‘The Briery,’ Jack Muskham’s residence at Royston, was old-fashioned and low, unpretentious without, comfortable within. It was lined with the effigies of race-horses and sporting prints. Only in one room, seldom used, was any sign of a previous existence. ‘Here,’ as an American newspaper man put it, when he came to interview the ‘last of the dandies’ on the subject of bloodstock, ‘here were evidences of this aristocrat’s early life in our glorious South West. Here were specimens of Navaho rugs and silver work; the plaited horsehair from El Paso; the great cowboy hats; and a set of Mexican harness dripping with silver. I questioned my host about this phase in his career. “Oh! that,” he said, in his Britisher’s drawl, “I had five years cow-punchin’ when I was a youngster. You see, I had only one thought — horses, and my father thought that might be better for me than ridin’ steeplechases here.”
‘“Can I put a date to that?” I asked this long, lean patrician with the watchful eyes and the languid manner.
‘“Why, yes, I came back in 1901, and except for the war I’ve been breedin’ bloodstock ever since.”
‘“And in the war?” I queried.
‘“Oh!” he answered; and I seemed to sense that I was intruding on him: “The usual thing. Yeomanry, cavalry, trenches, and that.”
‘“Tell me, Mr. Muskham,” I said: “Did you enjoy your life over with us out there?”
‘“Enjoy?” he said: “Rather, don’t you know.”’
The interview, produced in a Western paper, was baptised with the heading:
“ENJOYED LIFE IN SOUTHLAND,
SAYS BRITISH DANDY.”
The stud farm was fully a mile from Royston village, and at precisely a quarter to ten every day, when not away at races, bloodstock sales, or what not, Jack Muskham mounted his potter pony and ambled off to what the journalist had termed his “equine nursery.” He was accustomed to point to this potter pony as an example of what horses become if never spoken to in any but a gentle voice. She was an intelligent little three-year-old, three-quarter-bred, with a fine mouse-coloured coat over which someone seemed to have thrown a bottle of ink and then imperfectly removed the splashes. Beyond a slightly ragged crescent on her forehead, she had no white at all; her mane was hogged, and her long tail banged just below her hocks. Her eyes were quiet and bright, and — for a horse — her teeth were pearly. She moved with a daisy-clipping action, quickly recovering from any stumble. Ridden with a single rein applied to her neck, her mouth was never touched. She was but fourteen-two, and Jack Muskham’s legs, he using long stirrup leathers, came down very far. Riding her, as he said, was like sitting in a very easy chair. Besides himself, only one boy, chosen for the quietness of his voice, hands, nerves, and temper, was allowed to handle her.
Dismounting from this animal at the gate of the quadrangular yard which formed the stables, Jack Muskham would enter, smoking one of his special cigarettes in a short amber holder, and be joined on the central grass by his stud groom. He would then put out his cigarette, and they would go round the boxes — where the foals would be with their mothers, and the yearlings — and have this and that one out to be led round the tan track which adjoined the boxes round the yard. After this inspection, they would pass under the archway opposite the entrance and go to the paddocks to see the mares, foals, and yearlings at grass. Discipline in his ‘equine nursery’ was perfect; to all seeming his employees were as quiet, as clean, as well-behaved as the horses they had charge of. From the moment of his entrance to the moment when he emerged and remounted his potter pony, his talk would be of horses — sparing and to the point. And, daily, there were so many little things to see and say that he was rarely back at the house till one o’clock. He never discussed breeding on its scientific side with his stud groom, in spite of that functionary’s considerable knowledge, because, to Jack Muskham, the subject was as much a matter of high politics as the foreign relations of his country are to a Secretary for Foreign Affairs. His mating decisions were made in privacy, following the conclusions of close study welded to what he would have termed his ‘flair’ and others might have called his prejudices. Stars might come loose, Prime Ministers be knighted, Archdukes restored, towns swallowed up by earthquakes, together with all other forms of catastrophe, so long as Jack Muskham could blend St. Simon on Speculum with the right dashes of Hampton and Bend Or; or, in accordance with a more original theory of his own, could get old Herod through Le Sancy at the extreme top and extreme bottom of a pedigree which had Carbine and Barcaldine blood in between. He was, in fact, an idealist. To breed the perfect horse was his ideal, as little realisable, perhaps, as the ideals of other men, and far more absorbing — in his view. Not that he ever mentioned it — one did not use such a word! Nor did he bet, so that he was never deflected in his judgments by earthly desires. Tall, in his cigar-brown overcoat, specially lined with camel’s hair, and his fawn-coloured buckskin shoes and fawn-coloured face, he was probably the most familiar figure at Newmarket; nor was there any member of the Jockey Club, with the exception of three, whose dicta were more respected. He was in fact an outstanding example of the eminence in his walk of life that can be attained by a man who serves a single end with complete and silent fidelity. In truth, behind this ideal of the ‘perfect horse’ lay the shape of his own soul. Jack Muskham was a formalist, one of the few survivors in a form-shattering age; and that his formalism had pitched on the horse for its conspicuous expression was due in part to the completeness with which the race-horse was tied to the stud book, in part to the essential symmetry of that animal, and in part to the refuge the cult of it afforded from the whirr, untidiness, glare, blare, unending scepticism, and intrusive blatancy of what he termed “this mongrel age.”
At ‘The Briery’ two men did all the work except scrubbing, for which a woman came in daily. But for that, there was no sign in all the house that women existed in this world. It was monastic as a club which has not succumbed to female service, and as much more comfortable as it was smaller. The rooms were low, and two wide staircases reached the only upper floor, where the rooms were lower still. The books, apart from endless volumes relating to the race-horse, were either works of travel or of history, or detective novels; other fiction, with its scepticism, slangy diction, descriptions, sentiment, and sensation, was absent, if an exception be made of complete sets of Surtees, Whyte-Melville, and Thackeray.
As, in the pursuit by men of their ideals, there is almost always some saving element of irony, so in the case of Jack Muskham. He, whose aim in life was the production of the perfect thoroughbred, was actually engaged in an attempt to cast the thoroughbred, as hitherto conceived, from muzzle to crupper, on to the scrap-heap, and substitute for it an animal with a cross of blood not as yet in the Stud Book!
Unconscious of this discrepancy, he was seated at lunch with Telfourd Yule, still discussing the transportation of Arab mares, when Sir Lawrence Mont was announced.
“Lunch, Lawrence?”
“I have lunched, Jack. But coffee would be the very thing; also some brandy.”
“Then let’s go into the other room.”
“You have here,” said Sir Lawrence, “what I never thought to see again, the bachelor’s box of my youth. Jack is very remarkable, Mr. Yule. A man who can afford to date in these days is a genius. Do I see Surtees and Whyte-Melville entire? Mr. Yule, what did Mr. Waffles say in Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour when they were holding Caingey up by the heels to let the water run out of his pockets and boots?”
Yule’s humorous mug expanded, but he was silent.
“Exactly!” said Sir Lawrence: “No one knows nowadays. He said: ‘Why, Caingey, old boy, you look like a boiled porpoise with parsley sauce.’ Yes, and what did Mr. Sawyer answer in Market Harboro, when the Honourable Crasher drove at the turnpike gate, saying: ‘It’s open, I think’?”
Yule’s face, as of indiarubber, expanded further, and he was still more silent.
“Dear, dear! Jack?”
“He said: ‘I think not’.”
“Good!” Sir Lawrence sank into a chair. “And was it? No. Well! Have you arranged to steal that mare? Fine! And when you get her over?”
“I shall put her to the most suitable sire standing. I shall mate the result with the most suitable sire or mare I can find. Then I shall match the result of that mating privately against the best of our present thoroughbreds of the same age. If I’m proved right I ought to be able to get my Arab mares entered in the Stud Book. I’m trying to get three mares, by the way.”
“How old are you, Jack?”
“Rising fifty-three.”
“I’m sorry. This is good coffee.”
After that the three sat silent, awaiting the real purpose of this visit.
“I’ve come, Mr. Yule,” said Sir Lawrence, suddenly, “about that affair of young Desert’s.”
“Not true, I hope?”
“Unfortunately, yes. He makes no bones about it.” And, turning his monocle on Jack Muskham’s face, he saw there exactly what he had expected.
“A man,” said Muskham slowly, “ought to keep his form better than that, even if he IS a poet.”
“We won’t go into the rights and wrongs, Jack. Let it go at what you say. All the same”— and Sir Lawrence’s manner acquired strange gravity —“I want you two to keep mum. If it comes out, it can’t be helped, but I beg that you’ll neither of you say anything.”
“I don’t like the look of the fellow,” said Muskham shortly.
“That applies to at least nine-tenths of the people we see about; the reason is not adequate.”
“He’s one of those bitter, sceptical young moderns, with no real knowledge of the world and no reverence for anything.”
“I know you hold a brief for the past, Jack, but don’t bring it into this.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I didn’t want to mention it, but he’s engaged to my favourite niece, Dinny Cherrell.”
“That nice girl!”
“Yes. We none of us like it, except my boy Michael, who still swears by Desert. But Dinny has got her teeth into it, and I don’t think anything will budge her.”
“She can’t be allowed to marry a man who’s bound for Coventry the moment this comes out.”
“The more he’s taboo, the closer she’ll stick to him.”
“I like THAT,” said Muskham. “What do you say, Yule?”
