In 1930, shortly after the appearance of the Budget, the eighth wonder of the world might have been observed in the neighbourhood of Victoria Station — three English people, of wholly different type, engaged in contemplating simultaneously a London statue. They had come separately, and stood a little apart from each other in the south-west corner of the open space clear of the trees, where the drifting late afternoon light of spring was not in their eyes. One of these three was a young woman of about twenty-six, one a youngish man of perhaps thirty-four, and one a man of between fifty and sixty. The young woman, slender and far from stupid-looking, had her head tilted slightly upward to one side, and a faint smile on her parted lips. The younger man, who wore a blue overcoat with a belt girt tightly round his thin middle, as if he felt the spring wind chilly, was sallow from fading sunburn; and the rather disdainful look of his mouth was being curiously contradicted by eyes fixed on the statue with real intensity of feeling. The elder man, very tall, in a brown suit and brown buckskin shoes, lounged, with his hands in his trouser pockets, and his long, weathered, good-looking face masked in a sort of shrewd scepticism.
In the meantime the statue, which was that of Marshal Foch on his horse, stood high up among those trees, stiller than any of them.
The youngish man spoke suddenly.
“He delivered us.”
The effect of this breach of form on the others was diverse; the elder man’s eyebrows went slightly up, and he moved forward as if to examine the horse’s legs. The young woman turned and looked frankly at the speaker, and instantly her face became surprised.
“Aren’t you Wilfrid Desert?”
The youngish man bowed.
“Then,” said the young woman, “we’ve met. At Fleur Mont’s wedding. You were best man, if you remember, the first I’d seen. I was only sixteen. You wouldn’t remember me — Dinny Cherrell, baptized Elizabeth. They ran me in for bridesmaid at the last minute.”
The youngish man’s mouth lost its disdain.
“I remember your hair perfectly.”
“Nobody ever remembers me by anything else.”
“Wrong! I remember thinking you’d sat to Botticelli. You’re still sitting, I see.”
Dinny was thinking: ‘His eyes were the first to flutter me. And they really are beautiful.’
The said eyes had been turned again upon the statue.
“He DID deliver us,” said Desert.
“You were there, of course.”
“Flying, and fed up to the teeth.”
“Do you like the statue?”
“The horse.”
“Yes,” murmured Dinny, “it IS a horse, not just a prancing barrel, with teeth, nostrils and an arch.”
“The whole thing’s workmanlike, like Foch himself.”
Dinny wrinkled her brow.
“I like the way it stands up quietly among those trees.”
“How is Michael? You’re a cousin of his, if I remember.”
“Michael’s all right. Still in the House; he has a seat he simply can’t lose.”
“And Fleur?”
“Flourishing. Did you know she had a daughter last year?”
“Fleur? H’m! That makes two, doesn’t it?”
“Yes; they call this one Catherine.”
“I haven’t been home since 1927. Gosh! It’s a long time since that wedding.”
“You look,” said Dinny, contemplating the sallow darkness of his face, “as if you had been in the sun.”
“When I’m not in the sun I’m not alive.”
“Michael once told me you lived in the East.”
“Well, I wander about there.” His face seemed to darken still more, and he gave a little shiver. “Beastly cold, the English spring!”
“And do you still write poetry?”
“Oh! you know of that weakness?”
“I’ve read them all. I like the last volume best.”
He grinned. “Thank you for stroking me the right way; poets, you know, like it. Who’s that tall man? I seem to know his face.”
The tall man, who had moved to the other side of the statue, was coming back.
“Somehow,” murmured Dinny, “I connect him with that wedding, too.”
The tall man came up to them.
“The hocks aren’t all that,” he said.
Dinny smiled.
“I always feel so thankful I haven’t got hocks. We were just trying to decide whether we knew you. Weren’t you at Michael Mont’s wedding some years ago?”
“I was. And who are you, young lady?”
“We all met there. I’m his first cousin on his mother’s side, Dinny Cherrell. Mr. Desert was his best man.”
The tall man nodded.
“Oh! Ah! My name’s Jack Muskham, I’m a first cousin of his father’s.” He turned to Desert. “You admired Foch, it seems.”
“I did.”
Dinny was surprised at the morose look that had come on his face.
“Well,” said Muskham, “he was a soldier all right; and there weren’t too many about. But I came here to see the horse.”
“It is, of course, the important part,” murmured Dinny.
The tall man gave her his sceptical smile.
“One thing we have to thank Foch for, he never left us in the lurch.”
Desert suddenly faced round:
“Any particular reason for that remark?”
Muskham shrugged his shoulders, raised his hat to Dinny, and lounged away.
When he had gone there was a silence as over deep waters.
“Which way were you going?” said Dinny at last.
“Any way that you are.”
“I thank you kindly, sir. Would an aunt in Mount Street serve as a direction?”
“Admirably.”
“You must remember her, Michael’s mother; she’s a darling, the world’s perfect mistress of the ellipse — talks in stepping stones, so that you have to jump to follow her.”
They crossed the road and set out up Grosvenor Place on the Buckingham Palace side.
“I suppose you find England changed every time you come home, if you’ll forgive me for making conversation?”
“Changed enough.”
“Don’t you ‘love your native land,’ as the saying is?”
“She inspires me with a sort of horror.”
“Are you by any chance one of those people who wish to be thought worse than they are?”
“Not possible. Ask Michael.”
“Michael is incapable of slander.”
“Michael and all angels are outside the count of reality.”
“No,” said Dinny, “Michael is very real, and very English.”
“That is his contradictory trouble.”
“Why do you run England down? It’s been done before.”
“I never run her down except to English people.”
“That’s something. But why to me?”
Desert laughed.
“Because you seem to be what I should like to feel that England is.”
“Flattered and fair, but neither fat nor forty.”
“What I object to is England’s belief that she is still ‘the goods.’”
“And isn’t she, really?”
“Yes,” said Desert, surprisingly, “but she has no reason to think so.”
Dinny thought:
‘You’re perverse, brother Wilfrid, the young woman said,
And your tongue is exceedingly wry;
You do not look well when you stand on your head —
Why will you continually try?’
She remarked, more simply:
“If England is still ‘the goods,’ has no reason to think so and yet does, she would seem to have intuition, anyway. Was it by intuition that you disliked Mr. Muskham?” Then, looking at his face, she thought: ‘I’m dropping a brick.’
“Why should I dislike him? He’s just the usual insensitive type of hunting, racing man who bores me stiff.”
‘That wasn’t the reason,’ thought Dinny, still regarding him. A strange face! Unhappy from deep inward disharmony, as though a good angel and a bad were for ever seeking to fire each other out; but his eyes sent the same thrill through her as when, at sixteen, with her hair still long, she had stood near him at Fleur’s wedding.
“And do you really like wandering about in the East?”
“The curse of Esau is on me.”
‘Some day,’ she thought, ‘I’ll make him tell me why. Only probably I shall never see him again.’ And a little chill ran down her back.
“I wonder if you know my Uncle Adrian. He was in the East during the war. He presides over bones at a museum. You probably know Diana Ferse, anyway. He married her last year.”
“I know nobody to speak of.”
“Our point of contact, then, is only Michael.”
“I don’t believe in contacts through other people. Where do you live, Miss Cherrell?”
Dinny smiled.
“A short biographical note seems to be indicated. Since the umpteenth century, my family has been ‘seated’ at Condaford Grange in Oxfordshire. My father is a retired General; I am one of two daughters; and my only brother is a married soldier just coming back from the Soudan on leave.”
“Oh!” said Desert, and again his face had that morose look.
“I am twenty-six, unmarried but with no children as yet. My hobby seems to be attending to other people’s business. I don’t know why I have it. When in Town I stay at Lady Mont’s in Mount Street. With a simple upbringing I have expensive instincts and no means of gratifying them. I believe I can see a joke. Now you?”
Desert smiled and shook his head.
“Shall I?” said Dinny. “You are the second son of Lord Mullyon, you had too much war; you write poetry; you have nomadic instincts and are your own enemy; the last item has the only news value. Here we are in Mount Street; do come in and see Aunt Em.”
“Thank you — no. But will you lunch with me tomorrow and go to a matinée?”
“I will. Where?”
“Dumourieux’s, one-thirty.”
They exchanged hand-grips and parted, but as Dinny went into her aunt’s house she was tingling all over, and she stood still outside the drawing-room to smile at the sensation.
The smile faded off her lips under the fire of noises coming through the closed door.
‘My goodness!’ she thought: ‘Aunt Em’s birthday “pawty,” and I’d forgotten.’
Someone playing the piano stopped, there was a rush, a scuffle, the scraping of chairs on the floor, two or three squeals, silence, and the piano-playing began again.
