In a centre of literature such as London, where books come out by the half-dozen almost every day, the advent of a slender volume of poems is commonly of little moment. But circumstances combined to make the appearance of The Leopard, and other Poems a ‘literary event.’ It was Wilfrid’s first production for four years. He was a lonely figure, marked out by the rarity of literary talent among the old aristocracy, by the bitter, lively quality of his earlier poems, by his Eastern sojourn and isolation from literary circles, and finally by the report that he had embraced Islam. Someone, on the appearance of his third volume four years ago, had dubbed him ‘a sucking Byron’; the phrase had caught the ear. Finally, he had a young publisher who understood the art of what he called ‘putting it over.’ During the few weeks since he received Wilfrid’s manuscript, he had been engaged in lunching, dining, and telling people to look out for ‘The Leopard,’ the most sensation-making poem since ‘The Hound of Heaven.’ To the query “Why?” he replied in nods and becks and wreathed smiles. Was it true that young Desert had become a Mussulman? Oh! Yes. Was he in London? Oh! yes, but, of course, the shyest and rarest bird in the literary flock.
He who was Compson Grice Ltd. had from the first perceived that in ‘The Leopard’ he had ‘a winner’— people would not enjoy it, but they would talk about it. He had only to start the snowball rolling down the slope, and when moved by real conviction no one could do this better than he. Three days before the book came out he met Telfourd Yule by a sort of accidental prescience.
“Hallo, Yule, back from Araby?”
“As you see.”
“I say, I’ve got a most amazing book of poems coming out on Monday. The Leopard, by Wilfrid Desert. Like a copy? The first poem’s a corker.”
“Oh!”
“Takes the wind clean out of that poem in Alfred Lyall’s Verses written in India, about the man who died sooner than change his faith. Remember?”
“I do.”
“What’s the truth about Desert taking to Islam?”
“Ask him.”
“That poem’s so personal in feeling — it might be about himself.”
“Indeed?”
And Compson Grice thought, suddenly: ‘If it were! What a stunt!’
“Do you know him, Yule?”
“No.”
“You must read the thing; I couldn’t put it down.”
“Ah!”
“But would a man publish such a thing about his own experience?”
“Can’t say.”
And, still more suddenly, Compson Grice thought: ‘If it were, I could sell a hundred thousand!’
He returned to his office, thinking: ‘Yule was deuced close. I believe I was right, and he knows it. He’s only just back; everything’s known in the bazaars, they say. Now, let’s see, where am I?’
Published at five shillings, on a large sale there would, after royalty paid, be a clear profit of sixpence a copy. A hundred thousand copies would be two thousand five hundred pounds, and about the same in royalties to Desert! By George! But, of course, loyalty to client first! And there came to him one of those inspirations which so often come to loyal people who see money ahead of them.
‘I must draw his attention to the risk of people saying that it’s his own case. I’d better do it the day after publication. In the meantime I’ll put a second big edition in hand.’
On the day before publication, a prominent critic, Mark Hanna, who ran a weekly bell in the Carillon, informed him that he had gone all out for the poem. A younger man, well known for a certain buccaneering spirit, said no word, but wrote a criticism. Both critiques appeared on the day of publication. Compson Grice cut them out and took them with him to the ‘Jessamine’ restaurant, where he had bidden Wilfrid to lunch.
They met at the entrance and passed to a little table at the far end. The room was crowded with people who knew everybody in the literary, dramatic and artistic world. And Compson Grice waited, with the experience of one who had entertained many authors, until a bottle of Mouton Rothschild 1870 had been drunk to its dregs. Then, producing from his pocket the two reviews, he placed that of Mark Hanna before his guest, with the words: “Have you seen this? It’s rather good.”
Wilfrid read it.
The reviewer had indeed gone ‘all out.’ It was almost all confined to The Leopard, which it praised as the most intimate revelation of the human soul in verse since Shelley.
“Bunk! Shelley doesn’t reveal except in his lyrics.”
“Ah! well,” said Compson Grice, “they have to work in Shelley.”
The review acclaimed the poem as “tearing away the last shreds of the hypocritical veil which throughout our literature has shrouded the muse in relation to religion.” It concluded with these words: “This poem, indeed, in its unflinching record of a soul tortured by cruel dilemma, is the most amazing piece of imaginative psychology which has come our way in the twentieth century.”