“It’s no affair of mine. If Sir Lawrence wants me to say nothing, I shall say nothing.”
“Of course it’s no affair of ours; all the same, if making it known would stop your niece, I’d do it. I call it a damned shame!”
“It would have just the opposite effect, Jack. Mr. Yule, you know a lot about the Press. Suppose this story leaks into the Press, as it well may; what then?”
Yule’s eyes snapped.
“First they’ll tell it vaguely of a certain English traveller; then they’ll find out whether it’s denied by Desert; then they’ll tell it of him, with a good many details wrong, but not so wrong as all that. If he admits it, he can’t object. The Press is pretty fair, and damned inaccurate.”
Sir Lawrence nodded. “If I knew anyone going in for journalism, I should say: ‘Be strictly accurate, and you will be unique.’ I have not read any absolutely accurate personal paragraphs in the papers since the war.”
“That’s their dodge,” said Yule; “they get a double shot — first the inaccurate report and then the correction.”
“I loathe the Press,” said Muskham. “I had an American press-man here. There he sat, and short of kicking him out — I don’t know what on earth he made of me.”
“Yes, you date, Jack. To you Marconi and Edison are the world’s two greatest malefactors. Is it agreed, then, about young Desert?”
“Yes,” said Yule; and Muskham nodded.
Sir Lawrence passed swiftly from the subject.
“Nice country about here. Are you staying long, Mr. Yule?”
“I go back to Town this afternoon.”
“Let me take you.”
“Willingly.”
Half an hour later they had started.
“My cousin Jack,” said Sir Lawrence, “ought to be left to the nation. In Washington there’s a museum with groups of the early Americans under glass smoking the communal pipe, holding tomahawks over each other, and that sort of thing. One might have Jack —” Sir Lawrence paused: “That’s the trouble! How could one have Jack preserved? It’s so difficult to perpetuate the unemphatic. You can catch anything that jumps around; but when there’s no attitude except a watchful languor — and yet a man with a God of his own.”
“Form, and Muskham is its prophet.”
“He might, of course,” murmured Sir Lawrence, “be preserved in the act of fighting a duel. That’s perhaps the only human activity formal enough.”
“Form’s doomed,” said Yule.
“H’m! Nothing so hard to kill as the sense of shape. For what IS life but the sense of shape, Mr. Yule? Reduce everything to dead similarity, and still shape will ‘out’.’
“Yes,” said Yule, “but ‘form’ is shape brought to perfection-point and standardised; and perfection bores our bright young things.”
“That nice expression. But do they exist outside books, Mr. Yule?”
“Don’t they! And yawn-making — as they’d call it! I’d sooner attend City dinners for the rest of my life than spend a week-end in the company of those bright young things.”
“I doubt,” said Sir Lawrence, “whether I’ve come across them.”
“You should thank God. They never stop talking day or night, not even in their couplings.”
“You don’t seem to like them.”
“Well,” said Yule, looking like a gargoyle, “they can’t stand me any more than I can stand them. A boring little crowd, but, luckily, of no importance.”
“I hope,” said Sir Lawrence, “that Jack is not making the mistake of thinking young Desert is one.”
“Muskham’s never met a bright young thing. No; what gets his goat about Desert is the look of his face. It’s a deuced strange face.”
“Lost angel,” said Sir Lawrence. “‘Spiritual pride, my buck!’ Something fine about it.”
Yule nodded. “I don’t mind it myself; and his verse is good. But all revolt’s anathema to Muskham. He likes mentality clipped, with its mane plaited, stepping delicately to the snaffle.”
“I don’t know,” murmured Sir Lawrence, “I think those two might like each other, if they could shoot each other first. Queer people, we English!”
When, about the same time that afternoon, Adrian entered his brother’s parish and traversed the mean street leading to the Vicarage of St. Augustine’s-inthe-Meads, English people were being almost too well illustrated six doors round the corner.
An ambulance stood in front of a house without a future, and all who had something better to do were watching it. Adrian made one of the party. From the miserable edifice two men and a nurse were bearing the stretched-out body of a child, followed by a wailing, middle-aged, red-faced woman and a growling, white-faced man with a drooping moustache.
“What’s up?” said Adrian to a policeman.
“The child’s got to have an operation. You’d think she was goin’ to be murdered, instead of havin’ the best that care can give her. There’s the Vicar. If he can’t quiet ’em, no one can.”
Adrian saw his brother come out of the house and join the white-faced man. The growling ceased, but the woman’s wails increased. The child was ensconced by now in the ambulance, and the mother made an unwieldly rush at its door.
“Where’s their sense?” said the policeman, stepping forward.
Adrian saw Hilary put his hand on the woman’s shoulder. She turned as if to deliver a wide-mouthed imprecation, but a mere whimper issued. Hilary put his arm through hers and drew her quietly back into the house. The ambulance drove away. Adrian moved up to the white-faced man and offered him a cigarette. He took it with a “Thanks, mister,” and followed his wife.
All was over. The little crowd had gone. The policeman stood there alone.
“The Vicar’s a wonder,” he said.
“My brother,” said Adrian.
The policeman looked at him more respectfully.
“A rare card, sir, the Vicar.”
“I quite agree. Was that child very bad?”
“Won’t live the day out, unless they operate. Seems as if they’d saved it up to make a close run. Just an accident the Vicar happening on it. Some people’d rather die than go into ‘ospitals, let alone their children.”
“Independence,” said Adrian. “I understand the feeling.”
“Well, if you put it that way, sir, so do I. Still, they’ve got a wretched home in there, and everything of the best in the ‘ospital.”
“‘Be it never so humble —’” quoted Adrian.
“That’s right. And in my opinion it’s responsible for these slums. Very slummy round these parts, but try and move the people, and don’t they let you know! The Vicar does good work, reconditionin’ the ‘ouses, as they call it. If you want him, I’ll go and tell him.”
“Oh! I’ll wait.”
“You’d be surprised,” said the policeman, “the things people’ll put up with sooner than be messed about. And you can call it what you like: Socialism, Communism, Government by the people for the people, all comes to that in the end, messin’ you about. Here! You move on! No hawkin’ in this street!”
A man with a barrow who had looked as if he had been going to cry ‘Winkles!’ altered the shape of his mouth.
Adrian, stirred by the confusion of the policeman’s philosophy, waited in hopes of more, but at this moment Hilary emerged and came towards them.
“It won’t be their fault if she lives,” he said, and, answering the policeman’s salute, added: “Are those petunias coming up, Bell?”
“They are, sir; my wife thinks no end of ’em.”
“Splendid! Look here! You’ll pass the hospital on your way home, you might ask about that child for me; and ring me if the news is bad.”
“I will, Vicar; pleased to do it.”
“Thanks, Bell. Now, old man, let’s go in and have some tea.”
Mrs. Hilary being at a meeting, the brothers had tea by themselves.
“I’ve come about Dinny,” said Adrian, and unfolded her story.
Hilary lighted a pipe. “That saying,” he said at last: “‘Judge not that ye be not judged,’ is extraordinarily comforting, until you’ve got to do something about it. After that it appears to amount to less than nothing; all action is based on judgments, tacit or not. Is Dinny very much in love?”
Adrian nodded. Hilary drew deeply at his pipe.
“I don’t like it a little bit, then. I’ve always wanted a clear sky for Dinny; and this looks to me like a sirocco. I suppose no amount of putting it to her from other people’s points of view is any good?”
“I should say none.”
“Is there anything you want me to do?”
Adrian shook his head. “I only wanted your reaction.”
“Just sorrow that Dinny’s going to have a bad time. As to that recantation, my cloth rises on me, but whether it rises because I’m a parson, or a public-school Englishman, I don’t know. I suspect the older Adam.”
“If Dinny means to stick to this,” said Adrian, “one must stick to her. I always feel that if a thing one hates has to happen to a person one loves, one can only help by swallowing the idea of it whole. I shall try to like him and see his point of view.”
“He probably hasn’t one,” said Hilary. “Au fond, you know, like ‘Lord Jim,’ he just jumped; and he almost certainly knows it at heart.”
“The more tragic for them both; and the more necessary to stand by.”
Hilary nodded.
“Poor old Con will be badly hit. It gives such a chance to people to play the Pharisee. I can see the skirts being drawn aside.”
“Perhaps,” said Adrian, “modern scepticism will just shrug its shoulders and say: ‘Another little superstition gone west!’”
Hilary shook his head.
“Human nature, in the large, will take the view that he kowtowed to save his life. However sceptical people are nowadays about religion, patriotism, the Empire, the word gentleman, and all that, they still don’t like cowardice — to put it crudely. I don’t mean to say that a lot of them aren’t cowards, but they still don’t like it in other people; and if they can safely show their dislike, they will.”
“Perhaps the thing won’t come out.”
“Bound to, one way or another; and, for young Desert, the sooner the better. Give him a chance to captain his soul again. Poor little Dinny! This’ll test her sense of humour. Oh! dear me! I feel older. What does Michael say?”
“Haven’t seen him since.”
“Do Lawrence and Em know?”
“Probably.”
“Otherwise it’s to be kept dark, eh?”
“Yes. Well, I must be getting on.”
“I,” said Hilary, “shall carve my feelings into my Roman galley; I shall get half an hour at it, unless that child has collapsed.”
Adrian strode on to Bloomsbury. And while he went he tried to put himself in the place of one threatened with sudden extinction. No future life, no chance of seeing again those he loved; no promise, assured or even vague, of future conscious experience analogous to that of this life!
