The Rain-Girl. Herbert George Jenkins
Beresford. "Look here, I'll give you two pounds for every half-mile I do under three, and you give me one pound for every mile I do over."
"No," said Tallis, shaking his head, "that would be compounding a suicide. Your will might carry you on for four miles; but you'd finish the journey on a gate."
"You're as gloomy as a panel-doctor during an epidemic," laughed Beresford. "That's the worst of you medicos, you do everything by rule of thumb. You say certain things have happened and consequently certain other things must grow out of them as a natural sequence. You make no allowance for the personal equation."
"I've made a great deal of allowance for your personal equation, my son," replied Tallis grimly, "otherwise I should long ago have certified you insane."
"Why, I'm a perfect epic of sanity compared with you," protested Beresford. "Look how you used to scandalise the nurse by the way you talked to me when, according to all the rules of the game, I ought to have been left quiet."
"And which soothed you the most," enquired Tallis quietly, "being left alone to your thoughts, or told what you wanted to know?"
"Oh, it answered all right, of course."
Tallis shrugged his shoulders.
"It's too bad," laughed Beresford, "here have you dragged me back to life again, and now I'm bullying you. It's been ripping having you about. God knows what I should have done if you hadn't been here," he added as he rose and stretched himself.
"Well, don't break down again," said Tallis, "and above all things go slow. Let me hear how you get on and—if you find her."
"Right-o," he gripped the doctor's hand, "and now, like Dick Whittington, I'm off to discover London town."
He shook hands with the proprietor, and thanked him for all he had done and, with the good wishes of the whole staff, turned his head northwards in the direction of London, conscious that before him lay an even greater adventure than the one he had sought on that unforgettable first of May.
It seemed as if Nature, conscious of having failed him once, was now endeavouring to make amends for her lapse. Birds were fluting and calling from every branch and hedge, as if it were the first day of Spring. The trees, vivid in the morning sunlight, swayed and rustled gently in the breeze; the air, soft as a maiden's kiss, was heavily perfumed. It was a day for love and lingering.
As he walked slowly along the high-road drinking in the beauty of the morning, Beresford recalled with a smile Tallis' warning. Ten miles would be a trifle on a day such as this, he decided. Still he would take no undue risks and walk slowly, loiter in fact.
He had lost thirty-eight days. It was now June 9th. It was strange how a man's ideas could change. A month ago there had been nothing he desired beyond the open road; now his face was turned London-wards. Why? Again that inevitable "Why."
The country-side was evidently no place for a man who would seek quiet and a day's delight. It seemed capable of providing a veritable orgy of incident. George Borrow was right after all.
After half an hour's sauntering, he was glad to rest on a wayside stone-heap. There was plenty of time, he told himself, and no need to hurry. Again, it was pleasant sitting by the road-side, listening to the birds and watching the life of the hedges. He had become conscious of a strange lassitude, and a still stranger inclination on the part of his legs to double up beneath him. His head, too, seemed to be behaving quite unreasonably. There were curious buzzings in his ears, and every now and then a momentary giddiness assailed him. What if Tallis should prove right after all, that he really was totally unfit for more than a mile or two?
As if to disprove such a suggestion he rose and continued his way, telling himself that as he became more accustomed to the exercise, these little manifestations of reluctance on the part of his legs and head would disappear.
At the end of three hours he had covered about two miles. The rests had been more frequent, and the distances covered between them shorter. It now became too obvious for argument or doubt that he was in no fit state for the high-road. In a way he was not sorry, although it was undignified to have to confess himself beaten. Still London was calling as she had never called to him before, not even in those nightmare-days in flooded trenches during 1914. After all perhaps it would be wiser to take train and run no risks. Tallis had been very definite about the unwisdom of over-exertion.
The sight of an approaching cart decided him. As it drew almost level Beresford hailed the driver, a little, weather-beaten old man with ragged whiskers and kindly blue eyes, asking if he would give him a lift.
The man pulled up and invited him to jump in, explaining that he was bound for Leatherhead.
As he climbed into the cart, Beresford was conscious that it meant surrender; but he was quite content.
Thus it happened that at half-past three on the afternoon of the day he had set out from "The Two Dragons," Beresford found himself at Waterloo Station, with no luggage other than his rucksack and a walking-stick, wondering where he should spend the night. He had taken the precaution of booking a room at the Ritz-Carlton; but he was not due there until the following Monday. In any case he could not very well turn up without luggage and in his present kit.
Having sent a telegram to Tallis telling him of the accuracy of his lugubrious prophesies, Beresford hailed a taxi and drove to the Dickens Hotel in Bloomsbury, where he was successful in obtaining a room, owing to the sudden departure of a guest called away to the death-bedside of a relative.
That night he slept the sleep of the physically exhausted.
The morrow and the remainder of the week he devoted to shopping. He found that an hour in the morning, with another hour in the afternoon, after he had been fortified by lunch, was as much as he could stand. His tailor was frankly pleased to see him, and tactfully dissimulated the surprise he felt. In the matter of expedition he achieved the impossible. By the end of the week Beresford found himself completely equipped with all that was necessary to enable him to proceed upon his great search.
On the Monday morning when he drove from the Dickens Hotel to the Ritz-Carlton, he was conscious of two things, a thrill of anticipation and the blatant newness of his luggage.
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