Next day, in pitiful reaction, he presented to Mr. Marston a request to be allowed to commence his foreign tour immediately instead of, as had been previously arranged, in the beginning of the autumn.
“But, my dear fellow,” Mr. Marston expostulated, “you surely don’t want to go in the very middle of the cricket season, when you’re in such splendid form? Think what games you’ll be missing. There’s the Whittington match in August. We simply can’t do without you. And then there’s that game against Hogstead in September, in which you did so splendidly last year. It’s no good, my dear fellow, we simply can’t spare you.”
“I’m very sorry, sir,” he said, “but I do feel that I ought to be going out there soon, and July and August will be slack months--just the time to see people and form alliances. In the autumn they would be too busy to worry about me.”
Mr. Marston shrugged his shoulders. It was annoying, but still the business came first, he supposed.
“All right, my dear fellow. I daresay you are right. And I am glad to see you are so keen on your work. I only wish Gerald was.”
“Oh, but I think he is really, sir,” said Roland, who, for one horrible moment, had a feeling that he was playing a mean trick on Gerald. At school he had resented the way that little Mark-Grubber Shrimpton had gone up to Crusoe at the end of the hour to ask his questions. He had found a nasty name for such behavior then, and was there so much difference between Shrimpton’s thirst for knowledge and his own desire to travel when he might have been playing cricket? But Mr. Marston speedily reassured him.
“Oh, yes; Gerald--he’s keen enough of course, and, after all, he’s rather different. He’s known all along there was no necessity for him to over-exert himself, and I daresay he’s heard so much shop talked that he’s got pretty sick of the whole thing. You have come fresh to it.”
“Yes, yes, if you want to. I’ll ask Mr. Perkins to make an arrangement. I expect we’ll be able to get rid of you next week.”
Two days before his departure, as he was bounding downstairs on his way to lunch, Roland was suddenly confronted at the turn of the staircase below the second landing by a tall, graceful figure, in a wide-brimmed hat and light crinkly hair. He gave a surprised gasp. “I am so sorry,” he began; then saw that it was Beatrice. “Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Arnold?” It was rather dark and for a moment she did not recognize him.