"Well, it's only my tennis-frock," said Toni, her first involuntary qualms driven away by the friendly sound in Owen's voice. "We'll go back and finish now. You'll come, Owen? I'll tell Maggie to bring back the food."

"No, don't bother." He spoke quietly. "I'll go and brush off some of the London dust while you and your friends finish your supper. I'll have a bite later on. Don't worry about me." He turned to the boy. "I'm afraid we're in for a storm. I felt a few drops as I came up the drive."

Somewhat reluctantly, Toni left her husband and returned to the dining-room, where the Tobies anxiously awaited her coming. They had practically finished their meal, and a few moments later rose from the table and went into the drawing-room, where Toni presently excused herself and went in search of her husband.

She found him in the library, where Andrew had just brought him a slender repast; and even the un.o.bservant Toni was struck by the look of fatigue which brooded over his face as he sat poring over some closely-written sheets.

"Owen, I'm sure you ought not to do that now. Do leave it till to-morrow and come and listen to some music in the drawing-room instead."

She laid one small hand on the sheets as though to wrest them from his grasp; but he lifted her fingers aside with a rather weary gesture.

"No, dear, I can't leave this." His voice was flat and toneless. "I've promised to send it off the first thing to-morrow morning, and there's a lot to be done yet."

"But I'm sure you're ill! Have you got neuralgia again?"

"A little--oh, it's nothing, only the thunder in the air. You might tell Andrews to bring me some phenacetin, will you, dear? And now, my child, run away to your guests--they'll think it queer if you leave them alone much longer."

Toni turned obediently to the door, but she was not yet easy in her mind.

"Owen, are you sure there is nothing I can do?"

"Nothing, thank you, dear. I believe the storm is pa.s.sing after all."

He spoke the truth, for with a few more mutterings the thunder died away in the distance; and though the promised coolness did not come, both Owen and Toni were relieved by the lightening atmosphere--Toni because she was an arrant coward where thunderstorms were concerned; Owen because he felt that the clash of the elements would render the neuralgic pains in his head almost unbearable.

For long after Toni, relieved, had gone back to her visitors he sat doing nothing, lacking the energy to attack his task. Now and then he heard a few notes on the piano, and once he opened the door to listen to the elder Miss Peach's rendering of a song he knew, for Mollie Peach had a sweet, limpid soprano voice which no amount of chatter and noisy laughter could destroy.

When, however, the young man from Sandhurst started to shout a comic song, Owen shut the door hastily and wished the boy at Jericho.

He began to think the visitors would never go. At first he had hoped that their departure would set Toni free to help him after all; but when the clock in the hall chimed the half hour after ten, and still the music and laughter continued, he knew it was useless to expect any aid to-night.

At eleven the party broke up. The bicycles were brought round, and the four went gaily out of the front door to light lamps and see to suspiciously slack tyres.

Owen had charged Toni with polite messages to the two girls; and they, being somewhat in awe of a real live writer, were not sorry to avoid a meeting with their host; but Toni seemed so loth to part with them that she detained them all on the steps, chattering eagerly while the stars winked down out of the clearing sky and the owls hooted in melancholy fashion from the tops of the tall trees behind the house.

Finally the last farewells were said, the last appointments made; and Toni, yawning, turned to Andrews and bade him lock up safely.

She was still yawning when she came into the library a moment later; and in the lamplight Owen caught a glimpse of her little red mouth gaping behind her hand as she came up to the table.

"How sleepy I am!" Indeed her eyes were bright, like those of a sleepy child. "Aren't you coming, Owen? It's ever so late."

"Why didn't you pack your friends off a little earlier then?"

"Oh, I didn't want them to go." She yawned childishly once more.

"Owen"--suddenly a thought struck her--"you're not cross, are you? You didn't mind me having them here? You know, I thought it was going to be a storm----"

"Of course I didn't mind," he said, disarmed by her sudden appeal. "It was my fault for turning up unexpectedly. But now, Toni, supposing you run away to bed? I really must finish this work, and it's getting late."

She agreed, docilely, and kissing him lightly, ran away to bed as she was commanded, falling asleep as soon as she was safely there.

But Owen sat late in the library--sat, indeed, till the short summer night began to recede with stealthy, sliding footsteps before the victorious onrush of the dawn; and in those quiet, lamp-lit hours he asked himself despairingly why he had been in such haste to marry.

One consolation lay in the fact that Toni herself had not the slightest idea that her marriage was anything but a success. She did not know that her idleness, her incessant chatter about trivial things, her constant interruptions, her unauthorized intrusions into the privacy of his working hours, worried him almost beyond measure.

Bubbling over with youth and joy, she had no eyes for the look of strain, of weariness on another's face; and to her it seemed quite right that her husband should write and study while she danced through the summer hours as she would.

