To avoid the awkwardness of questions which could not be answered, all
that had been told Jon was:
"There's a girl coming down with Val for the week-end."
For the same reason, all that had been told Fleur was: "We've got a
youngster staying with us."
The two yearlings, as Val called them in his thoughts, met therefore in
a manner which for unpreparedness left nothing to be desired. They were
thus introduced by Holly:
"This is Jon, my little brother; Fleur's a cousin of ours, Jon."
Jon, who was coming in through a French window out of strong sunlight,
was so confounded by the providential nature of this miracle, that he
had time to hear Fleur say calmly: "Oh, how do you do?" as if he had
never seen her, and to understand dimly from the quickest imaginable
little movement of her head that he never had seen her. He bowed
therefore over her hand in an intoxicated manner, and became more silent
than the grave. He knew better than to speak. Once in his early life,
surprised reading by a nightlight, he had said fatuously "I was just
turning over the leaves, Mum," and his mother had replied: "Jon, never
tell stories, because of your face nobody will ever believe them."
The saying had permanently undermined the confidence necessary to the
success of spoken untruth. He listened therefore to Fleur's swift and
rapt allusions to the jolliness of everything, plied her with scones and
jam, and got away as soon as might be. They say that in delirium tremens
you see a fixed object, preferably dark, which suddenly changes shape
and position. Jon saw the fixed object; it had dark eyes and passably
dark hair, and changed its position, but never its shape. The
knowledge that between him and that object there was already a secret
understanding (however impossible to understand) thrilled him so that
he waited feverishly, and began to copy out his poem--which of course
he would never dare to--show her--till the sound of horses' hoofs roused
him, and, leaning from his window, he saw her riding forth with Val. It
was clear that she wasted no time, but the sight filled him with grief.
He wasted his. If he had not bolted, in his fearful ecstasy, he might
have been asked to go too. And from his window he sat and watched them
disappear, appear again in the chine of the road, vanish, and emerge
once more for a minute clear on the outline of the Down. 'Silly brute!'
he thought; 'I always miss my chances.'
Why couldn't he be self-confident and ready? And, leaning his chin on
his hands, he imagined the ride he might have had with her. A week-end
was but a week-end, and he had missed three hours of it. Did he know any
one except himself who would have been such a flat? He did not.