The Limit Part 36

"It's very sweet of you--but do you ever realise----I wonder if it's ever struck you, Val, that men aren't always in the mood for heavenly jokes? There are times when one likes to think--to see life as it is--to discuss abstract things, even."

"Oh! Well ... what do you think of Daphne's dress? Isn't it pretty? It was made by Ogburn, all out of nothing, in no time."

He looked at Daphne, who was sitting under a tree reading Cyril's last letter over again.

"It's all right. It suits _her_. I don't call _that_ a serious subject."

"What subject would you like, then?"

"Well--Romer, for instance. Where is he?"

"Talking to the gardener about mowing. Do you want him? I'll call him if you like."

"Dear Val, it's not quite like you to be ironical to _me_.... You ought not to laugh at Romer either. I'm complex, perhaps--I know I am; but it jars on me when you do that."

She stared at him.

"Look here--I know I'm tiresome," said Harry, returning to his usual caressing manner. "Don't take any notice of it. It's--the weather, I think, or want of exercise. I'll go and improvise a little."

He pushed back his chair, and, with a parting look of forgiveness, he went into the house and began to improvise (rather dismally) a well-known funeral march. Or perhaps it was only a coincidence. Perhaps he would have thought of it if Chopin hadn't.

Harry was only musical by fits and starts, and generally either to impress some one or because he was out of temper. Val never regarded it as a good sign when he grappled with the Steinway.

In ten minutes he had grown tired of his mood of melody, and strolled into the rose garden with a book.

Yes, certainly Harry was restless.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE ANGLES

"You're very quiet, Val," remarked Daphne, as they flew along in the motor on their way to call on the Prebendary's wife at The Angles.

Both sisters wore little cottage bonnets, blue motor-veils, and large loose white coats with high collars.

"How can I talk when we're exceeding the speed limit?" said Valentia.

"You usually do. Is anything the matter?"

"No, nothing at all.... Harry's been horrid lately."

"I suppose he _is_ occasionally."

"No, he's not. He's got the artistic temperament, and of course he can't always be the same, poor dear."

"What a pity one can't be an artist without having the artistic temperament! It always seems to mean being late for meals, and losing your temper, or being amusing when every one wants to go to bed."

"As a matter of fact," said Valentia, "I never knew any one with less of it than Harry. There isn't a more hard-headed business man in the world in his way, though he _has_ read poetry and plays the piano sometimes, and paints. He is an artist too ... but--well, not in any of the recognised arts.... I hear Miss Lus...o...b.. and Rathbone--I mean Mr. and Mrs. Rathbone--have gone to Oberammergau for their honeymoon."

"Oh! Is that the latest thing to do?"

"Of course not, Daphne, but she thinks it is. Miss Lus...o...b.. has spent her life in trying to catch the last omnibus and always just missing it, and she's not going to leave off now just because she happens to be married. Here we are!"

The Prebendary's wife received them very graciously. Her waist looked longer than ever, and her skirt seemed more than usually abnormal in width. She did all that she could to entertain them. She showed them her son Garstin's map of Buckinghamshire, and then said--

"I'll send for Mr. Stoendyck. He's upstairs inventing. You can't _think_ how clever he is and how hard he works. It's really wonderful! We often leave him alone for hours to think things out, and sometimes he plays sonatas; he says it refreshes him. He really is an extraordinary man."

Mr. Stoendyck came in, looking very martial and scientific and pleased with himself, as though he had just invented gunpowder. Mrs. Campbell began as usual to talk baby language, and play a kind of Dumb Crambo at him. He never seemed able to guess the word.

"I hope we haven't interrupted you in your studies," said Val politely.

"She say she ope she not interrupt. Work, you know. Oeuvre--Arbeit."

"I was just amusing myself with the very witty paper from Germany, _Kladderadatsch_. It is very funny," he said.

"It sounds funny," said Val sympathetically.

"What I find in England is that you're all wonderfully serious, wonderfully courteous, wonderfully kind"--he bowed to his hostess; "but, you'll excuse my saying so, I don't find enough wit or lightness for my temperament. For humour I have to go to Belgium or Germany."

He spoke with intense solemnity.

Mrs. Campbell now began to translate him even to himself.

"You say you like fun, wit--just fun to make laugh?" She made strange signs with her fingers.

He did not appear to understand the code. He stared at her with a frown, and rasped on seriously--

"I find a few comical jokes occasionally a great relief after my heavy work. It is very deep work."

"I suppose it would be indiscreet to ask what the invention is?" said Valentia, smiling.

"Not at all. There is nothing indiscreet whatever in your curiosity, Mrs. Wyburn."

He took a scone covered with b.u.t.ter and swallowed it in an extraordinarily short time, and in an ingenious manner.

"No, there's no indiscretion in the matter at all. Do not trouble yourself on that score. It is merely the natural interest that a cultivated and intellectual English lady would naturally take when she hears of an extraordinary invention from another country." He bowed, and having thus explained her to herself, he then ate another scone.

"She say she want to know, you know," nodded Mrs. Campbell, putting up a playful and threatening finger with dignified coquetry and a stony smile. (She was subject to fits of this kind of marble archness unexpectedly.)

"Yes. So I understood."

The Belgian was looking at Daphne with distinct admiration. Of course Miss Campbell came and sat down beside him. Women always follow their instinct to come and sit on the other side of any man whom they regard as their property. They seem to think that merely by sitting on the other side they protect him from freebooters. As a matter of fact, it would be more sensible, if to distract his attention were the object, to sit opposite with some one else.

Mr. Stoendyck turned his back on her completely, and said to Daphne--