‘It’s the sudden personal emergency coming out of the blue,’ he thought, ‘with no eyes on you, that’s the acid test. Who among us knows how he’ll come through it?’
His brothers, the soldier and the priest, would accept extinction as a matter of simple duty; even his brother the judge, though he would want to argue the point and might convert his executioner. ‘But I?’ he thought. ‘How rotten to die like that for a belief I haven’t got, in a remote corner of the earth, without even the satisfaction of knowing that my death was going to benefit anybody, or would ever even be known!’ Without professional or official prestige to preserve, faced by such an issue, requiring immediate decision, one would have no time to weigh and balance; would be thrown back on instinct. One’s temperament would decide. And if it were like young Desert’s, judging from his verse; if he were accustomed to being in opposition to his fellows, or at least out of touch with them; scornful of convention and matter-of-fact English bull-doggedness; secretly, perhaps, more in sympathy with Arabs than with his own countrymen, would he not almost infallibly decide as Desert had? ‘God knows how I should have acted,’ thought Adrian, ‘but I understand, and in a way I sympathise. Anyway, I’m with Dinny in this, and I’ll see her through; as she saw me through that Ferse business.’ And, having reached a conclusion, he felt better . . . .
But Hilary carved away at his Roman galley. Those classical studies he had so neglected had led up to his becoming a parson, and he could no longer understand why. What sort of young man could he have been to think he was fit for it? Why had he not taken to forestry, become a cowboy, or done almost anything that kept him out of doors instead of in the slummy heart of a dim city? Was he or was he not based on revelation? And, if not, on what was he based? Planing away at an after-deck such as that whence those early plumbers, the Romans, had caused so many foreigners to perspire freely, he thought: ‘I serve an idea, with a superstructure which doesn’t bear examination.’ Still, the good of mankind was worth working for! A doctor did it in the midst of humbug and ceremony. A statesman, though he knew that democracy, which made him a statesman, was ignorance personified. One used forms in which one didn’t believe, and even exhorted others to believe in them. Life was a practical matter of compromise. ‘We’re all Jesuits,’ he thought, ‘using doubtful means to good ends. I should have had to die for my cloth, as a soldier dies for his. But that’s neither here nor there!’
The telephone bell rang, and a voice said:
“The Vicar! . . . Yes, sir! . . . That girl. Too far gone to operate. So if you’d come, sir.”
Hilary put down the receiver, snatched his hat, and ran out of the house. Of all his many duties the deathbed was least to his taste, and, when he alighted from the taxi before the hospital, the lined mask of his face concealed real dread. Such a child! And nothing to be done except patter a few prayers and hold her hand. Criminal the way her parents had let it run on till it was too late. But to imprison them for it would be to imprison the whole British race, which never took steps to interfere with its independence till the last minute, and that too late!
“This way sir,” said a nurse.
In the whiteness and order of a small preliminary room Hilary saw the little figure, white-covered, collapsed, and with a deathly face. He sat down beside it, groping for words with which to warm the child’s last minutes.
‘Shan’t pray,’ he thought, ‘she’s too young.’
The child’s eyes, struggling out of their morphined immobility, flitted with terror round the room and fixed themselves, horror-stricken, first on the white figure of the nurse, then on the doctor in his overalls. Hilary raised his hand.
“D’you mind,” he said, “leaving her with me a moment?”
They passed into an adjoining room.
“Loo!” said Hilary softly.
Recalled by his voice from their terrified wandering, the child’s eyes rested on his smile.
“Isn’t this a nice clean place? Loo! What d’you like best in all the world?”
The answer came almost inaudibly from the white puckered lips: “Pictures.”
“That exactly what you’re going to have, every day — twice a day. Think of that. Shut your eyes and have a nice sleep, and when you wake the pictures will begin. Shut your eyes! And I’ll tell you a story. Nothing’s going to happen to you. See! I’m here.”
He thought she had closed her eyes, but pain gripped her suddenly again; she began whimpering and then screamed.
“God!” murmured Hilary. “Another touch, doctor, quick!”
The doctor injected morphia.
“Leave us alone again.”
The doctor slipped away, and the child’s eyes came slowly back to Hilary’s smile. He laid his fingers on her small emaciated hand.
“Now, Loo, listen!
“‘The Walrus and the Carpenter were walking hand in hand, They wept like anything to see such quantities of sand. “If seven maids with seven brooms could sweep for half a year, Do you suppose,” the Walrus said, “that they could get it clear?” “I doubt it,” said the Carpenter, and shed a bitter tear!’”
On and on went Hilary, reciting ‘The Mad Hatter’s Tea-party.’ And, while he murmured, the child’s eyes closed, the small hand lost warmth.
He felt its cold penetrating his own hand and thought: ‘Now, God, if you are — give her pictures!’
When Dinny opened her eyes on the morning after she had told her father, she could not remember what her trouble was. Realisation caused her to sit up with a feeling of terror. Suppose Wilfrid ran away from it all, back to the East or further! He well might, and think he was doing it for her sake.
‘I can’t wait till Thursday,’ she thought; ‘I must go up. If only I had money, in case —!’ She rummaged out her trinkets and took hasty stock of them. The two gentlemen of South Molton Street! In the matter of Jean’s emerald pendant they had behaved beautifully. She made a little parcel of her pledgeable ornaments, reserving the two or three she normally wore. There were none of much value, and to get a hundred pounds on them, she felt, would strain benevolence.
At breakfast they all behaved as if nothing had happened. So then, they all knew the worst!
‘Playing the angel!’ she thought.
When her father announced that he was going up to Town, she said she would come with him.
He looked at her, rather like a monkey questioning man’s right not to be a monkey too. Why had she never before noticed that his brown eyes could have that flickering mournfulness?
“Very well,” he said.
“Shall I drive you?” asked Jean.
“Thankfully accepted,” murmured Dinny.
Nobody said a word on the subject occupying all their thoughts.
In the opened car she sat beside her father. The may-blossom, rather late, was at its brightest, and its scent qualified the frequent drifts of petrol fume. The sky had the high brooding grey of rain withheld. Their road passed over the Chilterns, through Hampden, Great Missenden, Chalfont, and Chorley Wood; land so English that no one, suddenly awakened, could at any moment of the drive have believed he was in any other country. It was a drive Dinny never tired of; but today the spring green and brightness of the may and apple blossom, the windings and divings through old villages, could not deflect her attention from the impassive figure by whom she sat. She knew instinctively that he was going to try and see Wilfrid, and, if so — she was, too. But when he talked it was of India. And when she talked it was of birds. And Jean drove furiously and never looked behind her. Not till they were in the Finchley Road did the General say:
“Where d’you want to be set down, Dinny?”
“Mount Street.”
“You’re staying up, then?”
“Yes, till Friday.”
“We’ll drop you, and I’ll go on to my Club. You’ll drive me back this evening, Jean?”
Jean nodded without turning and slid between two vermilion-coloured buses, so that two drivers simultaneously used the same qualitative word.
Dinny was in a ferment of thought. Dared she telephone Stack to ring her up when her father came? If so, she could time her visit to the minute. Dinny was of those who at once establish liaison with ‘staff.’ She could not help herself to a potato without unconsciously conveying to the profferer that she was interested in his personality. She always said ‘Thank you,’ and rarely passed from the presence without having made some remark which betrayed common humanity. She had only seen Stack three times, but she knew he felt that she was a human being, even if she did not come from Barnstaple. She mentally reviewed his no longer youthful figure, his monastic face, black-haired and large-nosed, with eyes full of expression, his curly mouth, at once judgmatic and benevolent. He moved upright and almost at a trot. She had seen him look at her as if saying to himself: ‘If this is to be our fate, could I do with it? I could.’ He was, she felt, permanently devoted to Wilfrid. She determined to risk it. When they drove away from her at Mount Street, she thought: ‘I hope I shall never be a father!’
“Can I telephone, Blore?”
“Certainly, miss.”
She gave Wilfrid’s number.
“Is that Stack? Miss Cherrell speaking. . . . Would you do me a little favour? My father is going to see Mr. Desert today, General Sir Conway Cherrell; I don’t know at what time, but I want to come myself while he’s there. . . . Could you ring me up here as soon as he arrives? I’ll wait in. . . . Thank you so very much. . . . Is Mr. Desert well? . . . Don’t tell him or my father, please, that I’m coming. Thank you ever so!”
‘Now,’ she thought, ‘unless I’ve misread Dad! There’s a picture gallery opposite, I shall be able to see him leave from the window of it.’
No call came before lunch, which she had with her aunt.
“Your uncle has seen Jack Muskham,” said Lady Mont, in the middle of lunch; “Royston, you know; and he brought back the other one, just like a monkey — they won’t say anything. But Michael says he mustn’t, Dinny.”
“Mustn’t what, Aunt Em?”
“Publish that poem.”
“Oh! but he will.”
“Why? Is it good?”
“The best he has ever written.”
“So unnecessary.”
“Wilfrid isn’t ashamed, Aunt Em.”
“Such a bore for you, I do think. I suppose one of those companionable marriages wouldn’t do, would it?”
“I’ve offered it, dear.”
“I’m surprised at you, Dinny.”
“He didn’t accept it.”
“Thank God! I should hate you to get into the papers.
“Not more than I should myself, Auntie.”
