The Bishop of Porthminster was sinking fast; they had sent for his four nephews, his two nieces and their one husband. It was not thought that he would last the night.
He who had been ‘Cuffs’ Cherrell (for so the name Charwell is pronounced) to his cronies at Harrow and Cambridge in the ‘sixties, the Reverend Cuthbert Cherrell in his two London parishes, Canon Cherrell in the days of his efflorescence as a preacher, and Cuthbert Porthminster for the last eighteen years, had never married. For eighty-two years he had lived and for fifty-five, having been ordained rather late, had represented God upon certain portions of the earth. This and the control of his normal instincts since the age of twenty-six had given to his face a repressed dignity which the approach of death did not disturb. He awaited it almost quizzically, judging from the twist of his eyebrow and the tone in which he said so faintly to his nurse:
“You will get a good sleep tomorrow, nurse. I shall be punctual, no robes to put on.”
The best wearer of robes in the whole episcopacy, the most distinguished in face and figure, maintaining to the end the dandyism which had procured him the nickname ‘Cuffs,’ lay quite still, his grey hair brushed and his face like ivory. He had been a bishop so long that no one knew now what he thought about death, or indeed about anything, except the prayer book, any change in which he had deprecated with determination. In one never remarkable for expressing his feelings the ceremony of life had overlaid the natural reticence, as embroidery and jewels will disguise the foundation stuff of vestment.
He lay in a room with mullion windows, an ascetic room in a sixteenth-century house, close to the Cathedral, whose scent of age was tempered but imperfectly by the September air coming in. Some zinnias in an old vase on the window-sill made the only splash of colour, and it was noticed by the nurse that his eyes scarcely left it, except to dose from time to time. About six o’clock they informed him that all the family of his long-dead elder brother had arrived.
“Ah! See that they are comfortable. I should like to see Adrian.”
When an hour later he opened his eyes again, they fell on his nephew Adrian seated at the foot of the bed. For some minutes he contemplated the lean and wrinkled brownness of a thin bearded face, topped with grizzling hair, with a sort of faint astonishment, as though finding his nephew older than he had expected. Then, with lifted eyebrows and the same just quizzical tone in his faint voice, he said:
“My dear Adrian! Good of you! Would you mind coming closer? Ah! I haven’t much strength, but what I have I wanted you to have the benefit of; or perhaps, as you may think, the reverse. I must speak to the point or not at all. You are not a Churchman, so what I have to say I will put in the words of a man of the world, which once I was myself, perhaps have always been. I have heard that you have an affection, or may I say infatuation, for a lady who is not in a position to marry you — is that so?”
The face of his nephew, kindly and wrinkled, was gentle with an expression of concern.
“It is, Uncle Cuthbert. I am sorry if it troubles you.”
“A mutual affection?”
His nephew shrugged.
“My dear Adrian, the world has changed in its judgments since my young days, but there is still a halo around marriage. That, however, is a matter for your conscience and is not my point. Give me a little water.”
When he had drunk from the glass held out, he went on more feebly:
“Since your father died I have been somewhat in loco parentis to you all, and the chief repository, I suppose, of such traditions as attach to our name. I wanted to say to you that our name goes back very far and very honourably. A certain inherited sense of duty is all that is left to old families now; what is sometimes excused to a young man is not excused to those of mature age and a certain position like your own. I should be sorry to be leaving this life knowing that our name was likely to be taken in vain by the Press, or bandied about. Forgive me for intruding on your privacy, and let me now say good-bye to you all. It will be less painful if you will give the others my blessing for what it is worth — very little, I’m afraid. Good-bye, my dear Adrian, good-bye!”
The voice dropped to a whisper. The speaker closed his eyes, and Adrian, after standing a minute looking down at the carved waxen face, stole, tall and a little stooping, to the door, opened it gently and was gone.
The nurse came back. The Bishop’s lips moved and his eyebrows twitched now and then, but he spoke only once:
“I shall be glad if you will kindly see that my neck is straight, and my teeth in place. Forgive these details, but I do not wish to offend the sight . . .”
Adrian went down to the long panelled room where the family was waiting.
“Sinking. He sent his blessing to you all.”
Sir Conway cleared his throat. Hilary pressed Adrian’s arm. Lionel went to the window. Emily Mont took out a tiny handkerchief and passed her other hand into Sir Lawrence’s. Wilmet alone spoke:
“How does he look, Adrian?”
“Like the ghost of a warrior on his shield.”
Again Sir Conway cleared his throat.
“Fine old boy!” said Sir Lawrence, softly.
“Ah!” said Adrian.
They remained, silently sitting and standing in the compulsory discomfort of a house where death is visiting. Tea was brought in, but, as if by tacit agreement, no one touched it. And, suddenly, the bell tolled. The seven in that room looked up. At one blank spot in the air their glances met and crossed, as though fixed on something there and yet not there.
A voice from the doorway said:
“Now please, if you wish to see him.”
Sir Conway, the eldest, followed the bishop’s chaplain; the others followed Sir Conway.
In his narrow bed jutting from the centre of the wall opposite the mullion windows the bishop lay, white and straight and narrow, with just the added dignity of death. He graced his last state even more than he had graced existence. None of those present, not even his chaplain, who made the eighth spectator, knew whether Cuthbert Porthminster had really had faith, except in that temporal dignity of the Church which he had so faithfully served. They looked at him now with all the different feelings death produces in varying temperaments, and with only one feeling in common, aesthetic pleasure at the sight of such memorable dignity,
Conway — General Sir Conway Cherrell — had seen much death. He stood with his hands crossed before him, as if once more at Sandhurst in the old-time attitude of ‘stand at ease.’ His face was thin-templed and ascetic, for a soldier’s; the darkened furrowed cheeks ran from wide cheek-bones to the point of a firm chin, the dark eyes were steady, the nose and lips thin; he wore a little close grizzly dark moustache — his face was perhaps the stillest of the eight faces, the face of the taller Adrian beside him, the least still. Sir Lawrence Mont had his arm through that of Emily his wife, the expression on his thin twisting countenance was as of one saying: “A very beautiful performance — don’t cry, my dear.”
The faces of Hilary and Lionel, one on each side of Wilmet, a seamed race and a smooth face, both long and thin and decisive, wore a sort of sorry scepticism, as if expecting those eyes to open. Wilmet had flushed deep pink; her lips were pursed. She was a tall thin woman. The chaplain stood with bent head, moving his lips as though telling over internal beads. They stayed thus perhaps three minutes, then as it were with a single indrawn breath filed to the door. They went each to the room assigned.
They met again at dinner, thinking and speaking once more in terms of life. Uncle Cuthbert, except as a family figure-head, had never been very near to any one of them. The question whether he was to be buried with his fathers at Condaford or here in the Cathedral was debated. Probably his Will would decide. All but the General and Lionel, who were the executors, returned to London the same evening.
The two brothers, having read through the Will, which was short, for there was nothing much to leave, sat on in the library, silent, till the General said:
“I want to consult you, Lionel. It’s about my boy, Hubert. Did you read that attack made on him in the House before it rose?”
Lionel, sparing of words, and now on the eve of a Judgeship, nodded.
“I saw there was a question asked, but I don’t know Hubert’s version of the affair.”
“I can give it you. The whole thing is damnable. The boy’s got a temper, of course, but he’s straight as a die. What he says you can rely on. And all I can say is that if I’d been in his place, I should probably have done the same.”
Lionel nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Well, as you know, he went straight from Harrow into the War, and had one year in the R.A.F. under age, got wounded, went back and stayed on in the army after the war. He was out in Mespot, then went on to Egypt and India. He got malaria badly, and last October had a year’s sick leave given him, which will be up on October first. He was recommended for a long voyage. He got leave for it and went out through the Panama Canal to Lima. There he met that American professor, Hallorsen, who came over here some time ago and gave some lectures, it appears, about some queer remains in Bolivia; he was going to take an expedition there. This expedition was just starting when Hubert got to Lima, and Hallorsen wanted a transport officer. Hubert was fit enough after his voyage and jumped at the chance. He can’t bear idleness. Hallorsen took him on; that was in December last. After a bit Hallorsen left him in charge of his base camp with a lot of half-caste Indian mule men. Hubert was the only white man, and he got fever badly. Some of those half-caste Indian fellows are devils, according to his account; no sense of discipline and perfect brutes with animals. Hubert got wrong with them — he’s a hot-tempered chap, as I told you, and, as it happens, particularly fond of animals. The half-castes got more and more out of hand, till finally one of them, whom he’d had to have flogged for ill-treating mules and who was stirring up mutiny, attacked him with a knife. Luckily Hubert had his revolver handy and shot him dead. And on that the whole blessed lot of them, except three, cleared out, taking the mules with them. Mind you, he’d been left there alone for nearly three months without support or news of any kind from Hallorsen. Well, he hung on somehow, half dead, with his remaining men. At last Hallorsen came back, and instead of trying to understand his difficulties, pitched into him. Hubert wouldn’t stand for it; gave him as good as he got, and left. He came straight home, and is down with us at Condaford. He’s lost the fever, luckily, but he’s pretty well worn out, even now. And now that fellow Hallorsen has attacked him in his book; practically thrown the blame of failure on him, implies he was tyrannical and no good at handling men, calls him a hot-tempered aristocrat — all that bunkum that goes down these days. Well, some Service member got hold of this and asked that question about it in Parliament. One expects Socialists to make themselves unpleasant, but when it comes to a Service member alluding to conduct unbecoming to a British officer, it’s another matter altogether. Hallorsen’s in the States. There’s nobody to bring an action against: besides, Hubert could get no witnesses. It looks to me as if the thing has cut right across his career.”
Lionel Cherrell’s long face lengthened.
“Has he tried Headquarters?”
“Yes, he went up on Wednesday. They were chilly. Any popular gup about high-handedness scares them nowadays. I daresay they’d come round if no more were said, but how’s that possible? He’s been publicly criticised in that book, and practically accused in Parliament of violent conduct unbecoming to an officer and gentleman. He can’t sit down under that; and yet — what can he do?”
Lionel drew deeply at his pipe.
“D’you know,” he said, “I think he’d better take no notice.”
The General clenched his fist. “Damn it, Lionel, I don’t see that!”
“But he admits the shooting and the flogging. The public has no imagination, Con — they’ll never see his side of the thing. All they’ll swallow is that on a civilian expedition he shot one man and flogged others. You can’t expect them to understand the conditions or the pressure there was.”
“Then you seriously advise him to take it lying down?”
“As a man, no; as a man of the world, yes.”
“Good Lord! What’s England coming to? I wonder what old Uncle Cuffs would have said? He thought a lot of our name.”
“So do I. But how is Hubert to get even with them?”
The General was silent for a little while and then said:
“This charge is a slur on the Service, and yet his hands seem tied. If he handed in his Commission he could stand up to it, but his whole heart’s in the Army. It’s a bad business. By the way, Lawrence has been talking to me about Adrian. Diana Ferse was Diana Montjoy, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, second cousin to Lawrence — very pretty woman, Con. Ever see her?”
“As a girl, yes. What’s her position now, then?”
“Married widow — two children, and a husband in a Mental Home.”
“That’s lively. Incurable?”
Lionel nodded. “They say so. But of course, you never know.”
“Good Lord!”
“That’s just about it. She’s poor and Adrian’s poorer; it’s a very old affection on Adrian’s part, dates from before her marriage. If he does anything foolish, he’ll lose his curatorship.”
“Go off with her, you mean? Why, he must be fifty!”
“No fool like an — She’s an attractive creature. Those Montjoys are celebrated for their charm. Would he listen to you, Con?”
The General shook his head.
“More likely to Hilary.”
“Poor old Adrian — one of the best men on earth. I’ll talk to Hilary, but his hands are always full.”
The General rose. “I’m going to bed. We don’t smell of age at the Grange like this place — though the Grange is older.”
“Too much original wood here. Good-night, old man.”
The brothers shook hands, and, grasping each a candle, sought their rooms.
Condaford Grange had passed from the de Campforts (whence its name) into possession of the Cherrells in 1217, when their name was spelt Kerwell and still at times Keroual, as the spirit moved the scribe. The story of its passing was romantic, for the Kerwell who got it by marrying a de Campfort had got the de Campfort by rescuing her from a wild boar. He had been a landless wight whose father, a Frenchman from Guienne, had come to England after Richard’s crusade; and she had been the heiress of the landed de Campforts. The boar was incorporated on the family ‘shield,’ and some doubted whether the boar on the shield did not give rise to the story, rather than the story to the boar. In any case parts of the house were certified by expert masons to go back to the twelfth century. It had undoubtedly been moated; but under Queen Anne a restorative Cherrell, convinced of the millennium perhaps, and possibly inconvenienced by insects, had drained off the water, and there was now little sign that a moat had ever been.