Watching his guest lay down the cutting, Compson Grice said softly:
“Pretty good! It’s the personal fervour of the thing that gets them.”
Wilfrid gave his queer shiver.
“Got a cigar-cutter?”
Compson Grice pushed one forward with the other review.
“I think you ought to read this in the Daily Phase.”
The review was headed: ‘Defiance: Bolshevism and the Empire.’
Wilfrid took it up.
“Geoffrey Coltham?” he said. “Who’s he?”
The review began with some fairly accurate personal details of the poet’s antecedents, early work and life, ending with the mention of his conversion to Islam. Then, after some favourable remarks about the other poems, it fastened on The Leopard, sprang, as it were, at the creature’s throat, and shook it as a bulldog might. Then, quoting these lines:
‘Into foul ditch each dogma leads.
Cursed be superstitious creeds,
In every driven mind the weeds!
There’s but one liquor for the sane —
Drink deep! Let scepticism reign
And its astringence clear the brain!’
it went on with calculated brutality:
‘The thin disguise assumed by the narrative covers a personal disruptive bitterness which one is tempted to connect with the wounded and overweening pride of one who has failed himself and the British world. Whether Mr. Desert intended in this poem to reveal his own experience and feelings in connection with his conversion to Islam — a faith, by the way, of which, judging from the poor and bitter lines quoted above, he is totally unworthy — we cannot of course say, but we advise him to come into the open and let us know. Since we have in our midst a poet who, with all his undoubted thrust, drives at our entrails, and cuts deep into our religion and our prestige, we have the right to know whether or not he — like his hero — is a renegade.’
“That, I think,” said Compson Grice, quietly, “is libellous.”
Wilfrid looked up at him, so that he said afterwards: “I never knew Desert had such eyes.”
“I AM a renegade. I took conversion at the pistol’s point, and you can let everybody know it.”
Smothering the words: ‘Thank God!’ Compson Grice reached out his hand. But Wilfrid had leaned back and veiled his face in the smoke of his cigar. His publisher moved forward on to the edge of his chair.
“You mean that you want me to send a letter to the Daily Phase to say that The Leopard is practically your own experience?”
“Yes.”
“My dear fellow, I think it’s wonderful of you. That is courage, if you like.”
The smile on Wilfrid’s face caused Compson Grice to sit back, swallow the words: “The effect on the sales will be enormous,” and substitute:
“It will strengthen your position enormously. But I wish we could get back on that fellow.”
“Let him stew!”
“Quite!” said Compson Grice. He was by no means anxious to be embroiled, and have all his authors slated in the important Daily Phase.
Wilfrid rose. “Thanks very much. I must be going.”
Compson Grice watched him leave, his head high and his step slow. ‘Poor devil!’ he thought. ‘It IS a scoop!’
Back in his office, he spent some time finding a line in Colthan’s review which he could isolate from its context and use as advertisement. He finally extracted this: “Daily Phase: ‘No poem in recent years has had such power’” (the remaining words of the sentence he omitted because they were ‘to cut the ground from under the feet of all we stand for’). He then composed a letter to the editor. He was writing — he said — at the request of Mr. Desert, who, far from needing any challenge to come into the open, was only too anxious that everyone should know that The Leopard was indeed founded on his personal experience. For his own part — he went on — he considered that this frank avowal was a more striking instance of courage than could be met with in a long day’s march. He was proud to have been privileged to publish a poem which, in psychological content, quality of workmanship, and direct human interest, was by far the most striking of this generation.
He signed himself “Your obedient servant, Compson Grice.” He then increased the size of the order for the second edition, directed that the words “First edition exhausted; second large impression,” should be ready for use immediately, and went to his club to play bridge.
His club was the Polyglot, and in the hall he ran on Michael. The hair of his erstwhile colleague in the publishing world was ruffled, the ears stood out from his head, and he spoke at once:
“Grice, what are you doing about that young brute Coltham?”
Compson Grice smiled blandly and replied:
“Don’t worry! I showed the review to Desert, and he told me to draw its sting by complete avowal.”
“Good God!”
“Why? Didn’t you know?”