“Fleur got into the papers, libellin’.”
“I remember.”
“What’s that thing that comes back and hits you by mistake?”
“A boomerang?”
“I knew it was Australian. Why do they have an accent like that?”
“Really I don’t know, darling.”
“And marsupials? Blore, Miss Dinny’s glass.”
“No more, thank you, Aunt Em. And may I get down?”
“Let’s both get down”; and, getting up, Lady Mont regarded her niece with her head on one side. “Deep breathin’ and carrots to cool the blood. Why Gulf Stream, Dinny? What gulf is that?”
“Mexico, dear.”
“The eels come from there, I was readin’. Are you goin’ out?”
“I’m waiting for a ‘phone call.”
“When they say tr-r-roubled, it hurts my teeth. Nice girls, I’m sure. Coffee?”
“Yes, PLEASE!”
“It does. One comes together like a puddin’ after it.”
Dinny thought: ‘Aunt Em always sees more than one thinks.’
“Bein’ in love,” continued Lady Mont, “is worse in the country — there’s the cuckoo. They don’t have it in America, somebody said. Perhaps they don’t fall in love there. Your Uncle’ll know. He came back with a story about a poppa at Nooport. But that was years and years ago. I feel other people’s insides,” continued her aunt, uncannily. “Where’s your father gone?”
“To his Club.”
“Did you tell him, Dinny?”
“Yes.”
“You’re his favourite.”
“Oh, no! Clare is.”
“Fiddle!”
“Did the course of your love run smooth, Aunt Em?”
“I had a good figure,” replied her aunt; “too much, perhaps; we had then. Lawrence was my first.”
“Really?”
“Except for choir-boys and our groom, and a soldier or two. There was a little captain with a black moustache. Inconsiderate, when one’s fourteen.”
“I suppose your ‘wooing’ was very decorous?”
“No; your uncle was passionate. ‘Ninety-one. There’d been no rain for thirty years.”
“No such rain?”
“No! No rain at all — I forget where. There’s the telephone!”
Dinny reached the ‘phone just in front of the butler.
“It’ll be for me, Blore, thank you.”
She took up the receiver with a shaking hand.
“Yes? . . . I see . . . thank you, Stack . . . thank you very much. . . . Will you get me a taxi, Blore?”
She directed the taxi to the gallery opposite Wilfrid’s rooms, bought a catalogue, and went upstairs to the window. Here, under pretext of minutely examining Number 35, called ‘Rhythm,’ a misnomer so far as she could see, she kept watch on the door opposite. Her father could not already have left Wilfrid, for it was only seven minutes since the telephone call. Very soon, however, she saw him issuing from the door, and watched him down the street. His head was bent, and he shook it once or twice; she could not see his face, but she could picture its expression.
‘Gnawing his moustache,’ she thought; ‘poor lamb!’
The moment he rounded the corner she ran down, slipped across the street and up the first flight. Outside Wilfrid’s door she stood with her hand raised to the bell. Then she rang.
“Am I too late, Stack?”
“The General’s just gone, Miss.”
“Oh! May I see Mr. Desert? Don’t announce me.”
“No, miss,” said Stack. Had she ever seen eyes more full of understanding?
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door. Wilfrid was standing at the hearth with his head bent down on his folded arms. She stole silently up, waiting for him to realise her presence.
Suddenly he threw his head up, and saw her.
“Darling!” said Dinny, “so sorry for startling you!” And she tilted her head, with lips a little parted and throat exposed, watching the struggle on his face.
He succumbed and kissed her.
“Dinny, your father —”
“I know. I saw him go. ‘Mr. Desert, I believe! My daughter has told me of an engagement, and — er — your position. I— er — have come about that. You have — er — considered what will happen when your — er — escapade out there becomes — er — known. My daughter is of age, she can please herself, but we are all extremely fond of her, and I think you will agree that in the face of such a — er — scandal it would be wholly wrong on your part — er — to consider yourself engaged to her at present.”
“Almost exact.”
“And you answered?”
“That I’d think it over. He’s perfectly right.”
“He is perfectly wrong. I have told you before, ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.’ Michael thinks you ought not to publish The Leopard.”
“I must. I want it off my chest. When I’m not with you I’m hardly sane.”
“I know! But, darling, those two are not going to say anything; need it ever come out? Things that don’t come out quickly often don’t come out at all. Why go to meet trouble?”
“It isn’t that. It’s some damned fear in me that I WAS yellow. I want the whole thing out. Then, yellow or not, I can hold my head up. Don’t you see, Dinny?”
She did see. The look on his face was enough. ‘It’s my business,’ she thought, ‘to feel as he does, whatever I think; only so can I help him; perhaps only so can I keep him.’
“I understand, perfectly. Michael’s wrong. We’ll face the music, and our heads shall be ‘bloody but unbowed.’ But we won’t be ‘captains of our souls,’ whatever happens.”
And, having got him to smile, she drew him down beside her. After that long close silence, she opened her eyes with the slow look all women know how to give.
“To-morrow is Thursday, Wilfrid. Will you mind if we drop in on Uncle Adrian on the way home? He’s on our side. And about our engagement, we can say we aren’t engaged, and BE all the same. Good-bye, my love!”
Down in the vestibule by the front door as she was opening it, Stack’s voice said:
“Excuse me, miss.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been with Mr. Desert a long time, and I was thinking. You’re engaged to him, if I don’t mistake, miss?”
“Yes and no, Stack. I hope to marry him, however.”
“Quite, miss. And a good thing, too, if you’ll excuse me. Mr. Desert is a sudden gentleman, and I was thinking if we were in leeaison, as you might say, it’d be for his good.”
“I quite agree; that’s why I rang you up this morning.”
“I’ve seen many young ladies in my time, but never one I’d rather he married, miss, which is why I’ve taken the liberty.”
Dinny held out her hand. “I’m terribly glad you did; it’s just what I wanted; because things are difficult, and going to be more so, I’m afraid.”
Having polished his hand, Stack took hers, and they exchanged a rather convulsive squeeze.
“I know there’s something on his mind,” he said. “That’s not my business. But I have known him to take very sudden decisions. And if you were to give me your telephone numbers, miss, I might be of service to you both.”
Dinny wrote them down. “This is the town one at my uncle, Sir Lawrence Mont’s, in Mount Street; and this is my country one at Condaford Grange in Oxfordshire. One or the other is almost sure to find me. And thank you ever so. It takes a load off my mind.”
“And off mine, miss. Mr. Desert has every call on me. And I want the best for him. He’s not everybody’s money, but he’s mine.”
“And mine, Stack.”
“I won’t bandy compliments, miss, but he’ll be a lucky one, if you’ll excuse me.”
Dinny smiled. “No, I shall be the lucky one. Good-bye, and thank you again.”
She went away, treading, so to speak, on Cork Street. She had an ally in the lion’s mouth; a spy in the friend’s camp; a faithful traitor! Thus mixing her metaphors, she scurried back to her aunt’s house. Her father would almost certainly go there before returning to Condaford.
Seeing his unmistakable old bowler in the hall, she took the precaution of removing her own hat before going to the drawing-room. He was talking to her aunt, and they stopped as she came in. Everyone would always stop now as she came in! Looking at them with quiet directness, she sat down.
The General’s eyes met hers.
“I’ve been to see Mr. Desert, Dinny.”
“I know, dear. He is thinking it over. We shall wait till everyone knows, anyway.”
The General moved uneasily.
“And if it is any satisfaction to you, we are not formally engaged.”
The General gave her a slight bow, and Dinny turned to her aunt, who was fanning a pink face with a piece of lilac-coloured blotting-paper.
There was a silence, then the General said:
“When are you going to Lippinghall, Em?”
“Next week,” replied Lady Mont, “or is it the week after? Lawrence knows. I’m showing two gardeners at the Chelsea Flower Show. Boswell and Johnson, Dinny.”
“Oh! Are they still with you?”
“More so. Con, you ought to grow pestifera — no, that’s not the name — that hairy anemone thing.”
“Pulsatilla, Auntie.”
“Charmin’ flowers. They want lime.”
“We’re short of lime at Condaford,” said the General, “as you ought to know, Em.”
“Our azaleas were a dream this year, Aunt Em.”
Lady Mont put down the blotting-paper.
“I’ve been tellin’ your father, Dinny, that it’s no good fussin’ you.”
Dinny, watching her father’s glum face, said: “Do you know that nice shop in Bond Street, Auntie, where they make animals? I got a lovely little vixen and her cubs there to make Dad like foxes better.”
“Huntin’,” said Lady Mont, and sighed. “When they get up chimneys, it’s rather touchin’.”
“Even Dad doesn’t like digging out, or stopping earths, do you, Dad?”
“N-no!” said the General, “on the whole, no!”
“Bloodin’ children, too,” said Lady Mont. “I saw you blooded, Con.”
“Messy job, and quite unnecessary! Only the old raw-hide school go in for it now.”
“He looked so nasty, Dinny.”
“Yes, you haven’t got the face for it, Dad. It wants one of those snub-nosed, red-haired, freckled boys, that like killing for the sake of killing.”
The General rose.
“I must be going back to the Club. Jean picks me up there. When shall we see you, Dinny? Your mother —” and he stopped.
“Aunt Em’s keeping me till Saturday.”