The late Sir Conway, elder brother of the bishop, knighted in 1901 on his appointment to Spain, had been in the diplomatic service. He had therefore let the place down badly. He had died in 1904, at his post, and the letting-down process had been continued by his eldest son, the present Sir Conway, who, continually on Service, had enjoyed only spasmodic chances of living at Condaford till after the Great War. Now that he did live there, the knowledge that folk of his blood had been encamped there practically since the Conquest had spurred him to do his best to put it in order, so that it was by now unpretentiously trim without and comfortable within, and he was almost too poor to live in it. The estate contained too much covert to be profitable, and, though unencumbered, brought in but a few hundreds a year of net revenue. The pension of a General and the slender income of his wife (by birth the Honourable Elizabeth Frensham) enabled the General to incur a very small amount of supertax, to keep two hunters, and live quietly on the extreme edge of his means. His wife was one of those Englishwomen who seem to count for little, but for that very reason count for a good deal. She was unobtrusive, gentle, and always busy. In a word, she was background; and her pale face, reposeful, sensitive, a little timid, was a continual reminder that culture depends but slightly on wealth or intellect. Her husband and her three children had implicit confidence in her coherent sympathy. They were all of more vivid nature, more strongly coloured, and she was a relief.
She had not accompanied the General to Porthminster and was therefore awaiting his return. The furniture was about to come out of chintz, and she was standing in the tea room wondering whether that chintz would last another season, when a Scotch terrier came in, followed by her eldest daughter Elizabeth — better known as ‘Dinny.’ Dinny was slight and rather tall; she had hair the colour of chestnuts, an imperfect nose, a Botticellian mouth, eyes cornflower blue and widely set, and a look rather of a flower on a long stalk that might easily be broken off, but never was. Her expression suggested that she went through life trying not to see it as a joke. She was, in fact, like one of those natural wells, or springs, whence one cannot procure water without bubbles: ‘Dinny’s bubble and squeak,’ her uncle Sir Lawrence Mont called it. She was by now twenty-four.
“Mother, do we have to go into black edging for Uncle Cuffs?”
“I don’t think so, Dinny; or very slight.”
“Is he to be planted here?”
“I expect in the Cathedral, but Father will know.”
“Tea, darling? Scaramouch, up you come, and don’t bob your nose into the Gentleman’s Relish.”
“Dinny, I’m so worried about Hubert.”
“So am I, dear; he isn’t Hubert at all, he’s like a sketch of himself by Thom the painter, all on one side. He ought never to have gone on that ghastly expedition, Mother. There’s a limit to hitting it off with Americans, and Hubert reaches it sooner than almost anybody I know. He never could get on with them. Besides, I don’t believe civilians ever ought to have soldiers with them.”
“Why, Dinny?”
“Well, soldiers have the static mind. They know God from Mammon. Haven’t you noticed it, dear?”
Lady Cherrell had. She smiled timidly, and asked:
“Where is Hubert? Father will be home directly.”
“He went out with Don, to get a leash of partridges for dinner. Ten to one he’ll forget to shoot them, and anyway they’ll be too fresh. He’s in that state of mind into which it has pleased God to call him; except that for God read the devil. He broods over that business, Mother. Only one thing would do him good, and that’s to fall in love. Can’t we find the perfect girl for him? Shall I ring for tea?”
“Yes, dear. And this room wants fresh flowers.”
“I’ll get them. Come along, Scaramouch!”
Passing out into September sunshine, Dinny noted a green woodpecker on the lower lawn, and thought: ‘If seven birds with seven beaks should peck for half a term, do you suppose, the lady thought, that they could find a worm?’ It WAS dry! All the same the zinnias were gorgeous this year; and she proceeded to pick some. They ran the gamut in her hand from deepest red through pink to lemon-yellow — handsome blossoms, but not endearing. ‘Pity,’ she thought, ‘we can’t go to some bed of modern maids and pick one for Hubert.’ She seldom showed her feelings, but she had two deep feelings not for show — one for her brother, the other for Condaford, and they were radically entwined. All the coherence of her life belonged to Condaford; she had a passion for the place which no one would have suspected from her way of talking of it, and she had a deep and jealous desire to bind her only brother to the same devotion. After all, she had been born there while it was shabby and run-down, and had survived into the period of renovation. To Hubert it had only been a holiday and leave-time perch. Dinny, though the last person in the world to talk of her roots, or to take them seriously in public, had a private faith in the Cherrells, their belongings and their works, which nothing could shake. Every Condaford beast, bird and tree, even the flowers she was plucking, were a part of her, just as were the simple folk around in their thatched cottages, and the Early-English church, where she attended without belief to speak of, and the grey Condaford dawns which she seldom saw, the moonlit, owl-haunted nights, the long sunlight over the stubble, and the scents and the sounds and the feel of the air. When she was away from home she never said she was homesick, but she was; when she was at home she never said she revelled in it, but she did. If Condaford should pass from the Cherrells, she would not moan, but would feel like a plant pulled up by its roots. Her father had for it the indifferent affection of a man whose active life had been passed elsewhere; her mother the acquiescence of one who had always done her duty by what had kept her nose to the grindstone and was not exactly hers; her sister treated it with the matter-of-fact tolerance of one who would rather be somewhere more exciting; and Hubert — what had Hubert? She really did not know. With her hands full of zinnias and her neck warm from the lingering sunshine, she returned to the drawing-room.
Her mother was standing by the tea table.
“The train’s late,” she said. “I do wish Clare wouldn’t drive so fast.”
“I don’t see the connection, darling.” But she did. Mother was always fidgety when Father was behind time.
“Mother, I’m all for Hubert sending his version to the papers.”
“We shall see what your Father says — he’ll have talked to your Uncle Lionel.”
“I hear the car now,” said Dinny.
The General was followed into the room by his younger daughter. Clare was the most vivid member of the family. She had dark fine shingled hair and a pale expressive face, of which the lips were slightly brightened. The eyes were brown, with a straight and eager glance, the brow low and very white. Her expression was old for a girl of twenty, being calm and yet adventurous. She had an excellent figure and walked with an air.
“This poor dear has had no lunch, Mother,” she said.
“Horrible cross-country journey, Liz. Whisky-and-soda and a biscuit’s all I’ve had since breakfast.”
“You shall have an egg-nogg, darling,” said Dinny, and left the room. Clare followed her.
The General kissed his wife. “The old boy looked very fine, my dear, though, except for Adrian, we only saw him after. I shall have to go back for the funeral. It’ll be a swell affair, I expect. Great figure — Uncle Cuffs. I spoke to Lionel about Hubert; he doesn’t see what can be done. But I’ve been thinking.”
“Yes, Con?”
“The whole point is whether or not the Authorities are going to take any notice of that attack in the House. They might ask him to send in his commission. That’d be fatal. Sooner than that he’d better hand it in himself. He’s due for his medical on October the first. Can we pull any strings without his knowing? — the boy’s proud. I can go and see Topsham and you could get at Follanby, couldn’t you?”
Lady Cherrell made wry her face.
“I know,” said the General, “it’s rotten; but the real chance would be Saxenden, only I don’t know how to get at him.”
“Dinny might suggest something.”
“Dinny? Well, I suppose she HAS more brains than any of us, except you, my dear.”
“I,” said Lady Cherrell, “have no brains at all.”
“Bosh! Oh! Here she is.”
Dinny advanced, bearing a frothy liquor in a glass.
“Dinny, I was saying to your mother that we want to get into touch with Lord Saxenden about Hubert’s position. Can you suggest any way?”
“Through a country neighbour, Dad. Has he any?”
“His place marches with Wilfred Bentworth’s.”
“There it is, then. Uncle Hilary or Uncle Lawrence.”
“How?”
“Wilfred Bentworth is Chairman of Uncle Hilary’s Slum Conversion Committee. A little judicious nepotism, dear.”
“Um! Hilary and Lawrence were both at Porthminster — wish I’d thought of that.”
“Shall I talk to them for you, Father?”
“By George, if you would, Dinny! I hate pushing our affairs.”
“Yes, dear. It’s a woman’s job, isn’t it?”
The General looked at his daughter dubiously — he never quite knew when she was serious.
“Here’s Hubert,” said Dinny, quickly.
Hubert Cherrell, followed by a spaniel dog and carrying a gun, was crossing the old grey flagstones of the terrace. Rather over middle height, lean and erect, with a head not very large and a face weathered and seamed for so young a man, he wore a little darkish moustache cut just to the edge of his lips, which were thin and sensitive, and hair with already a touch of grey at the sides. His browned cheeks were thin too, but with rather high cheek-bones, and his eyes hazel, quick and glancing, set rather wide apart over a straight thin nose under gabled eyebrows. He was, in fact, a younger edition of his father. A man of action, forced into a state of thought, is unhappy until he can get out of it; and, ever since his late leader had launched that attack on his conduct, he had chafed, conscious of having acted rightly, or rather, in accordance with necessity. And he chafed the more because his training and his disposition forbade him giving tongue. A soldier by choice, not accident, he saw his soldiering imperilled, his name as an officer, and even as a gentleman, aspersed, and no way of hitting back at those who had aspersed it. His head seemed to him to be in Chancery for anyone to punch, most galling of experiences to anyone of high spirit. He came in through the French window, leaving dog and gun outside, aware that he was being talked about. He was now constantly interrupting discussions on his position, for in this family the troubles of one were the troubles of all. Having taken a cup of tea from his mother, he remarked that birds were getting wild already, covert was so sparse, and there was silence.
“Well, I’m going to look at my letters,” said the General, and went out followed by his wife.
Left alone with her brother, Dinny hardened her heart, and said:
“Something must be done, Hubert.”
“Don’t worry, old girl; it’s rotten, but there’s nothing one can do.”
“Why don’t you write your own account of what happened, from your diary? I could type it, and Michael will find you a publisher, he knows all those sort of people. We simply can’t sit down under this.”
“I loathe the idea of trotting my private feelings into the open; and it means that or nothing.”
Dinny wrinkled her brows.
“I loathe letting that Yank put his failure on to you. You owe it to the British Army, Hubert.”
“Bad as that? I went as a civilian.”
“Why not publish your diary as it is?”
“That’d be worse. You haven’t seen it.”
“We could expurgate, and embroider, and all that. You see, the Dad feels this.”
“Perhaps you’d better read the thing. It’s full of ‘miserable Starkey.’ When one’s alone like that, one lets oneself go.”
“You can cut out what you like.”
“It’s no end good of you, Dinny.”
Dinny stroked his sleeve.
“What sort of man is this Hallorsen?”
“To be just, he has lots of qualities: hard as nails, plenty of pluck, and no nerves; but it’s Hallorsen first with him all the time. It’s not in him to fail, and when he does, someone else has to stand the racket. According to him, he failed for want of transport: and I was his transport officer. But if he’d left the Angel Gabriel as he left me, he’d have done no better. He just miscalculated, and won’t admit it. You’ll find it all in my diary.”
“Have you seen this?” She held up a newspaper cutting, and read:
“‘We understand that action will be taken by Captain Charwell, D.S.O., to vindicate his honour in face of the statements made in Professor Hallorsen’s book on his Bolivian Expedition, the failure of which he attributed to Captain Charwell’s failure to support him at the critical moment.’ Someone’s trying to get a dog-fight out of it, you see.”
“Where was that?”
“In the Evening Sun.”
“Steps!” said Hubert bitterly; “what steps? I’ve nothing but my word, he took care of that when he left me alone with all those dagoes.”
“It’s the diary then, or nothing.”
“I’ll get you the damned thing . . . .”
That night Dinny sat at her window reading ‘the damned thing.’ A full moon rode between the elm trees and there was silence as of the grave. Just one sheep-bell tinkled from a fold on the rise; just one magnolia flower bloomed close to her window. All seemed unearthly, and now and then she stopped reading to gaze at the unreality. So had some ten thousand full moons ridden since her forebears received this patch of ground; the changeless security of so old a home heightened the lonely discomfort, the tribulation in the pages she was reading. Stark notes about stark things — one white man among a crew of half-caste savages, one animal-lover among half-starved animals and such men as knew not compassion. And with that cold and settled loveliness out there to look upon, she read and grew hot and miserable.