‘Musical chairs!’ she thought, and opened the door quietly. She who had been Diana Ferse was sitting at the piano. To eight assorted chairs, facing alternatively east and west, were clinging one large and eight small beings in bright paper hats, of whom seven were just rising to their feet and two still sitting on one chair. Dinny saw from left to right: Ronald Ferse; a small Chinese boy; Aunt Alison’s youngest, little Anne; Uncle Hilary’s youngest, Tony; Celia and Dingo (children of Michael’s married sister Celia Moriston); Sheila Ferse; and on the single chair Uncle Adrian and Kit Mont. She was further conscious of Aunt Em panting slightly against the fireplace in a large headpiece of purple paper, and of Fleur pulling a chair from Ronald’s end of the row.
“Kit, get up! You were out.”
Kit sat firm and Adrian rose.
“All right, old man, you’re up against your equals now. Fire away!”
“Keep your hands off the backs,” cried Fleur. “Wu Fing, you mustn’t sit till the music stops. Dingo, don’t stick at the end chair like that.”
The music stopped. Scurry, hustle, squeals, and the smallest figure, little Anne, was left standing.
“All right, darling,” said Dinny, “come here and beat this drum. Stop when the music stops, that’s right. Now again. Watch Auntie Di!”
Again, and again, and again, till Sheila and Dingo and Kit only were left.
‘I back Kit,’ thought Dinny.
Sheila out! Off with a chair! Dingo, so Scotch-looking, and Kit, so bright-haired, having lost his paper cap, were left padding round and round the last chair. Both were down; both up and on again, Diana carefully averting her eyes, Fleur standing back now with a little smile; Aunt Em’s face very pink. The music stopped, Dingo was down again; and Kit left standing, his face flushed and frowning.
“Kit,” said Fleur’s voice, “play the game!”
Kit’s head was thrown up and he rammed his hands into his pockets.
‘Good for Fleur!’ thought Dinny.
A voice behind her said:
“Your aunt’s purple passion for the young, Dinny, leads us into strange riots. What about a spot of quiet in my study?”
Dinny looked round at Sir Lawrence Mont’s thin, dry, twisting face, whose little moustache had gone quite white, while his hair was still only sprinkled.
“I haven’t done my bit, Uncle Lawrence.”
“Time you learned not to. Let the heathen rage. Come down and have a quiet Christian talk.”
Subduing her instinct for service with the thought: ‘I SHOULD like to talk about Wilfrid Desert!’ Dinny went.
“What are you working on now, Uncle?”
“Resting for the minute and reading the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson — a remarkable young woman, Dinny. In the days of the Regency there were no reputations in high life to destroy; but she did her best. If you don’t know about her, I may tell you that she believed in love and had a great many lovers, only one of whom she loved.”
“And yet she believed in love?”
“Well, she was a kind-hearted baggage, and the others loved her. All the difference in the world between her and Ninon de l’Enclos, who loved them all; both vivid creatures. A duologue between those two on ‘virtue’? It’s to be thought of. Sit down!”
“While I was looking at Foch’s statue this afternoon, Uncle Lawrence, I met a cousin of yours, Mr. Muskham.”
“Jack?”
“Yes.”
“Last of the dandies. All the difference in the world, Dinny, between the ‘buck,’ the ‘dandy,’ the ‘swell,’ the ‘masher,’ the ‘blood,’ the ‘knut,’ and what’s the last variety called?— I never know. There’s been a steady decrescendo. By his age Jack belongs to the ‘masher’ period, but his cut was always pure dandy — a dyed-inthe-wool Whyte Melville type. How did he strike you?”
“Horses, piquet and imperturbability.”
“Take your hat off, my dear. I like to see your hair.”
Dinny removed her hat.
“I met someone else there, too; Michael’s best man.”
“What! Young Desert? He back again?” And Sir Lawrence’s loose-eyebrow mounted.
A slight colour had stained Dinny’s cheeks.
“Yes,” she said.
“Queer bird, Dinny.”
Within her rose a feeling rather different from any she had ever experienced. She could not have described it, but it reminded her of a piece of porcelain she had given to her father on his birthday, two weeks ago; a little china group, beautifully modelled, of a vixen and four fox cubs tucked in under her. The look on the vixen’s face, soft yet watchful, so completely expressed her own feeling at this moment.
“Why queer?”
“Tales out of school, Dinny. Still, to YOU— There’s no doubt in my mind that that young man made up to Fleur a year or two after her marriage. That’s what started him as a rolling stone.”
Was that, then, what he had meant when he mentioned Esau? No! By the look of his face when he spoke of Fleur, she did not think so.
“But that was ages ago,” she said.
“Oh, yes! Ancient story; but one’s heard other things. Clubs are the mother of all uncharitableness.”
The softness of Dinny’s feeling diminished, the watchfulness increased.
“What other things?”
Sir Lawrence shook his head.
“I rather like the young man; and not even to you, Dinny, do I repeat what I really know nothing of. Let a man live an unusual life, and there’s no limit to what people invent about him. He looked at her rather suddenly; but Dinny’s eyes were limpid.
“Who’s the little Chinese boy upstairs?”
“Son of a former Mandarin, who left his family here because of the ructions out there — quaint little image. A likeable people, the Chinese. When does Hubert arrive?”
“Next week. They’re flying from Italy. Jean flies a lot, you know.”
“What’s become of her brother?” And again he looked at Dinny.
“Alan? He’s out on the China station.”
“Your aunt never ceases to bemoan your not clicking there.”
“Dear Uncle, almost anything to oblige Aunt Em; but, feeling like a sister to him, the prayer-book was against me.”
“I don’t want you to marry,” said Sir Lawrence, “and go out to some Barbary or other.”
Through Dinny flashed the thought: ‘Uncle Lawrence is uncanny,’ and her eyes became more limpid than ever.
“This confounded officialism,” he continued, “seems to absorb all our kith and kin. My two daughters, Celia in China, Flora in India; your brother Hubert in the Soudan; your sister Clare off as soon as she’s spliced — Jerry Corven’s been given a post in Ceylon. I hear Charlie Muskham’s got attached to Government House, Cape Town; Hilary’s eldest boy’s going into the Indian Civil, and his youngest into the Navy. Dash it all, Dinny, you and Jack Muskham seem to be the only pelicans in my wilderness. Of course there’s Michael.”
“Do you see much of Mr. Muskham, then, Uncle?”
“Quite a lot at ‘Burton’s,’ and he comes to me at ‘The Coffee House’; we play piquet — we’re the only two left. That’s in the illegitimate season — from now on I shall hardly see him till after the Cambridgeshire.”
“Is he a terribly good judge of a horse?”
“Yes. Of anything else, Dinny — no. They seldom are. The horse is an animal that seems to close the pores of the spirit. He makes you too watchful. You don’t only have to watch him, but everybody connected with him. How was young Desert looking?”
“Oh!” said Dinny, almost taken aback: “a sort of dark yellow.”
“That’s the glare of the sand. He’s a kind of Bedouin, you know. His father’s a recluse, so it’s a bit in his blood. The best thing I know about him is that Michael likes him, in spite of that business.”
“His poetry?” said Dinny.
“Disharmonic stuff, he destroys with one hand what he gives with the other.”
“Perhaps he’s never found his home. His eyes are rather beautiful, don’t you think?”
“It’s his mouth I remember best, sensitive and bitter.”
“One’s eyes are what one is, one’s mouth what one becomes.”
“That and the stomach.”
“He hasn’t any,” said Dinny. “I noticed.”
“The handful of dates and cup of coffee habit. Not that the Arabs drink coffee — green tea is their weakness, with mint in it. My God! Here’s your aunt. When I said ‘My God!’ I was referring to the tea with mint.”
Lady Mont had removed her paper headdress and recovered her breath.
“Darling,” said Dinny, “I DID forget your birthday, and I haven’t got anything for you.”
“Then give me a kiss, Dinny. I always say your kisses are the best. Where have you sprung from?”
“I came up to shop for Clare at the Stores.”
“Have you got your night things with you?”
“No.”
“That doesn’t matter. You can have one of mine. Do you still wear nightdresses?”
“Yes,” said Dinny.
“Good girl! I don’t like pyjamas for women — your uncle doesn’t either. It’s below the waist, you know. You can’t get over it — you try to, but you can’t. Michael and Fleur will be stayin’ on to dinner.”
“Thank you, Aunt Em; I do want to stay up. I couldn’t get half the things Clare needs today.”
“I don’t like Clare marryin’ before you, Dinny.”
“But she naturally would, Auntie.”
“Fiddle! Clare’s brilliant — they don’t as a rule. I married at twenty-one.”
“You see, dear!”
“You’re laughin’ at me. I was only brilliant once. You remember, Lawrence — about that elephant — I wanted it to sit, and it would kneel. All their legs bend one way, Dinny. And I said it WOULD follow its bent.”
“Aunt Em! Except for that one occasion you’re easily the most brilliant woman I know. Women are so much too consecutive.”
“Your nose is a comfort, Dinny, I get so tired of beaks, your Aunt Wilmet’s, and Hen Bentworth’s, and my own.”
