night was so like a dream.”
Jimmy found his tongue.
“You haven’t altered,” he said, “you look just the same.”
“Well,” she laughed, “after all, it’s not so long ago, is it?”
He was conscious of a dull hurt. To him, it had seemed years. But he
was nothing to her–just an acquaintance, one of a hundred. But what
more, he asked himself, could he have expected? And with the thought
came consolation. The painful sense of having lost ground left him.
He saw that he had been allowing things to get out of proportion. He
had not lost ground. He had gained it. He had met her again, and she
remembered him. What more had he any right to ask?
“I’ve crammed a good deal into the time,” he explained. “I’ve been
traveling about a bit since we met.”
“Do you live in Shropshire?” asked Molly.
“No. I’m on a visit. At least, I’m supposed to be. But I’ve lost the
way to the place, and I am beginning to doubt if I shall ever get
there. I was told to go straight on. I’ve gone straight on, and here
I am, lost in the snow. Do you happen to know whereabouts Dreever
Castle is?”
She laughed.
“Why,” she said, “I am staying at Dreever Castle, myself.”
“What?”
“So, the first person you meet turns out to be an experienced guide.
You’re lucky, Mr. Pitt.”
“You’re right,” said Jimmy slowly, “I am.”
“Did you come down with Lord Dreever? He passed me in the car just
as I was starting out. He was with another man and Lady Julia Blunt.
Surely, he didn’t make you walk?”
“I offered to walk. Somebody had to. Apparently, he had forgotten to
let them know he was bringing me.”
“And then he misdirected you! He’s very casual, I’m afraid.”
“Inclined that way, perhaps.”
“Have you known Lord Dreever long?”
“Since a quarter past twelve last night.”
“Last night!”
“We met at the Savoy, and, later, on the Embankment. We looked at
the river together, and told each other the painful stories of our
lives, and this morning he called, and invited me down here.”
Molly looked at him with frank amusement.
“You must be a very restless sort of person,” she said. “You seem to
do a great deal of moving about.”
“I do,” said Jimmy. “I can’t keep still. I’ve got the go-fever, like
that man in Kipling’s book.”
“But he was in love.”
“Yes,” said Jimmy. “He was. That’s the bacillus, you know.”
She shot a quick glance at him. He became suddenly interesting to
her. She was at the age of dreams and speculations. From being
merely an ordinary young man with rather more ease of manner than
the majority of the young men she had met, he developed in an
instant into something worthy of closer attention. He took on a
certain mystery and romance. She wondered what sort of girl it was
that he loved. Examining him in the light of this new discovery, she
found him attractive. Something seemed to have happened to put her
in sympathy with him. She noticed for the first time a latent
forcefulness behind the pleasantness of his manner. His self-
possession was the self-possession of the man who has been tried and
has found himself.
At the bottom of her consciousness, too, there was a faint stirring
of some emotion, which she could not analyze, not unlike pain. It
was vaguely reminiscent of the agony of loneliness which she had
experienced as a small child on the rare occasions when her father
had been busy and distrait, and had shown her by his manner that she
was outside his thoughts. This was but a pale suggestion of that
misery; nevertheless, there was a resemblance. It was a rather
desolate, shut-out sensation, half-resentful.
It was gone in a moment. But it had been there. It had passed over
her heart as the shadow of a cloud moves across a meadow in the
summer-time.
For some moments, she stood without speaking. Jimmy did not break
the silence. He was looking at her with an appeal in his eyes. Why
could she not understand? She must understand.