt castors. But when she raised her head wearily to peer around the room she started, glared at Mr. Wrenn, and accused: "Are you by any chance aware of the fact that this place is crowded with tourists? There are two family parties from Davenport or Omaha; I know they are!"
"Oh, they ain't such bad-looking people," protested Mr. Wrenn.... Just because he had induced her to stop for dinner the poor man thought his masculine superiority had been recognized.
"Oh, they're terrible! Can't you see it? Oh, you're hopeless."
"Why, that big guy-that big man with the rimless spectacles looks like he might be a good civil engineer, and I think that lady opposite him-"
"They're Americans."
"So're we!"
"I'm not."
"I thought-why-"
"Of course I was born there, but-"
"Well, just the same, I think they're nice people."
"Now see here. Must I argue with you? Can I have no peace, tired as I am? Those trippers are speaking of `quaint English flavor.' Can you want anything more than that to damn them? And they've been touring by motor-seeing every inn on the road."
"Maybe it's fun for-"
"Now don't argue with me. I know what I'm talking about. Why do I have to explain everything? They're hopeless!"
Mr. Wrenn felt a good wholesome desire to spank her, but he said, most politely: "You're awful tired. Don't you want to stay here tonight? Or maybe some other hotel; and I'll stay here."
"No. Don't want to stay any place. Want to get away from myself," she said, exactly like a naughty child.
So they tramped on again.
Darkness was near. They had plunged into a country which in the night seemed to be a stretch of desolate moorlands. As they were silently plodding up a hill the rain came. It came with a roar, a pitiless drenching against which they fought uselessly, soaking them, slapping their faces, blinding their eyes. He caught her arm and dragged her ahead. She would be furious with him because it rained, of course, but this was no time to think of that; he had to get her to a dry place.