Her father and Sir Lawrence not coming back to dinner, and her mother remaining in bed, Dinny dined alone with her aunt, for Clare was staying with friends.
“Aunt Em,” she said, when they had finished, “do you mind if I go round to Michael’s? Fleur has had a hunch.”
“Why?” said Lady Mont: “It’s too early for that — not till March.”
“You’re thinking of the hump, Auntie. A ‘hunch’ means an idea.”
“Then why didn’t she say so?” And, with that simple dismissal of the more fashionable forms of speech, Lady Mont rang the bell.
“Blore, a taxi for Miss Dinny. And, Blore, when Sir Lawrence comes in, let me know; I’m goin’ to have a hot bath, and wash my hair.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Do you wash your hair when you’re sad, Dinny?”
Driving through the misty dark evening to South Square, Dinny experienced melancholy beyond all she had felt yet. The thought of Hubert actually in a prison cell, torn from a wife not more than three weeks married, facing separation that might be permanent, and a fate that would not bear thinking of; and all because they were too scrupulous to stretch a point and take his word, caused fear and rage to bank up in her spirit, as unspent heat before a storm.
She found Fleur and her Aunt Lady Alison discussing ways and means. The Bolivian Minister, it appeared, was away convalescing after an illness, and a subordinate was in charge. This in Lady Alison’s opinion made it more difficult, for he would probably not take any responsibility. She would, however, arrange a luncheon to which Fleur and Michael should be bidden, and Dinny, too, if she wished; but Dinny shook her head — she had lost faith in her power of manipulating public men.
“If you and Fleur can’t manage it, Aunt Alison, I certainly can’t. But Jean is singularly attractive when she likes.”
“Jean telephoned just now, Dinny. If you came in to-night, would you go round and see her at their flat; otherwise she was writing to you.”
Dinny stood up. “I’ll go at once.”
She hurried through the mist along the Embankment and turned down towards the block of workmen’s flats where Jean had found her lodgment. At the corner boys were crying the more sanguinary tidings of the day; she bought a paper to see if Hubert’s case was mentioned, and opened it beneath a lamp. Yes! There it was! “British officer committed. Extradition on shooting charge.” How little attention she would have given to that, if it had not concerned her! This, that was agony to her and hers, was to the Public just a little pleasurable excitement. The misfortunes of others were a distraction; and the papers made their living out of it! The man who had sold the paper to her had a thin face, dirty clothes, and was lame; and, throwing a libationary drop out of her bitter cup, she gave him back the paper and a shilling. His eyes widened in a puzzled stare, his mouth remained a little open. Had she backed the winner — that one?
Dinny went up the bricked stairs. The flat was on the second floor. Outside its door a grown black cat was spinning round after its own tail. It flew round six times on the same spot, then sat down, lifted one of its back legs high into the air, and licked it.
Jean herself opened the door. She was evidently in the throes of packing, having a pair of combinations over her arm. Dinny kissed her and looked round. She had not been here before. The doors of the small sitting-room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom were open; the walls were distempered apple green, the floors covered with dark-green linoleum. For furniture there was a double bed, and some suit-cases in the bedroom, two armchairs and a small table in the sitting-room; a kitchen table and some bath salts in a glass jar; no rugs, no pictures, no books, but some printed linen curtains to the windows and a hanging cupboard along one whole side of the bedroom, from which Jean had been taking the clothes piled on the bed. A scent of coffee and lavender bags distinguished the atmosphere from that on the stairs.
Jean put down the combinations.
“Have some coffee, Dinny? I’ve just made it.”
She poured out two cups, sweetened them, handed Dinny one and a paper packet of cigarettes, then pointed to one of the armchairs and sat down in the other.
“You got my message, then? I’m glad you’ve come — saves my making up a parcel. I hate making parcels, don’t you?”
Her coolness and unharassed expression seemed to Dinny miraculous.
“Have you seen Hubert since?”
“Yes. He’s fairly comfortable. It’s not a bad cell, he says, and they’ve given him books and writing paper. He can have food in, too; but he’s not allowed to smoke. Someone ought to move about that. According to English law Hubert’s still as innocent as the Home Secretary; there’s no law to prevent the Home Secretary smoking, is there? I shan’t be seeing him again, but you’ll be going, Dinny — so give him my special love, and take him some cigarettes in case they let him.”
Dinny stared at her.
“What are you going to do, then?”
“Well, I wanted to see you about that. This is all strictly for your ear only. Promise to lie absolutely doggo, Dinny, or I shan’t say anything.”
Dinny said, resolutely: “Cross my heart as they say. Go on.”
“I’m going to Brussels tomorrow. Alan went today; he’s got extension of leave for urgent family affairs. We’re simply going to prepare for the worst, that’s all. I’m to learn flying in double quick time. If I go up three times a day, three weeks will be quite enough. Our lawyer has guaranteed us three weeks, at least. Of course, he knows nothing. Nobody is to know anything, except you. I want you to do something for me.” She reached forward and took out of her vanity bag a tissue-papered packet.
“I’ve got to have five hundred pounds. We can get a good second-hand machine over there for very little, they say, but we shall want all the rest. Now, look here Dinny, this is an old family thing. It’s worth a lot. I want you to pop it for five hundred; if you can’t get as much as that by popping, you’ll have to sell it. Pop, or sell, in your name, and change the English notes into Belgian money and send it to me registered to the G.P.O. Brussels. You ought to be able to send me the money within three days.” She undid the paper, and disclosed an old-fashioned but very beautiful emerald pendant.
“Oh!”
“Yes,” said Jean, “it really is good. You can afford to take a high line. Somebody will give you five hundred on it, I’m sure. Emeralds are up.”
“But why don’t you ‘pop’ it yourself before you go?”
Jean shook her head.
“No, nothing whatever that awakens suspicion. It doesn’t matter what you do, Dinny, because you’re not going to break the law. We possibly are, but we’re not going to be copped.”
“I think,” said Dinny, “you ought to tell me more.”
Again Jean shook her head.
“Not necessary, and not possible; we don’t know enough yet ourselves. But make your mind easy, they’re not going to get away with Hubert. You’ll take this, then?” And she wrapped up the pendant.
Dinny took the little packet, and, having brought no bag, slipped it down her dress. She leaned forward and said earnestly:
“Promise you won’t do anything, Jean, till everything else has failed.”
Jean nodded. “Nothing till the very last minute. It wouldn’t be good enough.”
Dinny grasped her hand. “I oughtn’t to have let you in for this, Jean, it was I who brought the young things together, you know.”
“My dear, I’d never have forgiven you if you hadn’t. I’m in love.”
“But it’s so ghastly for you.”
Jean looked into the distance so that Dinny could almost feel the cub coming round the corner.
“No! I like to think it’s up to me to pull him out of it. I’ve never felt so alive as I feel now.”
“Is there much risk for Alan?”
“Not if we work things properly. We’ve several schemes, according as things shape.”
Dinny sighed.
“I hope to God they’ll none of them be necessary.”
“So do I, but it’s impossible to leave things to chance, with a ‘just beast’ like ‘Walter’.”
“Well, good-bye, Jean, and good luck!”
They kissed, and Dinny went down into the street with the emerald pendant weighing like lead on her heart. It was drizzling now and she took a cab back to Mount Street. Her father and Sir Lawrence had just come in. Their news was inconsiderable. Hubert, it seemed, did not wish for bail again. ‘Jean,’ thought Dinny, ‘has to do with that.’ The Home Secretary was in Scotland and would not be back till Parliament sat, in about a fortnight’s time. The warrant could not be issued till after that. In expert opinion they had three weeks at least in which to move heaven and earth. Ah! but it was easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one tittle of the Law to fail. And yet was it quite nonsense when people talked of ‘interest’ and ‘influence’ and ‘wangling’ and ‘getting things through’? Was there not some talismanic way of which they were all ignorant?
Her father kissed her and went dejectedly up to bed, and Dinny was left alone with Sir Lawrence. Even he was in heavy mood.
“No bubble and squeak in the pair of us,” he said. “I sometimes think, Dinny, that the Law is overrated. It’s really a rough-and-ready system, with about as much accuracy in adjusting penalty to performance as there is to a doctor’s diagnosis of a patient he sees for the first time; and yet for some mysterious reason we give it the sanctity of the Holy Grail and treat its dicta as if they were the broadcastings of God. If ever there was a case where a Home Secretary might let himself go and be human, this is one. And yet I don’t see him doing it. I don’t, Dinny, and Bobbie Ferrar doesn’t. It seems that some wrongly-inspired idiot, not long ago, called Walter ‘the very spirit of integrity,’ and Bobbie says that instead of turning up his stomach, it went to his head, and he hasn’t reprieved anybody since. I’ve been wondering whether I couldn’t write to the ‘Times’ and say: ‘This pose of inexorable incorruptibility in certain quarters is more dangerous to justice than the methods of Chicago.’ Chicago ought to fetch him. He’s been there, I believe. It’s an awful thing for a man to cease to be human.”
“Is he married?”
“Not even that, now,” said Sir Lawrence.
“But some men don’t even begin to be human, do they?”
“That’s not so bad; you know where you are, and can take a fire-shovel to them. No, it’s the blokes who get swelled head that make the trouble. By the way, I told my young man that you would sit for your miniature.”
“Oh! Uncle, I simply couldn’t sit with Hubert on my mind!”
“No, no! Of course not! But something must turn up.” He looked at her shrewdly and added: “By the way, Dinny, young Jean?”
Dinny lifted a wide and simple gaze:
“What about her?”
“She doesn’t look to me too easy to bite.”
“No, but what can she do, poor dear?”
“I wonder,” said Sir Lawrence, raising one eyebrow, “I just wonder. ‘They’re dear little innocent things, they are, they’re angels without any wings, they are. That’s ‘Punch’ before your time, Dinny. And it will continue to be ‘Punch’ after your time, except that wings are growing on you all so fast.”
Dinny, still looking at him innocently, thought: ‘He’s rather uncanny, Uncle Lawrence!’ And soon after she went up to bed.