“Yours is only faintly aquiline, darling.”
“I was terrified of its gettin’ worse, as a child. I used to stand with the tip pressed up against a wardrobe.”
“I’ve tried that too, Auntie, only the other way.”
“Once while I was doin’ it your father was lyin’ concealed on the top, like a leopard, you know, and he hopped over me and bit through his lip. He bled all down my neck.”
“How nasty!”
“Yes. Lawrence, what are you thinking about?”
“I was thinking that Dinny has probably had no lunch. Have you, Dinny?”
“I was going to have it tomorrow, Uncle.”
“There you are!” said Lady Mont. “Ring for Blore. You’ll never have enough body until you’re married.”
“Let’s get Clare over first, Aunt Em.”
“St. George’s. I suppose Hilary’s doin’ them?”
“Of course!”
“I shall cry.”
“Why, exactly, do you cry at weddings, Auntie?”
“She’ll look like an angel; and the man’ll be in black tails and a toothbrush moustache, and not feelin’ what she thinks he is. Saddenin’!”
“But perhaps he’s feeling more. I’m sure Michael was about Fleur, or Uncle Adrian when he married Diana.”
“Adrian’s fifty-three and he’s got a beard. Besides, he’s Adrian.”
“I admit that makes a difference. But I think we ought rather to cry over the man. The woman’s having the hour of her life and the man’s waistcoat is almost certain to be too tight.”
“Lawrence’s wasn’t. He was always a thread-paper, and I was as slim as you, Dinny.”
“You must have looked lovely in a veil, Aunt Em. Didn’t she, Uncle?” The whimsically wistful look on both those mature faces stopped her, and she added: “Where did you first meet?”
“Out huntin’, Dinny. I was in a ditch, and your uncle didn’t like it, he came and pulled me out.”
“I think that’s ideal.”
“Too much mud. We didn’t speak to each other all the rest of the day.”
“Then what brought you together?”
“One thing and another. I was stayin’ with Hen’s people, the Corderoys, and your uncle called to see some puppies. What are you catechisin’ me for?”
“I only just wanted to know how it was done in those days.”
“Go and find out for yourself how it’s done in these days.”
“Uncle Lawrence doesn’t want to get rid of me.”
“All men are selfish, except Michael and Adrian.”
“Besides, I should hate to make you cry.”
“Blore, a cocktail and a sandwich for Miss Dinny, she’s had no lunch. And, Blore, Mr. and Mrs. Adrian and Mr. and Mrs. Michael to dinner. And, Blore, tell Laura to put one of my nightdresses and the other things in the blue spare room. Miss Dinny’ll stay the night. Those children!” And, swaying slightly, Lady Mont preceded her butler through the doorway.
“What a darling, Uncle!”
“I’ve never denied it, Dinny.”
“I always feel better after her. Was she ever out of temper?”
“She can begin to be, but she always goes on to something else before she’s finished.”
“What saving grace . . .!”
At dinner that evening, Dinny listened for any allusion by her uncle to Wilfred Desert’s return. There was none.
After dinner, she seated herself by Fleur in her habitual, slightly mystified admiration of this cousin by marriage, whose pretty poise was so assured, whose face and figure so beautifully turned out, whose clear eyes were so seeing, whose knowledge of self was so disillusioned, and whose attitude to Michael seemed at once that of one looking up and looking down.
‘If I ever married,’ thought Dinny, ‘I could never be like that to him. I would have to look him straight in the face as one sinner to another.’
“Do you remember your wedding, Fleur?” she said.
“I do, my dear. A distressing ceremony!”
“I saw your best man today.”
The clear white round Fleur’s eyes widened.
“Wilfrid? How did you remember him?”
“I was only sixteen, and he fluttered my young nerves.”
“That is, of course, the function of a best man. Well, and how was he?”
“Very dark and dissolvent.”
Fleur laughed. “He always was.”
Looking at her, Dinny decided to press on.
“Yes. Uncle Lawrence told me he tried to carry dissolution rather far.”
Fleur looked surprised. “I didn’t know Bart ever noticed that.”
“Uncle Lawrence,” said Dinny, “is a bit uncanny.”
“Wilfrid,” murmured Fleur, with a little reminiscent smile, “really behaved quite well. He went East like a lamb.”
“But surely that hasn’t kept him East ever since?”
“No more than measles keep you permanently to your room. Oh! no, he likes it. He’s probably got a harem.”
“No,” said Dinny, “he’s fastidious, or I should be surprised.”
“Quite right, my dear; and one for my cheap cynicism. Wilfrid’s the queerest sort of person, and rather a dear. Michael loved him. But,” she said, suddenly looking at Dinny, “he’s impossible to be in love with — disharmony personified. I studied him pretty closely at one time — had to, you know. He’s elusive. Passionate, and a bundle of nerves. Soft-hearted and bitter. And search me for anything he believes in.”
“Except,” queried Dinny, “beauty, perhaps; and truth if he could find it?”
Fleur made the unexpected answer, “Well, my dear, we all believe in those, when they’re about. The trouble is they aren’t, unless — unless they lie in oneself, perhaps. And if you happen to be disharmonic, what chance have you? Where did you see him?”
“Staring at Foch.”
“Ah! I seem to remember he rather idolised Foch. Poor Wilfrid, he hasn’t much chance. Shell-shock, poetry, and his breeding — a father who’s turned his back on life; a mother who was half an Italian, and ran off with another. Not restful. His eyes were his best point, they made you sorry for him; and they’re beautiful — rather a fatal combination. Did the young nerves flutter again?” She looked rather more broadly into Dinny’s face.
“No, but I wondered if yours would still if I mentioned him.”
“Mine? My child, I’m nearly thirty. I have two children, and”— her face darkened —“I have been inoculated. If I ever told anyone about THAT, Dinny, I might tell you, but there are things one doesn’t tell.”
Up in her room, somewhat incommoded by the amplitude of Aunt Em’s nightgown, Dinny stared into a fire lighted against protest. She felt that what she was feeling was absurd — a queer eagerness, at once shy and bold, the sensations, as it were, of direct action impending. And why? She had seen again a man who ten years before had made her feel silly; from all accounts a most unsatisfactory man. Taking a looking-glass, she scrutinised her face above the embroidery on the too ample gown. She saw what might have satisfied but did not.
‘One gets tired of it,’ she thought —‘always the same Botticellian artifact,
‘The nose that’s snub,
The eyes of blue!
‘Ware self, you red-haired nymph,
And shun the image that is you!’
HE was so accustomed to the East, to dark eyes through veils, languishing; to curves enticingly disguised; to sex, mystery, teeth like pearls — vide houri! Dinny showed her own teeth to the glass. There she was on safe ground — the best teeth in her family. Nor was her hair really red — more what Miss Braddon used to call auburn. Nice word! Pity it had gone out. With all that embroidery it was no good examining herself below the Victorian washing line. Remember that tomorrow before her bath! For what she was about to examine might the Lord make her truly thankful! Putting down the glass with a little sigh, she got into bed.
Wilfred Desert still maintained his chambers in Cork Street. They were, in fact, paid for by Lord Mullyon, who used them on the rare occasions when he emerged from rural retreat. It was not saying much that the secluded peer had more in common with his second than with his eldest son, who was in Parliament. It gave him, however, no particular pain to encounter Wilfrid; but as a rule the chambers were occupied only by Stack, who had been Wilfrid’s batman in the war, and had for him one of those sphinx-like habits which wear better than expressed devotions. When Wilfrid returned, at a moment or two’s notice, his rooms were ever exactly as he left them, neither more or less dusty and unaired; the same clothes hung on the same clothes-stretchers; and the same nicely cooked steak and mushrooms appeased his first appetite. The ancestral ‘junk,’ fringed and dotted by Eastern whims brought home, gave to the large sitting-room the same castled air of immutable possession. And the divan before the log fire received Wilfrid as if he had never left it. He lay there the morning after his encounter with Dinny, wondering why he could only get really good coffee when Stack made it. The East was the home of coffee, but Turkish coffee was a rite, a toy; and, like all rites and toys, served but to titillate the soul. This was his third day in London after three years; and in the last two years he had been through a good deal more than he would ever care to speak of, or even wish to remember; including one experience which still divided him against himself, however much he affected to discredit its importance. In other words, he had come back with a skeleton in his cupboard. He had brought back, too, enough poems for a fourth slender volume. He lay there, debating whether its slender bulk could not be increased by inclusion of the longest poem he had ever written, the outcome of that experience; in his view, too, the best poem he had ever written — a pity it should not be published, but —! And the ‘but’ was so considerable that he had many times been on the point of tearing the thing up, obliterating all trace of it, as he would have wished to blot remembrance from his mind. Again, but —! The poem expressed his defence for allowing what he hoped no one knew had happened to him. To tear it up would be parting with his defence. For he could never again adequately render his sensations in that past dilemma. He would be parting with his best protection from his own conscience, too; and perhaps with the only means of laying a ghost. For he sometimes thought that, unless he proclaimed to the world what had happened to him, he would never again feel quite in possession of his soul.
