Jim looked over her shoulder and saw the three wheeling their bicycles up the drive.

"Gerda," he remarked, "is a prettier thing every time I see her."

CHAPTER VII

GERDA

1

It rained so hard, so much harder even than usual, that Sunday, that only Barry and Gerda went to walk. Barry walked in every kind of weather, even in the July of 1920.

To-day after lunch Barry said "I'm going to walk over the downs. Anyone coming?" and Gerda got up silently, as was her habit. Kay stretched himself and yawned and said "Me for the fireside. I shall have to walk every day for three weeks after to-day," for he was going to-morrow on a reading-party. Rodney and Jim were playing a game of chess that had lasted since breakfast and showed every sign of lasting till bed-time; Neville and Mrs. Hilary were talking, and Grandmama was upstairs, having her afternoon nap.

2

They tramped along, waterproofed and bare-headed, down the sandy road.

The rain swished in Gerda's golden locks, till they clung dank and limp about her cheeks and neck; it beat on Barry's gla.s.ses, so that he took them off and blinked instead. The trees stormed and whistled in the southerly wind that blew from across Merrow Downs. Barry tried to whistle down it, but it caught the sound from his puckered lips and whirled it away.

Through Merrow they strode, and up onto the road that led across the downs, and there the wind caught them full, and it was as if buckets of water were being flung into their faces. The downs sang and roared; the purple-grey sky shut down on the hill's shoulder like a tent.

"Lord, what fun," said Barry, as they gasped for breath.

Gerda was upright and slim as a wand against the buffeting; her white little face was stung into sh.e.l.l-pink; her wet hair blew back like yellow seaweed.

Barry thought suddenly of Nan, who revelled in storms, and quickly shut his mind on the thought. He was schooling himself to think away from Nan, with her wild animal grace and her flashing mind and her cruel, careless indifference.

Gerda would have walked like this forever. Her wide blue eyes blinked away the rain; her face felt stung and lashed, yet happy and cold; her mouth was stiff and tight. She was part of the storm; as free, as fierce, as singing; though outwardly she was all held together and silent, only smiling a little with her shut mouth.

As they climbed the downs, the wind blew more wildly in their faces.

Gerda swayed against it, and Barry took her by the arm and half pushed her.

So they reached Newlands Corner, and all southern Surrey stormed below them, and beyond Surrey stormed Suss.e.x, and beyond Suss.e.x the angry, unseen sea.

They stood looking, and Barry's arm still steadied Gerda against the gale.

Gerda thought "It will end. It will be over, and we shall be sitting at tea. Then Sunday will be over, and on Monday he will go back to town."

The pain of that end of the world turned her cold beneath the glow of the storm. Then life settled itself, very simply. She must go too, and work with him. She would tell him so on the way home, when the wind would let them talk.

They turned their backs on the storm and ran down the hill towards Merrow. Gerda, light as a leaf on the wind, could have run all the way back; Barry, fit and light too, but fifteen years ahead of her, fell after five minutes into a walk.

Then they could talk a little.

"And to-morrow I shall be plugging in town," sighed Barry.

Gerda always went straight to her point.

"May I come into your office, please, and learn the work?"

He smiled down at her. Splendid child!

"Why, rather. Do you mean it? When do you want to come?"

"To-morrow?"

He laughed. "Good. I thought you meant in the autumn. ... To-morrow by all means, if you will. As a matter of fact we're frightfully short-handed in the office just now. Our typist has crocked, and we haven't another yet, so people have to type their own letters."

"I can do the typing," said Gerda, composedly. "I can type quite well."

"Oh, but that'll be dull for you. That's not what you want, is it?

Though, if you want to learn about the work, it's not a bad way ... you get it all pa.s.sing through your hands.... Would you really take on that job for a bit?"

Gerda nodded.

They were rapid and decided people; they did not beat about the bush. If they wanted to do a thing and there seemed no reason why not, they did it.

"That's first-cla.s.s," said Barry. "Give it a trial, anyhow.... Of course you'll be on trial too; we may find it doesn't work. If so, there are plenty of other jobs to be done in the office. But that's what we most want at the moment."

Barry had a way of a.s.suming that people would want, naturally, to do the thing that most needed doing.

Gerda's soul sang and whistled down the whistling wind. It wasn't over, then: it was only beginning. The W.E.A. was splendid; work was splendid; Barry Briscoe was splendid; life was splendid. She was sorry for Kay at Cambridge, Kay who was just off on a reading party, not helping in the world's work but merely getting education. Education was inspiring in connection with Democracy, but when applied to oneself it was dull.

The rain was lessening. It fell on their heads more lightly; the wind was like soft wet kisses on their backs, as they tramped through Merrow, and up the lane to Windover.

3

They all sat round the tea-table, and most of them were warm and sleepy from Sunday afternoon by the fire, but Barry and Gerda were warm and tingling from walking in the storm. Some people prefer one sensation, some the other.

Neville thought "How pretty Gerda looks, pink like that." She was glad to know that she too looked pretty, in her blue afternoon dress. It was good, in that charming room, that they should all look agreeable to the eye. Even Mrs. Hilary, with her nervous, faded grace, marred by self-consciousness and emotion. And Grandmama, smiling and shrewd, with her old in-drawn lips; and Rodney, long and lounging and clever; Jim, square-set, sensible, clean-cut, beautiful to his mother and to his women patients, good for everyone to look at; Barry, brown and charming, with his quick smile; the boy Kay, with his pale, rounded, oval face, his violet eyes like his mother's, only short-sighted, so that he had a trick of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g them up and peering, and a mouth that widened into a happy sweetness when he smiled.

They were all right: they all fitted in with the room and with each other.

Barry said "I've not been idle while walking. I've secured a secretary.

Gerda says she's coming to work at the office for us for a bit. Now, at once."

He had not Gerda's knack of silence. Gerda would shut up tight over her plans and thoughts, like a little oyster. She was no babbler; she did things and never talked. But Barry's plans brimmed up and over.

Neville said "You sudden child! And in July and August, too.... But you'll have only a month before you join Nan in Cornwall, won't you?"

Gerda nodded, munching a b.u.t.tered scone.

Grandmama, like an old war-horse scenting the fray, thought "Is it going to be an affair? Will they fall in love? And what of Nan?" Then rebuked herself for forgetting what she really knew quite well, having been told it often, that men and girls in these days worked together and did everything together, with no thought of affairs or of falling in love.... Only these two were very attractive, the young Briscoe and the pretty child, Gerda.

Neville, who knew Gerda, and that she was certainly in love again (it happened so often with Gerda), thought "Shall I stop it? Or shall I let things take their course? Oh, I'll let them alone. It's only one of Gerda's childish hero-worships, and he'll be kind without flirting. It'll do Gerda good to go on with this new work she's so keen on. And she knows he cares for Nan. I shall let her go."