'I wish I had your cheery disposition! To me Buck MacGinnis seems a pretty important citizen. I wonder what he meant by "fix"?'

White, however, declined to leave the subject of Buck's more gifted rival.

'Sam's a college man, you know. That gives him a pull. He has brains, and can use them.'

'That was one of the points on which Buck MacGinnis reproached me.

He said it was not fair to use my superior education.'

He laughed.

'Buck's got no sense. That's why you find him carrying on like a porch-climber. It's his only notion of how to behave when he wants to do a job. And that's why there's only one man to keep your eye on in this thing of the Little Nugget, and that's Sam. I wish you could get to know Sam. You'd like him.'

'You seem to look on him as a personal friend. I certainly don't like Buck.'

'Oh, Buck!' said White scornfully.

We turned towards the house as the sound of the bell came to us across the field.

'Then you think we may count on Sam's arrival, sooner or later, as a certainty?' I said.

'Surest thing you know.'

'You will have a busy time.'

'All in the day's work.'

'I suppose I ought to look at it in that way. But I do wish I knew exactly what Buck meant by "fix".'

White at last condescended to give his mind to the trivial point.

'I guess he'll try to put one over on you with a sand-bag,' he said carelessly. He seemed to face the prospect with calm.

'A sand-bag, eh?' I said. 'It sounds exciting.'

'And feels it. I know. I've had some.'

I parted from him at the door. As a comforter he had failed to qualify. He had not eased my mind to the slightest extent.

Chapter 7

Looking at it now I can see that the days which followed Audrey's arrival at Sanstead marked the true beginning of our acquaintanceship.

Before, during our engagement, we had been strangers, artificially tied together, and she had struggled against the chain. But now, for the first time, we were beginning to know each other, and were discovering that, after all, we had much in common.

It did not alarm me, this growing feeling of comradeship. Keenly on the alert as I was for the least sign that would show that I was in danger of weakening in my loyalty to Cynthia, I did not detect one in my friendliness for Audrey. On the contrary, I was hugely relieved, for it seemed to me that the danger was past. I had not imagined it possible that I could ever experience towards her such a tranquil emotion as this easy friendliness. For the last five years my imagination had been playing round her memory, until I suppose I had built up in my mind some almost superhuman image, some G.o.ddess. What I was pa.s.sing through now, of course, though I was unaware of it, was the natural reaction from that state of mind. Instead of the G.o.ddess, I had found a companionable human being, and I imagined that I had effected the change myself, and by sheer force of will brought Audrey into a reasonable relation to the scheme of things.

I suppose a not too intelligent moth has much the same views with regard to the lamp. His last thought, as he enters the flame, is probably one of self-congratulation that he has arranged his dealings with it on such a satisfactory commonsense basis.

And then, when I was feeling particularly safe and complacent, disaster came.

The day was Wednesday, and my 'afternoon off', but the rain was driving against the windows, and the attractions of billiards with the marker at the 'Feathers' had not proved sufficient to make me face the two-mile walk in the storm. I had settled myself in the study. There was a n.o.ble fire burning in the grate, and the darkness lit by the glow of the coals, the dripping of the rain, the good behaviour of my pipe, and the reflection that, as I sat there, Glossop was engaged downstairs in wrestling with my cla.s.s, combined to steep me in a meditative peace. Audrey was playing the piano in the drawing-room. The sound came to me faintly through the closed doors. I recognized what she was playing. I wondered if the melody had the same a.s.sociations for her that it had for me.

The music stopped. I heard the drawing-room door open. She came into the study.

'I didn't know there was anyone here,' she said. 'I'm frozen. The drawing-room fire's out.'

'Come and sit down,' I said. 'You don't mind the smoke?'

I drew a chair up to the fire for her, feeling, as I did so, a certain pride. Here I was, alone with her in the firelight, and my pulse was regular and my brain cool. I had a momentary vision of myself as the Strong Man, the strong, quiet man with the iron grip on his emotions. I was pleased with myself.

She sat for some minutes, gazing into the fire. Little spurts of flame whistled comfortably in the heart of the black-red coals.

Outside the storm shrieked faintly, and flurries of rain dashed themselves against the window.

'It's very nice in here,' she said at last.

'Peaceful.'

I filled my pipe and re-lit it. Her eyes, seen for an instant in the light of the match, looked dreamy.

'I've been sitting here listening to you,' I said. 'I liked that last thing you played.'

'You always did.'

'You remember that? Do you remember one evening--no, you wouldn't.'

'Which evening?'

'Oh, you wouldn't remember. It's only one particular evening when you played that thing. It sticks in my mind. It was at your father's studio.'

She looked up quickly.

'We went out afterwards and sat in the park.'

I sat up thrilled.

'A man came by with a dog,' I said.

'Two dogs.'

'One surely!'

'Two. A bull-dog and a fox-terrier.'

'I remember the bull-dog, but--by Jove, you're right. A fox-terrier with a black patch over his left eye.'