The General nodded. He suffered his sister’s and daughter’s kiss with a face that seemed to say, ‘Yes — but —’
From the window Dinny watched his figure moving down the street, and her heart twitched.
“Your father!” said her aunt’s voice behind her. “All this is very wearin’, Dinny.”
“I think it’s very dear of Dad not to have mentioned the fact that I’m dependent on him.”
“Con IS a dear,” said Lady Mont; “he said the young man was respectful. Who was it said: ‘Goroo — goroo’?”
“The old Jew in David Copperfield.”
“Well, it’s what I feel.”
Dinny turned from the window.
“Auntie! I don’t feel the same being at all as I did two weeks ago. I’m utterly changed. Then I didn’t seem to have any desires; now I’m all one desire, and I don’t seem to care whether I’m decent or not. Don’t say Epsom salts!”
Lady Mont patted her arm.
“‘Honour thy father and thy mother,’” she said; “but then there was ‘Forsake all and follow me,’ so you can’t tell.”
“I can,” said Dinny. “Do you know what I’m hoping now? That everything will come out tomorrow. If it did, we could be married at once.”
“Let’s have some tea, Dinny. Blore, tea! Indian and rather strong!”
Dinny took her lover to Adrian’s door at the museum the next day, and left him there. Looking round at his tall, hatless, girt-in figure, she saw him give a violent shiver. But he smiled, and even at that distance she felt warmed by his eyes.
Adrian, already notified, received the young man with what he stigmatised to himself as ‘morbid curiosity,’ and placed him at once in mental apposition to Dinny. A curiously diverse couple they would make! Yet, with a perception not perhaps unconnected with the custody of skeletons, he had a feeling that his niece was not physically in error. This was a figure that could well stand or lie beside her. Its stringy grace and bony gallantry accorded with her style and slenderness; and the darkened face, with its drawn and bitter lines, had eyes which even Adrian, who had all the public-school-man’s impatience of male film stars, could see would be attractive to the feminine gender. Bones broke the ice to some degree; and over the identity of a supposed Hittite in moderate preservation they became almost cordial. Places and people whom they had both seen in strange conditions were a further incentive to human feeling. But not till he had taken up his hat to go did Wilfrid say suddenly:
“Well, Mr. Cherrell, what would YOU do?”
Adrian, who was looking up, halted and considered his questioner with narrowed eyes.
“I’m a poor hand at advice, but Dinny is a precious baggage —”
“She is.”
Adrian bent and shut the door of a cabinet.
“This morning,” he said, “I watched a solitary ant in my bathroom trying to make its way and find out about things. I’m sorry to say I dropped some ashes from my pipe on it to see what it would do. Providence all over — always dropping ashes from its pipe on us to observe the result. I’ve been in several minds, but I’ve come to the conclusion that if you’re really in love with Dinny —” a convulsive movement of Wilfrid’s body ended in the tight clenching of his hands on his hat —“as I see you are, and as I know her to be with you, then stand fast and work your way with her through the ashes. She’d rather be in the cart with you than in a Pullman with the rest of us. I believe”— and Adrian’s face was illuminated by earnestness —“that she is one of those of whom it is not yet written, ‘and they twain shall be one SPIRIT.’” The young man’s face quivered.
‘Genuine!’ thought Adrian.
“So think first of her, but not in the ‘I love you so that nothing will induce me to marry you’ fashion. Do what she wants — when she wants it — she’s not unreasonable. And, honestly, I don’t believe you’ll either of you regret it.”
Desert took a step towards him, and Adrian could see that he was intensely moved. But he mastered all expression, save a little jerky smile, made a movement of one hand, turned, and went out.
Adrian continued to shut the doors of cupboards that contained bones. ‘That,’ he was thinking, ‘is the most difficult, and in some ways the most beautiful face I’ve seen. The spirit walks upon its waters and is often nearly drowned. I wonder if that advice was criminal, because for some reason or other I believe he’s going to take it.’ And he returned to the reading of a geographical magazine which Wilfrid’s visit had interrupted. It contained a spirited account of an Indian tribe on the Amazon which had succeeded, even without the aid of American engineers at capitalistic salaries, in perfecting the Communistic ideal. None of them, apparently, owned anything. Their whole lives, including the processes of nature, were passed in the public eye. They wore no clothes, they had no laws; their only punishment, something in connection with red ants, was inflicted for the only offence, that of keeping anything to themselves. They lived on the cassava root variegated with monkey, and were the ideal community!
‘A wonderful instance,’ thought Adrian, ‘of how the life of man runs in cycles. For the last twenty thousand years or so we’ve been trying, as we thought, to improve on the principle which guides the life of these Indians, only to find it reintroduced as the perfect pattern.’
He sat for some time with a smile biting deep into the folds about his mouth. Doctrinaires, extremists! That Arab who put a pistol to young Desert’s head was a symbol of the most mischievous trait in human nature! Ideas and creeds — what were they but half-truths, only useful in so far as they helped to keep life balanced? The geographical magazine slipped off his knee.
He stopped on the way home in the garden of his square to feel the sun on his cheek and listen to a blackbird. He had all he wanted in life: the woman he loved, fair health, a fair salary — seven hundred a year and the prospect of a pension — two adorable children, not his own, so that he was free from the misgivings of more normal parents; an absorbing job, a love of nature, and another thirty years, perhaps, before him. ‘If at this moment,’ he thought, ‘someone put a pistol to my head and said: “Adrian Cherrell, renounce Christianity or out go your brains!” should I say with Clive in India: “Shoot and be damned!”?’ And he could not answer. The blackbird continued to sing, the young leaves to twitter in the breeze, the sun to warm his cheek, and life to be desirable in the quiet of that one-time fashionable square . . . .
Dinny, when she left those two on the verge of acquaintanceship, had paused, in two minds, and then gone north to St. Augustine’s-inthe-Meads. Her instinct was to sap the opposition of the outlying portions of her family, so as to isolate the defences of her immediate people. She moved towards the heart of practical Christianity with a certain rather fearful exhilaration.
Her Aunt May was in the act of dispensing tea to two young ex-Collegians before their departure to a club where they superintended the skittles, chess, draughts, and ping-pong of the neighbourhood.
“If you want Hilary, Dinny, he had two committees, but they might collapse, because he’s almost the whole of both.”
“You and uncle know about me, I suppose?”
Mrs. Hilary nodded. She was looking very fresh in a sprigged dress.
“Would you mind telling me what uncle feels about it?”
“I’d rather leave that to him, Dinny. We neither of us remember Mr. Desert very well.”
“People who don’t know him well will always misjudge him. But neither you nor uncle care what other people think.” She said this with a guileless expression which by no means deceived Mrs. Hilary, accustomed to Women’s Institutes.
“We’re neither of us very orthodox, as you know, Dinny, but we do both of us believe very deeply in what Christianity stands for, and it’s no good pretending we don’t.”
Dinny thought a moment.
“Is that more than gentleness and courage and self-sacrifice, and must one be a Christian to have those?”
“I’d rather not talk about it. I should be sorry to say anything that would put me in a position different from Hilary’s.”
“Auntie, how model of you!”
Mrs. Hilary smiled. And Dinny knew that judgment in this quarter was definitely reserved.
She waited, talking of other things, till Hilary came in. He was looking pale and worried. Her aunt gave him tea, passed a hand over his forehead, and went out.
Hilary drank off his tea and filled his pipe with a knot of tobacco screwed up in a circular paper.
“Why corporations, Dinny? Why not three doctors, three engineers, three architects, an adding machine, and a man of imagination to work it and keep them straight?”
“Are you in trouble, Uncle?”
“Yes, gutting houses on an overdraft is ageing enough, without corporational red tape.”
Looking at his worn but smiling face, Dinny thought: ‘I can’t bother him with my little affairs.’ “You and Aunt May couldn’t spare time, I suppose, to come to the Chelsea Flower Show on Tuesday?”
“My goodness!” said Hilary, sticking one end of a match into the centre of the knob and lighting the knob with the other end, “how I would love to stand in a tent and smell azaleas!”
“We thought of going at one o’clock, so as to avoid the worst of the crush. Aunt Em would send for you.”
“Can’t promise, so don’t send. If we’re not at the main entrance at one, you’ll know that Providence has intervened. And now, what about you? Adrian has told me.”
“I don’t want to bother you, Uncle.”
Hilary’s shrewd blue eyes almost disappeared. He expelled a cloud of smoke.
“Nothing that concerns you will bother me, my dear, except in so far as it’s going to hurt you. I suppose you MUST, Dinny?”
“Yes, I must.”
Hilary sighed.
“In that case it remains to make the best of it. But the world loves the martyrdom of others. I’m afraid he’ll have a bad Press, as they say.”
“I’m sure he will.”
“I can only just remember him, as a rather tall, scornful young man in a buff waistcoat. Has he lost the scorn?”
Dinny smiled.
“It’s not the side I see much of at present.”
“I sincerely trust,” said Hilary, “that he has not what they call devouring passions.”
“Not so far as I have observed.”
“I mean, Dinny, that once that type has eaten its cake, it shows all the old Adam with a special virulence. Do you get me?”
“Yes. But I believe it’s a ‘marriage of true minds’ with us.”
“Then, my dear, good luck! Only, when people begin to throw bricks, don’t resent it. You’re doing this with your eyes open, and you’ll have no right to. Harder to bear than having your own toe trodden on is seeing one you love batted over the head. So catch hold of yourself hard at the start, and go on catching hold, or you’ll make it worse for him. If I’m not wrong, Dinny, you can get very hot about things.”
