“Seven counties!” interrupt I, sharply,
snapping the words out of his mouth. “Yes,
I know; you told me.”
The horses have been led away to the distant ale-house.
The coach stands forlorn and solitary on the moor.
Some of us, looking at the threatening aspect of the
weather, have suggested that we too should make
for shelter; but this suggestion is indignantly vetoed
by Mr. Parker.
“Rain! not a bit of it! It is not
thinking of raining! The wind! what is
the matter with the wind? Nice and fresh!
Much better than one of those muggy days, when you
can hardly breathe!”
The cloth is therefore laid, with the dead heather-flowers
beneath it, and the low leaden sky above. As
large stones as can be found have to be sought on
the moorland road to weight it, and hinder our banquet
from flying bodily away. It is at last spread—cold
lamb, cold partridges, chickens, mayonnaise,
cakes, pastry—they have just been arranged
in their defenceless nakedness under the eye of heaven,
when the rain begins. And, when it begins, it
begins to some purpose. It deceives us with no
false hopes—with no breakings in the serried
clouds—with no flying glimpses of blue
sky. Down it comes, straight,_straight_ down,
on the lamb, on the mayonnaise, splash into
the bitter. Each of us seizes the viand dearest
to his or her heart, and tries to shelter it beneath
his or her umbrella. But in vain! The great
slant storm reaches it under the puny defense.
Even Mr. Parker has to change the form of his
consolation, though not the spirit. He can no
longer deny that it is raining; but what he now says
is that it will not last—that it is only
a shower—that he is very glad to see it
come down so hard at first, as it is all the more
certain to be soon over.
Nobody has the heart to contradict him, though everybody
knows that it is a lie. Mrs. Huntley, at the
first drop, has made for the coach, and now sits in
it, serene and dry. Algy follows her, with a chicken
and a champagne bottle. I sit doggedly still,
where I am, on the cold moor.
Roger has not spoken to me since my rude reception
of him on arriving, but he now comes up to me.
“Had not you better follow her example?”
he asks, speaking rather formally, and looking toward
the coach, where, with, smiling profile and neat hair,
my rival is sitting, reveling among the flesh-pots.
Something in the sight of her sleek, smooth tidiness,
joined to the consciousness of my own miserable, blowsed
disorder, stings me more even than the rain-drops
are doing.
“Not I,” I answer, brusquely; “that
is what I trust I shall never do!”
He passes by my sneer without notice.
“In this rain you will be drenched in two minutes.”
“Apres!”
“Apres!” repeats, impatiently,
“apres? you will catch your death of
cold!”