To go to bed with one’s whole soul in a state of upheaval! And yet how many other upheaved souls lay, cheek to pillow, unsleeping! The room seemed full of the world’s unreasoning misery. If one were talented, one would get up and relieve oneself in a poem about Azrael, or something! Alas! It was not so easy as all that. One lay, and was sore — sore and anxious and angry. She could remember still how she had felt, being thirteen, when Hubert, not quite eighteen, had gone off to the war. That had been horrid, but this was much worse; and she wondered why. Then he might have been killed at any minute; now he was safer than anybody who was not in prison. He would be preserved meticulously even while they sent him across the world and put him up for trial in a country not his own, before some judge of alien blood. He was safe enough for some months yet. Why, then, did this seem so much worse than all the risks through which he had passed since he first went soldiering, even than that long, bad time on the Hallorsen expedition? Why? If not that those old risks and hardships had been endured of his free will; while the present trouble was imposed on him. He was being held down, deprived of the two great boons of human existence, independence and private life, boons to secure which human beings in communities had directed all their efforts for thousands of years, until — until they went Bolshy! Boons to every human being, but especially to people like themselves, brought up under no kind of whip except that of their own consciences. And she lay there as if she were lying in his cell, gazing into his future, longing for Jean, hating the locked-in feeling, cramped and miserable and bitter. For what had he done, what in God’s name had he done that any other man of sensibility and spirit would not do!
The mutter of the traffic from Park Lane formed a sort of ground base to her rebellious misery. She became so restless that she could not lie in bed, and, putting on her dressing gown, stole noiselessly about her room till she was chilled by the late October air coming through the opened window. Perhaps there was something in being married, after all; you had a chest to snuggle against and if need be weep on; you had an ear to pour complaint into; and lips that would make the mooing sounds of sympathy. But worse than being single during this time of trial was being inactive. She envied those who, like her father and Sir Lawrence, were at least taking cabs and going about; greatly she envied Jean and Alan. Whatever they were up to was better than being up to nothing, like herself! She took out the emerald pendant and looked at it. That at least was something to do on the morrow, and she pictured herself with this in her hand forcing large sums of money out of some flinty person with a tendency towards the art of lending.
Placing the pendant beneath her pillow, as though its proximity were an insurance against her sense of helplessness, she fell asleep at last.
Next morning she was down early. It had occurred to her that she could perhaps pawn the pendant, get the money, and take it to Jean before she left. And she decided to consult the butler, Blore. After all, she had known him since she was five; he was an institution and had never divulged any of the iniquities she had confided in him in her childhood.
She went up to him, therefore, when he appeared with her Aunt’s special coffee machine.
“Blore.”
“Yes, Miss Dinny.”
“Will you be frightfully nice and tell me, IN CONFIDENCE, who is supposed to be the best pawnbroker in London?”
Surprised but impassive — for, after all, anybody might have to ‘pop’ anything in these days — the butler placed the coffee machine at the head of the table and stood reflecting.
“Well, Miss Dinny, of course there’s Attenborough’s, but I’m told the best people go to a man called Frewen in South Molton Street. I can get you the number from the telephone book. They say he’s reliable and very fair.”
“Splendid, Blore! It’s just a little matter.”
“Quite so, Miss.”
“Oh! And, Blore, would you — should I give my own name?”
“No, Miss Dinny; if I might suggest: give my wife’s name and this address. Then, if there has to be any communication, I could get it to you by telephone, and no one the wiser.”
“Oh! that’s a great relief. But wouldn’t Mrs. Blore mind?”
“Oh! no, Miss, only too glad to oblige you. I could do the matter for you if you wish.”
“Thank you, Blore, but I’m afraid I must do it myself.”
The butler caressed his chin and regarded her; his eye seemed to Dinny benevolent but faintly quizzical.
“Well, Miss, if I may say so, a little nonchalance goes a long way even with the best of them. There are others if he doesn’t offer value.”
“Thank you frightfully, Blore; I’ll let you know if he doesn’t. Would half past nine be too early?”
“From what I hear, Miss, that is the best hour; you get him fresh and hearty.”
“Dear Blore!”
“I’m told he’s an understanding gent, who can tell a lady when he sees one. He won’t confuse you with some of those Tottie madams.”
Dinny laid her finger to her lips.
“Cross your heart, Blore.”
“Oh! absolutely, Miss. After Mr. Michael you were always my favourite.”
“And so were you, Blore.” She took up ‘The Times’ as her father entered, and Blore withdrew.
“Sleep well, Dad?”
The General nodded.
“And Mother’s head?”
“Better. She’s coming down. We’ve decided that it’s no use to worry, Dinny.”
“No, darling, it isn’t, of course. D’you think we could begin breakfast?”
“Em won’t be down, and Lawrence has his at eight. You make the coffee.”
Dinny, who shared her Aunt’s passion for good coffee went reverentially to work.
“What about Jean?” asked the General, suddenly. “Is she coming to us?”
Dinny did not raise her eyes.
“I don’t think so, Dad; she’ll be too restless; I expect she’ll just make out by herself. I should want to, if I were her.”
“I daresay, poor girl. She’s got pluck, anyway. I’m glad Hubert married a girl of spirit. Those Tasburghs have got their hearts in the right place. I remember an uncle of hers in India — daring chap, a Goorkha regiment, they swore by him. Let me see, where was he killed?”
Dinny bent lower over the coffee.
It was barely half past nine when she went out with the pendant in her vanity bag, and her best hat on. At half past nine precisely she was going up to the first floor above a shop in South Molton Street. Within a large room, at a mahogany table, were two seated gentlemen, who might have seemed to her like high-class bookmakers if she had known what such were like. She looked at them anxiously, seeking for signs of heartiness. They appeared, at least, to be fresh, and one of them came towards her.
Dinny passed an invisible tongue over her lips.
“I’m told that you are so good as to lend money on valuable jewellery?”
“Quite, Madam.” He was grey, and rather bald, and rather red, with light eyes, and he stood regarding her through a pair of pince-nez which he held in his hand. Placing them on his nose, he drew a chair up to the table, made a motion with one hand, and resumed his seat. Dinny sat down.
“I want rather a lot, five hundred,” and she smiled: “It was an heirloom, quite nice.”
Both the seated gentlemen bowed slightly.
“And I want it at once, because I have to make a payment. Here it is!” And out of her bag she drew the pendant, unwrapped it and pushed it forward on the table. Then, remembering the needed touch of nonchalance, she leaned back and crossed her knees.
Both of them looked at the pendant for a full minute without movement or speech. Then the second gentleman opened a drawer and took out a magnifying glass. While he was examining the pendant, Dinny was conscious that the first gentleman was examining herself. That — she supposed — was the way they divided labour. Which would they decide was the more genuine piece? She felt rather breathless, but kept her eyebrows slightly raised and her eyelids half closed.
“Your own property, Madam?” said the first gentleman.
Remembering once more the old proverb, Dinny uttered an emphatic: “Yes.”
The second gentleman lowered his glass, and seemed to weigh the pendant in his hand.
“Very nice,” he said. “Old-fashioned, but very nice. And for how long would you want the money?”
Dinny, who had no idea, said boldly: “Six months; but I suppose I could redeem it before?”
“Oh! yes. Five hundred, did you say?”
“Please.”
“If you are satisfied, Mr. Bondy,” said the second gentleman, “I am.”
Dinny raised her eyes to Mr. Bondy’s face. Was he going to say, ‘No, she’s just told me a lie?’ Instead, he pushed his underlip up over his upper lip, bowed to her and said:
“Quite!”
‘I wonder,’ she thought, ‘if they always believe what they hear, or never? I suppose it’s the same thing, really — THEY get the pendant and it’s I who have to trust them — or, rather, it’s Jean.’
The second gentleman now swept up the pendant, and, producing a book, began to write in it. Mr. Bondy, on the other hand, went towards a safe.
“Did you wish for notes, Madam?”
“Please.”
The second gentleman, who had a moustache and white spats, and whose eyes goggled slightly, passed her the book.
“Your name and address, Madam.”
As she wrote: ‘Mrs. Blore’ and her aunt’s number in Mount Street, the word ‘Help!’ came into her mind, and she cramped her left hand as to hide what should have been the ringed finger. Her gloves fitted dreadfully well and there was no desirable circular protuberance.
“Should you require the article, we shall want ￡550 on the 29th of April next. After that, unless we hear from you, it will be for sale.”
“Yes, of course. But if I redeem it before?”
“Then the amount will be according. The interest is at 20 per cent., so in a month, say, from now, we should only require ￡508 6s. 8d.”
“I see.”
The first gentleman detached a slip of paper and gave it to her.
“That is the receipt.”
“Could the pendant be redeemed on payment by anyone with this receipt, in case I can’t come myself?”
“Yes, Madam.”
Dinny placed the receipt in her vanity bag, together with as much of her left hand as would go in, and listened to Mr. Bondy counting notes on the table. He counted beautifully; the notes, too, made a fine crackle, and seemed to be new. She took them with her right hand, inserted them into the bag, and still holding it with her concealed left hand, arose.
“Thank you very much.”
“Not at all, Madam, the pleasure is ours. Delighted to be of service. Good-bye!”
Dinny bowed, and made slowly for the door. There, from under her lashes she distinctly saw the first gentleman close one eye.
She went down the stairs rather dreamily, shutting her bag.
‘I wonder if they think I’m going to have a baby,’ she thought; ‘or it may be only the Cambridgeshire.’ Anyway she had the money, and it was just a quarter to ten. Thomas Cook’s would change it, perhaps, or at least tell her where to get Belgian money.
It took an hour and visits to several places before she had most of it in Belgian money, and she was hot when she passed the barrier at Victoria with a platform ticket. She moved slowly down the train, looking into each carriage. She had gone about two-thirds down when a voice behind had called:
“Dinny!” And, looking round, she saw Jean in the doorway of a compartment.
“Oh! there you are, Jean! I’ve had such a rush. Is my nose shiny?”
“You never look hot, Dinny.”
“Well! I’ve done it; here’s the result, five hundred nearly all in Belgian.”
“Splendid!”
“And the receipt. Anyone can get it on this. The interest’s at 20 per cent, calculated from day to day, but after April 28th, unless redeemed, it’ll be for sale.”
“You keep that, Dinny.” Jean lowered her voice. “If we have to do things, it will mean we shan’t be on hand. There are several places that have no treaties with Bolivia, and that’s where we shall be till things have been put straight somehow.”
“Oh!” said Dinny, blankly, “I could have got more. They lapped it up.”
“Never mind! I must get in. G.P.O. Brussels. Good-bye! Give my dear love to Hubert and tell him all’s well.” She flung her arms round Dinny, gave her a hug, and sprang back into the train. It moved off almost at once, and Dinny stood waving to that brilliant browned face turned back towards her.