Reading it through, he thought: ‘It’s a damned sight better and deeper than Lyall’s confounded poem.’ And without any obvious connection he began to think of the girl he had met the day before. Curious that he had remembered her from Michael’s wedding, a transparent slip of a young thing like a Botticelli Venus, Angel, or Madonna — so little difference between them. A charming young thing, then! Yes, and a charming young woman now, of real quality, with a sense of humour and an understanding mind. Dinny Cherrell! Charwell they spelled it, he remembered. He wouldn’t mind showing her his poems; he would trust her reactions.
Partly because he was thinking of her, and partly because he took a taxi, he was late for lunch, and met Dinny on the doorstep of Dumourieux’s just as she was about to go away.
There is perhaps no better test of woman’s character than to keep her waiting for lunch in a public place. Dinny greeted him with a smile.
“I thought you’d probably forgotten.”
“It was the traffic. How can philosophers talk of time being space or space time? It’s disproved whenever two people lunch together. I allowed ten minutes for under a mile from Cork Street, and here I am ten minutes late. Terribly sorry!”
“My father says you must add ten per cent to all timing since taxis took the place of hansoms. Do you remember the hansom?”
“Rather!”
“I never was in London till they were over.”
“If you know this place, lead on! I was told of it, but I’ve not yet been here.”
“It’s underground. The cooking’s French.”
Divested of their coats, they proceeded to an end table.
“Very little for me, please,” said Dinny. “Say cold chicken, a salad, and some coffee.”
“Anything the matter?”
“Only a spare habit.”
“I see. We both have it. No wine?”
“No, thanks. Is eating little a good sign, do you think?”
“Not if done on principle.”
“You don’t like things done on principle?”
“I distrust the people who do them — self-righteous.”
“I think that’s too sweeping. You are rather sweeping, aren’t you?”
“I was thinking of the sort of people who don’t eat because it’s sensual. That’s not your reason, is it?”
“Oh! no,” said Dinny, “I only dislike feeling full. And very little makes me feel that. I don’t know very much about them so far, but I think the senses are good things.”
“The only things, probably.”
“Is that why you write poetry?”
Desert grinned.
“I should think YOU might write verse, too.”
“Only rhymes.”
“The place for poetry is a desert. Ever seen one?”
“No. I should like to.” And, having said that, she sat in slight surprise, remembering her negative reaction to the American professor and his great open spaces. But no greater contrast was possible than between Hallorsen and this dark, disharmonic young man, who sat staring at her with those eyes of his till she had again that thrill down her spine. Crumbling her roll, she said: “I saw Michael and Fleur last night at dinner.”
“Oh!” His lips curled. “I made a fool of myself over Fleur once. Perfect, isn’t she — in her way?”
“Yes,” and her eyes added: ‘Don’t run her down!’
“Marvellous equipment and control.”
“I don’t think you know her,” said Dinny, “and I’m sure I don’t.”
He leaned forward. “You seem to me a loyal sort of person. Where did you pick that up?”
“Our family motto is the word ‘Leal.’ That ought to have cured me, oughtn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” he said, abruptly, “whether I understand what loyalty is. Loyalty to what? To whom? Nothing’s fixed in this world; everything’s relative. Loyalty’s the mark of the static mind, or else just a superstition, and anyway the negation of curiosity.”
“There ARE things worth being loyal to, surely. Coffee, for instance, or one’s religion.”
He looked at her so strangely that Dinny was almost scared.
“Religion? Have you one?”
“Well, roughly, I suppose.”
“What? Can you swallow the dogmas of any religious creed? Do you believe one legend more true than another? Can you suppose one set of beliefs about the Unknowable has more value than the rest? Religion! You’ve got a sense of humour. Does it leave you at the word?”
“No; only religion, I suppose, may be just a sense of an all-pervading spirit, and the ethical creed that seems best to serve it.”
“H’m! A pretty far cry from what’s generally meant, and even then how do you know what best serves an all-pervading spirit?”
“I take that on trust.”
“There’s where we differ. Look!” he said, and it seemed to her that excitement had crept into his voice: “What’s the use of our reasoning powers, our mental faculties? I take each problem as it comes, I do the sum, I return the answer, and so I act. I act according to a reasoned estimate of what is best.”
“For whom?”
“For myself and the world at large.”
“Which first?”
“It’s the same thing.”
“Always? I wonder. And, anyway, that means doing so long a sum every time that I can’t think how you ever get to acting. And surely ethical rules are just the result of countless decisions on those same problems made by people in the past, so why not take them for granted?”
“None of those decisions were made by people of my temperament or in my circumstances.”
“No, I see that. You follow what they call case law, then. But how English!”
“Sorry!” said Desert, abruptly: “I’m boring you. Have a sweet?”
Dinny put her elbows on the table and, leaning her chin on her hands, looked at him earnestly.
“You weren’t boring me. On the contrary, you’re interesting me frightfully. Only I suppose that women act much more instinctively; I suppose that really means they accept themselves as more like each other than men do, and are more ready to trust their instinctive sense of general experience.”
“That HAS been women’s way; whether it will be much longer, I don’t know.”
“I think it will,” said Dinny. “I don’t believe we shall ever much care for sums. I WILL have a sweet, please. Stewed prunes, I think.”
Desert stared at her, and began to laugh.
“You’re wonderful. We’ll both have them. Is your family a very formal one?”
“Not exactly formal, but they do believe in tradition and the past.”
“And do you?”
“I don’t know. I definitely like old things, and old places, and old people. I like anything that’s stamped like a coin. I like to feel one has roots. I was always fond of history. All the same one can’t help laughing. There’s something very comic about the way we’re all tied — like a hen by a chalk mark to its beak.”
Desert stretched out his hand and she put hers into it.
“Shake hands on that saving grace.”
“Some day,” said Dinny, “you’re going to tell me something. But at the moment what play are we going to?”
“Is there anything by a man called Shakespeare?”
With some difficulty they discovered that a work by the world’s greatest dramatist was being given in a theatre beyond the pale of the river. They went to it, and, when the show was over, Desert said, hesitating: “I wonder if you would come and have tea at my rooms?”
Dinny smiled and nodded, and from that moment was conscious of a difference in his manner. It was at once more intimate yet more respectful, as if he had said to himself: ‘This is my equal.’
That hour of tea, brought by Stack, a man with strange, understanding eyes and something monk-like in his look, seemed to her quite perfect. It was like no other hour she had ever spent, and at the end of it she knew she was in love. The tiny seed planted ten years before had flowered. This was such a marvel, so peculiar to one who at twenty-six had begun to think she would never be in love, that every now and then she drew in her breath and looked wonderingly at his face. Why on earth did she feel like this? It was absurd! And it was going to be painful, because he wasn’t going to love her. Why should he? And if he wasn’t, she mustn’t show, and how was she to help showing?
“When am I going to see you again?” he said, when she stood up to go.
“Do you want to?”
“Extraordinarily.”
“But why?”
“Why not? You’re the first lady I’ve spoken to for ten years. I’m not at all sure you’re not the first lady I’ve ever spoken to.”
“If we are going to see each other again, you mustn’t laugh at me.”
“Laugh at you! One couldn’t. So when?”
“Well! At present I’m sleeping in a foreign night-gown at Mount Street. By rights I ought to be at Condaford. But my sister’s going to be married in town next week, and my brother’s coming back from Egypt on Monday, so perhaps I’ll send for things and stay up. Where would you like to see me?”
“Will you come for a drive tomorrow? I haven’t been to Richmond or Hampton Court for years.”
“I’ve never been.”
“All right! I’ll pick you up in front of Foch at two o’clock, wet or fine.”
“I will be pleased to come, young sir.”
“Splendid!” And, suddenly bending, he raised her hand and put his lips to it.
“Highly courteous,” said Dinny. “Good-bye!”
Preoccupied with this stupendous secret, Dinny’s first instinct was for solitude, but she was booked for dinner with the Adrian Cherrells. On her uncle’s marriage with Diana Ferse the house of painful memories in Oakley Street had been given up, and they were economically installed in one of those spacious Bloomsbury squares now successfully regaining the gentility lost in the eighteen-thirties and forties. The locality had been chosen for its proximity to Adrian’s ‘bones,’ for at his age he regarded as important every minute saved for the society of his wife. The robust virility which Dinny had predicted would accrue to her uncle from a year spent in the presence of Professor Hallorsen and New Mexico was represented by a somewhat deeper shade of brown in his creased cheeks, and a more frequent smile on his long face. It was a lasting pleasure to Dinny to think that she had given him the right advice, and that he had taken it. Diana, too, was fast regaining the sparkle which, before her marriage with poor Ferse, had made her a member of ‘Society.’ But the hopeless nature of Adrian’s occupation and the extra time he needed from her had precluded her from any return to that sacred ring. She inclined more and more, in fact, to be a wife and mother. And this seemed natural to one with Dinny’s partiality for her uncle. On her way there she debated whether or not to say what she had been doing. Having little liking for shifts and subterfuge, she decided to be frank. ‘Besides,’ she thought, ‘a maiden in love always likes to talk about the object of her affections.’ Again, if not to have a confidant became too wearing, Uncle Adrian was the obvious choice; partly because he knew at first hand something of the East, but chiefly because he was Uncle Adrian.
