It had clouded over after sunset: there was no moon visible, but an irradiance was omnipresent, and showed the muffled yew-tree walks, and the greater trees colossal, mountains overshadowing the land. Here and there, as you went, glimmered daffodils, like the Pleiades half-veiled, and long files of crocuses burned like waning fires.
Miss Percival, at about nine o'clock, came gently down one of these alleys, with a scarf over her head and shoulders. She looked like a nymph in Tanagra. And as if she knew where she was going, exactly, she walked gently but unfalteringly between the linked crocus-beacons to where the alley broadened into a bay of cut yews, to where ghostly white seats and a dim sun-dial seemed disposed as for a scene in a comedy. The leaden statue of a skipping faun would have been made out in a recess if you had known it was there. And as she entered the place a figure seated there, with elbows on knees and chin between his palms, looked up, listening, watching intently, then rose and waited.
“Struan,” said Miss Percival comfortably, “are you there?”
“I'm here,” she was answered.
Thereupon she came easily forward and stood near him. She was in white from top to toe; he could see the clean outline of her head and neck, denned by the hooding scarf. He had not as yet taken off his hat, but now, as she stood there silent, he slowly removed it. Still there was nothing said. Miss Percival was very deliberate.
Presently she spoke. “You didn't tell me this afternoon that you'd had a bother with Mr. Menzies. Why didn't you tell me?”
“Why should I tell you?” The words seemed wrung from him. “Why should you care?”
“Of course I care,” she said. “You know that I care. Why didn't you tell me? ... But I know why you didn't.”
“You do not.” He denied her hotly.
“Oh, but I do. Because you were ashamed.”
“It was not. I'm not ashamed. He's an old fool. He thinks he can teach me my business. Melons! Plants! Why, I'm one of them. What can he teach me?”
“He's a very good gardener,” Miss Percival began, but the rest was drowned.
“Gardener—he! He's a botcher. He measures his melons by the pound. It's money he wants, money-value. So much dung—so much meat. He says, 'Be careful, you, of the water-pot; go steady with your syringe. You'll damp off those plants it you're not handy,' he tells me. To me, this! Don't I know what the life of a plant must have, and how, and where it must be fed? He's an old fool, and you know it. And I'll not be told things I have got by heart before a lad new to his breeches. Besides,” he added darkly, “he'd vexed me before that, and bitterly.”
“How did he vex you?” Miss Percival's voice came cool and clear, but commanding.
“That I cannot tell you,” said he.
“But I want to know.” This seemed to her sufficing reason.
But he was dogged. “Then I can't help you. You cannot be told.”
“But perhaps I ought to be told. Do you think I ought?”
“Indeed, I don't know.”
“Well, will you tell me?”
“I will not, indeed. That is, I cannot.”
“It's very extraordinary.”
He made no answer.
“Struan,” said Miss Percival, after a while, “you are angry.”
He turned quickly. “With you? Never.”
“I didn't say that. I said you were angry.”
He said, “Ah—and so I am.”
“I am included, I suppose.”
“You are not. It could not be.”
She laughed. “I don't know—-”
He was vehement. “But you do know. You know it very well.”
She had no answer; but she smiled to herself; and I have no doubt she knew.
For two minutes or more there was silence, a time of suspense. Then Miss Percival said, “I've had a telegram. Mr. Ingram is coming to-morrow.”
To this he said nothing. She went on.
“He is bringing people with him. Mrs. Benson was very funny about it. He is coming at seven with some people, and she would read it that he was coming with seven people. When I asked her, how could we meet him if he had not told us the time? she made a grievance of it, and said that was so like him. So it is, of course.”
Struan remained speechless, and had turned away his face. Miss Percival continued her reflections aloud.
“How long has he been away? More than a year. He wrote once from Singapore—then from Rawal-pindi—and that was all, until I got this telegram. He's very casual, I must say.” Here she paused.
Struan said suddenly, “Miss Percival, I'm going.”
She turned with interest, and asked, with not too much interest, “Oh! Why?”
He said, “You know why.”
She lowered her voice by a tone, but no more. “I hope you won't. It would be a pity. There's no real reason for it. I'll speak to Menzies to-morrow. He doesn't mean any harm to you. He's only old and grumpy.”
“He's a fool,” said Struan. “Certainly, he's a fool. But that's neither here nor there.”
Miss Percival, ignoring what she chose to ignore, said again, “I hope you won't go.”
The young man shifted his ground, and dug his heel into the turf. “I must—indeed, I must.”
“Where shall you go?”
“God knows.”
“Why must you go?”
“You know why.”
“Is it because of Menzies?”
He threw his head up. “Menzies, forsooth!” He scorned Menzies.
“Then I don't see why you should go. I shouldn't like it. I hope you will stay.”
He looked at her now across the dusk, intensely. “You hope I will stay?”
“Yes, certainly I do.”
“You hope I will stay? You ask me to stay?”
She considered. Then she said, “Yes, I think so. Yes, I do.”
“Then,” said Struan, “God help us all. I stay.”
Miss Percival said cheerfully, “I'm so glad. I'll speak to Menzies to-morrow, and get him to leave you alone. He knows how well you do the melons, but of course he would never admit it.” She broke off the interview shortly afterwards.
“I'm going to bed,” she told him. “I've got lots to do to-morrow. Heaps of things. You must get me some of your flowers for the rooms.”
He was not appeased, “Menzies will do it,” he said. She laughed.
“You know what Menzies will say—'Pelargoniums for the hall, Miss Percival, and some nice maidenhair.' He's not inventive, poor Menzies.”
“He's an old fool,” said Struan. “He takes flowers for spangles in a circus.”
Miss Percival again laughed softly, and held out her hand. “Good-night,” she said. “I'm going.”
He touched her hand, and then put his own behind his back.
“Aren't you going to bed?” she asked him.
“Presently,” he said. “I'm going to walk round for a while.”
She hovered for a moment, seemed to hesitate, to weigh the attractions of walking round. It had a charm. Then she decided.
“Good-night,” she bade him for the third time.
He grumbled his good-night, and watched her fade into the dark. Not until noiselessly about among the breathing flowers.
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