This active and successful opening to her day had the most acute drawbacks, for it meant that she was now the more loose-ended.
The absence of the Home Secretary and the Bolivian Minister seemed likely to hold up all activity even if she could have been of use in those directions, which was improbable. Nothing for it but to wait, eating one’s heart out! She spent the rest of the morning wandering about, looking at shop windows, looking at the people who looked at shop windows. She lunched off poached eggs at an A.B.C. and went into a cinema, with a vague idea that whatever Jean and Alan were preparing would seem more natural if she could see something of the sort on the screen. She had no luck. In the film she saw were no aeroplanes, no open spaces, no detectives, no escaping from justice whatever; it was the starkest record of a French gentleman, not quite in his first youth, going into wrong bedrooms for an hour and more on end, without anyone actually losing her virtue. Dinny could not help enjoying it — he was a dear, and perhaps the most accomplished liar she had ever watched.
After this warmth and comfort, she set her face again towards Mount Street.
She found that her mother and father had taken the afternoon train back to Condaford, and this plunged her into uncertainty. Ought she to go back, too, and ‘be a daughter’ to them? Or ought she to remain ‘on the spot’ in case anything turned up for her to do?
She went up to her room undecided, and began half-heartedly to pack. Pulling open a drawer, she came on Hubert’s diary, which still accompanied her. Turning the pages idly, she lighted on a passage which seemed to her unfamiliar, having nothing to do with his hardships:
“Here’s a sentence in a book I’m reading: ‘We belong, of course, to a generation that’s seen through things, seen how futile everything is, and had the courage to accept futility, and say to ourselves: There’s nothing for it but to enjoy ourselves as best we can.’ Well, I suppose that’s my generation, the one that’s seen the war and its aftermath; and, of course, it IS the attitude of quite a crowd; but when you come to think of it, it might have been said by any rather unthinking person in any generation; certainly might have been said by the last generation after religion had got the knock that Darwin gave it. For what does it come to? Suppose you admit having seen through religion and marriage and treaties, and commercial honesty and freedom and ideals of every kind, seen that there’s nothing absolute about them, that they lead of themselves to no definite reward, either in this world or a next which doesn’t exist perhaps, and that the only thing absolute is pleasure and that you mean to have it — are you any farther towards getting pleasure? No! you’re a long way farther off. If everybody’s creed is consciously and crudely ‘grab a good time at all costs,’ everybody is going to grab it at the expense of everybody else, and the devil will take the hindmost, and that’ll be nearly everybody, especially the sort of slackers who naturally hold that creed, so that THEY, most certainly, aren’t going to get a good time. All those things they’ve so cleverly seen through are only rules of the road devised by men throughout the ages to keep people within bounds, so that we may all have a reasonable chance of getting a good time, instead of the good time going only to the violent, callous, dangerous and able few. All our institutions, religion, marriage, treaties, the law, and the rest, are simply forms of consideration for others necessary to secure consideration for self. Without them we should be a society of feeble motor-bandits and streetwalkers in slavery to a few super-crooks. You can’t, therefore, disbelieve in consideration for others without making an idiot of yourself and spoiling your own chances of a good time. The funny thing is that no matter how we all talk, we recognise that perfectly. People who prate like the fellow in that book don’t act up to their creed when it comes to the point. Even a motor-bandit doesn’t turn King’s evidence. In fact, this new philosophy of ‘having the courage to accept futility and grab a good time’ is simply a shallow bit of thinking; all the same, it seemed quite plausible when I read it.”
Dinny dropped the page as if it had stung her, and stood with a transfigured look on her face. Not the words she had been reading caused this change — she was hardly conscious of what they were. No! She had got an inspiration, and she could not think why she had not had it before! She ran downstairs to the telephone and rang up Fleur’s house.
“Yes?” came Fleur’s voice.
“I want Michael, Fleur; is he in?”
“Yes. Michael — Dinny.”
“Michael? Could you by any chance come round at once? It’s about Hubert’s diary. I’ve had a ‘hunch,’ but I’d rather not discuss it on the ‘phone. Or could I come to you? — You CAN come? Good! Fleur too, if she likes; or, if not, bring her wits.”
Ten minutes later Michael arrived alone. Something in the quality of Dinny’s voice seemed to have infected him, for he wore an air of businesslike excitement. She took him into the alcove and sat down with him on a sofa under the parakeet’s cage.
“Michael dear, it came to me suddenly: if we could get Hubert’s diary — about 15,000 words — printed at once, ready for publication, with a good title like ‘Betrayed’— or something —”
“‘Deserted,’” said Michael.
“Yes, ‘Deserted,’ and it could be shown to the Home Secretary as about to come out with a fighting preface, it might stop him from issuing a warrant. With that title and preface and a shove from the Press, it would make a real sensation, and be very nasty for him. We could get the Preface to pitch it strong about desertion of one’s kith and kin, and pusillanimity and truckling to the foreigner and all that. The Press would surely take it up on those lines.”
Michael ruffled his hair.
“It IS a hunch, Dinny; but there are several points: first, how to do it without making it blackmailish. If we can’t avoid that, then it’s no go. If Walter sniffs blackmail, he can’t possibly rise.”
“But the whole point is to make him feel that if he issues the warrant he’s going to regret it.”
“My child,” said Michael, blowing smoke at the parakeet, “it’s got to be much more subtle than that. You don’t know public men. The thing is to make them do of their own accord out of high motives what is for their own good. We must get Walter to do this from a low motive, and feel it to be a high one. That’s indispensable.”
“Won’t it do if he says it’s a high one? I mean need he feel it?”
“He must, at least by daylight. What he feels at three in the morning doesn’t matter. He’s no fool, you know. I believe,” and Michael rumpled his hair again, “that the only man who can work it after all is Bobbie Ferrar. He knows Walter upside down.”
“Is he a nice man? Would he?”
“Bobbie’s a sphinx, but he’s a perfectly good sphinx. And he’s in the know all round. He’s a sort of receiving station, hears everything naturally, so that we shouldn’t have to appear directly in any way.”
“Isn’t the first thing, Michael, to get the diary printed, so that it looks ready to come out on the nail?”
“Yes, but the Preface is the hub.”
“How?”
“What we want is that Walter should read the printed diary, and come to the conclusion from it that to issue the warrant will be damned hard luck on Hubert — as, of course, it will. In other words, we want to sop his private mind. After that, what I see Walter saying to himself is this: ‘Yes, hard luck on young Cherrell, hard luck, but the magistrate committed him, and the Bolivians are pressing, and he belongs to the classes; one must be careful not to give an impression of favouring privilege —’”
“I think that’s so unfair,” interrupted Dinny, hotly. “Why should it be made harder for people just because they happen not to be Tom, Dick and Harry? I call it cowardly.”
“Ah! Dinny, but we are cowardly in that sort of way. But as Walter was saying when you broke out: ‘One must not lightly stretch points. The little Countries look to us to treat them with special consideration.’”
“But why?” began Dinny again: “That seems —”
Michael held up his hand.
“I know, Dinny, I know. And this seems to me the psychological moment when Bobbie, out of the blue as it were, might say: ‘By the way, there’s to be a preface. Someone showed it me. It takes the line that England is always being generous and just at the expense of her own subjects. It’s pretty hot stuff, Sir. The Press will love it. That lay: We can’t stand by our own people, is always popular. And you know’— Bobbie would continue —‘it has often seemed to me, Sir, that a strong man, like you, ought perhaps to do something about this impression that we can’t stand by our own people. It oughtn’t to be true, perhaps it isn’t true, but it exists and very strongly; and you, Sir, perhaps better than anyone, could redress the balance there. This particular case wouldn’t afford a bad chance at all of restoring confidence on that point. In itself it would be right, I think’— Bobbie would say —‘not to issue a warrant, because that scar, you know, was genuine, the shooting really WAS an act of self-defence; and it would certainly do the country good to feel that it could rely again on the authorities not to let our own people down.’ And there he would leave it. And Walter would feel, not that he was avoiding attack, but that he was boldly going to do what was good for the Country — indispensable, that, Dinny, in the case of public men.” And Michael rolled his eyes. “You see,” he went on, “Walter is quite up to realising, without admitting it, that the preface won’t appear if he doesn’t issue the warrant. And I daresay he’ll be frank with himself in the middle of the night; but if in his 6 p.m. mind he feels he’s doing the courageous thing in not issuing the warrant, then what he feels in his 3 a.m. mind won’t matter. See?”
“You put it marvellously, Michael. But won’t he have to read the preface?”
“I hope not, but I think it ought to be in Bobbie’s pocket, in case he has to fortify his line of approach. There are no flies on Bobbie, you know.”
“But will Mr. Ferrar care enough to do all this?”
“Yes,” said Michael, “on the whole, yes. My Dad once did him a good turn, and old Shropshire’s his uncle.”
“And who could write that preface?”
“I believe I could get old Blythe. They’re still afraid of him in our party, and when he likes he can make livers creep all right.”
Dinny clasped her hands.
“Do you think he will like?”
“It depends on the diary.”
“Then I think he will.”
“May I read it before I turn it over to the printers?”
“Of course! Only, Michael, Hubert doesn’t want the diary to come out.”
“Well, that’s O.K. If it works with Walter and he doesn’t issue the warrant, it won’t be necessary; and if it doesn’t work, it won’t be necessary either, because the ‘fat will be in the fire,’ as old Forsyte used to say.”
“Will the cost of printing be much?”
“A few pounds — say twenty.”
“I can manage that,” said Dinny; and her mind flew to the two gentlemen, for she was habitually hard up.
“Oh! that’ll be all right, don’t worry!”
“It’s my hunch, Michael, and I should like to pay for it. You’ve no idea how horrible it is to sit and do nothing, with Hubert in this danger! I have the feeling that if he’s once given up, he won’t have a dog’s chance.”
“It’s ill prophesying,” said Michael, “where public men are concerned. People underrate them. They’re a lot more complicated than they’re supposed to be, and perhaps better principled; they’re certainly a lot shrewder. All the same, I believe this will click, if we can work old Blythe and Bobbie Ferrar properly. I’ll go for Blythe, and set Bart on to Bobbie. In the meantime this shall be printed,” and he took up the diary. “Good-bye, Dinny dear, and don’t worry more than you can help.”
Dinny kissed him, and he went.
That evening about ten he rang her up.
