Berry and Co Part 53

Adele Feste had arrived.

More than fifteen months had elapsed since we had reluctantly seen her into the boat-train at Euston and wished her a safe journey to her American home. At the time, with an uneasiness bred of experience, I had wondered whether our friendship was to survive the battery of time and distance, or whether it was destined to slip into a decline and so, presently, out of our lives, fainting and painless. Touch, however, had been maintained by a fitful correspondence, and constant references to Miss Feste's promised visit to White Ladies--a consummation which we one and all desired--were made for what they were worth. Finally my sister sat down and issued a desperate summons. "My dear, don't keep us waiting any longer. Arrive in August and stay for six months. If you don't, we shall begin to believe what we already suspect--that we live too far away." The thrust went home. Within a month the invitation had been accepted, with the direct result that here were Jill and I, at six o'clock of a pleasant August evening, standing upon a quay at Southampton, while the Rolls waited patiently, with Fitch at her wheel, a stone's throw away, ready to rush our guest and ourselves over the odd fifteen miles that lay between the port and White Ladies.

With us in the car we could take the inevitable cabin trunk and dressing-case. Adele's heavy baggage was to be consigned to the care of Fitch, who would bring it by rail the same evening to Mockery Dale, the little wayside station which served five villages and our own among them.

n.o.body from the quay was allowed to board the liner, and none of the pa.s.sengers were allowed to disembark, until the baggage had been off-loaded. For the best part, therefore, of an hour and a half Jill and I hovered under the shadow of the tall ship, walking self-consciously up and down, or standing looking up at the promenade deck with, so far as I was concerned, an impotently fatuous air and, occasionally, the meretricious leer usually reserved for the photographer's studio.

At last--

"If they don't let them off soon," I announced, "I shall break down. The strain of being cordial with somebody who's in sight, but out of earshot, is becoming unbearable. Let's go and have a breather behind the hutment." And I indicated an erection which looked like a ticket-office that had been thrown together during the Crimean War.

But Jill was inexorable.

"It can't be long now," she argued, "and if we go away----There!" She seized my arm with a triumphant clutch. "Look! They're beginning to get off."

It was true. One by one the vanguard of pa.s.sengers was already straggling laden on to the high gangway. I strained my eyes for a glimpse of the slight blue figure, which had left the taffrail and was presumably imprisoned in the press which could be observed welling out of a doorway upon the main deck....

A sudden and violent stress upon my left hand at once reminded me of n.o.bby's existence, and suggested that of a cat. Mechanically I held fast to the lead, at the opposite end of which the Sealyham was choking and labouring in a frenzied endeavour to molest a sleek tabby, which, from the a.s.surance of its gait, appeared to be a _persona grata_ upon the quay. The attempted felony attracted considerable attention, which should have been otherwise directed, with the result that a clergyman and two ladies were within an ace of being overrun by an enormous truckload of swaying baggage and coa.r.s.ely reviled by a sweating Hercules for their pains. As it was, the sudden diversion of the trolley projected several pieces of luggage on to the quay, occasioning an embryo stampede of the bystanders and drawing down a stern rebuke, delivered in no measured terms, from a blue-coated official, who had not seen what had happened, upon the heads of innocent and guilty alike. The real offender met my accusing frown with the disarming smile of childish innocence, and, when I shook my head, wagged his tail unctuously. As I picked him up and put him under my arm--

"So this is n.o.bby," said Adele.

I uncovered and nodded.

"And he had a bath this morning, so as to be all nice and clean when Miss Feste arrived. I did, too."

"How reckless!" said Adele. "You look very well on it."

"Thank you," said I, shaking hands. "And you look glorious. Hullo!

You've let your hair grow. I am glad."

"Think it's an improvement?"

"If possible."

The well-marked eyebrows went up, the bright brown eyes regarded me quizzically, the faint familiar smile hung maddeningly on the red lips.

"Polite as ever," she flashed.

"Put it down to the bath," said I. "Cleanliness is next to--er--devotion."

"Yes, and he's been counting the days," broke in Jill. "He has really.

Of course, we all have. But----Oh, Adele, I'm so glad you've come."

Adele drew my cousin's arm within her own.

