In Mr. Knox's Country Part 6

"Very well, I shall bathe," replied Philippa.

"I suppose you are aware that your old friend, Mr. Chichester, is at present in possession of the bathing cove," I returned, "and it might be as well to ascertain the opinion of your hostess on the subject of mixed bathing."

"Did you observe that Lord Derryclare was wearing your new motor-gloves?" said Philippa as I moved away.

I magnanimously left the last word with her.

The Derryclares were in the habit of hurling themselves, at intervals, out of civilisation, and into the wilderness, with much the same zest with which those who live in the wilderness hurl themselves into civilisation. In the wilderness, twenty miles from a railway station, they had built them a nest, and there led that variety of the simple life that is founded on good servants, old clothes, and a total indifference to weather. Wandering friends on motor tours swooped occasionally out of s.p.a.ce; married daughters, with intervals between visits to be filled in, arrived without warning, towing reluctant husbands (who had been there before). Lost men, implicated with Royal Commissions and Congested Districts, were washed in at intervals; Lady Derryclare said she never asked anyone; people came.

It is true that she had asked us, but the invitation had been given on our wedding-day, and had been put away with our duplicate wedding presents; we had now disinterred it, because I had bought a motor, and was still in the stage of enthusiasm when the amateur driver will beat up visits for his wife to pay. I do not know how Chichester got there; he, like Lady Derryclare, dated from the benighted period before Philippa knew me, and I may admit that, in common with most husbands, I am not attracted by the male friends of my wife's youth. If Chichester had been the type she fancied, was I merely a Super-Chichester?

Chichester was an elderly young man, worn smooth by much visiting in country houses, and thoroughly competent in the avocations proper to his career. He knew the best "stands" at half the shoots in Ireland, and could tell to half a crown the value set upon each by the keeper; if you gave him a map he could put a pudgy finger upon the good cooks as promptly as an archbishop upon his cathedral towns; he played a useful and remunerative game of bridge; to see his eye, critical, yet alight with healthful voracity, travelling down the array of dishes on the side-table at breakfast, and arranging unhesitatingly the order in which they were to be attacked, was a lesson to the heedless who blunt the fine edge of appet.i.te with porridge.

He faced me at lunch, plump and pink and s.h.i.+ning after his bathe; he was clean-shaved (the only reliable remedy for a greying moustache, as I did not fail to point out to Philippa); it increased his resemblance to a well-fed and _pa.s.se_ schoolboy. Old Derryclare, whose foible it was to believe that he never had any luncheon, was standing at the sideboard, devouring informally a slice of bread and honey. One of his eyes was bunged up by bee-stings, and the end of his large nose shone red from the same cause.

"Bill," he said, addressing his eldest son, "don't you forget to take those sections on board this afternoon."

"No fear!" responded Bill, helping himself to a beaker of barley-water with hands that bore indelible traces of tar and motor grease.

Bill was a vigorous youth, of the type that I have heard my friend Slipper describe as "a hardy young splinter"; he was supposed to be preparing for a diplomatic career, and in the meantime was apparently qualifying for the engine-room of a tramp steamer (of which, it may be added, his father would have made a most admirable skipper).

"Great stuff, honey, with a rice-pudding," went on Bill. "Mrs. Yeates, do you know I can make a topping rice-pudding?"

I noticed that Chichester, who was seated next to Philippa, suddenly ceased to chew.

"I can do you a very high-cla.s.s omelette, too," continued Bill, bas.h.i.+ng a brutal spoon into the fragile elegance of something that looked as if it were made of snow and spun gla.s.s. "I'm not so certain about my mutton-chops and beefsteak, but I've had the knives sharpened, anyhow!"

Chichester turned his head away, as from a jest too clownish to be worthy of attention. His cheek was large, and had a tender, beefy flush in it.

"In my house," he said to Philippa, "I never allow the knives to be sharpened. If meat requires a sharp knife it is not fit to eat."

"No, of course not!" replied Philippa, with nauseating hypocrisy.

"The principle on which my wife buys meat," I said to the table at large, "is to say to the butcher, 'I want the best meat in your shop; but don't show it to me!'"

"Mrs. Yeates is quite right," said Chichester seriously; "you should be able to trust your butcher."

The door flew open, and Lady Derryclare strode in, wrestling as she came with the strings of a painting ap.r.o.n, whose office had been no sinecure. She was tall and grey-haired, and was just sufficiently engrossed in her own pursuits to be an attractive hostess.

