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An unwonted flush in her cheeks and a brightness in her deep eyes rendered her perfectly captivating. "I haven't seen you looking so well and so pretty for ever such a long time," I said. The flush deepened. "You and Barbara have done me all the good in the world. You always do. Northlands is a sort of Fontaine de Jouvence for weary people." That was as graceful as could be.
We gave a carefully selected dinner-party or two, and accepted on his behalf a few discreet invitations. At these entertainments whether at Northlands or elsewhere we caused it to be understood that the lion, being sick, should not be asked to roar.
In the midst of it the rain came not as it comes upon us of the northlands, but in a sudden, choking, blinding deluge. "The blood of the kill," thought Tarzan, huddling himself closer to the bole of the great tree beneath which he stood. He was close to the edge of the jungle, and at a little distance he had seen two hills before the storm broke; but now he could see nothing.
Nobody had fainted or shed tears; it was over in a perfectly well-bred way. At lunch Susan, between Liosha and Jaffery, became the centre of attention and saved conversation from constraint. To Doria, who had lingered at Northlands, in order to lose no time in setting herself right with Jaffery, her own phrase the ordinary table small-talk would have been an ordeal.
"Even we publishers have our ideals and our purest is to distribute through the world the works of a man of genius." So Doria having telephoned for permission to come and see us on urgent business, arrived at Northlands late in the afternoon, full of the virtues of Wittekind and the vices of Jaffery.
I say the whole situation, because, when she returned to Northlands, she found there a haggard ogre who for the first time in his life had eaten a canary's share of an excellent dinner, imploring me to tell him whether he should enlist for a soldier, or commit suicide, or lie prone on Doria's doormat until it should please her to come out and trample on him.
I did what I ought to have done on my first visit; I brought the tragic lumber to Northlands, and having made a bonfire in a corner of the kitchen garden, burned the whole lot. Why Jaffery had not got rid of the evidence of Adrian's guilt, I could not at the time imagine. It was only later that I heard the trivial and mechanical reason.
"Let us have a final drink," said I. We drank, chatted a while, and went to bed. When I awoke the next morning the Vesta was already four hours on her way to Madagascar. I have one failing. Even I, Hilary Freeth, of Northlands in the County of Berkshire, Esquire, Gent, have one failing, and I freely confess it. I cannot keep a key.
We kept the unreasonable pair at Northlands as long as we could, doing all that lay in our power to restore Adrian's idiotically impaired health. I motored him about the county; I took him to golf, a pastime at which I do not excel; and I initiated him into the invigorating mysteries of playing at robbers with Susan.
A glacier probably the very glacier we are seeking follows this track and grinds them all into shape. Every angle of action of motion, shall I say? is indelibly impressed upon each and every rock here about; so all these northlands, from sea to sea, the world over, have been laboriously licked into shape by the irresistible tide of ice.
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