“Yes, I knew, but —”
These words were balm to the ears of Compson Grice, who had been visited by misgiving as to the truth of Wilfrid’s admission. Would a man really publish that poem if it were his own case; could he really want it known? But this was conclusive: Mont had been Desert’s discoverer and closest friend.
“So I’ve written to the Phase and dealt with it.”
“Did Wilfrid tell you to do that?”
“He did.”
“To publish that poem was crazy. ‘Quem deus —’” He suddenly caught sight of the expression on Compson Grice’s face. “Yes,” he added, bitterly, “you think you’ve got a scoop!”
Compson Grice said coldly:
“Whether it will do us harm or good remains to be seen.”
“Bosh!” said Michael. “Everybody will read the thing now, blast them! Have you seen Wilfrid today?”
“He lunched with me.”
“How’s he looking?”
Tempted to say ‘Like Asrael!’ Compson Grice substituted: “Oh! all right — quite calm.”
“Calm as hell! Look here, Grice! If you don’t stand by him and help him all you can through this, I’ll never speak to you again.”
“My dear fellow,” said Compson Grice, with some dignity, “what do you suppose?” And, straightening his waistcoat, he passed into the card room.
Michael, muttering, “Cold-blooded fish!” hurried in the direction of Cork Street. ‘I wonder if the old chap would like to see me,’ he thought.
But at the very mouth of the street he recoiled and made for Mount Street instead. He was informed that both his father and mother were out, but that Miss Dinny had come up that morning from Condaford.
“All right, Blore. If she’s in I’ll find her.”
He went up and opened the drawing-room door quietly. In the alcove, under the cage of her aunt’s parakeet, Dinny was sitting perfectly still and upright, like a little girl at a lesson, with her hands crossed on her lap and her eyes fixed on space. She did not see him till his hand was on her shoulder.
“Penny!”
“How does one learn not to commit murder, Michael?”
“Ah! Poisonous young brute! Have your people seen The Phase?”
Dinny nodded.
“What was the reaction?”
“Silence, pinched lips.”
Michael nodded.
“Poor dear! So you came up?”
“Yes, I’m going to the theatre with Wilfrid.”
“Give him my love, and tell him that if he wants to see me I’ll come at any moment. Oh! and, Dinny, try to make him feel that we admire him for spilling the milk.”
Dinny looked up, and he was moved by the expression on her face.
“It wasn’t all pride that made him, Michael. There’s something egging him on, and I’m afraid of it. Deep down he isn’t sure that it wasn’t just cowardice that made him renounce. I know he can’t get that thought out of his mind. He feels he’s got to prove, not to others so much as to himself, that he isn’t a coward. Oh! I know he isn’t. But so long as he hasn’t proved it to himself and everybody, I don’t know what he might do.”
Michael nodded. From his one interview with Wilfrid he had formed something of the same impression.
“Did you know that he’s told his publisher to make a public admission?”
“Oh!” said Dinny blankly. “What then?”
Michael shrugged.
“Michael, will anyone grasp the situation Wilfrid was in?”
“The imaginative type is rare. I don’t pretend I can grasp it. Can you?”
“Only because it happened to Wilfrid.”
Michael gripped her arm.
“I’m glad you’ve got the old-fashioned complaint, Dinny, not just this modern ‘physiological urge.’”
While Dinny was dressing her aunt came to her room.
“Your uncle read me that article, Dinny. I wonder!”
“What do you wonder, Aunt Em?”
“I knew a Coltham — but he died.”
“This one will probably die, too.”
“Where do you get your boned bodies, Dinny? So restful.”
“Harridge’s.”
“Your uncle says he ought to resign from his club.”
“Wilfrid doesn’t care two straws about his club; he probably hasn’t been in a dozen times. But I don’t think he’ll resign.”
“Better make him.”
“I should never dream of ‘making’ him do anything.”
“So awkward when they use black balls.”
“Auntie, dear, could I come to the glass?”
Lady Mont crossed the room and took up the slim volume from the bedside table.
“The Leopard! But he did change them, Dinny.”
“He did not, Auntie; he had no spots to change.”
“Baptism and that.”
“If baptism really meant anything, it would be an outrage on children till they knew what it was about.”
“Dinny!”
