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And he chaffed her merrily. "Here's a tale if it ever leaks out Rodchurch way. Have you heard how Mrs. Dale behaved up in London? Went to the theater, and drunk more'n was good for her. Came out fair squiffy so's poor Mr. Dale, he felt quite disgraced." She was not intoxicated in an ugly way; her speech, her movements were unaffected, and yet the alcohol was troubling her brain.
He knew them nearly all, and gravely returned their grave salutations as they passed by. They were maid-servants and men-servants from Rodchurch, old people and quite young people, a few laborers and cottage-women; and they all walked slowly, not at first talking to one another, but smiling with introspective vagueness.
She was leaning back, fanning herself with her program, and he observed the roundness and whiteness of her neck, the flesh of her shoulder showing through the transparent sleeve of her blouse, the moistness and warmth of her open lips. Yet she had told him at Rodchurch Road Station that she was attractive only to his eyes, and that she could never again arouse desire in other men.
"Oh, yes, let's see. You say you're the man from Rodchurch! That's north or midlands, isn't it? You must ask in Room 45.... What say? Down south, is it? Then you're quite right to ask here. No, we haven't heard any more about it since yesterday." At the end of each fruitless day he emerged from the vast place of postponement feeling exhausted, dazed, stupefied. The sunlight made him blink.
Every morning he was forced to repeat the whole process of self-introduction. "Dale? Rodchurch, Hants. Let's see. What name did you say? Dale! Superseded eh?" But on the sixth morning somebody knew all about him. It was quite a superior sort of clerk, who announced that Mr. Dale and all that concerned Mr. Dale had been transferred to other hands, in another part of the building.
Hope you'll honor us with a call whenever you're passing. And if you can, give me a lift in the Courier. I may say it's my intention to patronize their advertisement columns regular, soon's ever I begin to feel my feet under me." "See Rodchurch Gossip next issue," said Mr. Silcox significantly. "Thanks. You're a trump." "Good-by, Miss Yorke." And he laughed.
The whole business was settled. Norah was to go as a paying guest to that place at Bournemouth, and Mavis would drive her over to Rodchurch Road and put her into the four-fifteen train. At the station they would meet a girl called Nellie Evans, whom by a happy chance Mrs.
Here and there Mavis had of course dabbed her small prettinesses blue china and a clock on the mantel-shelf, colored cushions, photographs of the children, views of Rodchurch High Street, the Chase, Rodhaven Pier; and the old and the new, the useful and the ornamental, alike whispered to her of fulfilled desires, gratified fancies, and William Dale. It was her husband's room.
About a mile out from Rodchurch they passed the Baptist chapel a supremely ugly little building that stood isolated and forlorn in a narrow banked enclosure among flat pasture fields and Mavis, making conversation, called Dale's attention to the tablet that largely advertised its date. "Eighteen thirty-seven, Will! That's a long time ago." "Yes," he said, "a many years back that takes one.
And yet out of this raw material he had built up the potent, complex, highly-dowered organism known to the world as Mr. Dale of Rodchurch. There was the pride and glory from such a start to have reached so magnificent a position. But he could not have done it not all of it without Mavis. It would be unkind to wake this dear bedfellow merely because he himself could not sleep.
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