“I’ll try not to. When Wilfrid’s book of poems comes out, I want you to read one called ‘The Leopard’; it gives his state of mind about the whole thing.”
“Oh!” said Hilary blankly. “Justification? That’s a mistake.”
“That’s what Michael says. I don’t know whether it is or not; I think in the end — not. Anyway, it’s coming out.”
“There beginneth a real dog-fight. ‘Turn the other cheek’ and ‘too proud to fight’ would have been better left unsaid. All the same, it’s asking for trouble, and that’s all about it.”
“I can’t help it, Uncle.”
“I realise that, Dinny; it’s when I think of the number of things you won’t be able to help that I feel so blue. And what about Condaford? Is it going to cut you off from that?”
“People do come round, except in novels; and even there they have to in the end, or else die, so that the heroine may be happy. Will you say a word for us to Father if you see him, Uncle?”
“No, Dinny. An elder brother never forgets how superior he was to you when he was big and you were not.”
Dinny rose.
“Well, Uncle; thank you ever so for not believing in damnation, and even more for not saying so. I shall remember all you’ve said. Tuesday, one o’clock at the main entrance; and don’t forget to eat something first; it’s a very tiring business.”
When she had gone Hilary refilled his pipe.
‘“And even more for not saying so!”’ he repeated in thought. ‘That young woman can be caustic. I wonder how often I say things I don’t mean in the course of my professional duties.’ And, seeing his wife in the doorway, he added:
“May, would you say I was a humbug — professionally?”
“Yes, dear. How could it be otherwise?”
“You mean, the forms a parson uses aren’t broad enough to cover the variations of human nature? But I don’t see how they could be. Would you like to go to the Chelsea Flower Show on Tuesday?”
Mrs. Hilary, thinking: ‘Dinny might have asked ME,’ replied cheerfully: “Very much.”
“Let’s try and arrange so that we can get there at one o’clock.”
“Did you talk to her about her affair?”
“Yes.”
“Is she immovable?”
“Quite.”
Mrs. Hilary sighed. “It’s an awful pity. Do you think a man could ever live that down?”
“Twenty years ago I should have said ‘No.’ Now I’m not sure. It seems a queer thing to say, but it’s not the really religious people who’ll matter.”
“Why?”
“Because they won’t come across them. It’s the army, and Empire people, and Englishmen overseas, whom they will come across continually. The hub of unforgiveness is in her own family to start with. It’s the yellow label. The gum they use putting that on is worse than the patent brand of any hotel that wants to advertise itself.”
“I wonder,” said Mrs. Hilary, “what the children would say about it?”
“Queer that we don’t know.”
“We know less about our children than any of their friends do. Were we like that to our own elders, I wonder?”
“Our elders looked on us as biological specimens; they had us at an angle, and knew quite a lot about us. WE’VE tried to put ourselves on a level with our youngsters, elder brother and sister business, and we don’t know a thing. We’ve missed the one knowledge, and haven’t got the other. A bit humiliating, but they’re a decent crowd. It’s not the young people I’m afraid of in Dinny’s business, it’s those who’ve had experience of the value of English prestige, and they’ll be justified; and those who like to think he’s done a thing they wouldn’t have done themselves — and they won’t be justified a bit.”
“I think Dinny’s over-estimating her strength, Hilary.”
“No woman really in love could do otherwise. To find out whether she is or not will be her job. Well, she won’t rust.”
“You speak as if you rather liked it.”
“The milk is spilled, and it’s no good worrying. Let’s get down to the wording of that new appeal. There’s going to be a bad trade slump. Just our luck! All the people who’ve got money will be sticking to it.”
“I wish people wouldn’t be less extravagant when times are bad. It only means less work still. The shopkeepers are moaning about that already.”
Hilary reached for a notebook and began writing. His wife looked over his shoulder presently and read:
“To all whom it may concern:
“And whom does it not concern that there should be in our midst thousands of people so destitute from birth to death of the bare necessities of life that they don’t know what real cleanliness, real health, real fresh air, real good food are?”
“One ‘real’ will cover the lot, dear.”
Arriving at the Chelsea Flower Show, Lady Mont said thoughtfully: “I’m meetin’ Boswell and Johnson at the calceolarias, Dinny. What a crowd!”
“Yes, and all plain. Do they come, Auntie, because they’re yearning for beauty they haven’t got?”
“I can’t get Boswell and Johnson to yearn. There’s Hilary! He’s had that suit ten years. Take this and run for tickets, or he’ll try and pay.”
With a five-pound note Dinny slid towards the wicket, avoiding her uncle’s eyes. She secured four tickets, and turned smiling.
“I saw you being a serpent,” he said. “Where are we going first? Azaleas? I like to be thoroughly sensual at a flower show.”
Lady Mont’s deliberate presence caused a little swirl in the traffic, while her eyes from under slightly drooped lids took in the appearance of people selected, as it were, to show off flowers.
The tent they entered was warm with humanity and perfume, though the day was damp and cool. The ingenious beauty of each group of blossoms was being digested by variegated types of human being linked only through that mysterious air of kinship which comes from attachment to the same pursuit. This was the great army of flower-raisers — growers of primulas in pots, of nasturtiums, gladioli and flags in London back gardens, of stocks, hollyhocks and sweet-williams in little provincial plots; the gardeners of larger grounds; the owners of hothouses and places where experiments are made — but not many of these, for they had already passed through or would come later. All moved with a prying air, as if marking down their own next ventures; and alongside the nurserymen would stop and engage as if making bets. And the subdued murmur of voices, cockneyfied, countrified, cultivated, all commenting on flowers, formed a hum like that of bees, if not so pleasing. This subdued expression of a national passion, walled-in by canvas, together with the scent of the flowers, exercised on Dinny an hypnotic effect, so that she moved from one brilliant planted posy to another, silent and with her slightly upturned nose twitching delicately.
Her aunt’s voice roused her.
“There they are!” she said, pointing with her chin.
Dinny saw two men standing so still that she wondered if they had forgotten why they had come. One had a reddish moustache and sad cow-like eyes; the other looked like a bird with a game wing; their clothes were stiff with Sundays. They were not talking, nor looking at the flowers, but as if placed there by Providence without instructions.
“Which is Boswell, Auntie?”
“No moustache,” said Lady Mont; “Johnson has the green hat. He’s deaf. So like them.”
She moved towards them, and Dinny heard her say:
“Ah!”
The two gardeners rubbed their hands on the sides of their trousered legs, but did not speak.
“Enjoyin’ it?” she heard her aunt say. Their lips moved, but no sound came forth that she could catch. The one she had called Boswell lifted his cap and scratched his head. Her aunt was pointing now at the calceolarias, and suddenly the one in the green hat began to speak. He spoke so that, as Dinny could see, not even her aunt could hear a word, but his speech went on and on and seemed to afford him considerable satisfaction. Every now and then she heard her aunt say: “Ah!” But Johnson went on. He stopped suddenly; her aunt said “Ah!” again and came back to her.
“What was he saying?” asked Dinny.
“No,” said Lady Mont, “not a word. You can’t. But it’s good for him.” She waved her hand to the two gardeners, who were again standing without sign of life, and led the way.
They passed into the rose tent now, and Dinny looked at her watch. She had appointed to meet Wilfrid at the entrance of it.
She cast a hurried look back. There he was! She noted that Hilary was following his nose, Aunt May following Hilary, Aunt Em talking to a nurseryman. Screened by a prodigious group of ‘K. of Ks.’ she skimmed over to the entrance, and, with her hands in Wilfrid’s, forgot entirely where she was.
“Are you feeling strong, darling? Aunt Em is here, and my Uncle Hilary and his wife. I should so like them to know you, because they all count in our equation.”
He seemed to her at that moment like a highly-strung horse asked to face something it has not faced before.
“If you wish, Dinny.”
They found Lady Mont involved with the representatives of ‘Plantem’s Nurseries.’
“That one — south aspect and chalk. The nemesias don’t. It’s cross-country — they do dry so. The phloxes came dead. At least they said so: you can’t tell. Oh! Here’s my niece! Dinny, this is Mr. Plantem. He often sends — Oh! . . . ah! Mr. Desert! How d’you do? I remember you holdin’ Michael’s arms up at his weddin’.” She had placed her hand in Wilfrid’s and seemingly forgotten it, the while her eyes from under their raised brows searched his face with a sort of mild surprise.
“Uncle Hilary,” said Dinny.
“Yes,” said Lady Mont, coming to herself. “Hilary, May — Mr. Desert.”
Hilary, of course, was entirely his usual self, but Aunt May looked as if she were greeting a dean. And almost at once Dinny was tacitly abandoned to her lover.
“What do you think of Uncle Hilary?”
“He looks like a man to go to in trouble.”
“He is. He knows by instinct how not to run his head against brick walls, and yet he’s always in action. I suppose that comes of living in a slum. He agrees with Michael that to publish ‘The Leopard’ is a mistake.”
“Running my head against a brick wall — um?”
“Yes.”
“The die, as they say, is cast. Sorry if you’re sorry, Dinny.”
Dinny’s hand sought his. “No. Let’s sail under our proper colours — only, for my sake, Wilfrid, try to take what’s coming quietly, and so will I. Shall we hide behind this firework of fuchsias and slip off? They’ll expect it.”