“I mean it. One doesn’t commit people to things entirely without their consent; it isn’t decent. By the time Wilfrid could think at all he had no religion.”
“It wasn’t the givin’ up, then, it was the takin’ on.”
“He knows that.”
“Well,” said Lady Mont, turning towards the door, “I think it served that Arab right; so intrudin’! If you want a latch-key, ask Blore.”
Dinny finished dressing quickly and ran downstairs. Blore was in the dining-room.
“Aunt Em says I may have a key, Blore, and I want a taxi, please.”
Having telephoned to the cab-stand and produced a key, the butler said: “What with her ladyship speaking her thoughts out loud, miss, I’m obliged to know, and I was saying to Sir Lawrence this morning: ‘If Miss Dinny could take him off just now, on a tour of the Scotch Highlands where they don’t see the papers, it would save a lot of vexation.’ In these days, miss, as you’ll have noticed, one thing comes on the top of another, and people haven’t the memories they had. You’ll excuse my mentioning it.”
“Thank you ever so, Blore. Nothing I’d like better; only I’m afraid he wouldn’t think it proper.”
“In these days a young LADY can do anything, miss.”
“But men still have to be careful, Blore.”
“Well, miss, of course, relatives are difficult; but it could be arranged.”
“I think we shall have to face the music.”
The butler shook his head.
“In my belief, whoever said that first is responsible for a lot of unnecessary unpleasantness. Here’s your taxi, miss.”
In the taxi she sat a little forward, getting the air from both windows on her cheeks, which needed cooling. Even the anger and vexation left by that review were lost in this sweeter effervescence. At the corner of Piccadilly she read a newspaper poster: “Derby horses arrive.” The Derby tomorrow! How utterly she had lost count of events! The restaurant chosen for their dinner was Blafard’s in Soho, and her progress was impeded by the traffic of a town on the verge of national holiday. At the door, with the spaniel held on a leash, stood Stack. He handed her a note: “Mr. Desert sent me with this, miss. I brought the dog for a walk.”
Dinny opened the note with a sensation of physical sickness.
“DINNY DARLING,—
“Forgive my failing you to-night. I’ve been in a torture of doubt all day. The fact is, until I know where I stand with the world over this business, I have an overwhelming feeling that I must not commit you to anything; and a public jaunt like this is just what I ought to avoid for you. I suppose you saw The Daily Phase — that is the beginning of the racket. I must go through this next week on my own, and measure up where I am. I won’t run off, and we can write. You’ll understand. The dog is a boon, and I owe him to you. Good-bye for a little, my dear love.
“Your devoted
“W.D.”
It was all she could do not to put her hand on her heart under the driver’s eyes. Thus to be shut away in the heat of the battle was what, she knew now, she had been dreading all along. With an effort she controlled her lips, said “Wait a minute!” and turned to Stack.
“I’ll take you and Foch back.”
“Thank you, miss.”
She bent down to the dog. Panic was at work within her breast! The dog! He was a link between them!
“Put him into the cab, Stack.”
On the way she said quietly:
“Is Mr. Desert in?”
“No, miss, he went out when he gave me the note.”
“Is he all right?”
“A little worried, I think, miss. I must say I’d like to teach manners to that gentleman in The Daily Phase.”
“Oh! you saw that?”
“I did; it oughtn’t to be allowed is what I say.”
“Free speech,” said Dinny. And the dog pressed his chin against her knee. “Is Foch good?”
“No trouble at all, miss. A gentleman, that dog; aren’t you, boy?”
The dog continued to press his chin on Dinny’s knee; and the feel of it was comforting.
When the cab stopped in Cork Street, she took a pencil from her bag, tore off the empty sheet of Wilfrid’s note, and wrote:
“DARLING,—
“As you will. But by these presents know: I am yours for ever and ever. Nothing can or shall divide me from you, unless you stop loving
“Your devoted
“DINNY.
“You won’t do that, will you? Oh! don’t!”
Licking what was left of the gum on the envelope, she put her half sheet in and held it till it stuck. Giving it to Stack, she kissed the dog’s head and said to the driver: “The Park end of Mount Street, please. Good-night, Stack!”
“Good night, miss!”
