Chapter 3 - Page 2

four miles an hour. Manning goes
through all the agonies of death and damnation, he half dissolves, he
pants and drags for the first eight or ten miles, and then I must admit
he rather justifies Rendezvous' theory. He is to be found in the
afternoon in a hammock suffering from blistered feet, but otherwise
unusually well. But if he can escape it, he does. He hides."

"But if he doesn't want to go with Rendezvous, why does he?" said Mr.
Direck.

"Well, Rendezvous is accustomed to the command of men. And Manning's
only way of refusing things is on printed forms. Which he doesn't bring
down to Matching's Easy. Ah! behold!"

Far away across the lawn between two blue cedars there appeared a
leisurely form in grey flannels and a loose tie, advancing with manifest
circumspection.

"He's gone," cried Britling.

The leisurely form, obviously amiable, obviously a little out of
condition, became more confident, drew nearer.

"I'm sorry to have missed him," he said cheerfully. "I thought he might
come this way. It's going to be a very warm day indeed. Let us sit about
somewhere and talk.

"Of course," he said, turning to Direck, "Rendezvous is the life and
soul of the country."

They strolled towards a place of seats and hammocks between the big
trees and the rose garden, and the talk turned for a time upon
Rendezvous. "They have the tidiest garden in Essex," said Manning. "It's
not Mrs. Rendezvous' fault that it is so. Mrs. Rendezvous, as a matter
of fact, has a taste for the picturesque. She just puts the things about
in groups in the beds. She wants them, she says, to grow anyhow. She
desires a romantic disorder. But she never gets it. When he walks down
the path all the plants dress instinctively.... And there's a tree near
their gate; it used to be a willow. You can ask any old man in the
village. But ever since Rendezvous took the place it's been trying to
present arms. With the most extraordinary results. I was passing the
other day with old Windershin. 'You see that there old poplar,' he said.
'It's a willow,' said I. 'No,' he said, 'it did used to be a willow
before Colonel Rendezvous he came. But now it's a poplar.'... And, by
Jove, it is a poplar!"...

The conversation thus opened by Manning centred for a time upon Colonel
Rendezvous. He was presented as a monster of energy and self-discipline;
as the determined foe of every form of looseness, slackness, and
easy-goingness.

"He's done wonderful work for the local Boy Scout movement," said
Manning.

"It's Kitchenerism," said Britling.

"It's the army side of the efficiency