The first topics at dinner, however, were naturally Clare’s marriage and Hubert’s return. Dinny was somewhat exercised over her sister’s choice. Sir Gerald (Jerry) Corven was forty, active and middle-sized, with a daring face. She recognised that he had great charm, and her fear was, rather, that he had too much. He was high in the Colonial service, one of those men who — people instinctively said — would go far. She wondered also whether Clare was not too like him, daring and brilliant, a bit of a gambler, and, of course, seventeen years younger. Diana, who had known him well, said:
“The seventeen years’ difference is the best thing about it. Jerry wants steadying. If he can be a father to her as well, it may work. He’s had infinite experiences. I’m glad it’s Ceylon.”
“Why?”
“He won’t meet his past.”
“Has he an awful lot of past?”
“My dear, he’s very much in love at the moment; but with men like Jerry you never know; all that charm, and so much essential liking for thin ice.”
“Marriage doth make cowards of us all,” murmured Adrian.
“It won’t have that effect on Jerry Corven; he takes to risk as a goldfish takes to mosquito larvae. Is Clare very smitten, Dinny?”
“Yes, but Clare loves thin ice, too.”
“And yet,” said Adrian, “I shouldn’t call either of them really modern. They’ve both got brains and like using them.”
“That’s quite true, uncle. Clare gets all she can out of life, but she believes in life terribly. She might become another Hester Stanhope.”
“Good for you, Dinny! But to be that she’d have to get rid of Gerald Corven first. And if I read Clare, I think she might have scruples.”
Dinny regarded her uncle with wide eyes.
“Do you say that because you know Clare, or because you’re a Cherrell, Uncle?”
“I think because SHE’S a Cherrell, my dear.”
“Scruples,” murmured Dinny. “I don’t believe Aunt Em has them. Yet she’s as much of a Cherrell as any of us.”
“Em,” said Adrian, “reminds me of nothing so much as a find of bones that won’t join up. You can’t say of what she’s the skeleton. Scruples are emphatically co-ordinate.”
“No! Adrian,” murmured Diana, “not bones at dinner. When does Hubert arrive? I’m really anxious to see him and young Jean. After eighteen months of bliss in the Soudan which will be top dog?”
“Jean, surely,” said Adrian.
Dinny shook her head. “I don’t think so, Uncle.”
“That’s your sisterly pride.”
“No. Hubert’s got more continuity. Jean rushes at things and must handle them at once, but Hubert steers the course, I’m pretty sure. Uncle, where is a place called Darfur? And how do you spell it?”
“With an ‘r’ or without. It’s west of the Soudan; much of it is desert and pretty inaccessible, I believe. Why?”
“I was lunching today with Mr. Desert, Michael’s best man, you remember, and he mentioned it.”
“Has he been there?”
“I think he’s been everywhere in the Near East.”
“I know his brother,” said Diana, “Charles Desert, one of the most provocative of the younger politicians. He’ll almost certainly be Minister of Education in the next Tory Government. That’ll put the finishing touch to Lord Mullyon’s retirement. I’ve never met Wilfrid. Is he nice?”
“Well,” said Dinny, with what she believed to be detachment, “I only met him yesterday. He seems rather like a mince pie, you take a spoonful and hope. If you can eat the whole, you have a happy year.”
“I should like to meet the young man,” said Adrian. “He did good things in the war, and I know his verse.”
“Really, Uncle? I could arrange it; so far we are in daily communication.”
“Oh!” said Adrian, and looked at her. “I’d like to discuss the Hittite type with him. I suppose you know that what we are accustomed to regard as the most definitely Jewish characteristics are pure Hittite according to ancient Hittite drawings?”
“But weren’t they all the same stock, really?”
“By no means, Dinny. The Israelites were Arabs. What the Hittites were we have yet to discover. The modern Jew in this country and in Germany is probably more Hittite than Semite.”
“Do you know Mr. Jack Muskham, Uncle?”
“Only by repute. He’s a cousin of Lawrence’s and an authority on bloodstock. I believe he advocates a reintroduction of Arab blood into our race-horses. There’s something in it if you could get the very best strain. Has young Desert been to Nejd? You can still only get it there, I believe.”
“I don’t know. Where is Nejd?”
“Centre of Arabia. But Muskham will never get his idea adopted, there’s no tighter mind than the pukka racing man’s. He’s a pretty pure specimen himself, I believe, except for this bee in his bonnet.”
“Jack Muskham,” said Diana, “was once romantically in love with one of my sisters; it’s made him a misogynist.”
“H’m! That’s a bit cryptic!”
“He’s rather fine-looking, I think,” said Dinny.
“Wears clothes wonderfully and has a reputation for hating everything modern. I haven’t met him for years, but I used to know him rather well. Why, Dinny?”
“I just happened to see him the other day, and wondered.”
“Talking of Hittites,” said Diana, “I’ve often thought those very old Cornish families, like the Deserts, have a streak of Phoenician in them. Look at Lord Mullyon. There’s a queer type!”
“Fanciful, my love. You’d be more likely to find that streak in the simple folk. The Deserts must have married into non-Cornish stock for hundreds of years. The higher you go in the social scale, the less chance of preserving a primitive strain.”
“ARE they a very old family?” said Dinny.
“Hoary and pretty queer. But you know my views about old families, Dinny, so I won’t enlarge.”
Dinny nodded. She remembered very well that nerve-racked walk along Chelsea Embankment just after Ferse returned. And she looked affectionately into his face. It WAS nice to think that he had come into his own at last . . . .
When she got back to Mount Street that night her uncle and aunt had gone up, but the butler was seated in the hall. He rose as she entered.
“I didn’t know you had a key, Miss.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Blore, you were having such a nice snooze.”
“I was, Miss Dinny. After a certain age, as you’ll find out, one gets a liking for dropping off at improper moments. Now Sir Lawrence, he’s not a good sleeper, but, give you my word, if I go into his study almost any time when he’s at work, I’ll find him opening his eyes. And my Lady, she can do her eight hours, but I’ve known her to drop off when someone’s talking to her, especially the old Rector at Lippinghall, Mr. Tasburgh — a courtly old gentleman, but he has that effect. Even Mr. Michael — but then he’s in Parliament, and they get the ‘abit. Still, I do think, Miss, whether it was the war, or people not having any hope of anything, and running about so, that there’s a tendency, as the saying is, towards sleep. Well, it does you good. Give you my word, Miss; I was dead to the world before I had that forty winks, and now I could talk to you for hours.”
“That would be lovely, Blore. Only I find, so far, that I’m sleepiest at bedtime.”
“Wait till you’re married, Miss. Only I do hope you won’t be doing that yet awhile. I said to Mrs. Blore last night: ‘If Miss Dinny gets taken off, it’ll be the life and soul of the party gone!’ I’ve never seen much of Miss Clare, so that leaves me cold; but I heard my Lady yesterday telling you to go and find out for yourself how it was done, and, as I said to Mrs. Blore, ‘Miss Dinny’s like a daughter of the house, and’— well — you know my sentiments, Miss.”
“Dear Blore! I’m afraid I must go up now, I’ve had rather a tiring day.”
“Quite, Miss. Pleasant dreams!”
“Good-night!”
Pleasant dreams! Perhaps the dreams might be, but would reality? What uncharted country was she not entering with just a star to guide! And was it a fixed star, or some flaring comet? At least five men had wanted to marry her, all of whom she had felt she could sum up, so that a marriage would have been no great risk. And now she only wanted to marry one, but there he was, an absolutely uncertain quantity except that he could rouse in her a feeling she had never had before. Life was perverse. You dipped your finger in a lucky bag, and brought out — what? To-morrow she would walk with him. They would see trees and grass together; scenery and gardens, pictures, perhaps; the river, and fruit blossom. She would know at least how his spirit and her own agreed about many things she cared for. And yet, if she found they didn’t agree, would it make any difference to her feeling? It would not.
‘I understand now,’ she thought, ‘why we call lovers dotty. All I care about is that he should feel what I feel, and be dotty too. And of course he won’t — why should he?’
The drive to Richmond Park, over Ham Common and Kingston Bridge to Hampton Court, and back through Twickenham and Kew, was remarkable for alternation between silence and volubility. Dinny was, as it were, the observer, and left to Wilfrid all the piloting. Her feelings made her shy, and it was apparent that he was only able to expand if left to his free will — the last person in the world to be drawn out. They duly lost themselves in the maze at Hampton Court, where, as Dinny said,
“Only spiders who can spin threads out of themselves, or ghosts who can tails unfold, would have a chance.”
