THERE they were in a punt on one of the silent upper reaches of the Thames above Moulsford; Venus in white serge, with a blue veil around hat and throat, reclining gracefully on the cushions, and Mars in white flannels standing, punt-pole in hand. It was one of those days when Spring, in exuberant mood, throws off her shyness and masquerades in the gorgeousness of Summer. The noontide vapours quivered over the sun-baked meadow beyond the tow-path, and the shadows beneath the willows on the opposite bank loomed black and cool. The punt was proceeding up a patch of blazing river, and the drops from the pole sparkled like diamonds. Just ahead there was a bend lapped in the violent shade of overhanging elms. “This is the nearest thing to Heaven,” said Lady Edna.
“Wait till we tie up under the trees and it’ll be Heaven itself,” said Godfrey.
Even in the boating times of peace this stretch was rarely frequented, being too far both for the London crowd whose general limit was Goring, and for the Oxford town excursionist who seldom pushed below Wallingford. Also the cognoscenti declared it an uninteresting bit of river, dull and flat, devoid of the unspeakable charm of Clevedon and Pangbourne, and therefore unworthy of especial consideration. Still, the River is the River. Talk to an Englishman of the River, and he will not think of the Severn or the Wye, or the historic highway between London Bridge and the sea, but of those few miles of England’s fairy-stream, the beloved haunts of beauty and gentleness and love and laughter, where all the cares of the world are soothed into dreamful ease and the vague passions and aspirations of youth are transformed into magical definition. To the Londoner, at any rate, it is as sacred as Westminster Abbey. So the stretches of loveliness pronounced dull by the superior, were never neglected, and even this remote section, on Sundays especially, had its sparse devotees. But now, in war-time, not a blade or oar or paddle, not a glistening punt-pole disturbed the sweet stillness of the waters. Only once, since they had left the boat-house, had a barge passed them; a barge gay as to its poop with yellow and red, a thin spiral of smoke from its cabin funnel proclaiming the cooking of the Sunday dinner, while the barge-folk lounged on deck, their eyes and attitudes suggestive of those who were already overfed on lotus, and one small, freckled sunwraith of a child flitted along the tow-path beside the mild old horse.
But half an hour had passed since then. The very meadows no longer showed the once familiar pairs of Sunday lovers. Were it not for the pleasant cows, it would have been a scene of lovely desolation.
“There,” said Godfrey, shipping the pole, and guiding the punt by the aid of the branches to a mooring. “Allow me to introduce you to Heaven.”
She kissed her hand to the greenery and the dark water and laughed lightly. “How d’ye do, Heaven?”
Godfrey turned from the rope which he had made fast and stumbled to the floor of the punt. She started up in alarm.
“Your foot, dear!”
He laughed. “It’s all right this time. Sometimes I forget it’s a fake.”
He sat beside her on the cushions and pointed to a basket in front of them. “Shall we start on the nectar and ambrosia, or is it too early?”
“Let us wait a bit and take in Heaven first. What on earth are you doing?” she asked, a moment afterwards, as he established himself elbows on knees and chin in hands, and stared close into her blue eyes.
“I’m taking in all the Heaven that matters to me,” said Godfrey.
“Do I matter so much?”
“You do.”
“Light me a cigarette,” said Lady Edna.
He obeyed, handed her one alight and she put it between her lips.
“I love doing that,” said he. “I’ve never done it for any other woman in my life.”
She arched her eyebrows. “Does his Sultanship think he’s conferring an unprecedented honour on a poor woman?”
“Oh, Edna!” His boyish face flushed suddenly. “You know what I mean. I never dreamed that a wonderful woman would ever dream of taking anything from my lips to hers. Look.” He lit another cigarette and held it out to her. “Let me have yours.”
“Baby!” she said, making the exchange.
All of which imbecility was very bad and sad and mad, but to the united youth in the punt it was peculiarly agreeable.
“What a difference from last week-end,” she said, contentedly, after a while.
“What happened then?”
“I had all the stuff-boxes in London down, Edgar included.”
“And my venerable sire. I remember. I was at the War Office all Sunday. And it poured with rain. What did you do with them?”