“I’ve read it, Dinny. Walter must be pretty hard-boiled if it doesn’t fetch him. He won’t go to sleep over it, anyway, like the other bloke; he’s a conscientious card, whatever else he is. After all this is a sort of reprieve case, and he’s bound to recognise its seriousness. Once in his hands, he’s got to go through with this diary, and it’s moving stuff, apart from the light on the incident itself. So buck up!”
Dinny said: “Bless you!” fervently, and went to bed lighter at heart than she had been for two days.
In the slow long days, and they seemed many, which followed, Dinny remained at Mount Street, to be in command of any situation that might arise. Her chief difficulty lay in keeping people ignorant of Jean’s machinations. She seemed to succeed with all except Sir Lawrence, who, raising his eyebrow, said cryptically:
“Pour une gaillarde, c’est une gaillarde!”
And, at Dinny’s limpid glance, added: “Quite the Botticellian virgin! Would you like to meet Bobbie Ferrar? We’re lunching together underground at Dumourieux’s in Druary Lane, mainly on mushrooms.”
Dinny had been building so on Bobbie Ferrar that the sight of him gave her a shock, he had so complete an air of caring for none of those things. With his carnation, bass drawl, broad bland face, and slight drop of the underjaw, he did not inspire her.
“Have you a passion for mushrooms, Miss Cherrell?” he said.
“Not French mushrooms.”
“No?”
“Bobbie,” said Sir Lawrence, looking from one to the other, “no one would take you for one of the deepest cards in Europe. You are going to tell us that you won’t guarantee to call Walter a strong man, when you talk about the preface?”
Several of Bobbie Ferrar’s even teeth became visible.
“I have no influence with Walter.”
“Then who has?”
“No one. Except —”
“Yes?”
“Walter.”
Before she could check herself, Dinny said:
“You do understand, Mr. Ferrar, that this is practically death for my brother and frightful for all of us?”
Bobbie Ferrar looked at her flushed face without speaking. He seemed, indeed, to admit or promise nothing all through that lunch, but when they got up and Sir Lawrence was paying his bill, he said to her:
“Miss Cherrell, when I go to see Walter about this, would you like to go with me? I could arrange for you to be in the background.”
“I should like it terribly.”
“Between ourselves, then. I’ll let you know.”
Dinny clasped her hands and smiled at him.
“Rum chap!” said Sir Lawrence, as they walked away: “Lots of heart, really. Simply can’t bear people being hanged. Goes to all the murder trials. Hates prisons like poison. You’d never think it.”
“No,” said Dinny, dreamily.
“Bobbie,” continued Sir Lawrence, “is capable of being Private Secretary to a Cheka, without their ever suspecting that he’s itching to boil them in oil the whole time. He’s unique. The diary’s in print, Dinny, and old Blythe’s writing that preface. Walter will be back on Thursday. Have you seen Hubert yet?”
“No, but I’m to go with Dad tomorrow.”
“I’ve refrained from pumping you, but those young Tasburghs are up to something, aren’t they? I happen to know young Tasburgh isn’t with his ship.”
“Not?”
“Perfect innocence!” murmured Sir Lawrence. “Well, my dear, neither nods nor winks are necessary; but I hope to goodness they won’t strike before peaceful measures have been exhausted.”
“Oh! surely they wouldn’t!”
“They’re the kind of young person who still make one believe in history. Has it ever struck you, Dinny, that history is nothing but the story of how people have taken things into their own hands, and got themselves or others into and out of trouble over it? They can cook at that place, can’t they? I shall take your aunt there some day when she’s thin enough.”
And Dinny perceived that the dangers of cross-examination were over.
Her father called for her and they set out for the prison the following afternoon of a windy day charged with the rough melancholy of November. The sight of the building made her feel like a dog about to howl. The Governor, who was an army man, received them with great courtesy and the special deference of one to another of higher rank in his own profession. He made no secret of his sympathy with them over Hubert’s position, and gave them more than the time limit allowed by the regulations.
Hubert came in smiling. Dinny felt that if she had been alone he might have shown some of his real feelings, but that in front of his father he was determined to treat the whole thing as just a bad joke. The General, who had been grim and silent all the way there, became at once matter-of-fact and as if ironically amused. Dinny could not help thinking how almost absurdly alike, allowing for age, they were in looks and in manner. There was that in both of them which would never quite grow up, or rather which had grown up in early youth and would never again budge. Neither, from beginning to end of that half-hour, touched on feeling. The whole interview was a great strain, and so far as intimate talk was concerned, might never have taken place. According to Hubert, everything in his life there was perfectly all right, and he wasn’t worrying at all; according to the General, it was only a matter of days now, and the coverts were waiting to be shot. He had a good deal to say about India, and the unrest on the frontier. Only when they were shaking hands at the end did their faces change at all, and then only to the simple gravity of a very straight look into each other’s eyes. Dinny followed with a hand-clasp and a kiss behind her father’s back.
“Jean?” asked Hubert, very low.
“Quite all right, sent her dear love. Nothing to worry about, she says.”
The quiver of his lips hardened into a little smile, he squeezed her hand, and turned away.
In the gateway the doorkeeper and two warders saluted them respectfully. They got into their cab, and not one word did they say the whole way home. The thing was a nightmare from which they would awaken some day, perhaps.
Practically the only comfort of those days of waiting was derived by Dinny from Aunt Em, whose inherent incoherence continually diverted thought from logical direction. The antiseptic value, indeed, of incoherence became increasingly apparent as day by day anxiety increased. Her aunt was genuinely worried by Hubert’s position, but her mind was too plural to dwell on it to the point of actual suffering. On the fifth of November she called Dinny to the drawing-room window to look at some boys dragging a guy down a Mount Street desolate in wind and lamplight.
“The rector’s workin’ on that,” she said; “there was a Tasburgh who wasn’t hanged, or beheaded, or whatever they did with them, and he’s tryin’ to prove that he ought to have been; he sold some plate or somethin’ to buy the gunpowder, and his sister married Catesby, or one of the others. Your father and I and Wilmet, Dinny, used to make a guy of our governess; she had very large feet, Robbins. Children are so unfeelin’. Did you?”
“Did I what, Aunt Em?”
“Make guys?”
“No.”
“We used to go out singin’ carols, too, with our faces blacked. Wilmet was the corker. Such a tall child, with legs that went down straight like sticks wide apart from the beginning, you know — angels have them. It’s all rather gone out. I do think there ought to be somethin’ done about it. Gibbets, too. We had one. We hung a kitten from it. We drowned it first — not we — the staff.”
“Horrible, Aunt Em!”
“Yes; but not really. Your father brought us up as Red Indians. It was nice for him, then he could do things to us and we couldn’t cry. Did Hubert?”
“Oh! no. Hubert only brought himself up as a Red Indian.”
“That was your mother; she’s a gentle creature, Dinny. Our mother was a Hungerford. You must have noticed.”
“I don’t remember Grandmother.”
“She died before you were born. That was Spain. The germs there are extra special. So did your grandfather. I was thirty-five. He had very good manners. They did, you know, then. Only sixty. Claret and piquet, and a funny little beard thing. You’ve seen them, Dinny?”
“Imperials?”
“Yes, diplomatic. They wear them now when they write those articles on foreign affairs. I like goats myself, though they butt you rather.”
“Their smell, Aunt Em!”
“Penetratin’. Has Jean written to you lately?”
In Dinny’s bag was a letter just received. “No,” she said. The habit was growing on her.
“This hidin’ away is weak-minded. Still, it WAS her honeymoon.”
Her Aunt had evidently not been made a recipient of Sir Lawrence’s suspicions.
Upstairs she read the letter again before tearing it up.
“Poste restante, Brussels.
“DEAR DINNY,
“All goes on for the best here and I’m enjoying it quite a lot. They say I take to it like a duck to water. There’s nothing much to choose now between Alan and me, except that I have the better hands. Thanks awfully for your letters. Terribly glad of the diary stunt, I think it may quite possibly work the oracle. Still we can’t afford not to be ready for the worst. You don’t say whether Fleur’s having any luck. By the way, could you get me a Turkish conversation book, the pronouncing kind? I expect your Uncle Adrian could tell you where to get it. I can’t lay hands on one here. Alan sends you his love. Same from me. Keep us informed by wire if necessary.
“Your affte
“JEAN.”
A Turkish conversation book! This first indication of how their minds were working set Dinny’s working too. She remembered Hubert having told her that he had saved the life of a Turkish officer at the end of the war, and had kept up with him ever since. So Turkey was to be the asylum if —! But the whole plan was desperate. Surely it would not, must not come to that! But she went down to the Museum the next morning.
Adrian, whom she had not seen since Hubert’s committal, received her with his usual quiet alacrity, and she was sorely tempted to confide in him. Jean must know that to ask his advice about a Turkish conversation book would surely stimulate his curiosity. She restrained herself, however, and said:
“Uncle, you haven’t a Turkish conversation book? Hubert thought he’d like to kill time in prison brushing up his Turkish.”
Adrian regarded her, and closed one eye.
“He hasn’t any Turkish to brush. But here you are —”
And, fishing a small book from a shelf, he added: “Serpent!”
Dinny smiled.
“Deception,” he continued, “is wasted on me, Dinny, I am in whatever know there is.”
“Tell me, Uncle!”
“You see,” said Adrian, “Hallorsen is in it.”
“Oh!”
“And I, whose movements are dependent on Hallorsen’s, have had to put two and two together. They make five, Dinny, and I sincerely trust the addition won’t be needed. But Hallorsen’s a fine chap.”
“I know that,” said Dinny, ruefully. “Uncle, do tell me exactly what’s in the wind.”
Adrian shook his head.
“They obviously can’t tell themselves till they hear how Hubert is to be exported. All I know is that Hallorsen’s Bolivians are going back to Bolivia instead of to the States, and that a very queer padded, well-ventilated case is being made to hold them.”
“You mean his Bolivian bones?”
“Or possibly replicas. They’re being made, too.”
Thrilled, Dinny stood gazing at him.
“And,” added Adrian, “the replicas are being made by a man who believes he is repeating Siberians, and not for Hallorsen, and they’ve been very carefully weighed — one hundred and fifty-two pounds, perilously near the weight of a man. How much is Hubert?”
“About eleven stone.”
“Exactly.”
“Go on, Uncle.”