The eyes and mouth of the motionless henchman seemed to her so full of understanding that she turned her face away. And that was the end of the jaunt she had been so looking forward to.
From the top of Mount Street she crossed into the Park and sat on the seat where she had sat with him before, oblivious of the fact that she was unattached, without a hat, in evening dress, and that it was past eight o’clock. She sat with the collar of her cloak turned up to her chestnut-coloured hair, trying to see his point of view. She saw it very well. Pride! She had enough herself to understand. Not to involve others in one’s troubles was elementary. The fonder one was, the less would one wish to involve them. Curiously ironical how love divided people just when they most needed each other! And no way out, so far as she could see. The strains of the Guards’ band began to reach her faintly. They were playing — Faust?— no — Carmen! Wilfrid’s favourite opera! She got up and walked over the grass towards the sound. What crowds of people! She took a chair some way off and sat down again, close to some rhododendrons. The Habanera! What a shiver its first notes always gave one! How wild, sudden, strange and inescapable was love! ‘L’amour est enfant de Bohème’ . . .! The rhododendrons were late this year. That deep rosy one! They had it at Condaford . . . Where was he — oh! where was he at this moment? Why could not love pierce veils, so that in spirit she might walk beside him, slip a hand into his! A spirit hand was better than nothing! And Dinny suddenly realised loneliness as only true lovers do when they think of life without the loved one. As flowers wilt on their stalks, so would she wilt — if she were cut away from him. “See things through alone!” How long would he want to? For ever? At the thought she started up; and a stroller, who thought the movement meant for him, stood still and looked at her. Her face corrected his impression, and he moved on. She had two hours to kill before she could go in; she could not let them know that her evening had come to grief. The band was finishing off Carmen with the Toreador’s song. A blot on the opera, its most popular tune! No, not a blot, for it was meant, of course, to blare above the desolation of that tragic end, as the world blared around the passion of lovers. The world was a heedless and a heartless stage for lives to strut across, or in dark corners join and cling together . . . How odd that clapping sounded in the open! She looked at her wrist-watch. Half-past nine! An hour yet before it would be really dark. But there was a coolness now, a scent of grass and leaves; the rhododendrons were slowly losing colour, the birds had finished with song. People passed and passed her; she saw nothing funny about them, and they seemed to see nothing funny about her. And Dinny thought: ‘Nothing seems funny any more, and I haven’t had any dinner.’ A coffee stall? Too early, perhaps, but there must be places where she could still get something! No dinner, almost no lunch, no tea — a condition appropriate to the love-sick! She began to move towards Knightsbridge, walking fast, by instinct rather than experience, for this was the first time she had ever wandered alone about London at such an hour. Reaching the gate without adventure, she crossed and went down Sloane Street. She felt much better moving, and chalked up in her mind the thought: ‘For love-sickness, walking!’ In this straight street there was practically nobody to notice her. The carefully closed and blinded houses seemed to confirm, each with its tall formal narrow face, the indifference of the regimented world to the longings of street-walkers such as she. At the corner of the King’s Road a woman was standing.
“Could you tell me,” said Dinny, “of any place close by where I could get something to eat?”
The woman addressed, she now saw, had a short face with high cheek-bones on which, and round the eyes, was a good deal of make-up. Her lips were good-natured, a little thick; her nose, too, rather thick; her eyes had the look which comes of having to be now stony and now luring, as if they had lost touch with her soul. Her dress was dark and fitted her curves, and she wore a large string of artificial pearls. Dinny could not help thinking she had seen people in Society not unlike her.
“There’s a nice little place on the left.”
“Would you care to come and have something with me?” said Dinny, moved by impulse, or by something hungry in the woman’s face.
“Why! I would,” said the woman. “Fact is, I came out without anything. It’s nice to have company, too.” She turned up the King’s Road and Dinny turned alongside. It passed through her mind that if she met someone it would be quaint; but for all that she felt better.
‘For God’s sake,’ she thought, ‘be natural!’
The woman led her into a little restaurant, or rather public-house, for it had a bar. There was no one in the eating-room, which had a separate entrance, and they sat down at a small table with a cruet-stand, a handbell, a bottle of Worcester sauce, and in a vase some failing pyrethrums which had never been fresh. There was a slight smell of vinegar.