On the way back they got out at Kensington Gardens, dismissed the hired car, and walked to the tea kiosk. Over the pale beverage he asked her suddenly whether she would mind reading his new poems in manuscript.
“Mind? I should love it.”
“I want a candid opinion.”
“You will get it,” said Dinny. “When can I have them?”
“I’ll bring them round to Mount Street and drop them in your letter-box after dinner.”
“Won’t you come in this time?”
He shook his head.
When he left her at Stanhope Gate, he said abruptly:
“It’s been a simply lovely afternoon. Thank you!”
“It is for me to thank you.”
“You! You’ve got more friends than quills upon the fretful porpentine. It’s I who am the pelican.”
“Adieu, pelican!”
“Adieu, flowering wilderness!”
The words seemed musical all the way down Mount Street.
A fat unstamped envelope was brought in about half-past nine with the last post. Dinny took it from Blore, and slipping it under The Bridge of San Luis Rey, went on listening to her aunt.
“When I was a girl I squeezed my own waist, Dinny. We suffered for a principle. They say it’s comin’ in again. I shan’t do it, so hot and worryin’; but you’ll have to.”
“Not I.”
“When the waist has settled down there’ll be a lot of squeezin’.”
“The really tight waist will never come in again, Auntie.”
“And hats. In 1900 we were like eggstands with explodin’ eggs in them. Cauliflowers and hydrangeas, and birds of a feather, enormous. They stuck out. The Parks were comparatively pure. Sea-green suits you, Dinny; you ought to be married in it.”
“I think I’ll go up, Aunt Em. I’m rather tired.”
“That’s eatin’ so little.”
“I eat enormously. Good-night, dear.”
Without undressing she sat down to the poems, nervously anxious to like them, for she knew that he would see through any falsity. To her relief they had the tone she remembered in his other volumes, but were less bitter and more concerned with beauty. When she had finished the main sheaf, she came on a much longer poem entitled ‘The Leopard,’ wrapped round in a blank sheet of paper. Was it so wrapped to keep her from reading it; why, then, had he enclosed it? She decided that he had been doubtful, and wanted her verdict. Below the title was written the line:
“Can the leopard change its spots?”
It was the story of a young monk, secretly without faith, sent on a proselytising expedition. Seized by infidels, and confronted with the choice between death or recantation, he recants and accepts the religion of his captors. The poem was seared with passages of such deep feeling that they hurt her. It had a depth and fervour which took her breath away; it was a paean in praise of contempt for convention faced with the stark reality of the joy in living, yet with a haunting moan of betrayal running through it. It swayed her this way and that; and she put it down with a feeling almost of reverence for one who could so express such a deep and tangled spiritual conflict. With that reverence were mingled a compassion for the stress he must have endured before he could have written this and a feeling, akin to that which mothers feel, of yearning to protect him from his disharmonies and violence.
They had arranged to meet the following day at the National Gallery, and she went there before time, taking the poems with her. He came on her in front of Gentile Bellini’s ‘Mathematician.’ They stood for some time looking at it without a word.
“Truth, quality, and decorative effect. Have you read my stuff?”
“Yes. Come and sit down, I’ve got them here.”
They sat down, and she gave him the envelope.
“Well?” he said; and she saw his lips quivering.
“Terribly good, I think.”
“Really?”
“Even truly. One, of course, is much the finest.”
“Which?”
Dinny’s smile said: “You ask that?”
“The Leopard?”
“Yes. It hurt me, here.”
“Shall I throw it out?”
By intuition she realised that on her answer he would act, and said feebly: “You wouldn’t pay attention to what I said, would you?”
“What you say shall go.”
“Then of course you can’t throw it out. It’s the finest thing you’ve done.”
“Inshallah!”
“What made you doubt?”
“It’s a naked thing.”
“Yes,” said Dinny, “naked — but beautiful. When a thing’s naked it must be beautiful.”
“Hardly the fashionable belief.”
“Surely a civilised being naturally covers deformities and sores. There’s nothing fine in being a savage that I can see, even in art.”
“You run the risk of excommunication. Ugliness is a sacred cult now.”
“Reaction from the chocolate box,” murmured Dinny.
“Ah! Whoever invented those lids sinned against the holy ghost — he offended the little ones.”
“Artists are children, you mean?”
“Well, aren’t they? or would they carry on as they do?”
“Yes, they do seem to love toys. What gave you the idea for that poem?” His face had again that look of deep waters stirred, as when Muskham had spoken to them under the Foch statue.
“Tell you some day, perhaps. Shall we go on round?”
When they parted, he said: “To-morrow’s Sunday. I shall be seeing you?”
“If you will.”
“What about the Zoo?”
“No, not the Zoo. I hate cages.”
“Quite right. The Dutch garden near Kensington Palace?”
“Yes.”
And that made the fifth consecutive day of meeting.
For Dinny it was like a spell of good weather, when every night you go to sleep hoping it will last, and every morning wake up and rub your eyes seeing that it has.
Each day she responded to his: “Shall I see you tomorrow?” with an “If you will;” each day she concealed from everybody with care whom she was seeing, and how, and when; and it all seemed to her so unlike herself that she would think: ‘Who is this young woman who goes out stealthily like this, and meets a young man, and comes back feeling as if she had been treading on air? Is it some kind of a long dream I’m having?’ Only, in dreams one didn’t eat cold chicken and drink tea.
The moment most illuminative of her state of mind was when Hubert and Jean walked into the hall at Mount Street, where they were to stay till after Clare’s wedding. This first sight for eighteen months of her beloved brother should surely have caused her to feel tremulous. But she greeted him steady as a rock, even to the power of cool appraisement. He seemed extremely well, brown, and less thin, but more commonplace. She tried to think that was because he was now safe and married and restored to soldiering, but she knew that comparison with Wilfrid had to do with it. She seemed to know suddenly that in Hubert there had never been capacity for any deep spiritual conflict; he was of the type she knew so well, seeing the trodden path and without real question following. Besides, Jean made all the difference! One could never again be to him, or he to her, as before his marriage. Jean was brilliantly alive and glowing. They had come the whole way from Khartoum to Croydon by air with four stops. Dinny was troubled by the inattention which underlay her seeming absorption in their account of life out there, till a mention of Darfur made her prick her ears. Darfur was where something had happened to Wilfrid. There were still followers of the Mahdi there, she gathered. The personality of Jerry Corven was discussed. Hubert was enthusiastic about ‘a job of work’ he had done. Jean filled out the gap. The wife of a Deputy Commissioner had gone off her head about him. It was said that Jerry Corven had behaved badly.
“Well, well!” said Sir Lawrence, “Jerry’s a privateer, and women ought not to go off their heads about him.”
“Yes,” said Jean. “It’s silly to blame men nowadays.”
“In old days,” murmured Lady Mont, “men did the advancing and women were blamed; now women do it and the men are blamed.”
The extraordinary consecutiveness of the speech struck with a silencing effect on every tongue, until she added: “I once saw two camels, d’you remember, Lawrence, so pretty.”
Jean looked rather horrified, and Dinny smiled.
Hubert came back to the line. “I don’t know,” he said; “he’s marrying our sister.”
“Clare’ll give and take,” said Lady Mont. “It’s only when their noses are curved. The Rector,” she added to Jean, “says there’s a Tasburgh nose. You haven’t got it. It crinkles. Your brother Alan had it a little.” And she looked at Dinny. “In China, too,” she added. “I said he’d marry a purser’s daughter.”
“Good God, Aunt Em, he hasn’t!” cried Jean.
“No. Very nice girls, I’m sure. Not like clergymen’s.”
“Thank you!”
“I mean the sort you find in the Park. They call themselves that when they want company. I thought everybody knew.”
“Jean was rectory-bred, Aunt Em,” said Hubert.
“But she’s been married to you two years. Who was it said: ‘And they shall multiply exceedin’ly’?”
“Moses?” said Dinny.
“And why not?”
Her eyes rested on Jean, who flushed. Sir Lawrence remarked quickly: “I hope Hilary will be as short with Clare as he was with you and Jean, Hubert. That was a record.”
“Hilary preaches beautifully,” said Lady Mont. “At Edward’s death he preached on ‘Solomon in all his glory.’ Touchin’! And when we hung Casement, you remember — so stupid of us!— on the beam and the mote. We had it in our eye.”
“If I could love a sermon,” said Dinny, “it would be Uncle Hilary’s.”
“Yes,” said Lady Mont, “he could borrow more barley-sugar than any little boy I ever knew and look like an angel. Your Aunt Wilmet and I used to hold him upside down — like puppies, you know — hopin’, but we never got it back.”
“You must have been a lovely family, Aunt Em.”
