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It was under such circumstances that I sat with Beverly-Jones. And it was in shaking hands at leaving that he said: "I do wish, old chap, that you could run up to our summer place and give us the whole of August!" and I answered, as I shook him warmly by the hand: "My dear fellow, I'd simply love to!" "By gad, then it's a go!" he said. "You must come up for August, and wake us all up!"
"He was to act as the stage manager of charades." They will shake their heads. They will understand. But what is this? I raise my eyes from the paper and I see Beverly-Jones hurriedly approaching from the house. He is hastily dressed, with flannel trousers and a dressing-gown. His face looks grave. Something has happened. Thank God, something has happened. Some accident! Some tragedy!
Poppleton, who has a summer place of his own, looked at the gates very critically. "Now, do you know what I'd have done with those gates, if they were mine?" he said. "No," said Beverly-Jones. "I'd have set them two feet wider apart; they're too narrow, old chap, too narrow." Poppleton shook his head sadly at the gates.
I could have stood it better my coming here, I mean if they hadn't come down to the station in a body to meet me in one of those long vehicles with seats down the sides: silly-looking men in coloured blazers and girls with no hats, all making a hullabaloo of welcome. "We are quite a small party," Mrs. Beverly-Jones had written. Small! Great heavens, what would they call a large one?
I kept my face as well as I could, trying to hide my exultation. The office burnt! Fine! Robinson's singed! Glorious! I hurriedly packed my things and whispered to Beverly-Jones farewell messages for the sleeping household. I never felt so jolly and facetious in my life. I could feel that Beverly-Jones was admiring the spirit and pluck with which I took my misfortune.
Beverly-Jones showed his new boat-house next and Poppleton knocked a hole in the side with a hammer to show that the lumber was too thin. "If that were my boat-house," he said, "I'd rip the outside clean off it and use shingle and stucco." It was, I noticed, Poppleton's plan first to imagine Beverly-Jones's things his own, and then to smash them, and then give them back smashed to Beverly-Jones.
I am all right to be shown an iron-and-steel plant, or a soda-water factory, or anything really wonderful, but being shown a house and grounds and trees, things that I have seen all my life, leaves me absolutely silent. "These big gates," said Beverly-Jones, "we only put up this year." "Oh," I said. That was all. Why shouldn't they put them up this year?
They were Dutch; all right, why not? They were an experiment. Very good; let them be so. I know nothing in particular to say about a Dutch experiment. I could feel that Beverly-Jones grew depressed as he showed me round. I was sorry for him, but unable to help. I realized that there were certain sections of my education that had been neglected.
"I'd knock the thing down and burn it," I answered. But I think I must have said it too fiercely. Beverly-Jones looked hurt and said nothing. Not that these people are not doing all they can for me. I know that. I admit it.
It was only yesterday afternoon that Beverly-Jones found me standing here in the gloom of some cedar-trees beside the edge of the pond and took me back so quietly to the house that I realized he thought I meant to drown myself. So I did.
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