“Having got so far, Dinny, I’ll give you my theory, for what it’s worth. Hallorsen and his case full of replicas will travel by the ship that Hubert travels by. At any port of call in Spain or Portugal, Hallorsen will get off with his case, containing Hubert. He will contrive to have extracted and dropped the replicas overboard. The real bones will be waiting there for him, and he will fill up when Hubert has been switched off to a plane: that’s where Jean and Alan come in. They’ll fly to, well — Turkey, judging from your request just now. I was wondering where before you came. Hallorsen will pop his genuine bones into the case to satisfy the authorities, and Hubert’s disappearance will be put down to a jump overboard — the splash of the replicas, I shouldn’t wonder — or anyway will remain mysterious. It looks to me pretty forlorn.”
“But suppose there’s no port of call?”
“They’re pretty certain to stop somewhere; but, if not, they’ll have some alternative, which will happen on the way down to the ship. Or possibly they may elect to try the case dodge on the arrival in South America. That would really be safest, I think, though it lets out the flying.”
“But why is Professor Hallorsen going to run such a risk?”
“YOU ask me that, Dinny?”
“It’s too much — I— I don’t want him to.”
“Well, my dear, he also has the feeling, I know, that he got Hubert into this, and must get him out. And you must remember that he belongs to a nation that is nothing if not energetic and believes in taking the law into its own hands. But he’s the last man to trade on a service. Besides, it’s a three-legged race he’s running with young Tasburgh, who’s just as deep in it, so you’re no worse off.”
“But I don’t want to owe anything to either of them. It simply mustn’t come to that. Besides, there’s Hubert — do you think he’ll ever consent?”
Adrian said gravely:
“I think he has consented, Dinny; otherwise he’d have asked for bail. Probably he’ll be in charge of Bolivians and won’t feel he’s breaking English law. I fancy they’ve convinced him between them that they won’t run much risk. No doubt he feels fed up with the whole thing and ready for anything. Don’t forget that he’s really being very unjustly treated, and is just married.”
“Yes,” said Dinny, in a hushed voice. “And you, Uncle? How are things?”
Adrian’s answer was no less quiet:
“Your advice was right; and I’m fixed up to go, subject to this business.”
The feeling that such things did not happen persisted with Dinny even after her interview with Adrian; she had too often read of them in books. And yet, there was history, and there were the Sunday papers! Thought of the Sunday papers calmed her curiously and fortified her resolution to keep Hubert’s affair out of them. But she conscientiously posted to Jean the Turkish primer, and took to poring over maps in Sir Lawrence’s study when he was out. She also studied the sailing dates of the South American lines.
Two days later Sir Lawrence announced at dinner that ‘Walter’ was back; but after a holiday it would no doubt take him some time to reach a little thing like Hubert’s.
“A little thing!” cried Dinny: “merely his life and our happiness.”
“My dear, people’s lives and happiness are the daily business of a Home Secretary.”
“It must be an awful post. I should hate it.”
“That,” said Sir Lawrence, “is where your difference from a public man comes in, Dinny. What a public man hates is NOT dealing with the lives and happiness of his fellow-beings. Is our bluff ready, in case he comes early to Hubert?”
“The diary’s printed — I’ve passed the proof; and the preface is written. I haven’t seen that, but Michael says it’s a ‘corker.’”
“Good! Mr. Blythe’s corkers give no mean pause. Bobbie will let us know when Walter reaches the case.”
“What is Bobbie?” asked Lady Mont.
“An institution, my dear.”
“Blore, remind me to write about that sheep-dog puppy.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“When their faces are mostly white they have a kind of divine madness, have you noticed, Dinny? They’re all called Bobbie.”
“Anything less divinely mad than our Bobbie — eh, Dinny?”
“Does he always do what he says he will, Uncle?”
“Yes; you may bet on Bobbie.”
“I do want to see some sheep-dog trials,” said Lady Mont: “Clever creatures. People say they know exactly what sheep not to bite; and so thin, really. All hair and intelligence. Hen has two. About your hair, Dinny?”
“Yes, Aunt Em?”
“Did you keep what you cut off?”
“I did.”
“Well, don’t let it go out of the family; you may want it. They say we’re goin’ to be old-fashioned again. Ancient but modern, you know.”
Sir Lawrence cocked his eye. “Have you ever been anything else, Dinny? That’s why I want you to sit. Permanence of the type.”
“What type?” said Lady Mont. “Don’t be a type, Dinny; they’re so dull. There was a man said Michael was a type; I never could see it.”
“Why don’t you get Aunt Em to sit instead, Uncle? She’s younger than I am any day, aren’t you, Auntie?”
“Don’t be disrespectful. Blore, my Vichy.”
“Uncle, how old is Bobbie?”
“No one really knows. Rising sixty, perhaps. Some day, I suppose, his date will be discovered; but they’ll have to cut a section and tell it from his rings. You’re not thinking of marrying him, are you, Dinny? By the way, Walter’s a widower. Quaker blood somewhere, converted Liberal — inflammable stuff.”
“Dinny takes a lot of wooin’,” said Lady Mont.
“Can I get down, Aunt Em? I want to go to Michael’s.”
“Tell her I’m comin’ to see Kit tomorrow mornin’. I’ve got him a new game called Parliament — they’re animals divided into Parties; they all squeak and roar differently, and behave in the wrong places. The Prime Minister’s a zebra, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s a tiger — striped. Blore, a taxi for Miss Dinny.”
Michael was at the House, but Fleur was in. She reported that Mr. Blythe’s preface had already been sent to Bobbie Ferrar. As for the Bolivians — the Minister was not back, but the Attaché in charge had promised to have an informal talk with Bobbie. He had been so polite that Fleur was unable to say what was in his mind. She doubted if there was anything.
Dinny returned on as many tenterhooks as ever. It all seemed to hinge on Bobbie Ferrar, and he ‘rising’ sixty, so used to everything that he must surely have lost all persuasive flame. But perhaps that was for the best. Emotional appeal might be wrong. Coolness, calculation, the power of hinting at unpleasant consequences, of subtly suggesting advantage, might be what was wanted. She felt, indeed, completely at sea as to what really moved the mind of Authority. Michael, Fleur, Sir Lawrence had spoken from time to time as if they knew, and yet she felt that none of them were really wiser than herself. It all seemed to balance on the knife-edge of mood and temper. She went to bed and had practically no sleep.
One more day like that, and then, as a sailor, whose ship has been in the doldrums, wakes to movement under him, so felt Dinny when at breakfast she opened an unstamped envelope with “Foreign Office” imprinted on it.
“DEAR MISS CHERRELL —
“I handed your brother’s diary to the Home Secretary yesterday afternoon. He promised to read it last night, and I am to see him today at six o’clock. If you will come to the Foreign Office at ten minutes to six, we might go round together.
“Sincerely yours,
“R. FERRAR.”
So! A whole day to get through first! By now ‘Walter’ must have read the diary; had perhaps already made up his mind on the case! With the receipt of that formal note, a feeling of being in conspiracy and pledged to secrecy had come to her. Instinctively she said nothing of it; instinctively wanted to get away from everybody till all was over. This must be like waiting for an operation. She walked out into a fine morning, and wondered where on earth she should go; thought of the National Gallery, and decided that pictures required too much mind given to them; thought of Westminster Abbey and the girl Millicent Pole. Fleur had got her a post as mannequin at Frivolle’s. Why not go there, look at the winter models, and perhaps see that girl again? Rather hateful being shown dresses if you were not going to buy, giving all that trouble for nothing. But if only Hubert were released she would ‘go off the deep end’ and buy a real dress, though it took all her next allowance. Hardening her heart, therefore, she turned in the direction of Bond Street, forded that narrow drifting river, came to Frivolle’s, and went in.
“Yes, Madam”; and she was shown up, and seated on a chair. She sat there with her head a little on one side, smiling and saying pleasant things to the saleswoman; for she remembered one day in a big shop an assistant saying: “You’ve no idea, Moddam, what a difference it makes to us when a customer smiles and takes a little interest. We get so many difficult ladies and — oh! well —” The models were very ‘late,’ very expensive, and mostly, she thought, very unbecoming, in spite of the constant assurance: “This frock would just suit you, Madam, with your figure and colouring.”
Not sure whether to ask after her would harm or benefit the girl Millicent Pole, she selected two dresses for parade. A very thin girl, haughty, with a neat little head and large shoulder blades came wearing the first, a creation in black and white; she languished across with a hand on where one hip should have been, and her head turned as if looking for the other, confirming Dinny in the aversion she already had from the dress. Then, in the second dress, of sea green and silver, the one that she really liked except for its price, came Millicent Pole. With professional negligence she took no glance at the client, as who should say: “What do you think! If you lived in underclothes all day — and had so many husbands to avoid!” Then, in turning, she caught Dinny’s smile, answered it with a sudden startled brightness, and moved across again, languid as ever. Dinny got up, and going over to that figure now standing very still, took a fold of the skirt between finger and thumb, as if to feel its quality.
“Nice to see you again.”
The girl’s loose flower-like mouth smiled very sweetly. ‘She’s marvellous!’ thought Dinny.
“I know Miss Pole,” she said to the saleswoman. “That dress looks awfully nice on her.”
“Oh! but Madam, it’s your style completely. Miss Pole has a little too much line for it. Let me slip it on you.”
Not sure that she had been complimented, Dinny said:
“I shan’t be able to decide today; I’m not sure I can afford it.”
“That is quite all right, Madam. Miss Pole, just come in here and slip it off, and we’ll slip it on Madam.”
In there the girl slipped it off. ‘Even more marvellous,’ thought Dinny: ‘Wish I looked as nice as that in undies,’ and suffered her own dress to be removed.
“Madam is beautifully slim,” said the saleswoman.
“Thin as a rail!”
“Oh, no, Madam is well covered.”
“I think she’s just right!” The girl spoke with a sort of eagerness. “Madam has style.”
The saleswoman fastened the hook.
“Perfect,” she said. “A little fullness here, perhaps; we can put that right.”
“Rather a lot of my skin,” murmured Dinny.
“Oh! But so becoming, with a skin like Madam’s.”
“Would you let me see Miss Pole in that other frock — the black and white?”
This she said, knowing that the girl could not be sent to fetch it in her underclothes.
“Certainly; I’ll get it at once. Attend to Madam, Miss Pole.”
Left to themselves, the two girls stood smiling at each other.
“How do you like it now you’ve got it, Millie?”
“Well, it isn’t all I thought, Miss.”
“Empty?”
“I expect nothing’s what you think it. Might be a lot worse, of course.”