"So'm I," she said quietly. "And now--I did have a dressing-case once.

And a steamer-trunk.... D'you think it's any good looking for them?"

Twenty minutes later we were all three--four with n.o.bby--on the front seat of the Rolls, which was nosing its way gingerly out of the town.

"I wonder if you realize," said Adele, "what a beautiful country you live in."

At the moment we were immediately between an unpleasantly crowded tram and a fourth-rate beerhouse.

"Don't you have trams?" said I. "Or does alcohol mean so much to you? I suppose prohibition is a bit of a jar."

"To tell you the truth, I was thinking of the Isle of Wight. It looked so exquisite as we were coming in. Just like a toy continent out of a giant's nursery."

"Before the day is out," I prophesied, "you shall see finer things than that."

Once clear of the streets, I gave the car her head.

For a while we slid past low-lying ground, verdant and fresh and blowing, but flat and spa.r.s.ely timbered, with coppices here and there and, sometimes, elms in the hedgerows, and, now and again, a parcel of youngster oaks about a green--fair country enough at any time, and at this summer sundown homely and radiant. But there was better to come.

The car fled on.

Soon the ground rose sharply by leaps and bounds, the yellow road swerving to right and left, deep tilted meadows on one side with a screen of birches beyond, and on the other a sloping rabble of timber, whose foliage made up a tattered motley, humble and odd and b.a.s.t.a.r.d, yet, with it all, so rich in tender tones and unexpected feats of drapery that Adele cried that it was a slice of fairyland and sat with her chin on her shoulder, till the road curled up into the depths of a broad pine-wood, through which it cut, thin, and dead straight, and cool, and strangely solemn. In a flash it had become the nave of a cathedral, immense, solitary. Sombre and straight and tall, the walls rose up to where the swaying roof sobered the mellow sunshine and only let it pa.s.s dim and so, sacred. The wanton breeze, caught in the maze of tufted pinnacles, filtered its chastened way, a pensive organist, learned to draw grave litanies from the boughs and reverently voice the air of sanct.i.ty. The fresh familiar scent hung for a smokeless incense, breathing high ritual and redolent of pious mystery. No circ.u.mstance of worship was un.o.bserved. With one consent birds, beasts and insects made not a sound. The precious pall of silence lay like a phantom cloud, unruffled. Nature was on her knees.

The car fled on.

Out of the priestless sanctuary, up over the crest of the rise, into the kiss of the sunlight we sailed, and so on to a blue-brown moor, all splashed and dappled with the brilliant yellow of the gorse in bloom and rolling away into the hazy distance like an untroubled sea. So for a mile it flowed, a lazy pomp of purple, gold-flecked and glowing. Then came soft cliffs of swelling woodland, rising to stay its course with gentle dignity--walls that uplifted eyes found but the dwindled edge of a far mightier flood that stretched and tossed, a leafy waste of billows, flaunting more living shades of green than painters dream of, laced here and there with gold and, once in a long while, shot with crimson, rising and falling with Atlantic grandeur, till the eye faltered, and the proud rich waves seemed to be breaking on the rosy sky.

And over all the sun lay dying, his crimson ebb of life staining the firmament with splendour, his mighty heart turning the dance of Death to a triumphant progress, where Blood and Flame rode by with clouds for chargers, and Earth and Sky themselves shouldered the litter of their pa.s.sing King.

An exclamation of wonder broke from Adele, and Jill cried to me to stop.

"Just for a minute, Boy, so that she can see it properly."

Obediently I slowed to a standstill. Then I backed the great car and swung up a side track for the length of a cricket-pitch. The few cubits thus added to our stature extended the prospect appreciably. Besides, it was now unnecessary to crane the neck.

At last--

"If you're waiting for me to say 'Go,'" said Adele, "I shouldn't. I'm quite ready to sit here till nightfall. It's up to you to tear me away."

I looked at Jill.

"Better be getting on," I said. "The others'll be wondering where we are."

She nodded.

We did not stop again till the car came to rest easily before the great oak door, which those who built White Ladies hung upon its tremendous hinges somewhere in the 'forties of the sixteenth century.

"It is my duty," said Berry, "to inform you that on Wednesday I shall not be available."

"Why?" said my wife.