“That lousy brute Castro has been digging his infernal knife into the mules again. The poor brutes are thin as rails, and haven’t half their strength. Warned him for the last time. If he does it again, he’ll get the lash. . . . Had fever.”
“Castro got it good and strong this morning — a dozen; we’ll see if that will stop him. Can’t get on with these brutes; they don’t seem human. Oh! for a day on a horse at Condaford and forget these swamps and poor ghastly skeletons of mules . . .”
“Had to flog another of these brutes — their treatment of the mules is simply devilish, blast them! . . . Fever again . . .”
“Hell and Tommy to pay — had mutiny this morning. They laid for me. Luckily Manuel had warned me — he’s a good boy. As it was, Castro nearly had his knife through my gizzard. Got my left arm badly. Shot him with my own hand. Now perhaps they’ll toe the mark. Nothing from Hallorsen. How much longer does he expect me to hold on in this dump of hell? My arm is giving me proper gee-up . . . .”
“The lid is on at last, those devils stampeded the mules in the dark while I was asleep, and cleared out. Manuel and two other boys are all that’s left. We trailed them a long way — came on the carcases of two mules, that’s all; the beggars have dispersed and you might as well look for a star in the Milky Way. Got back to camp dead beat. . . . Whether we shall ever get out of this alive, goodness knows. My arm very painful, hope it doesn’t mean blood-poisoning . . .”
“Meant to trek today as best we could. Set up a pile of stones and left despatch for Hallorsen, telling him the whole story in case he ever does send back for me; then changed my mind. I shall stick it out here till he comes or till we’re dead, which is on the whole more likely . . .”
And so on through a tale of struggle to the end. Dinny laid down the dim and yellowed record and leaned her elbow on the sill. The silence and the coldness of the light out there had chilled her spirit. She no longer felt in fighting mood. Hubert was right. Why show one’s naked soul, one’s sore finger, to the public? No! Better anything than that. Private strings — yes, they should be pulled; and she would pull them for all she was worth.
Adrian Cherrell was one of those confirmed countrymen who live in towns. His job confined him to London, where he presided over a collection of anthropological remains. He was poring over a maxilla from New Guinea, which had been accorded a very fine reception in the Press, and had just said to himself: ‘The thing’s a phlizz. Just a low type of Homo Sapiens,’ when his janitor announced:
“Young lady to see you, sir — Miss Cherrell, I think.”
“Ask her in, James”; and he thought: ‘If that’s Dinny, where did I put my wits?’
“Oh! Dinny! Canrobert says that this maxilla is pre-Trinil. Mokley says Paulo-post-Piltdown; and Eldon P. Burbank says propter Rhodesian. I say Sapiens; observe that molar.”
“I do, Uncle Adrian.”
“Too human altogether. That man had toothache. Toothache was probably the result of artistic development. Altamiran art and Cromagnon cavities are found together. Homo Sapiens, this chap.”
“No toothache without wisdom — how cheery! I’ve come up to see Uncle Hilary and Uncle Lawrence, but I thought if I had lunch with you first, I should feel stronger.”
“We shall,” said Adrian, “therefore go to the Bulgarian café.”
“Why?”
“Because for the moment we shall get good food there. It’s the latest propaganda restaurant, my dear, so we are probably safe at a moderate price. Do you want to powder your nose?”
“Yes.”
“In here, then.”
While she was gone Adrian stood and stroked his goatee and wondered exactly what he could order for eighteen and sixpence; for, being a public servant without private means, he rarely had more than a pound in his pocket.
“What,” said Dinny, when they were seated before an omelette Bulgarienne, “do you know about Professor Hallorsen, Uncle Adrian?”
“The man who set out to discover the sources of civilisation in Bolivia?”
“Yes; and took Hubert with him.”
“Ah! But left him behind, I gather?”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“I did. I met him in 1920, climbing the ‘Little Sinner’ in the Dolomites.”
“Did you like him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Well, he was so aggressively young, he beat me to the top, and — he reminded me of baseball. Did you ever see baseball played?”
“No.”
“I saw it once in Washington. You insult your opponent so as to shake his nerve. You call him doughboy and attaboy, and President Wilson and Old Man Ribber, and things like that, just when he’s going to hit the ball. It’s ritual. The point is to win at any cost.”
“Don’t you believe in winning at any cost?”
“Nobody says they do, Dinny.”
“And we all try to when it comes to the point?”
“I have known it occur, even with politicians, Dinny.”
“Would you try to win at any cost, Uncle?”
“Probably.”
“You wouldn’t. I should.”
“You are very kind, my dear; but why this local disparagement?”
“Because I feel as bloodthirsty as a mosquito about Hubert’s case. I spent last night reading his diary.”
“Woman,” said Adrian, slowly, “has not yet lost her divine irresponsibility.”
“Do you think we’re in danger of losing it?”
“No, because whatever your sex may say, you never will annihilate man’s innate sense of leading you about.”
“What is the best way to annihilate a man like Hallorsen, Uncle Adrian?”
“Apart from a club, ridicule.”
“His notion about Bolivian civilisation was absurd, I suppose?”
“Wholly. There are, we know, some curious and unexplained stone monsters up there, but his theory, if I understand it, won’t wash at all. Only, my dear, Hubert would appear to be involved in it.”
“Not scientifically; he just went as transport officer.” And Dinny levelled a smile at her Uncle’s eyes. “It wouldn’t do any harm, would it, to hold up a stunt like that to ridicule? You could do it so beautifully, Uncle.”
“Serpent!”
“But isn’t it the duty of serious scientists to ridicule stunts?”
“If Hallorsen were an Englishman — perhaps; but his being an American brings in other considerations.”
“Why? I thought Science paid no regard to frontiers.”
“In theory. In practice we close the other eye. Americans are very touchy. You remember a certain recent attitude towards Evolution; if we had let out our shout of laughter over that, there might almost have been a war.”
“But most Americans laughed at it too.”
“Yes; but they won’t stand for outsiders laughing at their kith and kin. Have some of this soufflé Sofia?”
They ate in silence, each studying sympathetically the other’s face. Dinny was thinking: ‘I love his wrinkles, and it’s a nice little beard for a beard.’ Adrian was thinking: ‘I’m glad her nose turns up a little. I have very engaging nieces and nephews.’ At last she said:
“Well, Uncle Adrian, will you try and think of any way of strafing that man for the scurvy way he’s treated Hubert?”
“Where is he?”
“Hubert says in the States.”
“Have you considered, my dear, that nepotism is undesirable?”
“So is injustice, Uncle; and blood is thicker than water.”
“And this wine,” said Adrian, with a grimace, “is thicker than either. What are you going to see Hilary about?”
“I want to scrounge an introduction to Lord Saxenden.”
“Why?”
“Father says he’s important.”
“So you are out to ‘pull strings,’ as they say?”
Dinny nodded.
“No sensitive and honest person can pull strings successfully, Dinny.”
Her eyebrows twitched and her teeth, very white and even, appeared in a broad smile.
“But I’m neither, dear.”
“We shall see. In the meantime these cigarettes are really tiptop propaganda. Have one?”
Dinny took a cigarette, and, with a long puff, said:
“You saw great-Uncle ‘Cuffs’, didn’t you, Uncle Adrian?”
“Yes. A dignified departure. He died in amber, as you might say. Wasted on the Church; he was the perfect diplomat, was Uncle ‘Cuffs.’”
“I only saw him twice. But do you mean to say that HE couldn’t get what he wanted, without loss of dignity, by pulling strings?”
“It wasn’t exactly pulling strings with him, my dear; it was suavity and power of personality.”
“Manners?”
“Manner — the Grand; it about died with him.”
“Well, Uncle, I must be going; wish me dishonesty and a thick skin.”
“And I,” said Adrian, “will return to the jawbone of the New Guinean with which I hope to smite my learned brethren. If I can help Hubert in any decent way, I will. At all events I’ll think about it. Give him my love, and good-bye, my dear!”
They parted, and Adrian went back to his museum. Regaining his position above the maxilla, he thought of a very different jawbone. Having reached an age when the blood of spare men with moderate habits has an even-tempered flow, his ‘infatuation’ with Diana Ferse, dating back to years before her fatal marriage, had a certain quality of altruism. He desired her happiness before his own. In his almost continual thoughts about her the consideration ‘What’s best for her?’ was ever foremost. He had done without her for so long that importunity (never in his character) was out of the question where she was concerned. But her face, oval and dark-eyed, delicious in lip and nose, and a little sad in repose, constantly blurred the outlines of maxillae, thighbones, and the other interesting phenomena of his job. She and her two children lived in a small Chelsea house on the income of a husband who for four years had been a patient in a private Mental Home, and was never expected to recover his equilibrium. She was nearly forty, and had been through dreadful times before Ferse had definitely toppled over the edge. Of the old school in thought and manner, and trained to a coherent view of human history, Adrian accepted life with half-humorous fatalism. He was not of the reforming type, and the position of his lady love did not inspire him with a desire for the scalp of marriage. He wanted her to be happy, but did not see how in the existing circumstances he could make her so. She had at least peace and the sufficient income of him who had been smitten by Fate. Moreover, Adrian had something of the superstitious regard felt by primitive men for those afflicted with this particular form of misfortune. Ferse had been a decent fellow till the taint began to wear through the coatings of health and education, and his conduct for the two years before his eclipse was only too liberally explained by that eclipse. He was one of God’s afflicted; and his helplessness demanded of one the utmost scrupulosity. Adrian turned from the maxilla and took down a built-up cast of Pithecanthropus, that curious being from Trinil, Java, who for so long has divided opinion as to whether he shall be called man-ape or ape-man. What a distance from him to that modern English skull over the mantelpiece! Ransack the authorities as one might, one never received an answer to the question: Where was the cradle of Homo Sapiens, the nest where he had developed from Trinil, Piltdown, Neanderthal man, or from some other undiscovered collateral of those creatures? If Adrian had a passion, indeed, except for Diana Ferse, it was a burning desire to fix that breeding spot. They were toying now with the idea of descent from Neanderthal man, but he felt it wouldn’t do. When specialisation had reached a stage so definite as that disclosed by those brutish specimens, it did not swerve to type so different. As well expect development of red-deer from elk! He turned to that huge globe whereon were marked all discoveries of moment concerning the origin of modern Man, annotated in his own neat handwriting with notes on geological changes, time and climate. Where — where to look? It was a detective problem, soluble only in the French fashion by instinctive appreciation of the inherently probable locality, ratified by research at the selected spot — the greatest detective problem in the world. The foothills of the Himalayas, the Fayoum, or somewhere now submerged beneath the sea? If, indeed, it were under the sea, then it would never be established to certainty. Academic — the whole thing? Not quite, for with it was conjoined the question of man’s essence, the real primitive nature of the human being, on which social philosophy might and should be founded — a question nicely revived of late: Whether, indeed, man was fundamentally decent and peaceful, as examination into the lives of animals and some so-called savage peoples seemed to suggest, or fundamentally aggressive and restless, as that lugubrious record, History, seemed to assert? Find the breeding nest of Homo Sapiens, and there would emerge perhaps some evidence to decide whether he was devil-angel or angel-devil. To one with Adrian’s instincts there was great attraction in this revived thesis of the inherent gentleness of man, but his habit of mind refused to subscribe easily or wholesale to any kind of thesis. Even gentle beasts and birds lived by the law of self-preservation; so did primitive man; the devilries of sophisticated man began naturally with the extension of his activities and the increase of his competitions — in other words, with the ramifications of self-preservation induced by so-called civilised life. The uncomplicated existence of uncivilised man might well afford less chance to the instinct of self-preservation to be sinister in its manifestations, but you could hardly argue anything from that. Better to accept modern man as he was and try to curb his opportunities for mischief. Nor would it do to bank too much on the natural gentleness of primitive peoples. Only last night he had read of an elephant hunt in Central Africa, wherein the primitive negroes, men and women, who were beating for the white hunters, had fallen upon the carcasses of the slain elephants, torn them limb from limb, flesh from flesh, eaten it all dripping and raw, then vanished into the woods, couple by couple, to complete their orgy. After all, there was something in civilisation! But at this moment his janitor announced:
“A Professor ‘Allorsen to see you, sir. He wants to look at the Peruvian skulls.”
