MAKING A START

Self-possession was one of Jimmy's leading characteristics, but for the moment he found himself speechless. This girl had been occupying his thoughts for so long that--in his mind--he had grown very intimate with her. It was something of a shock to come suddenly out of his dreams, and face the fact that she was in reality practically a stranger. He felt as one might with a friend whose memory has been wiped out. It went against the grain to have to begin again from the beginning after all the time they had been together.

A curious constraint fell upon him.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Pitt?" she said, holding out her hand.

Jimmy began to feel better. It was something that she remembered his name.

"It's like meeting somebody out of a dream," said Molly. "I have sometimes wondered if you were real. Everything that happened that 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 pa.s.sed 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 amus.e.m.e.nt.

"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 a.n.a.lyze, 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 pa.s.sed 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.

But the eyes that met his were those of a child.

As they stood there, the horse, which had been cropping in a perfunctory manner at the short gra.s.s by the roadside, raised its head, and neighed impatiently. There was something so human about the performance that Jimmy and the girl laughed simultaneously. The utter materialism of the neigh broke the spell. It was a noisy demand for food.

"Poor Dandy!" said Molly. "He knows he's near home, and he knows it's his dinner-time."

"Are we near the castle, then?"

"It's a long way round by the road, but we can cut across the fields. Aren't these English fields and hedges just perfect! I love them. Of course, I loved America, but--"

"Have you left New York long?" asked Jimmy.

"We came over here about a month after you were at our house."

"You didn't spend much time there, then."

"Father had just made a good deal of money in Wall Street. He must have been making it when I was on the Lusitania. He wanted to leave New York, so we didn't wait. We were in London all the winter. Then, we went over to Paris. It was there we met Sir Thomas Blunt and Lady Julia. Have you met them? They are Lord Dreever's uncle and aunt."

"I've met Lady Julia."

"Do you like her?"

Jimmy hesitated.

"Well, you see--"