He liked his work, she supposed; and in Toni's world it was the usual thing for the men to work to support their wives. But that the wives had equal duties, that it was theirs to share the burdens of the men's spiritual and mental labour, she had, as yet, no idea.

"At least," said Owen wearily to himself, as he rose stiffly from his chair and moved to the oriel window to watch the marvel of the dawn, "at least I have made her happy; and as for me, it's my own mistake, and I must bear the consequences!"

With which philosophical reflection he extinguished the lamp and went slowly upstairs to bed.

CHAPTER XIII

In after days Toni always looked back to the afternoon of the Vicarage Bazaar as the occasion on which her eyes were opened ruthlessly to the cruelty of life.

The day began auspiciously enough. It was August now, a hot, languorous August, when the river lay veiled in a mist of heat, and the air, even in the early morning, was a sea of liquid gold. There were wonderful, magical nights, too, nights of mellow moonlight and sweet, mysterious perfumes, nights when a breath of clean, fragrance from distant bean-fields mingled with the richer, heavier scent of roses and Madonna lilies.

To Toni the summer had been one long time of enchantment. From the moment when she opened her eyes in the dawn, and ran to the window to see the hills shimmering in the heat, and the river sparkling with the peculiar silvery sheen of early morning, to the moment when she took her last stroll in the garden at night, and saw the stars come out in the darkening sky, while the white owls hooted mournfully in the tall trees, all, to Toni, was happiness and joy.

There is no doubt that people who are not introspective lead the happiest lives. Toni, not being given to wasting her time in reflection or self-a.n.a.lysis, remained happily unconscious of the fact that her life during that splendid summer was a very idle one. Like a good many other girls, she considered that a strenuous game on the tennis-court or a stiff pull up the river ent.i.tled her to as much subsequent leisure as she desired; and she enjoyed the slight fatigue consequent on these exertions with a virtuous sense of having really done some work which ent.i.tled her to a holiday.

She did not see very much of her husband; and sometimes she felt, with a slight pang of remorse, that before their marriage she had really taken more interest in his work than she found time to do nowadays. Not that he ever seemed to expect anything from her in that way. Once or twice, in the earlier days of their married life, he had been led into discussing various features of the review with her, and she had really tried hard to listen intelligently, and understand what he was talking about; but somehow he seemed to guess that the subjects did not interest her; and for the last few weeks he had confined his conversations with her to the little trivial happenings of every day.

He didn't mind, she supposed. He must get plenty of the old _Bridge_ at the office; and anyway it was far more of a change for him, when he came home, to talk of other things, even though they were in one sense less important.

She herself was perfectly happy; and had she been asked, she would certainly have said that Owen was in a state of equal bliss. Moreover, seeing that he had chosen her out of a world of women to be his wife, she never stopped to ask herself whether or no she came up to his standard of wifely perfection.

And considering her peculiarly blind and unquestioning att.i.tude of mind on the subject of her relation to her husband, the awakening which presently came was doubly painful.

The occasion, as has been stated, was that of the Vicarage Bazaar, an annual function held in the Vicarage gardens in the middle of August; and since Mrs. Madgwick, the Vicar's wife, had from motives of parochial diplomacy established some sort of intimacy with the young mistress of Greenriver, she had pressed Toni into her service as the great day came round.

With Molly and Cynthia Peach, Toni was to a.s.sist at the flower-stall, which was always, so the Tobies a.s.sured her, certain of patronage; and by ten o'clock on the morning of the day, Toni was at the Vicarage, laden with ma.s.ses of blossoms sent from Greenriver as a contribution to the stall.

From that moment until the hour of lunch, to which she was detained almost by force, Toni worked like a veritable busy bee, running errands, doing odd jobs, and, in the intervals, arranging the flowers on the stall, until hands and feet were both weary.

Having finished the hurried and uncomfortable meal, consisting chiefly of tinned tongue and a rather out-of-date cream cheese, Toni was allowed to run home to change her dress; and at half-past two precisely she was back, robed in the daintiest, filmiest white lawn gown, to take her place with the other stallholders, in readiness for the opening ceremony, performed, much to the delight of the entire Madgwick family, by a real d.u.c.h.ess.

The d.u.c.h.ess had little to say and said it very badly; but she was duly applauded and presented with a bouquet by a small white-robed child, stiff with starch and self-consciousness; after which her Grace descended thankfully from the little platform erected for her speech, and fulfilled the second and easier half of her duty by making the round of the stalls and spending a strictly equal amount at each one.

By now Toni had a good many acquaintances in the neighbourhood, and was pleased to see Mrs. Anstey smiling at her as she inquired the price of a magnificent bunch of sweet-peas which had come from the gardens of Greenriver.

Toni told her the price, and she forthwith bought the flowers, greatly to Toni's pleasure, for she loved her sweet-peas and had hoped, rather childishly, that someone nice would buy them.

As she was handing over the change, Toni summoned up courage to ask after Miss Lynn, and Mrs. Anstey smiled.