“Hallorsen!” said Adrian, startled. “Are you sure? I thought he was in America, James.”
“‘Allorsen was the name, sir; tall gentleman, speaks like an American. Here’s his card.”
“H’m! I’ll see him, James.” And he thought: ‘Shade of Dinny! What am I going to say?’
The very tall and very good-looking man who entered seemed about thirty-eight years old. His clean-shaven face was full of health, his eyes full of light, his dark hair had a fleck or two of premature grey in it. A breeze seemed to come in with him. He spoke at once:
“Mr. Curator?”
Adrian bowed.
“Why! Surely we’ve met; up a mountain, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Adrian.
“Well, well! My name’s Hallorsen — Bolivian expedition. I’m told your Peruvian skulls are bully. I brought my little Bolivian lot along; thought I’d like to compare them with your Peruvians right here. There’s such a lot of bunk written about skulls by people who haven’t seen the originals.”
“Very true, Professor. I shall be delighted to see your Bolivians. By the way, you never knew my name, I think. This is it.”
Adrian handed him a card. Hallorsen took it.
“Gee! Are you related to the Captain Charwell who’s got his knife into me?”
“His uncle. But I was under the impression that it was your knife that was into him.”
“Well, he let me down.”
“I understand he thinks you let him down.”
“See here, Mr. Charwell —”
“We pronounce the name Cherrell, if you don’t mind.”
“Cherrell — yes, I remember now. But if you hire a man to do a job, Mr. Curator, and that job’s too much for him, and because it’s too much for him you get left, what do you do — pass him a gold medal?”
“You find out, I think, whether the job you hired him to do was humanly possible, before you take out your knife, anyway.”
“That’s up to the man who takes the job. And what was it? Just to keep a tight rein on a few dagoes.”
“I don’t know very much about it, but I understand he had charge of the transport animals as well.”
“He surely did; and let the whole thing slip out of his hand. Well, I don’t expect you to side against your nephew. But can I see your Peruvians?”
“Certainly.”
“That’s nice of you.”
During the mutual inspection which followed Adrian frequently glanced at the magnificent specimen of Homo Sapiens who stood beside him. A man so overflowing with health and life he had seldom seen. Natural enough that any check should gall him. Sheer vitality would prevent him from seeing the other side of things. Like his nation, matters must move his way, because there was no other way that seemed possible to his superabundance.
‘After all,’ he thought, ‘he can’t help being God’s own specimen — Homo transatlanticus superbus’; and he said slyly: “So the sun is going to travel West to East in future, Professor?”
Hallorsen smiled, and his smile had an exuberant sweetness.
“Well, Mr. Curator, we’re agreed, I guess, that civilisation started with agriculture. If we can show that we raised Indian corn on the American continent way back, maybe thousands of years before the old Nile civilisation of barley and wheat, why shouldn’t the stream be the other way?”
“And can you?”
“Why, we have twenty to twenty-five types of Indian corn. Hrwdlicka claims that some twenty thousand years was necessary to differentiate them. That puts us way ahead as the parents of agriculture, anyway.”
“But alas! no type of Indian corn existed in the old world till after the discovery of America.”
“No, sir; nor did any old-world type cereal exist in America till after that. Now, if the old-world culture seeped its way across the Pacific, why didn’t it bring along its cereals?”
“But that doesn’t make America the light-bringer to the rest of the world, does it?”
“Maybe not; but if not, she just developed her own old civilisations out of her own discovery of cereals; and they were the first.”
“Are you an Atlantean, Professor?”
“I sometimes toy with the idea, Mr. Curator.”
“Well, well! May I ask if you are quite happy about your attack on my nephew?”
“Why, I certainly had a sore head when I wrote it. Your nephew and I didn’t click.”
“That, I should think, might make you all the more doubtful as to whether you were just.”
“If I withdrew my criticism, I wouldn’t be saying what I really thought.”
“You are convinced that you had no hand in your failure to reach your objective?”
The frown on the giant’s brow had a puzzled quality, and Adrian thought: ‘An honest man, anyway.’
“I don’t see what you’re getting at,” said Hallorsen, slowly,
“You chose my nephew, I believe?”
“Yes, out of twenty others.”
“Precisely. You chose the wrong man, then?”
“I surely did.”
“Bad judgment?”
Hallorsen laughed.
“That’s very acute, Mr. Curator. But I’m not the man to advertise my own failings.”
“What you wanted,” said Adrian, dryly, “was a man without the bowels of compassion; well, I admit, you didn’t get him.”
Hallorsen flushed.
“We shan’t agree about this, sir. I’ll just take my little lot of skulls away. And I thank you for your courtesy.”
A few minutes later he was gone.
Adrian was left to tangled meditation. The fellow was better than he had remembered. Physically a splendid specimen, mentally not to be despised, spiritually — well, typical of a new world where each immediate objective was the most important thing on earth till it was attained, and attainment more important than the methods of attainment employed. ‘Pity,’ he thought, ‘if there’s going to be a dog-fight. Still, the fellow’s in the wrong; one ought to be more charitable than to attack like that in public print. Too much ego in friend Hallorsen.’ So thinking, he put the maxilla into a drawer.
Dinny pursued her way towards St. Augustine’s-inthe-Meads. On that fine day the poverty of the district she was entering seemed to her country-nurtured eyes intensely cheerless. She was the more surprised by the hilarity of the children playing in the streets. Asking one of them the way to the Vicarage, she was escorted by five. They did not leave her when she rang the bell, and she was forced to conclude that they were actuated by motives not entirely connected with altruism. They attempted, indeed, to go in with her, and only left when she gave them each a penny. She was ushered into a pleasant room which looked as though it would be glad if someone had the time to enter it some day, and was contemplating a reproduction of the Castelfranco Francesca, when a voice said:
“Dinny!” and she saw her Aunt May. Mrs. Hilary Cherrell had her usual air of surmounting the need for being in three places at once; she looked leisurely, detached, and pleased — not unnaturally, for she liked her niece.
“Up for shopping, dear?”
“No, Aunt May, I’ve come to win an introduction off Uncle Hilary.”
“Your Uncle’s in the Police Court.”
A bubble rose to Dinny’s surface.
“Why, what’s he done, Aunt May?”
Mrs. Hilary smiled.
“Nothing at present, but I won’t answer for him if the magistrate isn’t sensible. One of our young women has been charged with accosting.”
“Not Uncle Hilary?”
“No, dear, hardly that. Your uncle is a witness to her character.”
“And is there really a character to witness to, Aunt May?”
“Well, that’s the point. Hilary says so; but I’m not so sure.”
“Men are very trustful. I’ve never been in a Police Court. I should love to go and catch Uncle there.”
“Well, I’m going in that direction. We might go together as far as the Court.”
Five minutes later they issued, and proceeded by way of streets ever more arresting to the eyes of Dinny, accustomed only to the picturesque poverty of the countryside.
“I never quite realised before,” she said, suddenly, “that London was such a bad dream.”
“From which there is no awakening. That’s the chilling part of it. Why on earth, with all this unemployment, don’t they organise a national Slum Clearance Scheme? It would pay for itself within twenty years. Politicians are marvels of energy and principle when they’re out of office, but when they get in, they simply run behind the machine.”
“They’re not women, you see, Auntie.”
“Are you chaffing, Dinny?”
“Oh! no. Women haven’t the sense of difficulty that men have; women’s difficulties are physical and real, men’s difficulties are mental and formal, they always say: ‘It’ll never do!’ Women never say that. They act, and find out whether it will do or not.”
Mrs. Hilary was silent a moment.
“I suppose women ARE more actual; they have a fresher eye, and less sense of responsibility.”
“I wouldn’t be a man for anything.”
“That’s refreshing; but on the whole they get a better time, my dear, even now.”
“They think so, but I doubt it. Men are awfully like ostriches, it seems to me. They can refuse to see what they don’t want to, better than we can; but I don’t think that’s an advantage.”
“If you lived in the Meads, Dinny, you might.”
“If I lived in the Meads, dear, I should die.”
Mrs. Hilary contemplated her niece by marriage. Certainly she looked a little transparent and as if she could be snapped off, but she also had a look of ‘breeding,’ as if her flesh were dominated by her spirit. She might be unexpectedly durable, and impermeable by outside things.
“I’m not so sure, Dinny; yours is a toughened breed. But for that your uncle would have been dead long ago. Well! Here’s the Police Court. I’m sorry I can’t spare time to come in. But everybody will be nice to you. It’s a very human place, if somewhat indelicate. Be a little careful about your next-door neighbours.”
Dinny raised an eyebrow: “Lousy, Aunt May?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say not. Come back to tea, if you can.”
She was gone.
The exchange and mart of human indelicacy was crowded, for with the infallible flair of the Public for anything dramatic, the case in which Hilary was a witness to character had caught on, since it involved the integrity of the Police. Its second remand was in progress when Dinny took the last remaining fifteen square inches of standing room. Her neighbours on the right reminded her of the nursery rhyme: ‘The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker.’ Her neighbour on the left was a tall policeman. Many women were among the throng at the back of the Court. The air was close and smelled of clothes. Dinny looked at the magistrate, ascetic and as if pickled, and wondered why he did not have incense fuming on his desk. Her eyes passed on to the figure in the dock, a girl of about her own age and height, neatly dressed, with good features except that her mouth was perhaps more sensuous than was fortunate for one in her position. Dinny estimated that her hair was probably fair. She stood very still, with a slight fixed flush on her pale cheeks, and a frightened restlessness in her eyes. Her name appeared to be Millicent Pole. Dinny gathered that she was alleged by a police constable to have accosted two men in the Euston Road, neither of whom had appeared to give evidence. In the witness-box a young man who resembled a tobacconist was testifying that he had seen the girl pass twice or three times — had noticed her specially as a ‘nice bit’; she had seemed worried, as if looking for something.
For somebody, did he mean?
That or the other, how should he know? No, she wasn’t looking on the pavement; no, she didn’t stop, she passed HIM, anyway, without a look. Had he spoken to her? No fear! Doing? Oh, he was just outside his shop for a breath of air after closing. Did he see her speak to anyone? No, he didn’t, but he wasn’t there long.
“The Reverend Hilary Charwell.”
Dinny saw her uncle rise from a bench and step up under the canopy of the witness box. He looked active and unclerical, and her eyes rested with pleasure on his long firm face, so wrinkled and humorous.
“Your name is Hilary Charwell?”
“Cherrell, if you don’t mind.”
“Quite. And you are the incumbent of St. Augustine’s-inthe-Meads?”
Hilary bowed.
“For how long?”
“Thirteen years.”
“You are acquainted with the defendant?”
“Since she was a child.”
“Tell us, please, Mr. Cherrell, what you know of her?”
Dinny saw her uncle turn more definitely to the magistrate.
“Her father and mother, sir, were people for whom I had every respect; they brought up their children well. He was a shoemaker — poor, of course; we’re all poor in my parish. I might almost say they died of poverty five and six years ago, and their two daughters have been more or less under my eye since. They work at Petter and Poplin’s. I’ve never heard anything against Millicent here. So far as I know, she’s a good honest girl.”
“I take it, Mr. Cherrell, your opportunities of judging of her are not very great?”
“Well, I visit the house in which she lodges with her sister. If you saw it, sir, you would agree that it requires some self-respect to deal as well as they do with the conditions there.”
“Is she a member of your congregation?”
A smile came on her uncle’s lips, and was reflected on the magistrate’s.
“Hardly, sir. Their Sundays are too precious to young people nowadays. But Millicent is one of the girls who goes for her holidays to our Rest House near Dorking. They are always very good girls down there. My niece by marriage, Mrs. Michael Mont, who runs the house, has reported well of her. Shall I read what she says?
“‘DEAR UNCLE HILARY,
“‘You ask about Millicent Pole. She has been down three times, and the matron reports that she is a nice girl and not at all flighty. My own impression of her is the same.’”
“Then it comes to this, Mr. Cherrell: in your view a mistake has been made in this case?”
“Yes, sir; I am convinced of it.”
The girl in the dock put her handkerchief to her eyes. And Dinny felt, suddenly, indignant at the extreme wretchedness of her position. To stand there before all those people, even if she had done as they said! And why shouldn’t a girl ask a man for his companionship? He wasn’t obliged to give it.
The tall policeman stirred, looked down at her, as if scenting unorthodoxy, and cleared his throat.