“Tryin’. Our father that was not in Heaven took care not to see us much. Our mother couldn’t help it — poor dear! We had no sense of duty.”
“And now you all have so much; isn’t it queer?”
“Have I a sense of duty, Lawrence?”
“Emphatically not, Em.”
“I thought so.”
“But wouldn’t you say as a whole, Uncle Lawrence, that the Cherrells have too much sense of duty?”
“How can they have TOO much?” said Jean.
Sir Lawrence fixed his monocle.
“I scent heresy, Dinny.”
“Surely duty’s narrowing, Uncle? Father and Uncle Lionel and Uncle Hilary, and even Uncle Adrian, always think first of what they ought to do. They despise their own wants. Very fine, of course, but rather dull.”
Sir Lawrence dropped his eyeglass.
“Your family, Dinny,” he said, “perfectly illustrate the mandarin. They hold the Empire together. Public schools, Osborne, Sandhurst; oh! ah! and much more. From generation to generation it begins in the home. Mother’s milk with them. Service to Church and State — very interesting, very rare now, very admirable.”
“Especially when they’ve kept on top by means of it,” murmured Dinny.
“Shucks!” said Hubert: “As if anyone thought of that in the Services!”
“You don’t think of it because you don’t have to; but you would fast enough if you did have to.”
“Somewhat cryptic, Dinny,” put in Sir Lawrence; “you mean if anything threatened them, they’d think: ‘We simply mustn’t be removed, we’re It.’”
“But are they It, Uncle?”
“With whom have you been associating, my dear?”
“Oh! no one. One must think sometimes.”
“Too depressin’,” said Lady Mont. “The Russian revolution, and all that.”
Dinny was conscious that Hubert was regarding her as if thinking: ‘What’s come to Dinny?’
“If one wants to take out a linch-pin,” he said, “one always can, but the wheel comes off.”
“Well put, Hubert,” said Sir Lawrence; “it’s a mistake to think one can replace type or create it quickly. The sahib’s born, not made — that is, if you take the atmosphere of homes as part of birth. And, if you ask me, he’s dying out fast. A pity not to preserve him somehow; we might have National Parks for them, as they have for bisons.”
“No,” said Lady Mont, “I won’t.”
“What, Aunt Em?”
“Drink champagne on Wednesday, nasty bubbly stuff!”
“Must we have it at all, dear?”
“I’m afraid of Blore. He’s so used. I might tell him not, but it’d be there.”
“Have you heard of Hallorsen lately, Dinny?” asked Hubert suddenly.
“Not since Uncle Adrian came back. I believe he’s in Central America.”
“He WAS large,” said Lady Mont. “Hilary’s two girls, Sheila, Celia, and little Anne, five — I’m glad you’re not to be, Dinny. It’s superstition, of course.”
Dinny leaned back and the light fell on her throat.
“To be a bridesmaid once is quite enough, Aunt Em . . .”
When next morning she met Wilfrid at the Wallace Collection, she said:
“Would you by any chance like to be at Clare’s wedding tomorrow?”
“No hat and no black tails; I gave them to Stack.”
“I remember how you looked, perfectly. You had a grey cravat and a gardenia.”
“And you had on sea-green.”
“Eau-de-nil. I’d like you to have seen my family, though, they’ll all be there; and we could have discussed them afterwards.”
“I’ll turn up among the ‘also ran’ and keep out of sight.”
‘Not from me,’ thought Dinny. So she would not have to go a whole day without seeing him!
With every meeting he seemed less, as it were, divided against himself; and sometimes would look at her so intently that her heart would beat. When she looked at him, which was seldom, except when he wasn’t aware, she was very careful to keep her gaze limpid. How fortunate that one always had that pull over men, knew when they were looking at one, and was able to look at them without their knowing!
When they parted this time, he said: “Come down to Richmond again on Thursday. I’ll pick you up at Foch — two o’clock as before.”
And she said: “Yes.”
Clare Cherrell’s wedding, in Hanover Square, was ‘fashionable’ and would occupy with a list of names a quarter of a column in the traditional prints. As Dinny said:
“So delightful for them!”
With her father and mother Clare came to Mount Street from Condaford overnight. Busy with her younger sister to the last, and feeling an emotion humorously disguised, Dinny arrived with Lady Cherrell at the Church not long before the bride. She lingered to speak to an old retainer at the bottom of the aisle, and caught sight of Wilfrid. He was on the bride’s side, far back, gazing at her. She gave him a swift smile, then passed up the aisle to join her mother in the left front pew. Michael whispered as she went by:
“People HAVE rolled up, haven’t they?”
They had. Clare was well known and popular, Jerry Corven even better known, if not so popular. Dinny looked round at the “audience”— one could never credit a wedding with the word congregation. Irregular and with a good deal of character, their faces refused generalisation. They looked like people with convictions and views of their own. The men conformed to no particular type, having none of that depressing sameness which used to characterise the German officer caste. With herself and her mother in the front pew were Hubert and Jean, Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Em; in the pew behind sat Adrian with Diana, Mrs. Hilary, and Lady Alison. Dinny caught sight of Jack Muskham at the end of two or three rows back, tall, well-dressed, rather bored-looking. He nodded to her, and she thought: Odd, his remembering me!
On the Corven side of the aisle were people of quite as much diversity of face and figure. Except Jack Muskham, the bridegroom, and his best man, hardly a man gave the impression of being well-dressed or of having thought about his clothes. But from their faces Dinny received the impression that they were all safe in the acceptance of a certain creed. Not one gave her the same feeling that Wilfrid’s face brought of spiritual struggle and disharmony, of dreaming, suffering, and discovery. ‘I’m fanciful,’ she thought. And her eyes came to rest on Adrian, who was just behind her. He was smiling quietly above that goatee beard of his, which lengthened his thin brown visage. ‘He has a dear face,’ she thought, ‘not conceited, like the men who wear those pointed beards as a rule. He always will be the nicest man in the world.’ And she whispered: “Fine collection of bones here, Uncle.”
“I should like your skeleton, Dinny.”
“I mean to be burned and scattered. H’ssh!”
The choir was coming in, followed by the officiating priests. Jerry Corven turned. Those lips smiling like a cat’s beneath that thin-cut moustache, those hardwood features and daring, searching eyes! Dinny thought with sudden dismay: ‘How could Clare! But after all I’d think the same of any face but one, just now. I’m going potty.’ Then Clare came swaying up the aisle on her father’s arm! ‘Looking a treat! Bless her!’ A gush of emotion caught Dinny by the throat, and she slipped her hand into her mother’s. Poor mother! She was awfully pale! Really the whole thing was stupid! People WOULD make it long and trying and emotional. Thank goodness Dad’s old black tail-coat really looked quite decent — she had taken out the stains with ammonia; and he stood as she had seen him when reviewing troops. If Uncle Hilary happened to have a button wrong, Dad would notice it. Only there wouldn’t be any buttons. She longed fervently to be beside Wilfrid away at the back. He would have nice unorthodox thoughts, and they would soothe each other with private smiles.
Now the bridesmaids! Hilary’s two girls, her cousins Monica and Joan, slender and keen, Little Celia Moriston, fair as a seraph (if that was female), Sheila Ferse, dark and brilliant; and toddly little Anne — a perfect dumpling!
Once on her knees, Dinny quietened down. She remembered how they used to kneel, night-gowned, against their beds, when Clare was a tiny of three and she herself a ‘big girl’ of six. She used to hang on to the bed-edge by the chin so as to save the knees; and how ducky Clare had looked when she held her hands up like the child in the Reynolds picture! ‘That man,’ thought Dinny, ‘will hurt her! I know he will!’ Her thoughts turned again to Michael’s wedding all those ten years ago. There she had stood, not three yards from where she was kneeling now, alongside a girl she didn’t know — some relative of Fleur’s. And her eyes, taking in this and that with the fluttered eagerness of youth, had lighted on Wilfrid standing sideways, keeping watch on Michael. Poor Michael! He had seemed rather daft that day, from excessive triumph! She could remember quite distinctly thinking: ‘Michael and his lost angel!’ There had been in Wilfrid’s face something which suggested that he had been cast out of happiness, a scornful and yet yearning look. That was only two years after the Armistice, and she knew now what utter disillusionment and sense of wreckage he had suffered after the war. He had been talking to her freely the last two days; had even dwelled with humorous contempt on his infatuation for Fleur eighteen months after that marriage which had sent him flying off to the East. Dinny, but ten when the war broke out, remembered it chiefly as meaning that mother had been anxious about father, had knitted all the time, and been a sort of sock depot; that everybody hated the Germans; that she had been forbidden sweets because they were made with saccharine, and finally the excitement and grief when Hubert went off to the war and letters from him didn’t often come. From Wilfrid these last few days she had gathered more clearly and poignantly than ever yet what the war had meant to some who, like Michael and himself, had been in the thick of it for years. With his gift of expression he had made her feel the tearing away of roots, the hopeless change of values, and the gradual profound mistrust of all that age and tradition had decreed and sanctified. He had got over the war now, he said. He might think so, but there were in him still torn odds and ends of nerves not yet mended up. She never saw him without wanting to pass a cool hand over his forehead.