“It was you I came in to see.”
“Did you reely? But I hope you’ll have the dress, Miss — suits you a treat. You look lovely in it.”
“They’ll be putting you in the sales department, Millie, if you don’t look out.”
“Oh! I wouldn’t go there. It’s nothing but a lot of soft sawder.”
“Where do I unhook?”
“Here. It’s very economic — only one. And you can do it for yourself, with a wriggle. I read about your brother, Miss. I do think that’s a shame.”
“Yes,” said Dinny, and stood stony in her underclothes. Suddenly she stretched out her hand and gripped the girl’s. “Good luck, Millie!”
“And good luck to you, Miss!”
They had just unclasped hands when the saleswoman came back.
“I’m so sorry to have bothered you,” smiled Dinny, “but I’ve quite made up my mind to have this one, if I can afford it. The price is appalling.”
“Do you think so, Madam? It’s a Paris model. I’ll see if I can get Mr. Better to do what he can for YOU— it’s YOUR frock. Miss Pole, find Mr. Better for me, will you?”
The girl, now in the black and white creation, went out.
Dinny, who had resumed her dress, said:
“Do your mannequins stay long with you?”
“Well, no; in and out of dresses all day, it’s rather a restless occupation.”
“What becomes of them?”
“In one way or another they get married.”
How discreet! And soon after, Mr. Better — a slim man with grey hair and perfect manners — having said he would reduce the price ‘for Madam’ to what still seemed appalling, Dinny went out into the pale November sunlight saying she would decide tomorrow. Six hours to kill. She walked North-East towards the Meads, trying to soothe her own anxiety by thinking that everyone she passed, no matter how they looked, had anxieties of their own. Seven million people, in one way of another all anxious. Some of them seemed so, and some did not. She gazed at her own face in a shop window, and decided that she was one of those who did not; and yet how horrid she felt! The human face was a mask, indeed! She came to Oxford Street and halted on the edge of the pavement, waiting to cross. Close to her was the bony white-nosed head of a van horse. She began stroking its neck, wishing she had a lump of sugar. The horse paid no attention, nor did its driver. Why should they? From year’s end to year’s end they passed and halted, halted and passed through this maelstrom, slowly, ploddingly, without hope of release, till they both fell down and were cleared away. A policeman reversed the direction of his white sleeves, the driver jerked his reins, and the van moved on, followed by a long line of motor vehicles. The policeman again reversed his sleeves and Dinny crossed, walked on to Tottenham Court Road, and once more stood waiting. What a seething and intricate pattern of creatures, and their cars, moving to what end, fulfilling what secret purpose? To what did it all amount? A meal, a smoke, a glimpse of so-called life in some picture palace, a bed at the end of the day. A million jobs faithfully and unfaithfully pursued, that they might eat, and dream a little, and sleep, and begin again. The inexorability of life caught her by the throat as she stood there, so that she gave a little gasp, and a stout man said:
“Beg pardon, did I tread on your foot, Miss?”
As she was smiling her ‘No,’ a policeman reversed his white sleeves, and she crossed. She came to Gower Street, and walked rapidly up its singular desolation. ‘One more ribber, one more ribber to cross,’ and she was in the Meads, that network of mean streets, gutters, and child life. At the Vicarage both her Uncle and Aunt for once were in, and about to lunch. Dinny sat down, too. She did not shrink from discussing the coming ‘operation’ with them. They lived so in the middle of operations. Hilary said:
“Old Tasburgh and I got Bentworth to speak to the Home Secretary, and I had this note from ‘the Squire’ last night. ‘All Walter would say was that he should treat the case strictly on its merits without reference to what he called your nephew’s status — what a word! I always said the fellow ought to have stayed Liberal.’”
“I wish he WOULD treat it on its merits!” cried Dinny; “then Hubert would be safe. I do hate that truckling to what they call Democracy! He’d give a cabman the benefit of the doubt.”
“It’s the reaction from the old times, Dinny, and gone too far, as reaction always does. When I was a boy there was still truth in the accusation of privilege. Now, it’s the other way on; station in life is a handicap before the Law. But nothing’s harder than to steer in the middle of the stream — you want to be fair, and you can’t.”
“I was wondering, Uncle, as I came along. What was the use of you and Hubert and Dad and Uncle Adrian, and tons of others doing their jobs faithfully — apart from bread and butter, I mean?”
“Ask your Aunt,” said Hilary.
“Aunt May, what IS the use?”
“I don’t know, Dinny. I was bred up to believe there was a use in it, so I go on believing. If you married and had a family, you probably wouldn’t ask the question.”
“I knew Aunt May would get out of answering. Now, Uncle?”
“Well, Dinny, I don’t know either. As she says, we do what we’re used to doing; that’s about it.”
“In his diary Hubert says that consideration for others is really consideration for ourselves. Is that true?”
“Rather a crude way of putting it. I should prefer to say that we’re all so interdependent that in order to look after oneself one’s got to look after others no less.”
“But is one worth looking after?”
“You mean: is life worth while at all?”
“Yes.”
“After five hundred thousand years (Adrian says a million at least) of human life, the population of the world is very considerably larger than it has ever been yet. Well, then! Considering all the miseries and struggles of mankind, would human life, self-conscious as it is, have persisted if it wasn’t worth while to be alive?”
“I suppose not,” mused Dinny; “I think in London one loses the sense of proportion.”
At this moment a maid came in.
“Mr. Cameron to see you, Sir.”
“Show him in, Lucy. He’ll help you to regain it, Dinny. A walking proof of the unquenchable love of life, had every malady under the sun, including black-water, been in three wars, two earthquakes, had all kinds of jobs in all parts of the world, is out of one now, and has heart disease.”
Mr. Cameron entered; a short spare man getting on for fifty, with bright Celtic grey eyes, dark grizzled hair, and a slightly hooked nose. One of his hands was bound up, as if he had sprained a thumb.
“Hallo, Cameron,” said Hilary, rising. “In the wars again?”
“Well, Vicar, where I live, the way some of those fellows treat horses is dreadful. I had a fight yesterday. Flogging a willing horse, overloaded, poor old feller — never can stand that.”
“I hope you gave him beans!”
Mr. Cameron’s eyes twinkled.
“Well, I tapped his claret, and sprained my thumb. But I called to tell you, Sir, that I’ve got a job on the Vestry. It’s not much, but it’ll keep me going.”
“Splendid! Look here, Cameron, I’m awfully sorry, but Mrs. Cherrell and I have to go to a Meeting now. Stay and have a cup of coffee and talk to my niece. Tell her about Brazil.”
Mr. Cameron looked at Dinny. He had a charming smile.
The next hour went quickly and did her good. Mr. Cameron had a fine flow. He gave her practically his life story, from boyhood in Australia, and enlistment at sixteen for the South African war, to his experiences since the Great War. Every kind of insect and germ had lodged in him in his time; he had handled horses, Chinamen, Kaffirs, and Brazilians, broken collar-bone and leg, been gassed and shell-shocked, but there was — he carefully explained — nothing wrong with him now but “a touch of this heart disease.” His face had a kind of inner light, and his speech betrayed no consciousness that he was out of the common. He was, at the moment, the best antidote Dinny could have taken, and she prolonged him to his limit. When he had gone she herself went away into the medley of the streets with a fresh eye. It was now half-past three, and she had two hours and a half still to put away. She walked towards Regent’s Park. Few leaves were left upon the trees, and there was a savour in the air from bonfires of them burning; through their bluish drift she passed, thinking of Mr. Cameron, and resisting melancholy. What a life to have lived! And what a zest at the end of it! From beside the Long Water in the last of the pale sunlight, she came out into Marylebone, and bethought herself that before she went to the Foreign Office she must go where she could titivate. She chose Harridge’s and went in. It was half-past four. The stalls were thronged; she wandered among them, bought a new powder-puff, had some tea, made herself tidy, and emerged. Still a good half-hour, and she walked again, though by now she was tired. At a quarter to six precisely she gave her card to a commissionaire at the Foreign Office, and was shown into a waiting-room. It was lacking in mirrors, and taking out her case she looked at herself in its little powder-flecked round of glass. She seemed plain to herself and wished that she didn’t; though, after all, she was not going to see ‘Walter’— only to sit in the background, and wait again. Always waiting!
“Miss Cherrell!”
There was Bobbie Ferrar in the doorway. He looked just as usual. But of course he didn’t care. Why should he?
He tapped his breast pocket. “I’ve got the preface. Shall we trot? And he proceeded to talk of the Chingford murder. Had she been following it? She had not. It was a clear case — completely! And he added, suddenly:
“The Bolivian won’t take the responsibility, Miss Cherrell.”
“Oh!”
“Never mind.” And his face broadened.
‘His teeth ARE real,’ thought Dinny, ‘I can see some gold filling.’
They reached the Home Office and went in. Up some wide stairs, down a corridor, into a large and empty room, with a fire at the end, their guide took them. Bobbie Ferrar drew a chair up to the table.
“‘The Graphic’ or this?” and he took from his side pocket a small volume.
“Both, please,” said Dinny, wanly. He placed them before her. ‘This’ was a little flat red edition of some War Poems.
“It’s a first,” said Bobbie Ferrar; “I picked it up after lunch.”
“Yes,” said Dinny, and sat down.
An inner door was opened, and a head put in.
“Mr. Ferrar, the Home Secretary will see you.”
Bobbie Ferrar turned on her a look, muttered between his teeth: “Cheer up!” and moved squarely away.
In that great waiting-room never in her life had she felt so alone, so glad to be alone, or so dreaded the end of loneliness. She opened the little volume and read:
“He eyed a neat framed notice there
Above the fireplace hung to show
Disabled heroes where to go
For arms and legs, with scale of price,
And words of dignified advice
How officers could get them free —
Elbow or shoulder, hip or knee.
Two arms, two legs, though all were lost,
They’d be restored him free of cost.
Then a girl guide looked in and said . . .”
