Reginald thought this charming; but at the same time he could not conceal from himself the fact that Margaret’s passion for the poetic cut, as it were, both ways. He admired and loved the loftiness of her Soul, but, on the other hand, it was the deuce of a business having to live up to it. For Reginald was a very ordinary young man. They had tried to inoculate him with a love of Poetry at school, but it had never ‘taken’. Until he was twenty-six he had been satisfied to class all poetry (except that of Mr Doss Chiderdoss) under the heading of Rot. Then he met Margaret, and the trouble began. On the day he first met her, at a picnic, she had looked so soulful, so aloof from this world, that he had felt instinctively that here was a girl who expected more from a man than a mere statement that the weather was rippin’. It so chanced that he knew just one quotation from the Classics, to wit, Tennyson’s critique of the Island Valley of Avilion. He knew this because he had had the passage to write out one hundred and fifty times at school, on the occasion of his being caught smoking by a master who happened to be a passionate admirer of The Idylls of the King.
A remark of Margaret’s that it was a splendid day for a picnic and that the country looked nice gave him his opportunity.
‘It reminds me,’ he said, ‘of the Island Valley of Avilion, where falls not hail or rain or any snow, nor ever wind blows, loudly; but it lies deep-meadow’d, happy, fair, with orchard lawns…’
He broke off here to squash a wasp; but Margaret had heard enough.
‘Are you fond of poetry, Mr Humby?’ she said, with a sort of far-off look.
‘Er — oh, rather! I should think so!’ said Reginald.
And that was how all the trouble had started. It had meant unremitting toil for Reginald. He felt that he had set himself a standard from which he must not fall. He bought every new volume of poetry which was praised in the Press, and learned the reviews of it by heart. Every evening he read painfully a portion of the Classics. He plodded through the poetry sections of Bartlett’s Book of Quotations. Margaret’s devotion to the various bards was so enthusiastic, and her reading so wide, that there were times when Reginald wondered if he could stand the strain. But he pegged away manfully.
He was helped by the fact that he actually saw Margaret but rarely. Being in a government office he found it impossible to get away during the week, Chigley Heath being a matter of thirty miles or so from London. Sunday was, as a rule, the only day on which they met; and [Image] studious application to the poets during the week always enabled him to ?name=/cm_showreply.femail’;s[Image] menge [Image] acquit himself with credit.
But the strain was fearful.
It occurred to Reginald on this particular Saturday that he was in a position to bring off a double event. The Hearty Lunchers’ match was to [Image]begin at eleven-thirty. Consequently, if he arranged to meet Margaret at ngly, a Text Size: [Image] their usual Sunday meeting-place — Brown’s boathouse, which was about a mile from the cricket-field — at four-thirty, he could have his game and still have plenty of time to pull her up the river to their favourite honeysuckled cottage for tea. If his side happened to be fielding at four o’clock he could get a substitute to act for him; and if Chigley Heath batted last he would get his captain to put him in early, so that he could get his innings over in good time.
Having laid these plans he caught his train on the Saturday morning with a light heart.
All went well from the start, The day was fine, the sun warm but tempered with a light breeze. The Hearty Lunchers batted first and lost six wickets before the interval for a hundred and twenty. The Chigley Heath crowd, mainly composed of small boys and octogenarians, who looked on the Hearty Lunchers as a first-class team because they wore bright blazers, were loud in their approval of their bowlers’ performance in dismissing more than half the side for so few runs.