The ring was on now, the fateful words said, the exhortations over; they were going to the vestry. Her mother and Hubert followed. Dinny sat motionless, her eyes fixed on the East window. Marriage! What an impossible state, except — with a single being.
A voice in her ear said:
“Lend me your hanky, Dinny. Mine’s soakin’, and your uncle’s is blue.”
Dinny passed her a scrap of lawn, and surreptitiously powdered her own nose.
“Be done at Condaford, Dinny,” continued her aunt. “All these people — so fatiguin’, rememberin’ who they aren’t. That was his mother, wasn’t it? She isn’t dead, then.”
Dinny was thinking: ‘Shall I get another look at Wilfrid?’
“When I was married everybody kissed me,” whispered her aunt, “so promiscuous. I knew a girl who married to get kissed by his best man. Aggie Tellusson. I wonder. They’re comin’ back!”
Yes! How well Dinny knew that bride’s smile! How could Clare feel it, not married to Wilfrid! She fell in behind her father and mother, alongside Hubert, who whispered: “Buck up, old girl, it might be a lot worse!” Divided from him by a secret that absorbed her utterly, Dinny squeezed his arm. And, even as she did so, saw Wilfrid, with his arms folded, looking at her. Again she gave him a swift smile, and then all was hurly-burly, till she was back at Mount Street and Aunt Em saying to her, just within the drawing-room door:
“Stand by me, Dinny, and pinch me in time.” Then came the entry of the guests and her aunt’s running commentary.
“It IS his mother — kippered. Here’s Hen Bentworth! . . . Hen, Wilmet’s here, she’s got a bone to pick. . . . How d’you do? Yes, isn’t it — so tirin’. . . . How d’you do? The ring was so well done, don’t you think? Conjurers! . . . Dinny, who’s this? . . . How do you do? Lovely! No! Cherrell. Not as it’s spelled, you know — so awkward! . . . The presents are over there by the man with the boots, tryin’ not to. Silly, I think! But they will. . . . How d’you do? You ARE Jack Muskham? Lawrence dreamed the other night you were goin’ to burst. . . . Dinny, get me Fleur, too, she knows everybody.”
Dinny went in search of Fleur and found her talking to the bridegroom.
As they went back to the door Fleur said: “I saw Wilfrid Desert in the church. How did he come there?”
Really Fleur was too sharp for anything!
“Here you are!” said Lady Mont. “Which of these three comin’ is the Duchess? The scraggy one. Ah! . . . How d’you do? Yes, charmin’. Such a bore, weddin’s! Fleur, take the Duchess to have some presents. . . . How d’you do? No, my brother Hilary. He does it well, don’t you think? Lawrence says he keeps his eye on the ball. Do have an ice, they’re downstairs. . . . Dinny, is this one after the presents, d’you think?— Oh! How d’you do, Lord Beevenham? My sister-inlaw ought to be doin’ this. She ratted. Jerry’s in there. . . . Dinny, who was it said: ‘The drink, the drink!’ Hamlet? He said such a lot. Not Hamlet? . . . Oh! How d’you do? . . . How d’you do? . . . How d’you do, or don’t you? Such a crush! . . . Dinny, your hanky!”
“I’ve put some powder on it, Auntie.”
“There! Have I streaked? . . . How d’you do? Isn’t it silly, the whole thing? As if they wanted anybody but themselves, you know. . . . Oh! Here’s Adrian! Your tie’s on one side, dear. Dinny, put it right. How d’you do? Yes, they are. I don’t like flowers at funerals — poor things, lyin’ there, and dyin’. . . . How’s your dear dog? You haven’t one? Quite! . . . Dinny, you ought to have pinched me. . . . How d’you do? How d’you do? I was tellin’ my niece she ought to pinch me. Do you get faces right? No. How nice! How d’you do? How d’you do? How d’you do? . . . That’s three! Dinny, who’s the throwback just comin’? Oh! . . . How d’you do? So you got here? I thought you were in China. . . . Dinny, remind me to ask your uncle if it was China. He gave me such a dirty look. Could I give the rest a miss? Who is it’s always sayin’ that? Tell Blore ‘the drink,’ Dinny. Here’s a covey! . . . How d’you do? . . . How de do? . . . How do? . . . Do! . . . Do! . . . How? . . . So sweet! . . . Dinny, I want to say: Blast!”
On her errand to Blore Dinny passed Jean talking to Michael, and wondered how anyone so vivid and brown had patience to stand about in this crowd. Having found Blore, she came back. Michael’s queer face, which she thought grew pleasanter every year, as if from the deepening impress of good feeling, looked strained and unhappy.
“I don’t believe it, Jean,” she heard him say.
“Well,” said Jean, “the bazaars do buzz with rumour. Still, without fire of some sort there’s never smoke.”
“Oh! yes, there is — plenty. He’s back in England, anyway. Fleur saw him in the church today. I shall ask him.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Jean: “if it’s true he’ll probably tell you, and if it isn’t, it’ll only worry him for nothing.”
So! They were talking of Wilfrid. How find out why without appearing to take interest? And suddenly she thought: ‘Even if I could, I wouldn’t. Anything that matters he must tell me himself. I won’t hear it from anyone else.’ But she felt disturbed, for instinct was always warning her of something heavy and strange on his mind.
When that long holocaust of sincerity was over and the bride had gone, she subsided into a chair in her uncle’s study, the only room which showed no signs of trouble. Her father and mother had started back to Condaford, surprised that she wasn’t coming too. It was not like her to cling to London when the tulips were out at home, the lilacs coming on, the apple blossom thickening every day. But the thought of not seeing Wilfrid daily had become a positive pain.
‘I HAVE got it badly,’ she thought, ‘worse than I ever believed was possible. Whatever is going to happen to me?’
She was lying back with her eyes closed when her uncle’s voice said:
“Ah! Dinny, how pleasant after those hosts of Midian! The mandarin in full feather! Did you know a quarter of them? Why do people go to weddings? A registrar’s, or under the stars, there’s no other way of preserving decency. Your poor aunt has gone to bed. There’s a lot to be said for Mohammedanism, except that it’s the fashion now to limit it to one wife, and she not in Purdah. By the way, there’s a story going round that young Desert’s become a Moslem. Did he say anything to you about it?”
Dinny raised her startled head.
“I’ve only twice known it happen to fellows in the East, and they were Frenchmen and wanted harems.”
“Money’s the only essential for that, Uncle.”
“Dinny, you’re getting cynical. Men like to have the sanction of religion. But that wouldn’t be Desert’s reason; a fastidious creature, if I remember.”
“Does religion matter, Uncle, so long as people don’t interfere with each other?”
“Well, some Moslems’ notions of woman’s rights are a little primitive. He’s liable to wall her up if she’s unfaithful. There was a sheikh when I was in Marakesh — gruesome.”
Dinny shuddered.
“‘From time immemorial,’ as they say,” went on Sir Lawrence, “religion has been guilty of the most horrifying deeds that have happened on this earth. I wonder if young Desert has taken up with it to get him access to Mecca. I shouldn’t think he believes anything. But you never know — it’s a queer family.”
Dinny thought: ‘I can’t and won’t talk about him.’
“What proportion of people in these days do you think really have religion, Uncle?”
“In northern countries? Very difficult to say. In this country ten to fifteen per cent of the adults, perhaps. In France and southern countries, where there’s a peasantry, more, at least on the surface.”
“What about the people who came this afternoon?”
“Most of them would be shocked if you said they weren’t Christians, and most of them would be still more shocked if you asked them to give half their goods to the poor, and that would only make them well disposed Pharisees, or was it Sadducees?”
“Are you a Christian, Uncle Lawrence?”
“No, my dear; if anything a Confucian, who, as you know, was simply an ethical philosopher. Most of our caste in this country, if they only knew it, are Confucian rather than Christian. Belief in ancestors, and tradition, respect for parents, honesty, moderation of conduct, kind treatment of animals and dependents, absence of self-obtrusion, and stoicism in face of pain and death.”
“What more,” murmured Dinny, wrinkling her nose, “does one want except the love of beauty?”
“Beauty? That’s a matter of temperament.”
“But doesn’t it divide people more than anything?”
“Yes, but willy nilly. You can’t make yourself love a sunset.”
“‘You are wise, Uncle Lawrence, the young niece said.’ I shall go for a walk and shake the wedding-cake down.”
“And I shall stay here, Dinny, and sleep the champagne off.”
Dinny walked and walked. It seemed an odd thing to be doing alone. But the flowers in the Park were pleasing, and the waters of the Serpentine shone and were still, and the chestnut trees were coming alight. And she let herself go on her mood, and her mood was of love.