“I COULD do with a cigarette,” said the woman.
Dinny had none. She tinkled the bell.
“Any particular sort?”
“Oh! Gaspers.”
A waitress appeared, looked at the woman, looked at Dinny, and said: “Yes?”
“A packet of Players, please. A large coffee for me, strong and fresh, and some cake or buns, or anything. What will you have?”
The woman looked at Dinny, as though measuring her capacity, looked at the waitress, and said, hesitating: “Well, to tell the truth, I’m hungry. Cold beef and a bottle of stout?”
“Vegetables?” said Dinny: “A salad?”
“Well, a salad, thank you.”
“Good! And pickled walnuts? Will you get it all as quickly as you can, please?”
The waitress passed her tongue over her lips, nodded, and went away.
“I say,” said the woman, suddenly, “it’s awful nice of you, you know.”
“It was so friendly of you to come. I should have felt a bit lost without you.”
“SHE can’t make it out,” said the woman, nodding her head towards the vanished waitress. “To tell you the truth, nor can I.”
“Why? We’re both hungry.”
“No doubt about that,” said the woman; “you’re going to see me eat. I’m glad you ordered pickled walnuts, I never can resist a pickled onion, and it don’t do.”
“I might have thought of cocktails,” murmured Dinny, “but perhaps they don’t make them here.”
“A sherry wouldn’t be amiss. I’ll get ’em.” The woman rose and disappeared into the bar.
Dinny took the chance to powder her nose. She also dived her hand down to the pocket in her ‘boned body’ where the spoils of South Molton Street were stored, and extracted a five-pound note. She was feeling a sort of sad excitement.
The woman came back with two glasses. “I told ’em to charge it to our bill. The liquor’s good here.”
Dinny raised her glass and sipped. The woman tossed hers off at a draught.
“I wanted that. Fancy a country where you couldn’t get a drink!”
“But they can, of course, and do.”
“You bet. But they say some of the liquor’s awful.”
Dinny saw that her gaze was travelling up and down her cloak and dress and face with insatiable curiosity.
“Pardon me,” said the woman, suddenly: “You got a date?”
“No, I’m going home after this.”
The woman sighed. “Wish she’d bring those bl-inkin’ cigarettes.”
The waitress reappeared with a bottle of stout and the cigarettes. Staring at Dinny’s hair, she opened the bottle.
“Coo!” said the woman, taking a long draw at her ‘Gasper,’ “I wanted that.”
“I’ll bring you the other things in a minute,” said the waitress.
“I haven’t seen you on the stage, have I?” said the woman.
“No, I’m not on the stage.”
The advent of food broke the ensuing hush. The coffee was better than Dinny had hoped and very hot. She had drunk most of it and eaten a large piece of plum cake before the woman, putting a pickled walnut in her mouth, spoke again.
“D’you live in London?”
“No. In Oxfordshire.”
“Well, I like the country, too; but I never see it now. I was brought up near Maidstone — pretty round there.” She heaved a sigh with a flavouring of stout. “They say the Communists in Russia have done away with vice — isn’t that a scream? An American journalist told me. Well! I never knew a budget make such a difference before,” she continued, expelling smoke as if liberating her soul: “Dreadful lot of unemployment.”
“It does seem to affect everybody.”
“Affects me, I know,” and she stared stonily. “I suppose you’re shocked at that.”
“It takes a lot to shock people nowadays, don’t you find?”
“Well, I don’t mix as a rule with bishops.”
Dinny laughed.
“All the same,” said the woman, defiantly, “I came across a parson who talked the best sense to me I ever heard; of course, I couldn’t follow it.”
“I’ll make you a bet,” said Dinny, “that I know his name. Cherrell?”
“In once,” said the woman, and her eyes grew round.
“He’s my uncle.”
“Coo! Well, well! It’s a funny world! And not so large. Nice man he was,” she added.
“Still is.”
“One of the best.”
Dinny, who had been waiting for those inevitable words, thought: ‘This is where they used to do the “My erring sister” stunt.’
The woman uttered a sigh of repletion.
“I’ve enjoyed that,” she said, and rose. “Thank you ever so. I must be getting on now, or I’ll be late for business.”
Dinny tinkled the bell. The waitress appeared with suspicious promptitude.