“Thank you, Mr. Cherrell.”
Hilary stepped out of the witness box and in doing so caught sight of his niece and waved a finger. Dinny became aware that the case was over, the magistrate making up his mind. He sat perfectly silent, pressing his finger-tips together and staring at the girl, who had finished mopping her eyes and was staring back at him. Dinny held her breath. On the next minute — a life, perhaps, hung in the balance! The tall policeman changed his feet. Was his sympathy with his fellow in the force, or with that girl? All the little noises in the Court had ceased, the only sound was the scratching of a pen. The magistrate held his finger-tips apart and spoke:
“I am not satisfied that this case has been made out. The defendant will be dismissed. You may go.”
The girl made a little choking sound. To her right the candlestick-maker uttered a hoarse: “‘Ear! ‘ear!”
“‘Ush!” said the tall policeman. Dinny saw her uncle walking out beside the girl; he smiled as he passed.
“Wait for me, Dinny — shan’t be two minutes!”
Slipping out behind the tall policeman, Dinny waited in the lobby. The nature of things around gave her the shuddery feeling one had turning up the light in a kitchen at night; the scent of Condy’s Fluid assailed her nostrils; she moved nearer to the outer door. A police sergeant said:
“Anything I can do for you, Miss?”
“Thank you, I’m waiting for my uncle; he’s just coming.”
“The reverend gentleman?”
Dinny nodded.
“Ah! He’s a good man, is the Vicar. That girl got off?”
“Yes.”
“Well! Mistakes will ‘appen. Here he is, Miss.”
Hilary came up and put his arm through Dinny’s.
“Ah! Sergeant,” he said, “how’s the Missis?”
“Prime, Sir. So you pulled her out of it?”
“Yes,” said Hilary; “and I want a pipe. Come along, Dinny.” And, nodding to the sergeant, he led her into the air.
“What brought YOU into this galley, Dinny?”
“I came after you, Uncle. Aunt May brought me. Did that girl really not do it?”
“Ask me another. But to convict her was the surest way to send her to hell. She’s behind with her rent, and her sister’s ill. Hold on a minute while I light up.” He emitted a cloud of smoke and resumed her arm. “What do you want of me, my dear?”
“An introduction to Lord Saxenden.”
“Snubby Bantham? Why?”
“Because of Hubert.”
“Oh! Going to vamp him?”
“If you’ll bring us together.”
“I was at Harrow with Snubby, he was only a baronet then — I haven’t seen him since.”
“But you’ve got Wilfred Bentworth in your pocket, Uncle, and their estates march.”
“Well, I daresay Bentworth will give me a note to him for you.”
“That’s not what I want. I want to meet him socially.”
“Um! Yes, you can hardly vamp him without. What’s the point, exactly?”
“Hubert’s future. We want to get at the fountain-head before worse befalls.”
“I see. But look here, Dinny, Lawrence is your man. He has Bentworth going to them at Lippinghall on Tuesday next week, for partridge driving. You could go too.”
“I thought of Uncle Lawrence, but I couldn’t miss the chance of seeing you, Uncle.”
“My dear,” said Hilary, “attractive nymphs mustn’t say things like that. They go to the head. Well, here we are! Come in and have tea.”
In the drawing room of the Vicarage Dinny was startled to see again her Uncle Adrian. He was sitting in a corner with his long legs drawn in, surrounded by two young women who looked like teachers. He waved his spoon, and presently came over to her.
“After we parted, Dinny, who should appear but the man of wrath himself, to see my Peruvians.”
“Not Hallorsen?”
Adrian held out a card: ‘Professor Edward Hallorsen,’ and in pencil, ‘Piedmont Hotel.’
“He’s a much more personable bloke than I thought when I met him husky and bearded in the Dolomites; and I should say he’s no bad chap if taken the right way. And what I was going to say to you was: Why not take him the right way?”
“You haven’t read Hubert’s diary, Uncle.”
“I should like to.”
“You probably will. It may be published.”
Adrian whistled faintly.
“Perpend, my dear. Dog-fighting is excellent for all except the dogs.”
“Hallorsen’s had his innings. It’s Hubert’s turn to bat.”
“Well, Dinny — no harm in having a look at the bowling before he goes in. Let me arrange a little dinner. Diana Ferse will have us at her house, and you can stay the night with her for it. So what about Monday?”
Dinny wrinkled her rather tip-tilted nose. If, as she intended, she went to Lippinghall next week, Monday WOULD be handy. It might, after all, be as well to see this American before declaring war on him.
“All right, Uncle, and thank you very much. If you’re going West may I come with you? I want to see Aunt Emily and Uncle Lawrence. Mount Street’s on your way home.”
“Right! When you’ve had your fill, we’ll start.”
“I’m quite full,” said Dinny, and got up.
Her luck held, and she flushed her third Uncle contemplating his own house in Mount Street, as if he were about to make an offer for it.
“Ah! Dinny, come along; your Aunt’s moulting, and she’ll be glad to see you. I miss old Forsyte,” he added in the hall. “I was just considering what I ought to ask for this house if we let it next season. You didn’t know old Forsyte — Fleur’s father: he was a character.”
“What is the matter with Aunt Em, Uncle Lawrence?”
“Nothing, my dear. I think the sight of poor old Uncle ‘Cuffs’ has made her dwell on the future. Ever dwell on the future, Dinny? It’s a dismal period, after a certain age.”
He opened a door.
“My dear, here’s Dinny.”
Emily, Lady Mont, was standing in her panelled drawing-room flicking a feather brush over a bit of Famille Verte, with her parakeet perched on her shoulder. She lowered the brush, advanced with a far-away look in her eyes, said “Mind, Polly,” and kissed her niece. The parakeet transferred itself to Dinny’s shoulder and bent its head round enquiringly to look in her face.
“He’s such a dear,” said Lady Mont; “you won’t mind if he tweaks your ear? I’m so glad you came, Dinny; I’ve been so thinking of funerals. Do tell me your idea about the hereafter.”
“Is there one, Auntie?”
“Dinny! That’s so depressing.”
“Perhaps those who want one have it.”
“You’re like Michael. He’s so mental. Where did you pick Dinny up, Lawrence?”
“In the street.”
“That sounds improper. How is your father, Dinny? I hope he isn’t any the worse for that dreadful house at Porthminster. It did so smell of preserved mice.”
“We’re all very worried about Hubert, Aunt Em.”
“Ah! Hubert, yes. You know, I think he made a mistake to flog those men. Shootin’ them one can quite understand, but floggin’ is so physical and like the old Duke.”
“Don’t you feel inclined to flog carters when they lash overloaded horses up-hill, Auntie?”
“Yes, I do. Was that what they were doin’?”
“Practically, only worse. They used to twist the mules’ tails and stick their knives into them, and generally play hell with the poor brutes.”
“Did they? I’m so glad he flogged them; though I’ve never liked mules ever since we went up the Gemmi. Do you remember, Lawrence?”
Sir Lawrence nodded. On his face was the look, affectionate but quizzical, which Dinny always connected with Aunt Em.
“Why, Auntie?”
“They rolled on me; not they exactly, but the one I was ridin’. They tell me it’s the only time a mule has ever rolled on anybody — surefooted.”
“Dreadful taste, Auntie!”
“Yes; and most unpleasant — so internal. Do you think Hubert would like to come and shoot partridges at Lippinghall next week?’
“I don’t think you could get Hubert to go anywhere just now. He’s got a terrible hump. But if you have a cubby-hole left for me, could I come?”
“Of course. There’ll be plenty of room. Let’s see: just Charlie Muskham and his new wife, Mr. Bentworth and Hen, Michael and Fleur, and Diana Ferse, and perhaps Adrian because he doesn’t shoot, and your Aunt Wilmet. Oh! ah! And Lord Saxenden.”
“What!” cried Dinny.
“Why? Isn’t he respectable?”
“But, Auntie — that’s perfect! He’s my objective.”
“What a dreadful word; I never heard it called that before. Besides, there’s a Lady Saxenden, on her back somewhere.”
“No, no, Aunt Em. I want to get at him about Hubert. Father says he’s the nod.”
“Dinny, you and Michael use the oddest expressions. What nod?”
Sir Lawrence broke the petrified silence he usually observed in the presence of his wife.
“Dinny means, my dear, that Saxenden is a big noise behind the scenes in military matters.”
“What is he like, Uncle Lawrence?”
“Snubby? I’ve known him many years — quite a lad.”
“This is very agitatin’,” said Lady Mont, resuming the parakeet.
“Dear Auntie, I’m quite safe.”
“But is Lord — er — Snubby? I’ve always tried to keep Lippin’hall respectable. I’m very doubtful about Adrian as it is, but”— she placed the parakeet on the mantelpiece —“he’s my favourite brother. For a favourite brother one does things.”
“One does,” said Dinny.
“That’ll be all right, Em,” put in Sir Lawrence. “I’ll watch over Dinny and Diana, and you can watch over Adrian and Snubby.”
“Your uncle gets more frivolous every year, Dinny; he tells me the most dreadful stories.” She stood still alongside Sir Lawrence and he put his hand through her arm.
Dinny thought: ‘The Red King and the White Queen.’
“Well, good-bye, Dinny,” said her Aunt, suddenly; “I have to go to bed. My Swedish masseuse is takin’ me off three times a week. I really am reducin’.” Her eyes roved over Dinny: “I wonder if she could put you on a bit!”
“I’m fatter than I look, Auntie.”
“So am I— it’s distressin’. If your uncle wasn’t a hop-pole I shouldn’t mind so much.” She inclined her cheek, and Dinny gave it a smacking kiss.
“What a nice kiss!” said Lady Mont. “I haven’t had a kiss like that for years. People do peck so! Come, Polly!” and, with the parakeet upon her shoulder, she swayed away.
“Aunt Em looks awfully well.”
“She is, my dear. It’s her mania — getting stout; she fights it tooth and nail. We live on the most variegated cookery. It’s better at Lippinghall, because Augustine leads us by the nose, and she’s as French as she was thirty-five years ago when we brought her back from our honeymoon. Cooks like a bird, still. Fortunately nothing makes me fat.”
“Aunt Em isn’t fat.”
“M-no.”
“And she carries herself beautifully. We don’t carry ourselves like that.”
“Carriage went out with Edward,” said Sir Lawrence; “it was succeeded by the lope. All you young women lope as if you were about to spring on to something and make a get-away. I’ve been trying to foresee what will come next. Logically it should be the bound, but it may quite well revert and be the languish.”
“What sort of man is Lord Saxenden, really, Uncle Lawrence?”
“One of those who won the war by never having his opinion taken. You know the sort of thing: ‘Went down for week-end to Cooquers. The Capers were there, and Gwen Blandish; she was in force and had much to say about the Polish front. I had more. Talked with Capers; he thinks the Boches have had enough. I disagreed with him; he is very down on Lord T. Arthur Prose came over on Sunday; he estimates that the Russians now have two million rifles but no bullets. The war, he says, will be over by January. He is appalled by our losses. If he only knew what I know! Lady Thripp was there with her son, who has lost his left foot. She is most engaging; promised to go and see her hospital and tell her how to run it. Very pleasant dinner on Sunday — everybody in great form; we played at comfits. Alick came in after; he says we lost forty thousand men in the last attack, but the French lost more. I expressed the opinion that it was very serious. No one took it.’”
Dinny laughed. “Were there such people?”
“Were there not, my dear! Most valuable fellows; what we should have done without them — the way they kept their ends up and their courage and their conversation — the thing had to be seen to be believed. And almost all of them won the war. Saxenden was especially responsible. He had an active job all the time.”
“What job?”
“Being in the know. He was probably more in the know than anybody else on earth, judging by what he says. Remarkable constitution, too, and lets you see it: great yachtsman.”
“I shall look forward to him.”
“Snubby,” sighed her uncle, “is one of those persons at whom it is better to look back. Would you like to stay the night, Dinny, or are you going home?”
“Oh, I must go back to-night. My train’s at eight from Paddington.”
“In that case I’ll lope you across the Park, give you a snack at Paddington, and put you into the train.”
“Oh! don’t bother about me, Uncle Lawrence.”
“Let you cross the Park without me, and miss the chance of being arrested for walking with a young female! Never! We might even sit, and try our luck. You’re just the type that gets the aged into trouble. There’s something Botticellian about you, Dinny. Come along.”
