Virginia Pomeroy

GREY TOR INN

HERE beginneth the chronicle of the dreadfullest drive that ever was driven. I pitied Sir Archibald with my whole heart to be left behind with Greytoria and me, but what else could be done? There was a mist when we started which degenerated after a bit into an intermittent drizzle, and at intervals the wind blew a young tornado. The road was dreary, but fascinating in its broad stretches of loneliness. We passed green field and brown moor in turn, with all the trees looking grey in the mist, and here and there the brawling of a stream to break the silence. Sometimes there was a woodman working in a roadside copse, sometimes a goggled stone-breaker pursuing his monoto- | | 150 nous task, sometimes a carrier bending beneath his weight of fagots. If it had not been for the flaming gorse and the groups of red cattle, there would have been no colour in the landscape. My spirits kept their normal height for the first six or eight miles, but they sank little by little as the hills grew in number and increased in height. Sir Archibald refused to let me walk, and it made me wretched to see him stalking be-side the pony chaise, appealing to Greytoria's pride, courage, conscience, ambition, and sense of decency, in turn, and mostly without avail. We kept the best-travelled road, but it seemed to lead us farther and farther from Grey Tor, which had quite disappeared from the horizon and could not be used as a landmark. There could be no conversation either going up or down hill, as Sir Archibald was too breathless and busy. I, sitting in state, punctuated the ascents and descents, as long as I had strength, with agreeable persiflage something in this wise:—

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"The guide-book says, 'Pedestrianism is doubtless the ideal manner of touring in Devonshire. Only on foot is it possible to view the more romantic scenery. Motors are not advised and bicycles discouraged.'"

Sir Archibald would smile, say something under his breath, and whack Greytoria.

"Sir Archibald, there is a place in these parts where the devil is said to have died of cold; it must be just here."

"Sir Archibald, do 'e knaw I think we'm pixy-led? When Devonshire folk miss the path home at night and go astray, they'm 'pixy-led.'"

If we two poor wayfarers could have sat quietly beside each other and chatted in 'e dimpsey light, it would not have been a bit bad, but there was something eternally doing. When the drag was n't being put on or off, the whip was being agitated, or Sir Archibald was looking for a house to ask the way. Never was there such a route from one spot to another as the one we took from Wid- | | 152 dington-in-the-Wolds to the Grey Tor Inn. If it was seven miles as the swallow flies, it was twenty-seven as Greytoria flew. The dinner hour passed, and the luncheon baskets, with all other luggage, were in the motor. Sir Archibald's last information, obtained from an unintelligible boy driving a cow, was to the effect that we were only two miles from home.

"She may manage it and she may not," said my squire, looking savagely at Greytoria. "If I only knew whether she can't or she won't, I should deal with her differently."

The rain now came down in earnest. Part of my mind was forever toiling up or creeping down a hill with the pony, and another part was spent in keeping my umbrella away from Sir Archibald's hat, on those rare occasions when he was by my side. A woman may have the charms of Cleopatra or Helen of Troy, but if she cannot keep her parasol or umbrella away from a man's hat, her doom is sealed.

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How I hate this British climate! How I hate to wear always and always stout shoes, sensible clothes, serviceable hats, short skirts, looking like a frump in the intervals of sunshine, that I may be properly attired when it rains! I shed a few secret tears now and then for sheer down-heartedness and discouragement. I was desperately cold, and my wetting had given me a feverish, teeth-chattering sort of feeling. Hungry I was, too, and in such a rage with the beastly pony that I wished she had been eaten in the French Revolution; she was too old to be tender, even then.

Now ensued a brief, all too brief, season of content on a fairly level bit of road. It was not over an eighth of a mile in length, and must have been an accident on the part of Nature. I was so numb and so sleepy that I just heard Sir Archibald's sigh of gratitude as he took his seat for a moment beside me, and then I subsided into a semi-comatose state, too tired to make even one more ex- | | 154 piring effort to be agreeable. I am not clear as to the next few moments, in which I felt a sudden sense of warmth and well-being and companionship. I must have dropped off into a sort of dream, and in the dream I felt the merest touch, just the brush of something on my cheek, or I thought I did. Slight as it was there was something unaccustomed about it that made me come hastily into the conscious world, and my waking was made the more speedy by a sudden stir and noise and ejaculation. We had come to another hill, and Sir Archibald had evidently wished for once to omit the walking-up process. Greytoria, outraged in her deepest sensibilities by the unwonted addition of Sir Archibald's weight to her burdens, braced her hind legs firmly and proceeded to achieve the impossible by slithering backward down the bill. Sir Archibald leaped out on the one side; I put the drag on, or off, which-ever is wrong, and leaped out on the other.

He adjusted the drag and gave Greytoria | | 155 a clip that she will describe to her grand-children on future winter evenings. I, with matchless presence of mind, got behind the pony chaise and put my shoulder under the back to break its descent. And so we wound wearily up the hill, and on reaching the top, saw the lighted hotel just ahead of us.

In silence we traversed the few remaining yards, each busy with his own thought. Silently we entered the gate and gave Greytoria to the waiting groom. Silently and stiffly I alighted from the chaise, helped by Sir Archibald's supporting arm. He held my hand a second longer than was necessary; held it, half dropped it, and held it again; or did something unusual with it that was widely separated from an ordinary goodnight "shake."

There was no harm in that, for the most unsentimental man feels a sort of brotherly sympathy for a damp, cold, hungry, tired, nice girl.

But about that other—episode? . . . Of | | 156 course if he did, I should resent it bitterly; but if it were only a dream I must not blame him even in thought. . . . There is always the risk that a man might misunderstand the frank good-fellowship in which we American girls are brought up, and fail to realize that with all our nonsense we draw the line just as heavily, and in precisely the same place as our British cousins. . . . But why do I think about it any more? . . . It would n't be a bit like him, so probably he did n't. . . . In fact it is so entirely out of character that he simply couldn't. . . . And yet I suppose the number of men who actually could n't, is comparatively small.