She spoke to Bingham, and touched his arm with her hand as if to ask for his support.

Boreham saw that he was excluded. It was obvious, and he stood staring after them, full of indignation.

"I shall see you later," he said in a dry voice. How did it all happen?

As soon as they were on the terrace, May released Bingham's arm.

"You want to get a rest before you go to the Hardings," he said. Then he added, in a voice that threw out the words merely as a remark which demanded no answer, "Was it physical--or--moral or both? Umph!" he went on. "Now, we have only a step to make. It's the third doorway!"

CHAPTER XVII

A TEA PARTY

Mrs. Harding had not succeeded in finding some chance of "casually"

asking Mrs. Potten to have tea with her, but she had secured the Dashwoods. That was something. Mrs. Harding's drawing-room was s.p.a.cious and looked out on the turreted walls of Christ Church. The house witnessed to Mrs. Harding's private means.

"We have got Lady Dashwood in the further room," she murmured to some ladies who arrived punctually from the Sale in St. Aldates, "and we nearly got the Warden of Kings."

The navete of Mrs. Harding's remark was quite unconscious, and was due to that absence of humour which is the very foundation stone of sn.o.bbishness.

"But the Warden is coming to fetch his party home," added Mrs. Harding, cheerfully.

Harding, too, was in good spirits. He was all patriotism and full of courteous consideration for his friends. So heartened was he that, after tea, at the suggestion of Bingham, he sat down to the piano to sing a duet with his wife. This was also a sort of touching example of British respectability with a dash of "go" in it!

Bingham was turning over some music.

"What shall it be, Tina?" asked Harding, whose repertoire was limited.

"This!" said Bingham, and he placed on the piano in front of Hording the duet from "Becket."

The room was crowded, khaki prevailing. "All the women are workers,"

Mrs. Harding had explained.

Gwendolen Scott was there, of course, still conscious of the ten-shilling note in the pocket of her coat. Mrs. Potten had gone, along with the Buckinghamshire collar, just as if neither had ever existed.

Boreham was there, talking to one or two men in khaki, because he could not get near May Dashwood. She had now somehow got wedged into a corner over which Bingham was standing guard.

At the door the Warden had just made his appearance. He had got no further than the threshold, for he saw his hostess about to sing and would not advance to disturb her.

From where he stood May Dashwood could be plainly seen, and Bingham stooping with his hands on his knees, making an inaudible remark to her.

The remark that gentleman was actually making was: "You'll have a treat presently--the greatest surprise in your life."

Mrs. Harding stood behind her husband. She was dressed with strict regard to the last fashion. Dressing in each fashion as it came into existence she used to call quite prettily, "the simple truth about it."

Since the war she called it frankly and seriously "the true economy."

Her face usually expressed a superior self-a.s.surance, and now it wore also a look of indulgent amiability. Her whole appearance suggested a happy peac.o.c.k with its tail spread, and the surprise which Bingham predicted came when she opened her mouth and, instead of emitting screams in praise of diamonds and of Paris hats (as one would have expected), she piped in a small melancholy voice the following pathetic inquiry--

"Is it the wind of the dawn that I hear in the pine overhead?"

And then came Harding's growling baritone, avoiding any mention of cigars or c.o.c.ktails and making answer--

"No! but the noise of the deep as it hollows the cliffs of the land."

Mrs. Harding--

"Is there a voice coming up with the voice of the deep from the strand, One coming up with the song in the flush of the glimmering red?"

Mr. Harding--

"Love that is born of the deep coming up with the sun from the sea."

Bingham was convulsed with inward laughter. May tried to smile a little--at the incongruity of the singers and the words they sang; but her thoughts were all astray. The Warden was here--so near!

No one else was in the least amused. Boreham was plainly worried, and was staring through his eyegla.s.s at Bingham's back, behind which May Dashwood was half obliterated. Gwendolen Scott had only just caught sight of the Warden and had flushed up, and wore an excited look on her face. She was glancing at him with furtive glances--ready to bow. Now she caught his eye and bowed, and he returned the bow very gravely.

Lady Dashwood was leaning back in her chair listening with resigned misery.

May looked straight before her, past Bingham's elbow. She knew the song from Becket well. Words in the song were soon coming that she dreaded, because of the Warden standing there by the door.

The words came--

"Love that is born of the deep coming up with the sun from the sea, Love that can shape or can shatter a life till the life shall have fled."

She raised her eyes to the Warden. She could see his profile. It looked n.o.ble among the faces around him, as he stood with his head bent, apparently very much aloof, absorbed in his own thoughts.

He, of all men she had ever met, ought to have understood "love that is born of the deep," and did not. He turned his head slightly and met her eyes for the flash of a second. It was the look of a man who takes his last look.

She did not move, but she grasped the arms of her chair and heard no more of the music but sounds, vaguely drumming at her ears, without meaning.

She did not even notice Bingham's movement, the slow cautious movement with which he turned to see what had aroused her emotion. When he knew, he made a still more cautious and imperceptible movement away from her; the movement of a man who discerns that he had made a step too far and wishes to retrace that step without being observed.

May did not even notice that the song was over and that people were talking and moving about.

"We are going, May," said Lady Dashwood. "Mr. Boreham has to go and hunt for a ten-shilling note that Mrs. Potten thinks she dropped at Christ Church. She has just sent me a letter about it. She can't remember the staircase. In any case we have to go and pick up our purchases there, so we are all going together."

"She's always dropping things," said Boreham, who had taken the opportunity of coming up and speaking to May. "She may have lost the note anywhere between here and Norham Gardens. She's incorrigible."

The little gathering was beginning to melt away. Harding and Bingham had hurried off on business, and there was n.o.body now left but Boreham and the party from King's and Mrs. Harding, who was determined to help in the search for Mrs. Potten's lost note.

"Miss Scott is coming back with me--to help wind up things at the Sale,"

said Mrs. Harding, "and on our way we will go in and help you."

Gwendolen's first impulse, when Mrs. Potten's note was discussed, was to get behind somebody else so as not to be seen. Would Mr. Harding and Mr.

Bingham remember about the extra note? Probably--so her second impulse was to say aloud: "I wonder if it's the note I quite forgot to give to Mrs. Potten? I've got it somewhere." Alas! this impulse was short-lived.

Ever since she had put the note in her pocket, the mental image of an umbrella had been before her eyes. She had begun to consider that mental umbrella as already a real umbrella and hers. She walked about already, in imagination, under it. She might have planned to spend money that had fallen into her hands on sweets. That would have been the usual thing; but no, she was going to spend it on something very useful and necessary. That ten shillings, in fact, so carelessly flung aside by Mrs. Potten, was going to be spent in a way very few girls would think of. To spend it on an umbrella was wonderfully virtuous and made the whole affair a sort of duty.