It was seven o’clock of the September evening when they debouched into Hyde Park, and, passing under the plane trees, walked on its withered grass.
“Too early,” said Sir Lawrence, “owing to Daylight Saving. Indecorum isn’t billed till eight. I doubt if it will be any use to sit, Dinny. Can you tell a disguised copper when you see him? It’s very necessary. The bowler hat — for fear of being hit on the head too suddenly; they always fall off in books; tendency to look as if he weren’t a copper; touch of efficiency about the mouth — they complete their teeth in the force; eyes a trifle on the ground when they’re not on you; the main man dwelling a little on both feet, and looking as if he had been measured for something. Boots of course — proverbial.”
Dinny gurgled.
“I tell you what we might do, Uncle Lawrence. Stage an accost. There’ll be a policeman at the Paddington Gate. I’ll loiter a little, and accost you as you come up. What ought I to say?”
Sir Lawrence wrinkled up an eyebrow.
“So far as I can recollect, something like: ‘How do, ducky? Your night out?’”
“I’ll go on, then, and let that off on you under the policeman’s nose.”
“He’d see through it, Dinny.”
“You’re trying to back out.”
“Well, no one has taken a proposition of mine seriously for so long. Besides, ‘Life is real, life is earnest, and the end is not the gaol’!”
“I’m disappointed in you, Uncle.”
“I’m used to that, my dear. Wait till you’re grave and reverend, and see how continually you will disappoint youth.”
“But think: we could have whole columns of the newspapers devoted to us for days. ‘Paddington Gate accosting incident: Alleged Uncle.’ Don’t you hanker to be an alleged uncle and supersede the affairs of Europe? Don’t you even want to get the Police into trouble? Uncle, it’s pusillanimous.”
“Soit!” said Sir Lawrence: “One uncle in the Police Court per day is enough. You’re more dangerous than I thought, Dinny.”
“But, really, why should those girls be arrested? That all belongs to the past, when women WERE under-dogs.”
“I am entirely of your way of thinking, Dinny, but the Nonconformist conscience is still with us, and the Police must have something to do. Without adding to unemployment it’s impossible to reduce their numbers. And an idle police force is dangerous to cooks.”
“Do be serious, Uncle!”
“Not that, my dear! Whatever else life holds for us — not that! But I do foresee the age when we shall all be free to accost each other, limited only by common civility. Instead of the present Vulgate, there will be revised versions for men and women. ‘Madam, will you walk?’ ‘Sir, do you desire my company?’ It will be an age not perhaps of gold, but at least of glitter. This is Paddington Gate. Could you have had the heart to spoof that noble-looking copper? Come along, let’s cross.”
“Your Aunt,” he resumed, as they entered Paddington Station, “won’t rise again, so I’ll dine with you in the buffet. We’ll have a spot of the ‘boy,’ and for the rest, if I know our railway stations, oxtail soup, white fish, roast beef, greens, browned potatoes, and plum tart — all good, if somewhat English.”
“Uncle Lawrence,” said Dinny, when they had reached the roast beef, “what do YOU think of Americans?”
“No patriotic man, Dinny, speaks the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, on that subject. Americans, however, like Englishmen, may be divided into two classes — Americans and Americans. In other words, some are nice and some are nasty.”
“Why don’t we get on better with them?”
“That’s an easy one. The nasty English don’t get on better with them because they have more money than we have. The nice English don’t get on as well as they ought with them, because Americans are so responsive and the tone of the American voice is not pleasing to the English ear. Or take it the other way round. The nasty Americans don’t get on well with the English because the tone of the English voice is unpleasing to them. The nice Americans don’t get on as well with us as they should, because we’re so unresponsive and sniffy.”
“Don’t you think they want to have things their own way too much?”
“So do we. It isn’t that. It’s manner, my dear, that divides us, manner and language.”
“How?”
“Having what used to be the same language is undoubtedly a snare. We must hope for such a development of the American lingo as will necessitate our both learning each other’s.”
“But we always talk about the link of a common tongue.”
“Why this curiosity about Americans?”
“I’m to meet Professor Hallorsen on Monday.”
“The Bolivian bloke. A word of advice then, Dinny: Let him be in the right, and he’ll feed out of your hand. Put him in the wrong, and you’ll not feed out of his.”
“Oh! I mean to keep my temper.”
“Keep your left up, and don’t rush in. Now, if you’ve finished, my dear, we ought to go; it’s five minutes to eight.”
He put her into her carriage and supplied her with an evening paper. As the train moved out, he added:
“Give him the Botticellian eye, Dinny. Give him the Botticellian eye!”
Adrian brooded over Chelsea as he approached it on Monday evening. It was not what it used to be. Even in late Victorian days he remembered its inhabitants as somewhat troglodytic — persons inclined to duck their heads, with here and there a high light or historian. Charwomen, artists hoping to pay their rent, writers living on four-and-sevenpence a day, ladies prepared to shed their clothes at a shilling an hour, couples maturing for the Divorce Court, people who liked a draught, together with the worshippers of Turner, Carlyle, Rossetti, and Whistler; some publicans, not a few sinners, and the usual sprinkling of those who eat mutton four times a week. Behind a river fa?ade hardening into the palatial, respectability had gradually thickened, till it was now lapping the incurable King’s Road and emerging even there in bastions of Art and Fashion.
Diana’s house was in Oakley Street. He could remember it as having no individuality whatever, and inhabited by a family of strict mutton-eaters; but in the six years of Diana’s residence it had become one of the charming nests of London. He had known all the pretty Montjoy sisters scattered over Society, but of them all Diana was the youngest, the prettiest, most tasteful, and wittiest — one of those women who, without money to speak of or impeachment of virtue, contrive that all about them shall be elegant to the point of exciting jealousy. From her two children and her Collie dog (almost the only one left in London), from her harpsichord, four-poster, Bristol glass, and the stuff on her chairs and floors, taste always seemed to him to radiate and give comfort to the beholder. She, too, gave comfort, with her still perfect figure, dark eyes clear and quick, oval face, ivory complexion, and little crisp trick of speech. All the Montjoy sisters had that trick, it came from their mother, of Highland stock, and had undoubtedly in the course of thirty years made a considerable effect on the accent of Society, converting it from the g-dropping yaw-yaw of the ‘nineties into a rather charming r — and 1-pinching dialect. When he considered why Diana, with her scant income and her husband in a Mental Home, was received everywhere in Society, Adrian was accustomed to take the image of a Bactrian camel. That animal’s two humps were like the two sections of Society (with the big S) joined by a bridge, seldom used after the first crossing. The Montjoys, a very old landed family in Dumfriesshire innumerably allied in the past with the nobility, had something of an hereditary perch on the foremost hump — a somewhat dull position from which there was very little view, because of the camel’s head — and Diana was often invited to great houses where the chief works were hunting, shooting, hospitals, Court functions, and giving debutantes a chance. As Adrian well knew, she seldom went. She was far more constantly seated on the second hump, with its wide and stimulating view over the camel’s tail. Ah! They were a queer collection on that back hump! Many, like Diana herself, crossed from the first hump by the bridge, others came up the camel’s tail, a few were dropped from Heaven, or — as people sometimes called it — America. To qualify for that back hump Adrian, who had never qualified, knew that you needed a certain liveliness on several fronts; either a first-rate memory so that anything you read or listened to could be retailed with ready accuracy; or a natural spring of wit. If you had neither of these you might appear on the hump once, but never again. Personality of course, you must have, though without real eccentricity; but it must not be personality which hid its light under a bushel. Eminence in some branch of activity was desirable, but not a sine qua non. Breeding again was welcome, but not if it made you dull. Beauty was a passport, but it had to be allied with animation. Money was desirable, but money alone wouldn’t get you a seat. Adrian had noted that knowledge of Art, if vocal, was of greater value than the power to produce it; and directive ability acceptable if it were not too silent or too dry. Then, again, some people seemed to get there out of an aptitude for the ‘coulisses,’ and for having a finger in every pie. But first and last the great thing was to be able to talk. Innumerable strings were pulled from this back hump, but whether they guided the camel’s progress at all he was never sure, however much those who pulled them thought so. Diana, he knew, had so safe a seat among this heterogeneous group, given to constant meals, that she might have fed without expense from Christmas to Christmas, nor need ever have passed a week-end in Oakley Street. And he was the more grateful in that she so constantly sacrificed all that to be with her children and himself. The war had broken out just after her marriage with Ronald Ferse, and Sheila and Ronald had not been born till after his return from it. They were now seven and six, and, as Adrian was always careful to tell her, ‘regular little Montjoys.’ They certainly had her looks and animation. But he alone knew that the shadow on her face in repose was due more to the fear that she ought not to have had them than to anything else in her situation. He, too, alone knew that the strain of living with one unbalanced as Ferse had become had so killed sex impulse in her that she had lived these four years of practical widowhood without any urge towards love. He believed she had for himself a real affection, but he knew that so far it stopped short of passion.
He arrived half an hour before dinner time, and went up to the schoolroom at the top of the house, to see the children. They were receiving bed-time rusks and milk from their French governess, welcomed him with acclamation and clamoured for him to go on with the story he was telling them. The French governess, who knew what to expect, withdrew. Adrian sat down opposite the two small sparkling faces, and began where he had left off: “So the man who had charge of the canoes was a tremendous fellow, brown all over, who had been selected for his strength, because of the white unicorns which infested that coast.’
“Boo! Uncle Adrian — unicorns are imaginative.”
“Not in those days, Sheila.”
“Then what’s become of them?”
“There is only about one left, and he lives where white men cannot go, because of the ‘Bu-bu’ fly.”
“What is the ‘Bu-bu’ fly?”
“The ‘Bu-bu’ fly, Ronald, is remarkable for settling in the calf of the leg and founding a family there.”
“Oh!”
“Unicorns — as I said before I was interrupted — which infested that coast. His name was Mattagor, and this was his way with unicorns. After luring them down to the beach with crinibobs —”
“What are crinibobs?”
“They look like strawberries and taste like carrots — crinibobs — he would steal up behind them —”
“If he was in front of them with the crinibobs, how could he steal up behind them?”
“He used to thread the crinibobs through a string made out of fibre, and hang them in a row between two charm trees. As soon as the unicorns were nibbling, he would emerge from the bush where he would be hiding, and, making no noise with his bare feet, tie their tails together two by two.”
“But they would feel their tails being tied!”
“No, Sheila; white unicorns don’t feel with their tails. Then he would retire to the bush, and click his tongue against his teeth, and the unicorns would dash forward in wild confusion.”
“Did their tails ever come out?”
“Never. That was the great thing, because he was very fond of animals.”
“I expect the unicorns never came again?”
“Wrong, Ronny. Their love of crinibobs was too great.”
“Did he ever ride on them?”
“Yes; sometimes he would leap lightly on to two of their backs and ride off into the jungle with one foot on each back, laughing drily to himself. So under his charge, as you may imagine, the canoes were safe. It was not the wet season, so that the landsharks would not be so numerous, and the expedition was about to start when —”
“When what, Uncle Adrian? It’s only Mummy.”
“Go on, Adrian.”
But Adrian remained silent, with his eyes fixed on the advancing vision. Then, averting from it his eyes and fixing them on Sheila, he proceeded:
“I must now pause to tell you why the moon was so important. They could not start the expedition till the half-moon was seen advancing towards them through the charm trees.”
“Why not?”
“That is what I am going to tell you. In those days people, and especially this tribe of Phwatabhoys, paid a great deal of attention to what was beautiful — things like Mummy, or Christmas carols, or little new potatoes, had a great effect on them. And before they did anything they had to have an omen.”
“What is an omen?”
“You know what an amen is — it comes at the end: well, an omen comes at the beginning, to bring luck. And the omen had to be beautiful. Now the half-moon was considered to be the most beautiful thing in the dry season, so they had to wait till it came advancing to them through the charm trees, as you saw Mummy just now walking towards us through the door.”
“But the moon hasn’t got feet.”
“No; she floats. And one fine evening she came floating, like nothing else on earth, so lovely and so slim, and with such an expression in her eyes that they all knew their expedition was bound to be successful; and they abased themselves before her, saying: ‘Omen! if thou wilt be with us, then shall we pass over the wilderness of the waters and the sands with thee in our eyes, and be happy in the happiness that comes with thee for ever and ever. Amen!’ And when they had put it like that, they got into the canoes, Phwatabhoy by Phwatabhoy and Phwatanymph by Phwatanymph, till they were all in. And the half-moon stayed there at the edge of the charm trees and blessed them with her eyes. But one man stopped behind. He was an old Phwatabhoy who wished for the half-moon so much that he forgot everything, and started crawling towards her, hoping to touch her feet.”
