that, and a good deal beyond it. But it’s a large order.’
‘Of course it is. But what was it you said? The most beautiful girl in all London? That’s a large order, too, isn’t it? How much is she worth?’
‘You’re talking for the joke now,’ said Crewe. ‘I don’t like to hear that kind of thing, either. You never think in that way.’
‘My thoughts are my own. I may think as I choose.’
‘Yes. But you have thoughts above money.’
‘Have I? How kind of you to say so.—I’ve had enough of this wind; we’ll go down.’
She led the way, and neither of them spoke till they were in the street again. Nancy felt her hair.
‘Am I blown to pieces?’ she asked.
‘No, no; you’re all right. Now, will you walk through the City?’
‘Where’s the place you spoke of?’
‘Farringdon Street. That’ll bring you round to Blackfriars Bridge, when you want to go home. But there’s plenty of time yet.’
So they rambled aimlessly by the great thoroughfares, and by hidden streets of which Nancy had never heard, talking or silent as the mood dictated. Crewe had stories to tell of this and that thriving firm, of others struggling in obscurity or falling from high estate; to him the streets of London were so many chapters of romance, but a romance always of to-day, for he neither knew nor cared about historic associations. Vast sums sounded perpetually on his lips; he glowed with envious delight in telling of speculations that had built up great fortunes. He knew the fabulous rents that were paid for sites that looked insignificant; he repeated anecdotes of calls made from Somerset House upon men of business, who had been too modest in returning the statement of their income; he revived legends of dire financial disaster, and of catastrophe barely averted by strange expedients. To all this Nancy listened with only moderate interest; as often as not, she failed to understand the details which should have excited her wonder. None the less, she received an impression of knowledge, acuteness, power, in the speaker; and this was decidedly pleasant.
‘Here’s the place where I think of starting for myself,’ said Crewe, as he paused at length before a huge building in Farringdon Street.
‘This?—Can you afford such a rent?’
Her companion burst into laughter.
‘I don’t mean the whole building. Two or three rooms, that’s all, somewhere upstairs.’
Nancy made a jest of her mistake.
‘An advertising agent doesn’t want much space,’ said Crewe. ‘I know a chap who’s doing a pretty big business in one room, not far from here.—Well, we’ve had a long walk; now you must rest a bit, and have a cup of tea.’
‘I thought you were going to propose champagne.’
‘Oh—if you like—’
They went to a restaurant in Fleet Street, and sat for half an hour over the milder beverage. Crewe talked of his projects, his prospects; and Nancy, whom the afternoon had in truth fatigued a little, though her mind was still excited, listened without remark.
‘Well,’ he said at length, leaning towards her, ‘how long do you give me?’
She looked away, and kept silence.
‘Two years:—just to make a solid start; to show that something worth talking ‘about is to come?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
He kept his position, and gazed at her.
‘I know it isn’t money that would tempt you.’ He spoke in a very low voice, though no one was within earshot. ‘Don’t think I make any mistake about that! But I have to show you that there’s something in me. I wouldn’t marry any woman that thought I made love to her out of interest.’
Nancy began to draw on her gloves, and smiled, just biting her lower lip.
‘Will you give me a couple of years, from to-day? I won’t bother you. It’s honour bright!’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Nancy repeated.
‘Whilst you’re away?’
‘Yes, whilst I’m away at Teignmouth.’
‘And tell me when you come back?’
‘Tell you—how long. Yes.’
And she rose.
CHAPTER 4
From the mouth of Exe to the mouth of Teign the coast is uninteresting. Such beauty as it once possessed has been destroyed by the railway. Cliffs of red sandstone drop to the narrow beach, warm between the blue of sky and sea, but without grandeur, and robbed of their native grace by navvy-hewing, which for the most part makes of them a mere embankment: their verdure stripped away, their juttings tunnelled, along their base the steel parallels of smoky traffic. Dawlish and Teignmouth have in themselves no charm; hotel and lodging-house, shamed by the soft pure light that falls about them, look blankly seaward, hiding what remains of farm or cottage in the older parts. Ebb-tide uncovers no fair stretch of sand, and at flood the breakers are thwarted on a bulwark of piled stone, which supports the railway, or protects a promenade.
But inland these discontents are soon forgotten; there amid tilth and pasture, gentle hills and leafy hollows of rural Devon, the eye rests and the mind is soothed. By lanes innumerable, deep between banks of fern and flower; by paths along the bramble-edge of scented meadows; by the secret windings of copse and brake and stream-worn valley—a way lies upward to the long ridge of Haldon, where breezes sing among the pines, or sweep rustling through gorse and bracken. Mile after mile of rustic loveliness, ever and anon the sea-limits blue beyond grassy slopes. White farms dozing beneath their thatch in harvest sunshine; hamlets forsaken save by women and children, by dogs and cats and poultry, the labourers afield. Here grow the tall foxgloves, bending a purple head in the heat of noon; here the great bells of the convolvulus hang thick from lofty hedges, massing their pink and white against dark green leafage; here amid shadowed undergrowth trail the long fronds of lustrous hartstongue; wherever the eye falls, profusion of summer’s glory. Here, in many a nook carpeted with softest turf, canopied with tangle of leaf and bloom, solitude is safe from all intrusion—unless it be that of flitting bird, or of some timid wild thing that rustles for a moment and is gone. From dawn to midnight, as from midnight to dawn, one who would be alone with nature might count upon the security of these bosks and dells.
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