“I stroked them and fed them and put them through their little tricks,” she laughed. Then she added more seriously, “It happened to be a very important day for your father. The Government has gone crazy on finding out new forceful men—and clearing out the incompetent political hacks. Edgar’s just hanging on by the skin of his teeth, you know. Well, they’ve discovered your remarkable father, and last week-end they practically fixed it up with him. A new Ministry of Propaganda. Oh!” she laughed again. “I didn’t have such a bad time after all. But”—she sighed—“this is better. Don’t let us think of wars or politics or Edgars and such horrible things.” She threw her cigarette into the water, and bent down to the basket. “Let us lunch.”
It had been indeed an important day for Baltazar. The house near Moulsford, Lady Edna’s personal possession, a vast square, red-brick, late Georgian building, standing in grounds that reached down to the river, had been filled with anxiously chosen High and Mightinesses, among whom her husband, minister though he was, shone like an inferior satellite. It was the last move in the game on behalf of John Baltazar which she had played for many weeks.
“What are you asking that damned fellow for?” Edgar Donnithorpe had asked, looking at the list of guests.
“Because he amuses me.”
“He doesn’t amuse me,” snapped her husband.
He was a little thin man, with thin grey hair and a thin moustache and a thin voice. Up to a few months ago she had treated him with contemptuous tolerance. Now she had begun to dislike him exceedingly.
“If you don’t want to meet Mr. Baltazar,” she replied, “you can stay in London.”
They sparred in the unedifying manner of ill-assorted husband and wife.
“I’m sick of seeing this overbearing adventurer in my house,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. I’m not going to let you make a fool of yourself.”
“My dear man,” she replied cuttingly, “if I were looking out for a lover, this time I should take a young one.”
She laughed scornfully and swept away. Long smouldering resentment had been suddenly fanned into the flame of open hostility. She raged in her heart against him. Never before had he dared to insinuate such a taint in her political interest in any man. She, Lady Edna Donnithorpe, to carry on an intrigue with John Baltazar—the insult of it!
The next day brought a short but fierce encounter.
“You pretend to be jealous. You’re not. You’re envious. You’re envious of a bigger man than yourself. You’re afraid of him. You little minnows hate Tritons. I quite understand.”
In the wrath of a weak and foolish man he sputtered unforgettable words which no woman ever forgives. She faced him with lips as thin as his own, and her languorous eyes hardened into little dots of jade.
“You had better see to it that I don’t break you,” she said.
“Break me? How? Politically?” He laughed a thin laugh of derision. “In the first place you couldn’t. In the second you wouldn’t. What would become of your position if I were out of the Government?”
“I can very well look after myself,” she replied.
On Saturday morning he made some apology for loss of temper which she coldly accepted on condition of his courteous treatment of John Baltazar. And so it fell that, when the subject of all this to-do arrived at Moulsford, he found himself almost effusively welcomed by the negative Edgar, and thrust into the inner circle of the High and Mightinesses assembled. As the latter took Baltazar very seriously as a coming power in the country, and as Lady Edna’s attitude towards him was marked by no especial characteristic, Edgar Donnithorpe came to the unhappy conclusion that he had made a fool of himself, and during the informal discussion on the creation of the new Ministry, for which purpose the week-end party had gathered together, he had dared do little more than “just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike” when Baltazar’s name was mentioned. Which pusillanimity coming to his wife’s ears, deepened her resentment against him; and only Baltazar’s triumphal exit on the Monday morning restrained her from giving it practical expression. Sufficient for the day was the success thereof.
In the lazy punt, that gracious Spring morning, she strove to drive the last week-end from her thoughts. She revelled in the unusual and the audacious. Edgar had gone to Paris on an international conference. Only an ancient and faded Aunt, Lady L?titia Vardon, a sort of permanent aristocratic caretaker, was in the house; Godfrey the sole guest. And Aunt L?titia had caught a God-sent cold and was staying in bed. They two had the whole bright day before them, and the scented evening, with never a soul to obtrude on their idyllic communion. She had always snapped her fingers at convention. But, Lady Edna Donnithorpe, chartered libertine, had always observed the terms of her charter, her heart never having tempted her to break them. This delicious breach was a different matter altogether. She had even dared to put off two or three previously inv............