Once outside the tent they moved towards the Embankment exit, past the rock gardens, each with its builder standing in the damp before it, as though saying: ‘Look on this, and employ me!’
“Making nice things and having to cadge round to get people to notice them!” said Dinny.
“Where shall we go, Dinny?”
“Battersea Park?”
“Across this bridge, then.”
“You were a darling to let me introduce them, but you did so look like a horse trying to back through its collar. I wanted to stroke your neck.”
“I’ve got out of the habit of people.”
“It’s nice not to be dependent on them.”
“The worst mixer in the world. But you, I should have thought —”
“I only want you; I think I must have a nature like a dog’s. Without you, now, I should just be lost.”
The twitch of his mouth was better than an answer.
“Ever seen the Lost Dogs’ Home? It’s over there.”
“No. Lost dogs are dreadful to think about. Perhaps one ought to, though. Yes, let’s!”
The establishment had its usual hospitalised appearance of all being for the best considering that it was the worst. There was a certain amount of barking and of enquiry on the faces of a certain number of dogs. Tails wagged as they approached. Such dogs as were of any breed looked quieter and sadder than the dogs that were of no breed, and those in the majority. A black spaniel was sitting in a corner of the wired enclosure, with head drooped between long ears. They went round to him.
“How on earth,” said Dinny, “can a dog as nice as that stay unclaimed? He IS sad!”
Wilfrid put his fingers through the wire. The dog looked up. They saw a little red under his eyes, and a wisp of hair loose and silky on his forehead. He raised himself slowly from off his haunches, and they could see him pant very slightly as though some calculation or struggle were going on in him.
“Come on, old boy!”
The dog came slowly, all black, foursquare on his feathered legs. He had every sign of breeding, making his forlorn position more mysterious than ever. He stood almost within reach; his shortened tail fluttered feebly, then came to a droop again, precisely as if he had said: ‘I neglect no chance, but you are not.’
“Well, old fellow?” said Wilfrid.
Dinny bent down. “Give me a kiss.”
The dog looked up at them. His tail moved once, and again drooped.
“Not a good mixer, either,” said Wilfrid.
“He’s too sad for words.” She bent lower and this time got her hand through the wire. “Come, darling!” The dog sniffed her glove. Again his tail fluttered feebly; a pink tongue showed for a moment as though to make certain of his lips. With a supreme effort Dinny’s fingers reached his muzzle smooth as silk.
“He’s awfully well bred, Wilfrid.”
“Stolen, I expect, and then got away. Probably from some country kennel.”
“I believe I could hang dog-thieves.”
The dog’s dark-brown eyes had the remains of moisture in their corners. They looked back at Dinny, with suspended animation, as if saying: ‘You are not my past, and I don’t know if there is a future.’
She looked up. “Oh, Wilfrid!”
He nodded and left her with the dog. She stayed stooped on her heels, slowly scratching behind the dog’s ears, till Wilfrid, followed by a man with a chain and collar, came back.
“I’ve got him,” he said; “he reached his time-limit yesterday, but they were keeping him another week because of his looks.”
Dinny turned her back, moisture was oozing from her eyes. She mopped them hastily, and heard the man say:
“I’ll put this on, sir, before he comes out, or he might leg it; he’s never taken to the place.”
Dinny turned round.
“If his owner turns up we’ll give him back at once.”
“Not much chance of that, miss. In my opinion that’s the dog of someone who’s died. He slipped his collar, probably, and went out to find him, got lost, and no one’s cared enough to send here and see. Nice dog, too. You’ve got a bargain. I’m glad. I didn’t like to think of that dog being put away; young dog, too.”
He put the collar on, led the dog out to them, and transferred the chain to Wilfrid, who handed him a card.
“In case the owner turns up. Come on, Dinny; let’s walk him a bit. Walk, boy!”
The nameless dog, hearing the sweetest word in his vocabulary, moved forward to the limit of the chain.
“That theory’s probably right,” said Wilfrid, “and I hope it is. We shall like this fellow.”
Once on grass they tried to get through to the dog’s inner consciousness. He received their attentions patiently, without response, tail and eyes lowered, suspending judgment.
“We’d better get him home,” said Wilfrid. “Stay here, and I’ll bring up a cab.”
He wiped a chair with his handkerchief, transferred the chain to her, and swung away.
Dinny sat watching the dog. He had followed Wilfrid to the limit of the chain and then seated himself in the attitude in which they had first seen him.
What did dogs feel? They certainly put one and one together; loved, disliked, suffered, yearned, sulked, and enjoyed, like human beings; but they had a very small vocabulary and so — no ideas! Still, anything must be better than living in a wire enclosure with a lot of dogs less sensitive than yourself!
The dog came back to her side, but kept his head turned in the direction Wilfrid had taken, and began to whine.
A taxi cab drew up. The dog stopped whining, and began to pant.
“Master’s coming!” The dog gave a tug at the chain.
Wilfrid had reached him. Through the slackened chain she could feel the disillusionment; then it tightened, and the wagging of the tail came fluttering down the links as the dog sniffed at the turn-ups of Wilfrid’s trousers.
In the cab the dog sat on the floor with his chin hanging over Wilfrid’s shoe. In Piccadilly he grew restless and ended with his chin on Dinny’s knee. Between Wilfrid and the dog the drive was an emotional medley for her, and she took a deep breath when she got out.
“Wonder what Stack will say,” said Wilfrid. “A spaniel in Cork Street is no catch.”
The dog took the stairs with composure.
“House-trained,” said Dinny thankfully.
In the sitting-room the dog applied his nose to the carpet. Having decided that the legs of all the furniture were uninteresting and the place bereft of his own kind, he leaned his nose on the divan and looked out of the corners of his eyes.
“Up!” said Dinny. The dog jumped on to the divan.
“Jove! He does smell!” said Wilfrid.
“Let’s give him a bath. While you’re filling it, I’ll look him over.”
She held the dog, who would have followed Wilfrid, and began parting his hair. She found several yellow fleas, but no other breed.
“Yes, you do smell, darling.”
The dog turned his head and licked her nose.
“The bath’s ready, Dinny!”
“Only dog fleas.”
“If you’re going to help, put on that bath gown, or you’ll spoil your dress.”
Behind his back, Dinny slipped off her frock and put on the blue bath gown, half hoping he would turn, and respecting him because he didn’t. She rolled up the sleeves and stood beside him. Poised over the bath, the dog protruded a long tongue.
“He’s not going to be sick, is he?”
“No; they always do that. Gently, Wilfrid, don’t let him splash — that frightens them. Now!”
Lowered into the bath, the dog, after a scramble, stood still with his head drooped, concentrated on keeping foothold of the slippery surface.
“This is hair shampoo, better than nothing. I’ll hold him. You do the rubbing in.”
Pouring some of the shampoo on the centre of that polished black back, Dinny heaped water up the dog’s sides and began to rub. This first domestic incident with Wilfrid was pure joy, involving no mean personal contact with him as well as with the dog. She straightened up at last.
“Phew! My back! Sluice him and let the water out. I’ll hold him.”
Wilfrid sluiced, the dog behaving as if not too sorry for his fleas. He shook himself vigorously, and they both jumped back.
“Don’t let him out,” cried Dinny; “we must dry him in the bath.”
“All right. Put your hands round his neck and hold him still.”
Wrapped in a huge bath towel, the dog lifted his face to her; its expression was drooping and forlorn.
“Poor boy, soon over now, and you’ll smell lovely.”
The dog shook himself.
Wilfrid withdrew the towel. “Hold him a minute, I’ll get an old blanket; we’ll make him curl up till he’s dry.”
Alone with the dog, who was now trying to get out of the bath, Dinny held him with his forepaws over the edge, and worked away at the accumulations of sorrow about his eyes.
“There! That’s better!”
They carried the almost inanimate dog to the divan, wrapped in an old Guards’ blanket.
“What shall we call him, Dinny?”
“Let’s try him with a few names, we may hit on his real one.”
He answered to none. “Well,” said Dinny, “let’s call him ‘Foch.’ But for Foch we should never have met.”
Feelings at Condaford, after the General’s return, were vexed and uneasy. Dinny had said she would be back on Saturday, but it was now Wednesday and she was still in London. Her saying, “We are not formally engaged,” had given little comfort, since the General had added, “That was soft sawder.” Pressed by Lady Cherrell as to what exactly had taken place between him and Wilfrid, he was laconic.
“He hardly said a word, Liz. Polite and all that, and I must say he doesn’t look like a fellow who’d quit. His record’s very good, too. The thing’s inexplicable.”
“Have you read any of his verse, Con?”
“No. Where is it?”
“Dinny has them somewhere. Very bitter. So many writers seem to be like that. But I could put up with anything if I thought Dinny would be happy.”
“Dinny says he’s actually going to publish a poem about that business. He must be a vain chap.”
“Poets almost always are.”
“I don’t know who can move Dinny. Hubert says he’s lost touch with her. To begin married life under a cloud like that!”
“I sometimes think,” murmured Lady Cherrell, “that living here, as we do, we don’t know what will cause clouds and what won’t.”
“There can’t be a question,” said the General, with finality, “among people who count.”
“Who does count, nowadays?”
The General was silent. Then he said shrewdly:
“England’s still aristocratic underneath. All that keeps us going comes from the top. Service and tradition still rule the roost. The socialists can talk as they like.”