“But she hadn’t feet!”
“He thought she had, for to him she was like a woman made of silver and ivory. And he crawled in and out of the charm trees, but never could he quite reach her, because she was the half-moon.”
Adrian paused, and there was for a moment no sound; then he said: “To be continued in our next,” and went out. Diana joined him in the hall.
“Adrian, you are corrupting the children. Don’t you know that fables and fairy-tales are no longer to be allowed to interfere with their interest in machines? After you’d gone Ronald said: ‘Does Uncle Adrian really believe you are the half-moon, Mummy?’”
“And you answered?”
“Diplomatically. But they’re as sharp as squirrels.”
“Well! Sing me ‘Waterboy’ before Dinny and her swain come.”
And while she sat and sang, Adrian gazed and worshipped. Her voice was good and she sang well that strange and haunting song. The last ‘Waterboy’ had barely died away when the maid announced:
“Miss Cherrell. Professor Hallorsen.”
Dinny came in with her head held high, and Adrian augured but poorly from the expression of her eyes. He had seen schoolboys look like that when they were going to ‘roast’ a new-comer. After her came Hallorsen, immensely tall in that small drawing-room, his eyes swimming with health. He bowed low when presented to Dinny. “Your daughter, I presume, Mr. Curator?”
“No, my niece; a sister of Captain Hubert Cherrell.”
“Is that so? I am honoured to make your acquaintance, Ma’am.”
Adrian, noting that their eyes, having crossed, seemed to find it difficult to disengage, said:
“How are you liking the Piedmont, Professor?”
“The cooking’s fine, but there are too many of us Americans.”
“Perching just now like the swallows?”
“Ah! In a fortnight we’ll all have flitted.”
Dinny had come brimful of Anglo-femininity, and the contrast between Hallorsen’s overpowering health and Hubert’s haggard looks had at once sharpened the edge of her temper. She sat down beside that embodiment of the conquering male with the full intention of planting every dart she could in his epidermis. He was, however, at once engaged in conversation by Diana, and she had not finished her soup (clear, with a prune in it) before, stealing a look round at him, she revised her plan. After all, he was a stranger and a guest, and she was supposed to be a lady; there were other ways of killing a cat beside hanging it. She would not plant darts, she would ‘charm him with smiles and soap’; that would be more considerate towards Diana and her uncle, and more effective warfare in the long run. With a cunning worthy of her cause, she waited till he was in deep water over British politics, which he seemed to regard as serious manifestations of human activity; then, turning on him the Botticellian eye, she said:
“We should treat American politics just as seriously, Professor. But surely they’re not serious, are they?”
“I believe you are right, Miss Cherrell. There’s just one rule for politicians all over the world: Don’t say in Power what you say in Opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible. The only real difference, I judge, between Parties is that one Party sits in the National ‘Bus, and the other Party strap-hangs.”
“In Russia, what’s left of the other Party lies under the seat, doesn’t it?”
“So it does in Italy,” said Diana.
“And what about Spain?” added Adrian.
Hallorsen uttered his infectious laugh. “Dictatorships aren’t politics. They’re jokes.”
“NO jokes, Professor.”
“Bad jokes, Professor.”
“How do you MEAN— jokes, Professor?”
“Bluff. Just one long assumption that human nature’s on the mark the Dictator makes for it. The moment his bluff’s called — Why! Wump!”
“But,” said Diana, “suppose a majority of the people approve of their dictator, isn’t that democracy, or government by consent of the governed?”
“I would say no, Mrs. Ferse, unless he was confirmed by majority every year.”
“Dictators get things done,” said Adrian.
“At a price, Mr. Curator. But look at Diaz in Mexico. For twenty years he made it the Garden of Eden, but see what it’s been ever since he went. You can’t get out of a people for keeps what isn’t yet in them.”
“The fault,” replied Adrian, “in our political system and in yours, Professor, is that a whole lot of reforms latent in the common-sense of the people don’t get a chance of being carried out because our short-term politicians won’t give a lead, for fear of losing the power they haven’t got.”
“Aunt May,” Dinny murmured, “was saying: Why not cure Unemployment by a National Slum Clearance effort, and kill the two birds with one stone?”
“My! But that’s a mighty fine idea!” said Hallorsen, turning on her the full of his brimming face.
“Vested interests,” said Diana, “slum landlordism and the building trades are too strong for that.”
Adrian added: “And there’s the cash required.”
“Why! that’s all easy. Your Parliament could take what powers they need for a big national thing like that; and what’s wrong with a Loan, anyway? — the money would come back; it’s not like a Loan for war, all shot away in powder. What do you pay in doles?”
No one could answer him.
“I judge the saving would pay the interest on a pretty big Loan.”
“It just, in fact,” said Dinny, sweetly, “needs simple faith. That’s where you Americans beat us, Professor Hallorsen.”
A look slid over the American’s face as though he were saying: ‘Cats!’
“Well, we certainly had a pieful of simple faith when we came over to fight in France. But we ate the lot. It’ll be the home fires we keep burning next time.”
“Was your faith so simple even last time?”
“I fear it was, Miss Cherrell. Not one in twenty of us ever believed the Germans could get a cinch on us away over there.”
“I sit rebuked, Professor.”
“Why! Not at all! You judge America by Europe.”
“There was Belgium, Professor,” said Diana; “even we had some simple faith at the start.”
“Pardon me, but did the case of Belgium really move you, Ma’am?”
Adrian was drawing circles with a fork; he looked up.
“Speaking for onself, yes. I don’t suppose it made any difference to the Army people, Navy people, big business people, or even to a large section of Society, political and otherwise. They all knew that if war came we were practically committed to France. But to simple folk like myself and some two-thirds of the population not in the know, to the working classes, in fact, generally, it made all the difference. It was like seeing What’s-his-name — the Man Mountain — advancing on the smallest Flyweight in the ring, who was standing firm and squaring up like a man.”
“Mighty well put, Mr. Curator.”
Dinny flushed. Was there generosity in this man? Then, as if conscious of treachery to Hubert, she said acidly:
“I’ve read that the sight even ruffled Roosevelt.”
“It ruffled quite a few of us, Miss Cherrell; but we’re a long way off over there, and things have to be near before they stir the imagination.”
“Yes, and after all, as you said just now, you did come in at the end.”
Hallorsen looked fixedly at her ingenuous face, bowed and was silent.
Bet when, at the end of that peculiar evening, he was saying good-night, he added:
“I fear you’ve gotten a grouch against me, Miss Cherrell.”
Dinny smiled, without reply.
“All the same, I hope I may meet you again.”
“Oh! But why?”
“Well, I kind of have the feeling that I might change the view you have of me.”
“I am very fond of my brother, Professor Hallorsen.”
“I still think I’ve more against your brother than he has against me.”
“I hope you may be right before long.”
“That sounds like trouble.”
Dinny tilted her head.
She went up to bed, biting her lip with vexation. She had neither charmed nor assailed the enemy; and instead of clean-cut animosity, she had confused feelings about him.
His inches gave him a disconcerting domination. ‘He’s like those creatures in hairy trousers on the films,’ she thought, ‘carrying off the semi-distressed cow-girls — looks at one as if he thought one was on his pillion.’ Primitive Force in swallow-tails and a white waistcoat! A strong but not a silent man.
Her room looked over the street, and from her window she could see the plane trees on the Embankment, the river, and the wide expanse of starry night.
“Perhaps,” she said to herself, aloud, “you won’t leave England so soon as you thought.”
“Can I come in?”
She turned to see Diana in the doorway.
“Well, Dinny, what think you of our friend the enemy?”
“Tom Mix, mixed with the Giant that Jack killed.”
“Adrian likes him.”
“Uncle Adrian lives too much with bones. The sight of red blood goes to his head.”
“Yes; this is the sort of ‘he-man’ women are supposed to fall for. But you behaved well, Dinny, though your eyes looked very green at first.”
“They feel greener now I’ve let him go without a scratch.”
“Never mind! You’ll have other chances. Adrian’s got him asked to Lippinghall tomorrow.”
“What!”
“You’ve only to embroil him with Saxenden there, and Hubert’s trick is done. Adrian didn’t tell you, for fear your joy might show itself. The Professor wants to sample British ‘hunting.’ The poor man doesn’t in the least realise that he’s walking into a lioness’s den. Your Aunt Em will be delicious with him.”
“Hallorsen!” murmured Dinny: “He must have Scandinavian blood.”
“He says his mother was old New England, but married out of the direct succession. Wyoming’s his State. Delightful word, Wyoming.”
“‘The great open spaces.’ What is there about the expression ‘he-man’ which infuriates me, Diana?”
“Well, it’s like being in a room with a burst of sunflowers. But ‘he-men’ aren’t confined to the great open spaces; you’ll find Saxenden one.”
“Really!”
“Yes. Good-night, my dear. And may no ‘he-men’ come to you in dreams!”
When Dinny had disrobed, she again took out the diary and re-read a passage she had turned down. It ran thus: “Feel very low to-night — as if all my sap had run out. Can only keep my pecker up by thinking of Condaford. Wonder what old Foxham would say if he could see me doctoring the mules! The stuff I’ve invented for their colic would raise hair on a billiard ball, but it stops the thing all right. God was in luck when He planned the inside of a mule. Dreamed last night I was standing at the end of the home spinney with pheasants coming over in a stream, and for the life of me I couldn’t pull my trigger; ghastly sort of paralysis. Keep thinking of old Haddon and his: ‘Go it, Master Bertie. Stick your ‘eels in and take ‘old of ‘is ‘ead!’ Good old Haddon! He was a character. The rain’s stopped. Dry — first time for ten days. And the stars are out.
‘A ship, an isle, a sickle moon,
With few but with how splendid stars.’
If only I could sleep! . . .”
That essential private irregularity, room by room, which differentiates the old English from every other variety of country house, was patent at Lippinghall Manor. People went into rooms as if they meant to stay there, and while there inhaled an atmosphere and fitted into garniture different from those in any of the other rooms; nor did they feel that they must leave the room as they found it, if indeed they knew how that was. Fine old furniture stood in careless partnership with fill-up stuff acquired for the purposes of use or ease. Portraits of ancestors, dark or yellow, confronted Dutch or French landscapes still more yellow or dark, with here and there delightful old prints, and miniatures not without charm. In two rooms at least were beautiful old fireplaces, defiled by the comfort of a fender which could be sat on. Staircases appeared unexpectedly in the dark. The position of a bedroom was learned with difficulty and soon forgotten. In it would be, perhaps, a priceless old chestnut wood wardrobe and a four-poster bed of an excellent period; a window-seat with cushions, and some French prints. To it would be conjoined a small room with narrow bed; and bathroom that might or might not need a stroll, but would have salts in it. One of the Monts had been an Admiral; queer old charts, therefore, with dragons lashing the seas, lurked in odd corners of the corridors; one of the Monts, Sir Lawrence’s grandfather, seventh baronet, had been a racing man, and the anatomy of the thoroughbred horse, and jockey of his period (1860-1883) could be studied on the walls. The sixth baronet, who, being in politics, had lived longer than the rest, had left imprints of the earlier Victorian period, his wife and daughters in crinolines, himself in whiskers. The outside of the house was Carolean, tempered here and there by Georgian, and even Victorian fragments where the sixth baronet had given way to his feeling for improvement. The only thing definitely modern was the plumbing.
When Dinny came down to breakfast on the Wednesday morning — the shoot being timed to start at ten — three of the ladies and all the men except Hallorsen were already sitting or wandering to the side-tables. She slipped into a chair next to Lord Saxenden, who rose slightly with the word:
“Morning!”
“Dinny,” called Michael from a sideboard, “coffee, cocoatina or ginger beer?”
“Coffee and a kipper, Michael.”
“There are no kippers.”
Lord Saxenden looked up: “No kippers?” he muttered, and resumed his sausage.
“Haddock?” said Michael.
“No, thank you.”
“Anything for you, Aunt Wilmet?”
“Kedgeree.”
“There is no kedgeree. Kidneys, bacon, scrambled eggs, haddock, ham, cold partridge pie.”
Lord Saxenden rose. “Ah! Ham!” and went over to the side table.