The fire crackled suddenly and spat out a spark. Dinny saw it die on the hearthrug, with regret. She read more poems, but did not take them in, and, closing the little book, opened ‘The Graphic.’ Having turned its pages from end to end she could not have mentioned the subject of any single picture. The sinking feeling beneath her heart absorbed every object she looked upon. She wondered if it were worse to wait for an operation on oneself or on someone loved; and decided that the latter must be worse. Hours seemed to have passed; how long had he really been gone? Only half-past six! Pushing her chair back, she got up. On the walls were the effigies of Victorian statesmen, and she roamed from one to the other; but they might all have been the same statesman, with his whiskers at different stages of development. She went back to her seat, drew her chair close in to the table, rested her elbows on it, and her chin on her hands, drawing little comfort from that cramped posture. Thank Heaven! Hubert didn’t know his fate was being decided, and was not going through this awful waiting. She thought of Jean and Alan, and with all her heart hoped that they were ready for the worst. For with each minute the worst seemed more and more certain. A sort of numbness began creeping over her. He would never come back — never, never! And she hoped he wouldn’t, bringing the death-warrant. At last she laid her arms flat on the table, and rested her forehead on them. How long she had stayed in that curious torpor she knew not, before the sound of a throat being cleared roused her, and she started back.
Not Bobbie Ferrar, but a tall man with a reddish, clean-shaven face and silver hair brushed in a cockscomb off his forehead, was standing before the fire with his legs slightly apart and his hands under his coat tails; he was staring at her with very wide-opened light grey eyes, and his lips were just apart as if he were about to emit a remark. Dinny was too startled to rise, and she sat staring back at him.
“Miss Cherrell! Don’t get up.” He lifted a restraining hand from beneath a coat-tail. Dinny stayed seated — only too glad to, for she had begun to tremble violently.
“Ferrar tells me that you edited your brother’s diary?”
Dinny bowed her head. Take deep breaths!
“As printed, is it in its original condition?”
“Yes.”
“Exactly?”
“Yes. I haven’t altered or left out a thing.”
Staring at his face she could see nothing but the round brightness of the eyes and the slight superior prominence of the lower lip. It was almost like staring at God. She shivered at the queerness of the thought and her lips formed a little desperate smile.
“I have a question to ask you, Miss Cherrell.”
Dinny uttered a little sighing: “Yes.”
“How much of this diary was written since your brother came back?”
She stared; then the implication in the question stung her.
“None! Oh, none! It was all written out there at the time.” And she rose to her feet.
“May I ask how you know that?”
“My brother —” Only then did she realise that throughout she had nothing but Hubert’s word —“my brother told me so.”
“His word is gospel to you?”
She retained enough sense of humour not to ‘draw herself up,’ but her head tilted.
“Gospel. My brother is a soldier and —”
She stopped short, and, watching that superior lower lip, hated herself for using that cliché.
“No doubt, no doubt! But you realise, of course, the importance of the point?”
“There is the original —” stammered Dinny. Oh! Why hadn’t she brought it! “It shows clearly — I mean, it’s all messy and stained. You can see it at any time. Shall —?”
He again put out a restraining hand.
“Never mind that. Very devoted to your brother, Miss Cherrell?”
Dinny’s lips quivered.
“Absolutely. We all are.”
“He’s just married, I hear?”
“Yes, just married.”
“Your brother wounded in the war?”
“Yes. He had a bullet through his left leg.”
“Neither arm touched?”
Again that sting!
“No!” The little word came out like a shot fired. And they stood looking at each other half a minute — a minute; words of appeal, of resentment, incoherent words were surging to her lips, but she kept them closed; she put her hand over them. He nodded.
“Thank you, Miss Cherrell. Thank you.” His head went a little to one side; he turned, and rather as if carrying that head on a charger, walked to the inner door. When he had passed through, Dinny covered her face with her hands. What had she done? Antagonised him? She ran her hands down over her face, over her body, and stood with them clenched at her sides, staring at the door through which he had passed, quivering from head to foot. A minute passed. The door was opened again, and Bobbie Ferrar came in. She saw his teeth. He nodded, shut the door, and said:
“It’s all right.”
Dinny spun round to the window. Dark had fallen, and if it hadn’t, she couldn’t have seen. All right! All right! She dashed her knuckles across her eyes, turned round, and held out both hands, without seeing where to hold them.
They were not taken, but his voice said:
“I’m very happy.”
“I thought I’d spoiled it.”
She saw his eyes then, round as a puppy dog’s.
“If he hadn’t made up his mind already he wouldn’t have seen you, Miss Cherrell. He’s not as case-hardened as all that. As a matter of fact, he’d seen the Magistrate about it at lunch time — that helped a lot.”
‘Then I had all that agony for nothing,’ thought Dinny.
“Did he have to see the preface, Mr. Ferrar?”
“No, and just as well — it might have worked the other way. We really owe it to the Magistrate. But you made a good impression on him. He said you were transparent.”
“Oh!”
Bobbie Ferrar took the little red book from the table, looked at it lovingly, and placed it in his pocket. “Shall we go?”
In Whitehall Dinny took a breath so deep that the whole November dusk seemed to pass into her with the sensation of a long, and desperately wanted drink.
“A Post Office!” she said. “He couldn’t change his mind, could he?”
“I have his word. Your brother will be released to-night.”
“Oh! Mr. Ferrar!” Tears suddenly came out of her eyes. She turned away to hide them, and when she turned back to him, he was not there.
When from that Post Office she had despatched telegrams to her father and Jean, and telephoned to Fleur, to Adrian and Hilary, she took a taxi to Mount Street, and opened the door of her Uncle’s study. Sir Lawrence, before the fire with a book he was not reading, looked up.
“What’s your news, Dinny?”
“Saved!”
“Thanks to you!”
“Bobbie Ferrar says, thanks to the Magistrate. I nearly wrecked it, Uncle.”
“Ring the bell!” Dinny rang.
“Blore, tell Lady Mont I want her.”
“Good news, Blore; Mr. Hubert’s free.”
“Thank you, Miss; I was laying six to four on it.”
“What can we do to relieve our feelings, Dinny?”
“I must go to Condaford, Uncle.”
“Not till after dinner. You shall go drunk. What about Hubert? Anybody going to meet him?”
“Uncle Adrian said I’d better not, and he would go. Hubert will make for the flat, of course, and wait for Jean.”
Sir Lawrence gave her a whimsical glance.
“Where will she be flying from?”
“Brussels.”
“So that was the centre of operations! The closing down of that enterprise gives me almost as much satisfaction, Dinny, as Hubert’s release. You can’t get away with that sort of thing, nowadays.”
“I think they might have,” said Dinny, for with the removal of the need for it, the idea of escape seemed to have become less fantastic. “Aunt Em! What a nice wrapper!”
“I was dressin’. Blore’s won four pounds. Dinny, kiss me. Give your Uncle one, too. You kiss very nicely — there’s body in it. If I drink champagne, I shall be ill tomorrow.”
“But need you, Auntie?”
“Yes. Dinny, promise me to kiss that young man.”
“Do you get a commission on kissing, Aunt Em?”
“Don’t tell me he wasn’t goin’ to cut Hubert out of prison, or something. The Rector said he flew in with a beard one day, and took a spirit level and two books on Portugal. They always go to Portugal. The Rector’ll be so relieved; he was gettin’ thin about it. So I think you ought to kiss him.”
“A kiss means nothing nowadays, Auntie. I nearly kissed Bobbie Ferrar; only he saw it coming.”
“Dinny can’t be bothered to do all this kissing,” said Sir Lawrence; “she’s got to sit to my miniature painter. The young man will be at Condaford tomorrow, Dinny.”
“Your Uncle’s got a bee, Dinny; collectin’ the Lady. There aren’t any, you know. It’s extinct. We’re all females now.”
By the only late evening train Dinny embarked for Condaford. They had plied her with wine at dinner, and she sat in sleepy elation, grateful for everything — the motion, and the moon-ridden darkness flying past the windows. Her exhilaration kept breaking out in smiles. Hubert free! Condaford safe! Her father and mother at ease once more! Jean happy! Alan no longer threatened with disgrace! Her fellow-passengers, for she was travelling third-class, looked at her with the frank or furtive wonderment that so many smiles will induce in the minds of any taxpayers. Was she tipsy, weak-minded, or merely in love? Perhaps all three! And she looked back at them with a benevolent compassion because they were obviously not half-seas-over with happiness. The hour and a half seemed short, and she got out on to the dimly lighted platform, less sleepy, but as elated as when she had got into the train. She had forgotten to add in her telegram that she was coming, so she had to leave her things and walk. She took the main road; it was longer, but she wanted to swing along and breathe home air to the full. In the night, as always, things looked unfamiliar, and she seemed to pass houses, hedges, trees that she had never known. The road dipped through a wood. A car came with its headlights glaring luridly, and in that glare she saw a weasel slink across just in time — queer little low beast, snakily humping its long back. She stopped a moment on the bridge over their narrow twisting little river. That bridge was hundreds of years old, nearly as old as the oldest parts of the Grange, and still very strong. Just beyond it was their gate, and when the river flooded, in very wet years, it crept up the meadow almost to the shrubbery where the moat had once been. Dinny pushed through the gate and walked on the grass edging of the drive between the rhododendrons. She came to the front of the house, which was really its back — long, low, unlighted. They did not expect her, and it was getting on for midnight; and the idea came to her to steal round and see it all grey and ghostly, tree-and-creeper-covered in the moonlight. Past the yew trees, throwing short shadows under the raised garden, she came round on to the lawn, and stood breathing deeply, and turning her head this way and that, so as to miss nothing that she had grown up with. The moon flicked a ghostly radiance on to the windows, and shiny leaves of the magnolias; and secrets lurked all over the old stone face. Lovely! Only one window was lighted, that of her father’s study. It seemed strange that they had gone to bed already, with relief so bubbling in them. She stole from the lawn on to the terrace and stood looking in through the curtains not quite drawn. The General was at his desk with a lot of papers spread before him, sitting with his hands between his knees, and his head bent. She could see the hollow below his temple, the hair above it, much greyer of late, the set mouth, the almost beaten look on the face. The whole attitude was that of a man in patient silence, preparing to accept disaster. Up in Mount Street she had been reading of the American Civil War, and she thought that just so, but for his lack of beard, might some old Southern General have looked, the night before Lee’s surrender. And, suddenly, it came to her that by an evil chance they had not yet received her telegram. She tapped on the pane. Her father raised his head. His face was ashen grey in the moonlight, and it was evident that he mistook her apparition for confirmation of the worst; he opened the window. Dinny leaned in, and put her hands on his shoulders.
“Dad! Haven’t you had my wire? It’s all right, Hubert’s free.”
The General’s hands shot up and grasped her wrists, colour came into his face, his lips relaxed, he looked suddenly ten years younger.
“Is it — is it certain, Dinny?”
