Derrick brightened visibly at the suggestion. I heard him talking to Freda all the time that Sir John stood laughing and joking as to the comparative pleasures of yachting and shooting.
“I can’t tell,” said Freda, and there was a shade of sadness in her tone. Her voice was deeper than most women’s voices--a rich contralto with something striking and individual about it. I could hear her quite plainly; but Derrick spoke less distinctly--he always had a bad trick of mumbling.
“You see I am the youngest,” she said, “and I am not really ‘out.’ Perhaps my mother will wish one of the elder ones to go; but I half think they are already engaged for September, so after all I may have a chance.”
“Yes, I came here because my sisters did not care to leave London till the end of the season,” replied the clear contralto. “It has been a perfect cruise. I shall remember it all my life.”
After that, nothing more was audible; but I imagine Derrick must have hazarded a more personal question, and that Freda had admitted that it was not only the actual sailing she should remember. At any rate her face when I caught sight of it again made me think of the girl described in the ‘Biglow Papers’:
“‘’Twas kin’ o’ kingdom come to look On sech a blessed creatur. A dogrose blushin’ to a brook Ain’t modester nor sweeter.’”
So the train went off, and Derrick and I were left to idle about Southampton and kill time as best we might. Derrick seemed to walk the streets in a sort of dream--he was perfectly well aware that he had met his fate, and at that time no thought of difficulties in the way had arisen either in his mind or in my own. We were both of us young and inexperienced; we were both of us in love, and we had the usual lover’s notion that everything in heaven and earth is prepared to favour the course of his particular passion.
I remember that we soon found the town intolerable, and, crossing by the ferry, walked over to Netley Abbey, and lay down idly in the shade of the old grey walls. Not a breath of wind stirred the great masses of ivy which were wreathed about the ruined church, and the place looked so lovely in its decay, that we felt disposed to judge the dissolute monks very leniently for having behaved so badly that their church and monastery had to be opened to the four winds of heaven. After all, when is a church so beautiful as when it has the green grass for its floor and the sky for its roof?