In the Mountains Part 12

'But why? We would only be speculating--'

She held up her hand. 'I have a horror of the word. All speculation is abhorrent to me. My brother-in-law said to me, Never speculate.'

'But didn't he mean in the business sense?'

'He meant it, I am certain, in every sense. Physically and morally.'

'Well then, don't let us speculate. Let us talk about experiences. We've all had them. I am sure it would be as instructive as Merivale, and we might perhaps--perhaps we might even laugh a little. Don't you think it would be pleasant to--to laugh a little?'

'I'd love to,' said Dolly, her eyes shining.

'Suppose, instead of being women, we were three men--'

Mrs. Barnes, who had been stiffening for some minutes, drew herself up at this.

'I am afraid I cannot possibly suppose that,' she said.

'Well, but suppose we _were_--'

'I do not wish to suppose it,' said Mrs. Barnes.

'Well, then, suppose it wasn't us at all, but three men here, spending their summer holidays together can't you imagine how they would talk?'

'I can only imagine it if they were nice men,' said Mrs. Barnes, 'and even so but dimly.'

'Yes. Of course. Well, let us talk together this morning as if we were nice men,--about anything and everything. I can't _think_,' I finished plaintively, 'why we shouldn't talk about anything and everything.'

Dolly looked at me with dancing eyes.

Mrs. Barnes sat very straight. She was engaged in twisting the honey-spoon round and round so as to catch its last trickling neatly.

Her eyes were fixed on this, and if there was a rebuke in them it was hidden from me.

'You must forgive me,' she said, carefully winding up the last thread of honey, 'but as I am not a nice man I fear I cannot join in. Nor, of course, can Dolly, for the same reason. But I need not say,' she added earnestly, 'that there is not the slightest reason why you, on your own terrace, shouldn't, if you wish, imagine yourself to be a nice--'

'Oh no,' I broke in, giving up. 'Oh no, no. I think perhaps you are right. I do think perhaps it is best to go on with Merivale.'

We finished breakfast with the usual courtesies.

I didn't try to be natural any more.

_September 1st._

Dolly forgot herself this morning.

On the first of the month I pay the bills. Antoine reminded me last month that this used to be my practice before the war, and I remember how languidly I roused myself from my meditations on the gra.s.s to go indoors and add up figures. But to-day I liked it. I went in cheerfully.

'This is my day for doing the accounts,' I said to Mrs. Barnes, as she was about to form the procession to the chairs. 'They take me most of the morning, so I expect we won't see each other again till luncheon.'

'Dear me,' said Mrs. Barnes sympathetically, 'how very tiresome for you.

Those terrible settling up days. How well I know them, and how I used to dread them.'

'Yes,' said Dolly--

_Reines Gluck geniesst doch nie_ _Wer zahlen soll und weiss nicht wie._

Poor Kitty. We know all about that, don't we.' And she put her arm round her sister.

Dolly had forgotten herself.

I thought it best not to linger, but to go in quickly to my bills.

Her accent was perfect. I know enough German to know that.

_September 2nd._

We've been a little strained all day in our relations because of yesterday. Dolly drooped at lunch, and for the first time didn't smile.

Mrs. Barnes, I think, had been rebuking her with more than ordinary thoroughness. Evidently Mrs. Barnes is desperately anxious I shouldn't know about Siegfried. I wonder if there is any way of delicately introducing Germans into the conversation, and conveying to her that I have guessed about Dolly's husband and don't mind him a bit. Why should I mind somebody else's husband? A really nice woman only minds her own.

But I know of no two subjects more difficult to talk about tactfully than Germans and husbands; and when both are united, as in this case, my courage rather fails.

We went for a dreary walk this afternoon. Mrs. Barnes was watchful, and Dolly was meek. I tried to be sprightly, but one can't be sprightly by oneself.

_September 3rd._

In the night there was a thunderstorm, and for the first time since I got here I woke up to rain and mist. The mist was pouring in in waves through the open windows, and the room was quite cold. When I looked at the thermometer hanging outside, I saw it had dropped twenty degrees.

We have become so much used to fine weather arrangements that the sudden change caused an upheaval. I heard much hurrying about downstairs, and when I went down to breakfast found it was laid in the hall. It was like breakfasting in a tomb, after the radiance of our meals out of doors.

The front door was shut; the rain pattered on the windows; and right up against the panes, between us and the world like a great grey flannel curtain, hung the mist. It might have been some particularly odious December morning in England.

'_C'est l'automne_,' said Antoine, bringing in three cane chairs and putting them round the tea-table on which the breakfast was laid.

'_C'est un avertiss.e.m.e.nt_,' said Mrs. Antoine, bringing in the coffee.

Antoine then said that he had conceived it possible that Madame and _ces dames_ might like a small wood fire. To cheer. To enliven.

'Pray not on our account,' instantly said Mrs. Barnes to me, very earnestly. 'Dolly and I do not feel the cold at all, I a.s.sure you. Pray do not have one on our account.'

'But wouldn't it be cosy--' I began, who am like a cat about warmth.

'I would far rather you did not have one,' said Mrs. Barnes, her features puckered.

'Think of all the wood!'

'But it would only be a few logs--'

'What is there nowadays so precious as logs? And it is far, far too early to begin fires. Why, only last week it was still August. Still the dog-days.'