Dinny nodded. She was smiling, but tears stood in her eyes.
“My God! That’s news! Come in! I must go up and tell your Mother!” He was out of the room before she was in it.
In this room, which had resisted her mother’s and her own attempts to introduce aestheticism, and retained an office-like barrenness, Dinny stood staring at this and at that evidence of Art’s defeat, with the smile that was becoming chronic. Dad with his papers, his military books, his ancient photographs, his relics of India and South Africa, and the old-style picture of his favourite charger, his map of the estate; his skin of the leopard that had mauled him, and the two fox masks — happy again! Bless him!
She had the feeling that her mother and he would rather be left alone to rejoice, and slipped upstairs to Clare’s room. That vivid member of the family was asleep with one pyjama-d arm outside the sheet and her cheek resting on the back of the hand. Dinny looked amiably at the dark shingled head and went out again. No good spoiling beauty sleep! She stood at her opened bedroom window, gazing between the nearly bare elm-trees, at the moonlit rise of fields and the wood beyond. She stood and tried hard not to believe in God. It seemed mean and petty to have more belief in God when things were going well than when they were instinct with tragedy; just as it seemed mean and petty to pray to God when you wanted something badly, and not pray when you didn’t. But after all God was Eternal Mind that you couldn’t understand; God was not a loving Father that you could. The less she thought about all that the better. She was home like a ship after storm; it was enough! She swayed, standing there, and realised that she was nearly asleep. Her bed was not made ready; but getting out an old, thick dressing-gown, she slipped off shoes, dress, and corset belt, put on the gown and curled up under the eiderdown. In two minutes, still with that smile on her lips, she was sleeping . . . .
A telegram from Hubert, received at breakfast next morning, said that he and Jean would be down in time for dinner.
“‘The Young Squire Returns!’” murmured Dinny. “‘Brings Bride!’ Thank goodness it’ll be after dark, and we can kill the fatted calf in private. Is the fatted calf ready, Dad?”
“I’ve got two bottles of your great-grandfather’s Chambertin 1865 left. We’ll have that, and the old brandy.”
“Hubert likes woodcock best, if there are any to be had, Mother, and pancakes. And how about the inland oyster? He loves oysters.”
“I’ll see, Dinny.”
“And mushrooms,” added Clare.
“You’ll have to scour the country, I’m afraid, Mother.”
Lady Cherrell smiled, she looked quite young.
“It’s ‘a mild hunting day,’” said the General: “What about it, Clare? The meet’s at Wyvell’s Cross, eleven.”
“Rather!”
Returning from the stables after seeing her father and Clare depart, Dinny and the dogs lingered. The relief from that long waiting, the feeling of nothing to worry about, was so delicious that she did not resent the singular similarity in the present state of Hubert’s career to the state which had given her so much chagrin two months back. He was in precisely the same position, only worse, because married; and yet she felt as blithe as a ‘sandboy.’ It proved that Einstein was right, and everything relative!
She was singing ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’ on her way to the raised garden when the sound of a motor-cycle on the drive caused her to turn. Someone in the guise of a cyclist waved his hand, and shooting the cycle into a rhododendron bush came towards her, removing his hood.
Alan, of course! And she experienced at once the sensation of one about to be asked in marriage. Nothing — she felt — could prevent him this morning, for he had not even succeeded in doing the dangerous and heroic thing which might have made the asking for reward too obvious.
‘But perhaps,’ she thought, ‘he still has a beard — that might stop him.’ Alas! He had only a jaw rather paler than the rest of his brown face.
He came up holding out both hands and she gave him hers. Thus grappled, they stood looking at each other.
“Well,” said Dinny, at last, “tell your tale. You’ve been frightening us out of our wits, young man.”
“Let’s go and sit down up there, Dinny.”
“Very well. Mind Scaramouch, he’s under your foot, and the foot large.”
“Not so very. Dinny, you look —”
“No,” said Dinny; “rather worn than otherwise. I know all about the Professor and the special case for his Bolivian bones, and the projected substitution of Hubert on the ship.”
“What!”
“We’re not half-wits, Alan. What was YOUR special lay, beard and all? We can’t sit on this seat without something between us and the stone.”
“I couldn’t be the something?”
“Certainly not. Put your overall there. Now!”
“Well,” he said, looking with disfavour at his boot, “if you really want to know. There’s nothing certain, of course, because it all depended on the way they were going to export Hubert. We had to have alternatives. If there was a port of call, Spanish or Portuguese, we WERE going to use the box trick. Hallorsen was to be on the ship, and Jean and I at the port with a machine and the real bones. Jean was to be the pilot when we got him — she’s a natural flier; and they were to make for Turkey.”
“Yes,” said Dinny; “we guessed all that.”
“How?”
“Never mind. What about the alternative?”
“If there was no port of call it wasn’t going to be easy; we’d thought of a faked telegram to the chaps in charge of Hubert when the train arrived at Southampton or whatever the port was, telling them to take him to the Police Station and await further instructions. On the way there Hallorsen on a cycle would have bumped into the taxi on one side, and I should have bumped in on the other; and Hubert was to slip out into my car and be nipped off to where the machine was ready.”
“Mm!” said Dinny. “Very nice on the screen; but are they so confiding in real life?”
“Well, we really hadn’t got that worked out. We were betting on the other.”
“Has all that money gone?”
“No; only about two hundred, and we can re-sell the machine.” Dinny heaved a long sigh, and her eyes rested on him.
“Well,” she said, “if you ask me, you’re jolly well out of it.”
He grinned. “I suppose so; especially as if it had come off I couldn’t very well have bothered you. Dinny, I’ve got to rejoin today. Won’t you —?”
Dinny said softly: “Absence makes the heart grow fonder, Alan. When you come back next time, I really will see.”
“May I have one kiss?”
“Yes.” She tilted her cheek towards him.
‘Now,’ she thought, ‘is when they kiss you masterfully full on the lips. He hasn’t! He must almost respect me!’ And she got up.
“Come along, dear boy; and thank you ever so for all you luckily didn’t have to do. I really will try and become less virginal.”
He looked at her ruefully, as though repenting of his self-control, then smiled at her smile. And soon the splutter of his motor-cycle faded into the faintly sighing silence of the day.
Still with the smile on her lips Dinny went back to the house. He was a dear! But really one must have time! Such a lot of repenting at leisure could be done even in these days!
After their slight and early lunch Lady Cherrell departed in the Ford driven by the groom in search of the fatted calf. Dinny was preparing to hunt the garden for whatever flowers November might yield when a card was brought to her:
“Mr. Neil Wintney,
Ferdinand Studios,
Orchard Street,
Chelsea.”
‘Help!’ she thought; ‘Uncle Lawrence’s young man!’ “Where is he, Amy?”
“In the hall, Miss.”
“Ask him into the drawing-room; I’ll be there in a minute.”
Divested of her gardening gloves and basket, she looked at her nose in her little powdery mirror; then, entering the drawing-room through the French window, saw with surprise the ‘young man’ sitting up good in a chair with some apparatus by his side. He had thick white hair, and an eyeglass on a black ribbon; and when he stood she realised that he must be at least sixty. He said:
“Miss Cherrell? Your Uncle, Sir Lawrence Mont, has commissioned me to do a miniature of you.”
“I know,” said Dinny; “only I thought —” She did not finish. After all, Uncle Lawrence liked his little joke, or possibly this was his idea of youth.
The ‘young man’ had screwed his monocle into a comely red cheek, and through it a full blue eye scrutinized her eagerly. He put his head on one side and said: “If we can get the outline, and you have some photographs, I shan’t give you much trouble. What you have on — that flax-blue — is admirable for colour; background of sky — through that window — yes, not too blue — an English white in it. While the light’s good, can we —?” And, talking all the time, he proceeded to make his preparations.
“Sir Lawrence’s idea,” he said, “is the English lady; culture deep but not apparent. Turn a little sideways. Thank you — the nose —”
“Yes,” said Dinny; “hopeless.”
“Oh! no, no! Charming. Sir Lawrence, I understand, wants you for his collection of types. I’ve done two for him. Would you look down? No! Now full at me! Ah! The teeth — admirable!”
“All mine, so far.”
“That smile is just right, Miss Cherrell: it gives us the sense of spoof we want; not too much spoof, but just spoof enough.”
“You don’t want me to hold a smile with exactly three ounces of spoof in it?”
“No, no, my dear young lady; we shall chance on it. Now suppose you turn three-quarters. Ah! Now I get the line of the hair; the colour of it admirable.”
“Not too much ginger, but just ginger enough?”
The ‘young man’ was silent. He had begun with singular concentration to draw and to write little notes on the margin of the paper.
Dinny, with crinkled eyebrows, did not like to move. He paused and smiled at her with a sort of winey sweetness.
“Yes, yes, yes,” he said. “I see, I see.”
What did he see? The nervousness of the victim seized her suddenly, and she pressed her open hands together.
“Raise the hands, Miss Cherrell. No! Too Madonnaish. We must think of the devil in the hair. The eyes to me, full.”
“Glad?” asked Dinny.
“Not too glad; just — Yes, an English eye; candid but reserved. Now the turn of the neck. Ah! A leetle tilt. Ye — es. Almost stag-like; almost — a touch of the — not startled — no, of the aloof.”
He again began to draw and write with a sort of remoteness, as if he were a long way off.
And Dinny thought: ‘If Uncle Lawrence wants self-consciousness he’ll get it all right.’
The ‘young man’ stopped and stood back, his head very much on one side, so that all his attention seemed to come out of his eyeglass.
“The expression,” he muttered.
“I expect,” said Dinny, “you want an unemployed look.”
“Naughty!” said the ‘young man’: “Deeper. Could I play that piano for a minute?”
“Of course. But I’m afraid it’s not been played on lately.”
“It will serve.” He sat down, opened the piano, blew on the keys, and began playing. He played strongly, softly, well. Dinny stood in the curve of the piano, listening, and speedily entranced. It was obviously Bach, but she did not know what. An endearing, cool, and lovely tune, coming over and over and over, monotonous, yet moving as only Bach could be.
“What is it?”
“A Chorale of Bach, set by a pianist.” And the ‘young man’ nodded his eyeglass towards the keys.
“Glorious! Your ears on heaven and your feet in flowery fields,” murmured Dinny.
The ‘young man’ closed the piano and stood up.
“That’s what I want, that’s what I want, young lady!”
“Oh!” said Dinny. “Is that all?”
The End