Lady Cherrell looked up, astonished at this flow.
“Well,” she said, “what are we to do about Dinny?”
The General shrugged.
“Wait till things come to a crisis of some sort. Cut-you-off-with-a-shilling is out of date and out of question — we’re too fond of her. You’ll speak to her, Liz, when you get a chance, of course . . .”
Between Hubert and Jean discussion of the matter took a rather different line.
“I wish to God, Jean, Dinny had taken to your brother.”
“Alan’s got over it. I had a letter from him yesterday. He’s at Singapore now. There’s probably somebody out there. I only hope it isn’t a married woman. There are so few girls in the East.”
“I don’t think he’d go for a married woman. Possibly a native; they say Malay girls are often pretty.”
Jean grimaced.
“A Malay girl instead of Dinny!”
Presently she murmured: “I’d like to see this Mr. Desert. I think I could give him an idea, Hubert, of what’ll be thought of him if he carries Dinny into this mess.”
“You must be careful with Dinny.”
“If I can have the car I’ll go up tomorrow and talk it over with Fleur. She must know him quite well; he was their best man.”
“I’d choose Michael of the two; but for God’s sake take care, old girl.”
Jean, who was accustomed to carry out her ideas, slid away next day before the world was up and was at South Square, Westminster, by ten o’clock. Michael, it appeared, was down in his constituency.
“The safer his seat,” said Fleur, “the more he thinks he has to see of them. It’s the gratitude complex. What can I do for you?”
Jean slid her long-lashed eyes round from the Fragonard, which she had been contemplating as though it were too French, and Fleur almost jumped. Really, she WAS like a ‘leopardess’!
“It’s about Dinny and her young man, Fleur. I suppose you know what happened to him out there?”
Fleur nodded.
“Then can’t something be done?”
Fleur’s face became watchful. She was twenty-nine, Jean twenty-three; but it was no use coming the elder matron!
“I haven’t seen anything of Wilfrid for a long time.”
“Somebody’s got to tell him pretty sharply what’ll be thought of him if he lugs Dinny into this mess.”
“I’m by no means sure there’ll be a mess; even if his poem comes out. People like the Ajax touch.”
“You’ve not been in the East.”
“Yes, I have; I’ve been round the world.”
“That’s not the same thing at all.”
“My dear,” said Fleur, “excuse my saying so, but the Cherrells are about thirty years behind the times.”
“I’m not a Cherrell.”
“No, you’re a Tasburgh, and, if anything, that’s a little worse. Country rectories, cavalry, navy, Indian civil — how much d’you suppose all that counts nowadays?”
“It counts with those who belong to it; and he belongs to it, and Dinny belongs to it.”
“No one who’s really in love belongs anywhere,” said Fleur. “Did you care two straws when you married Hubert with a murder charge hanging over his head?”
“That’s different. He’d done nothing to be ashamed of.”
Fleur smiled.
“True to type. Would it surprise you, as they say in the courts, if I told you that there isn’t one in twenty people about town who’d do otherwise than yawn if you asked them to condemn Wilfrid for what he did? And there isn’t one in forty who won’t forget all about it in a fortnight.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Jean flatly.
“You don’t know modern Society, my dear.”
“It’s modern Society,” said Jean, even more flatly, “that doesn’t count.”
“Well, I don’t know that it does much; but then what does?”
“Where does he live?”
Fleur laughed.
“In Cork Street, opposite the Gallery. You’re not thinking of bearding him, are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wilfrid can bite.”
“Well,” said Jean, “thanks. I must be going.”
Fleur looked at her with admiration. The girl had flushed, and that pink in her brown cheeks made her look more vivid than ever.
“Well, good-bye, my dear; and do come and tell me about it. I know you’ve the pluck of the devil.”
“I don’t know that I’m going at all,” said Jean. “Good-bye!”
She drove, rather angry, past the House of Commons. Her temperament believed so much in action that Fleur’s worldly wisdom had merely irritated her. Still, it was not so easy as she had thought to go to Wilfrid Desert and say: ‘Stand and deliver me back my sister-inlaw.’ She drove, however, to Pall Mall, parked her car near the Parthen?um, and walked up to Piccadilly. People who saw her, especially men, looked back, because of the admirable grace of her limbs and the colour and light in her face. She had no idea where Cork Street was, except that it was near Bond Street. And, when she reached it, she walked up and down before locating the Gallery. ‘That must be the door, opposite,’ she thought. She was standing uncertainly in front of a door without a name, when a man with a dog on a lead came up the stairs and stood beside her.
“Yes, miss?”
“I am Mrs. Hubert Cherrell. Does Mr. Desert live here?”
“Yes, ma’am; but whether you can see him I don’t know. Here, Foch, good dog! If you’ll wait a minute I’ll find out.”
A minute later Jean, swallowing resolutely, was in the presence. ‘After all,’ she was thinking, ‘he can’t be worse than a parish meeting when you want money from it.’
Wilfrid was standing at the window, with his eyebrows raised.
“I’m Dinny’s sister-inlaw,” said Jean. “I beg your pardon for coming, but I wanted to see you.”
Wilfrid bowed.
“Come here, Foch.”
The spaniel, who was sniffing round Jean’s skirt, did not respond until he was called again. He licked Wilfrid’s hand and sat down behind him. Jean had flushed.
“It’s frightful cheek on my part, but I thought you wouldn’t mind. We’ve just come back from the Soudan.”
Wilfrid’s face remained ironic, and irony always upset her. Not quite stammering, she continued:
“Dinny has never been in the East.”
Again Wilfrid bowed. The affair was not going like a parish meeting.
“Won’t you sit down?” he said.
“Oh, thank you, no; I shan’t be a minute. You see, what I wanted to say was that Dinny can’t possibly realise what certain things mean out there.”
“D’you know, that’s what occurred to me.”
“Oh!”
A minute of silence followed, while the flush on her face and the smile on Wilfrid’s deepened. Then he said:
“Thank you so much for coming. Anything else?”
“Er — no! Good-bye!”
All the way downstairs she felt shorter than she had ever felt in her life. And the first man she passed in the street jumped, her eyes had passed through him like a magnetic shock. He had once been touched by an electric eel in Brazil, and preferred the sensation. Yet, curiously, while she retraced her steps towards her car, though worsted, she bore no grudge. Even more singularly, she had lost most of her feeling that Dinny was in danger.
Regaining her car, she had a slight altercation with a policeman and took the road for Condaford. Driving to the danger of the public all the way, she was home to lunch. All she said of her adventure was that she had been for a long drive. Only in the four-poster of the chief spare room did she say to Hubert:
“I’ve been up and seen him. D’you know, Hubert, I really believe Dinny will be all right. He’s got charm.”
“What on earth,” said Hubert, turning on his elbow, “has that to do with it?”
“A lot,” said Jean. “Give me a kiss, and don’t argue . . .”
When his strange young visitor had gone, Wilfrid flung himself on the divan and stared at the ceiling. He felt like a general who has won a ‘victory’— the more embarrassed. Having lived for thirty-five years, owing to a variety of circumstances, in a condition of marked egoism, he was unaccustomed to the feelings which Dinny from the first had roused within him. The old-fashioned word ‘worship’ was hardly admissible, but no other adequately replaced it. When with her his sensations were so restful and refreshed that when not with her he felt like one who had taken off his soul and hung it up. Alongside this new beatitude was a growing sense that his own happiness would not be complete unless hers was too. She was always telling him that she was only happy in his presence. But that was absurd, he could never replace all the interests and affections of her life before the statue of Foch had made them acquainted. And, if not, for what was he letting her in? The young woman with the eyes, who had just gone, had stood there before him like an incarnation of this question. Though he had routed her, she had left the query printed on the air.
The spaniel, seeing the incorporeal more clearly than his master, was resting a long nose on his knee. Even this dog he owed to Dinny. He had got out of the habit of people. With this business hanging over him, he was quite cut off. If he married Dinny, he took her with him into isolation. Was it fair?
But, having appointed to meet her in half an hour, he rang the bell.
“I’m going out now, Stack.”
“Very good, sir.”
Leading the dog, he made his way to the Park. Opposite the Cavalry Memorial he sat down to wait for her, debating whether he should tell her of his visitor. And just then he saw her coming.
She was walking quickly from Park Lane, and had not yet seen him. She seemed to skim, straight, and — as those blasted novelists called it —‘willowy’! She had a look of spring, and was smiling as if something pleasant had just happened to her. This glimpse of her, all unaware of him, soothed Wilfrid. If she could look so pleased and care-free, surely he need not worry. She halted by the bronze horse which she had dubbed ‘the jibbing barrel,’ evidently looking for him. Though she turned her head so prettily this way and that, her face had become a little anxious. He stood up. She waved her hand and came quickly across the drive.
“Been sitting to Botticelli, Dinny?”
“No — to a pawnbroker. If you ever want one I recommend Frewens of South Molton Street.”
“YOU, at a pawnbroker’s?”
“Yes, darling. I’ve got more money of my own on me than I ever had in my life.”
“What do you want it for?”
Dinny bent and stroked the dog.
“Since I knew you I’ve grasped the real importance of money.”
“And what’s that?”
“Not to be divided from you by the absence of it. The great open spaces are what we want now. Take Foch off the lead, Wilfrid; he’ll follow, I’m sure.”