“Well, Dinny?”
“Just some jam, please, Michael.”
“Goose-gog, strawberry, black currant, marmalade.”
“Gooseberry.”
Lord Saxenden resumed his seat with a plate of ham, and began reading a letter as he ate. She did not quite know what to make of his face, because she could not see his eyes, and his mouth was so full. But she seemed to gather why he had been nicknamed ‘Snubby.’ He was red, had a light moustache and hair, both going grey, and a square seat at table. Suddenly he turned to her and said:
“Excuse my reading this. It’s from my wife. She’s on her back, you know.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Horrible business! Poor thing!”
He put the letter in his pocket, filled his mouth with ham, and looked at Dinny. She saw that his eyes were blue, and that his eyebrows, darker than his hair, looked like clumps of fish-hooks. His eyes goggled a little, as though he were saying: “I’m a lad — I’m a lad.” But at this moment she noticed Hallorsen coming in. He stood uncertain, then, seeing her, came to the empty seat on her other side.
“Miss Cherrell,” he said, with a bow, “can I sit right here?”
“Of course: the food is all over there, if you’re thinking of any.”
“Who’s that fellow?” said Lord Saxenden, as Hallorsen went foraging: “He’s an American.”
“Professor Hallorsen.”
“Oh! Ah! Wrote a book on Bolivia? What!”
“Yes.”
“Good-looking chap.”
“A he-man.”
He looked round at her with surprise.
“Try this ham. I used to know an uncle of yours at Harrow, I think.”
“Uncle Hilary!” said Dinny. “He told me.”
“I once laid him three strawberry mashes to two on myself in a race down the Hill steps to the Gym.”
“Did you win, Lord Saxenden?”
“No; and I never paid your uncle.”
“Why not?”
“He sprained his ankle and I put my knee out. He hopped to the Gym door; but I couldn’t move. We were both laid up till the end of term, and then I left.” Lord Saxenden chuckled. “So I still owe him three strawberry mashes.”
“I thought we had ‘some’ breakfast in America, but it’s nil to this,” said Hallorsen, sitting down.
“Do you know Lord Saxenden?”
“Lord Saxenden,” repeated Hallorsen with a bow.
“How de do? You haven’t got our partridge in America, have you?”
“Why, no, I believe not. I am looking forward to hunting that bird. This is mighty fine coffee, Miss Cherrell.”
“Yes,” said Dinny. “Aunt Em prides herself on her coffee.”
Lord Saxenden squared his seat. “Try this ham. I haven’t read your book.”
“Let me send it you; I’ll be proud to have you read it.”
Lord Saxenden ate on.
“Yes, you ought to read it, Lord Saxenden,” said Dinny; “and I’ll send you another book that bears on the same subject.”
Lord Saxenden glared.
“Charming of you both,” he said. “Is that strawberry jam?” and he reached for it.
“Miss Cherrell,” said Hallorsen, in a low voice, “I’d like to have you go through my book and mark the passages you think are prejudicial to your brother. I wrote that book when I had a pretty sore head.”
“I’m afraid that I don’t see what good that would do now.”
“So I could get them cut out, if you wish, for the second edition.”
“That’s very good of you,” said Dinny, icily, “but the harm is done, Professor.”
Hallorsen said, still lower: “I’m just terribly sorry to have hurt you.”
A sensation, perhaps only to be summed up in the words: ‘You are — are you!’ flushed Dinny from top to toe with anger, triumph, calculation, humour.
“It’s my brother you’ve hurt.”
“Maybe that could be mended if we could get together about it.”
“I wonder.” And Dinny rose.
Hallorsen stood up too, and bowed as she passed.
‘Terribly polite,’ she thought.
She spent her morning with the diary in a part of the garden so sunk within yew hedges that it formed a perfect refuge. The sun was warm there, and the humming of the bees over zinnias, pentstemons, hollyhocks, asters, Michaelmas daisies, was very soothing. In that so sheltered garden the dislike of casting Hubert’s intimate feelings to the world’s opinion came on her again. Not that the diary whined; but it revealed the hurts of mind and body with the sharpness of a record meant for no eye but the recorder’s. The sound of shots kept floating to her; and presently, leaning her elbows on the top of the yew hedge, she looked out over the fields towards where they were shooting.
A voice said:
“There you are!”
Her aunt, in a straw hat so broad that it covered her to the very edges of her shoulders, was standing below with two gardeners behind her.
“I’m coming round to you, Dinny; Boswell, you and Johnson can go now. We’ll look at the Portulaca this afternoon.” And she gazed up from under the tilted and enormous halo of her hat. “It’s Majorcan,” she said, “so shelterin’.”
“Boswell and Johnson, Auntie!”
“We had Boswell, and your uncle would look till we found Johnson. He makes them go about together. Do you believe in Doctor Johnson, Dinny?”
“I think he used the word ‘Sir’ too much.”
“Fleur’s got my gardenin’ scissors. What’s that, Dinny?”
“Hubert’s diary.”
“Depressin’?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been lookin’ at Professor Hallorsen — he wants takin’ in.”
“Begin with his cheek, Aunt Em.”
“I hope they’ll shoot some hares,” said Lady Mont; “hare soup is such a stand-by. Wilmet and Henrietta Bentworth have agreed to differ already.”
“What about?”
“Well, I couldn’t be bothered, but I think it was about the P.M., or was it Portulaca? — they differ about everything. Hen’s always been about Court, you know.”
“Is that fatal?”
“She’s a nice woman. I’m fond of Hen, but she does cluck. What are you doin’ with that diary?”
“I’m going to show it to Michael and ask his advice.”
“Don’t take it,” said Lady Mont; “he’s a dear boy, but don’t take it; he knows a lot of funny people — publishers and that.”
“That’s why I’m asking him.”
“Ask Fleur, she has a head. Have you got this zinnia at Condaford? D’you know, Dinny, I think Adrian’s goin’ potty.”
“Aunt Em!”
“He moons so; and I don’t believe there’s anywhere you could stick a pin into him. Of course I mustn’t say it to you, but I think he ought to have her.”
“So do I, Auntie.”
“Well, he won’t.”
“Or she won’t.”
“They neither of them will; so how it’s to be managed I don’t know. She’s forty.”
“How old is Uncle Adrian?”
“He’s the baby, all but Lionel. I’m fifty-nine,” said Lady Mont decisively. “I know I’m fifty-nine, and your father is sixty; your grandmother must have been in a great tear at that time, she kept on havin’ us. What do YOU think about this question of havin’ children?”
Dinny swallowed a bubble and said:
“Well, for married people, perhaps, in moderation.”
“Fleur’s going to have another in March; it’s a bad month — careless! When are you goin’ to get married, Dinny?”
“When my young affections are engaged, not before.”
“That’s very prudent. But not an American.”
Dinny flushed, smiled dangerously and said:
“Why on earth should I marry an American?”
“You never know,” said Lady Mont, twisting off a faded aster; “it depends on what there is about. When I married Lawrence, he was so about!”
“And still is, Aunt Em; wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be sharp!”
And Lady Mont seemed to go into a dream, so that her hat looked more enormous than ever.
“Talking of marriage, Aunt Em, I wish I knew of a girl for Hubert. He does so want distracting.”
“Your uncle,” said Lady Mont, “would say distract him with a dancer.”
“Perhaps Uncle Hilary knows one that he could highly recommend.”
“You’re naughty, Dinny. I always thought you were naughty. But let me think: there WAS a girl; no, she married.”
“Perhaps she’s divorced by now.”
“No. I think she’s divorcin’ him, but it takes time. Charmin’ little creature.”
“I’m sure. Do think again, Auntie.”
“These bees,” replied her aunt, “belong to Boswell. They’re Italian. Lawrence says they’re Fascists.”
“Black shirts and no after-thoughts. They certainly seem very active bees.”
“Yes; they fly a lot and sting you at once if you annoy them. Bees are nice to me.”
“You’ve got one on your hat, dear. Shall I take it off?”
“Stop!” said Lady Mont, tilting her hat back, with her mouth slightly open: “I’ve thought of one.”
“One what?”
“Jean Tasburgh, the daughter of our Rector here — very good family. No money, of course.”
“None at all?”
Lady Mont shook her head, and the hat wobbled. “No Jean never has money. She’s pretty. Rather like a leopardess.”
“Could I look her over, Auntie? I know fairly well what Hubert wouldn’t like.”
“I’ll ask her to dinner. They feed badly. We married a Tasburgh once. I think it was under James, so she’ll be a cousin, but terribly removed. There’s a son, too; in the Navy, all there, you know, and no moustache. I believe he’s stayin’ at the Rectory on furlong.”
“Furlough, Aunt Em.”
“I knew that word was wrong. Take that bee off my hat, there’s a dear.”
Dinny took the small bee off the large hat with her handkerchief, and put it to her ear.
“I still like to hear them buzz,” she said.
“I’ll ask him too,” answered her aunt; “his name’s Alan, a nice fellow.” And she looked at Dinny’s hair. “Medlar-coloured, I call it. I think he’s got prospects, but I don’t know what they are. Blown up in the war.”
“He came down again whole, I hope, Auntie?”
“Yes; they gave him something or other for it. He says it’s very stuffy in the Navy now. All angles, you know, and wheels, and smells. You must ask him.”
“About the girl, Aunt Em, how do you mean, a leopardess?”
“Well, she looks at you, and you expect to see a cub comin’ round the corner. Her mother’s dead. She runs the parish.”
“Would she run Hubert?”
“No; she’d run anybody who tried to run him.”
“That might do. Can I take a note for you to the Rectory?”
“I’ll send Boswell and Johnson,” Lady Mont looked at her wrist. “No, they’ll have gone to dinner. I always set my watch by them. We’ll go ourselves, Dinny; it’s only quarter of a mile. Does my hat matter?”
“On the contrary, dear.”
“Very well, then; we can get out this way,” and moving to the far end of the yew-treed garden, they descended some steps into a long grassy avenue, and, passing through a wicket gate, had soon arrived at the Rectory. Dinny stood in its creepered porch, behind her aunt’s hat. The door stood open, and a dim panelled hallway with a scent of pot-pourri and old wood, conveyed a kind of invitation. A female voice from within called:
“A— lan!”
A male voice answered: “Hal — lo!”
“D’you mind cold lunch?”
“There’s no bell,” said Lady Mont; “we’d better clap.” They clapped in unison.
“What the deuce?” A young man in grey flannels had appeared in a doorway. He had a broad brown face, dark hair, and grey eyes, deep and direct.
“Oh!” he said. “Lady Mont . . . Hi! Jean!” Then, meeting Dinny’s eyes round the edge of the hat, he smiled as they do in the Navy.
“Alan, can you and Jean dine to-night? Dinny, this is Alan Tasburgh. D’you like my hat?”
“It’s a topper, Lady Mont.”
A girl, made all of a piece and moving as if on steel springs, was coming towards them. She wore a fawn-coloured sleeveless jumper and skirt, and her arms and cheeks were fully as brown. Dinny saw what her aunt meant. The face, broad across the cheek-bones, tapered to the chin, the eyes were greenish grey and sunk right in under long black lashes; they looked straight out with a light in them; the nose was fine, the brow low and broad, the shingled hair dark brown. ‘I wonder!’ thought Dinny. Then, as the girl smiled, a little thrill went through her.
“This is Jean,” said her aunt: “my niece, Dinny Cherrell.”
A slim brown hand clasped Dinny’s firmly.
“Where’s your father?” continued Lady Mont.
“Dad’s away at some parsonical Conference. I wanted him to take me, but he wouldn’t.”
“Then I expect he’s in London really, doin’ theatres.”
Dinny saw the girl flash a look at her aunt, decide that it was Lady Mont, and smiled. The young man laughed.
“So you’ll both come to dinner? Eight-fifteen. Dinny, we must go back to lunch. Swallows!” added Lady Mont round the brim of her hat, and passed out through the porch.
“There’s a house-party,” said Dinny to the young man’s elevated eyebrows. “She means tails and white tie.”
“Oh! Ah! Best bib and tucker, Jean.”
The two stood in the porchway arm in arm. ‘Very attractive!’ Dinny thought.
“Well?” said her aunt, in the grass avenue again.
“Yes, I quite saw the cub. She’s beautiful, I think. But I should keep her on a lead.”
“There’s Boswell and Johnson!” exclaimed Lady Mont, as if they were in the singular. “Gracious! It must be past two, then!”