"It was perfectly lovely out there on the _Sheila_," she said, handing the ap.r.o.n to the butler, who removed it from the room with respectful disapproval. "If only she hadn't swung with the tide! I found my sketch had more and more in it every moment--turning into a panorama, in fact! Yachts would be perfect if they had long solid legs and stood on concrete."

I said that I thought a small island would do as well.

Lady Derryclare disputed this, and argued that an island would involve a garden, whereas the charm of a yacht was that one hideous bunch of flowers on the cabin table was all that was expected of it, and that kind people ash.o.r.e always gave it vegetables.

I said that these things did not concern me, as I usually neither opened my eyes or touched food while yachting. I said this very firmly, being not without fear that I might yet find myself hustled into becoming one of the party that was to go aboard the _Sheila_ that very night. They were to start on the top of the tide, that is to say, at 4 A.M. the following morning, to sail round the coast to a bay some thirty miles away, renowned for its pollack-fis.h.i.+ng, and there to fish.

Pollack-fis.h.i.+ng, as a sport, does not appeal to me; according to my experience, it consists in hauling up coa.r.s.e fish out of deep water by means of a hook baited with red flannel. It might appear poor-spirited, even effeminate, but nothing short of a press-gang should get me on board the _Sheila_ that night.

"Every expedition requires its martyr," said Lady Derryclare, helping herself to some of the best cold salmon it has been my lot to encounter, "it makes it so much pleasanter for the others; some one they can despise and say funny things about."

"The situation may produce its martyr," I said.

Lady Derryclare glanced quickly at me, and then at Chichester, who was now expounding to Philippa the method, peculiar to himself, by which he secured mountain mutton of the essential age.

At nine-thirty that night I sat with my hostess and my wife, engaged in a domestic game of Poker-patience. Shaded lights and a softly burning turf fire shed a mellow radiance; an exquisite completeness was added by a silken rustle of misty rain against the south window.

"Do you think they'll start in this weather?" said Philippa sympathetically.

"Seventy-five, and one full house, ten, that's eighty-five," said Lady Derryclare abstractedly. "Start? you may be quite sure they'll start!

Then we three shall have an empty house. That ought to count at least twenty!"

Lady Derryclare was far too good a hostess not to appreciate the charms of solitude; that Philippa and I should be looked upon as solitude was soothing to the heart of the guest, the heart that, however good the hostess, inevitably conceals some measure of apprehension.

"Has Mr. Chichester been on board the _Sheila_?" I enquired, with elaborate unconcern.

"_Never!_" said Lady Derryclare melodramatically.

"I believe he has done some yachting?" I continued.

"A five-hundred-ton steam yacht to the West Indies!" replied Lady Derryclare. "Bathrooms and a _chef_----"

There was a thumping of heavy feet outside the door, and the yacht party entered, headed by Lord Derryclare with a lighted lantern. They were clad in oilskins and sou'-westers; Bill had a string of onions in one hand and a sponge-bag in the other; Chichester carried a large gold-mounted umbrella.

"You look as if you were acting a charade," said Lady Derryclare, shuffling the cards for the next game, the game that would take place when the pleasure-seekers had gone forth into the rain. "The word is Fare-well, I understand?"

It occurred to me that to fare well was the last thing that Chichester was likely to do; and, furthermore, that the same thing had occurred to him.

"'Fare thee well, my own Mary Anne!'" sang Lord Derryclare, in a voice like a ba.s.soon, and much out of tune. "It's a dirty night, but the gla.s.s is rising, and" (here he relapsed again into song) "'We are bound for the sea, Mary Anne! We are bound for the sea!'"

"Then we're to meet you on Friday?" said Philippa, addressing herself to Chichester in palpable and egregious consolation.

"Dear lady," replied Chichester tartly, "in the South of Ireland it is quite absurd to make plans. One is the plaything of the climate!"

"All aboard," said Lord Derryclare, with a swing of his lantern.

As they left the room the eye of Bill met mine, not without understanding.

"Now D's perfectly happy," remarked Lady Derryclare, sorting her suits; "but I'm not quite so sure about the Super-Cargo."

The game progressed pleasantly, and we heard the rain enwrap the house softly, as with a mantle.

The next three days were spent in inglorious peace, not to say sloth.

On one of them, which was wet, I cleared off outstanding letters and browsed among new books and innumerable magazines: on the others, which were fine, I ran the ladies in the car back into the hills, and pottered after grouse with a venerable red setter, while Lady Derryclare painted, and Philippa made tea. When not otherwise employed, I thanked heaven that I was not on board the _Sheila_.

On Thursday night came a telegram from the yacht:

"Ronnie's flotilla in; luncheon party to-morrow; come early.--BILL."