“The bill, please, and can you get me THAT changed?”
The waitress took the note with a certain caution.
“I’ll just go and fix myself,” said the woman; “see you in a minute.” She passed through a door.
Dinny drank up the remains of her coffee. She was trying to realise what it must be like to live like that. The waitress came back with the change, received her tip, said “Thank you, miss,” and went. Dinny resumed the process of realisation.
“Well,” said the woman’s voice behind her, “I don’t suppose I’ll ever see you again. But I’d like to say I think you’re a jolly good sort.”
Dinny looked up at her.
“When you said you’d come out without anything, did you mean you hadn’t anything to come out with?”
“Sure thing,” said the woman.
“Then would you mind taking this change? It’s horrid to have no money in London.”
The woman bit her lips, and Dinny could see that they were trembling.
“I wouldn’t like to take your money,” she said, “after you’ve been so kind.”
“Oh! bosh! Please!” And, catching her hand, she pressed the money into it. To her horror, the woman uttered a loud sniff. She was preparing to make a run for the door, when the woman said:
“D’you know what I’m going to do? I’m going home to have a sleep. My God, I am! I’m going home to have a sleep.”
Dinny hurried back to Sloane Street. Walking past the tall blinded houses, she recognised with gratitude that her love-sickness was much better. If she did not walk too fast, she would not be too soon at Mount Street. It was dark now, and in spite of the haze of city light the sky was alive with stars. She did not enter the Park again, but walked along its outside railings. It seemed an immense time since she had parted from Stack and the dog in Cork Street. Traffic was thickening as she rounded into Park Lane. To-morrow all these vehicles would be draining out to Epsom Downs; the Town would be seeming almost empty. And, with a sickening sensation, it flashed on her how empty it would always feel without Wilfrid to see or look forward to.
She came to the gate by the ‘jibbing barrel,’ and suddenly, as though all that evening had been a dream, she saw Wilfrid standing beside it. She choked and ran forward. He put out his arms and caught her to him.
The moment could hardly be prolonged, for cars and pedestrians were passing in and out; so arm-inarm they moved towards Mount Street. Dinny just clung to him, and he seemed equally wordless; but the thought that he had come there to be near her was infinitely comforting.
They escorted each other back and forth past the house, like some footman and housemaid for a quarter of an hour off duty. Class and country, custom and creed, all were forgotten. And, perhaps, no two people in all its seven millions were in those few minutes more moved and at one in the whole of London.
At last the comic instinct woke.
“We can’t see each other home all night, darling. So one kiss — and yet — one kiss — and yet — one kiss!”
She ran up the steps, and turned the key.
Wilfred’s mood when he left his publisher at ‘The Jessamine’ was angry and confused. Without penetrating to the depths of Compson Grice’s mental anatomy, he felt that he had been manipulated; and the whole of that restless afternoon he wandered, swung between relief at having burnt his boats and resentment at the irrevocable. Thus preoccupied, he did not really feel the shock his note would be to Dinny, and only when, returning to his rooms, he received her answer did his heart go out to her, and with it himself to where she had fortuitously found him. In the few minutes while they paraded Mount Street, silent and half-embraced, she had managed to pass into him her feeling that it was not one but two against the world. Why keep away and make her more unhappy than he need? And he sent her a note by Stack next morning asking her to go ‘joy-riding.’ He had forgotten the Derby, and their car was involved almost at once in a stream of vehicles.
“I’ve never seen the Derby,” said Dinny. “Could we go?”
There was the more reason why they should go because there seemed to be no reasonable chance of not going.
Dinny was astonished at the general sobriety. No drinking and no streamers, no donkey-carts, false noses, badinage. Not a four-inhand visible, not a coster nor a Kate; nothing but a wedged and moving stream of motor ‘buses and cars mostly shut.
When, at last, they had ‘parked’ on the Downs, eaten their sandwiches and moved into the crowd, they turned instinctively toward the chance of seeing a horse.
Frith’s “Derby Day” seemed no longer true, if it ever was. In that picture people seemed to have lives and to be living them; in this crowd everybody seemed trying to get somewhere else.
In the paddock, which at first sight still seemed all people and no horses, Wilfrid said suddenly:
“This is foolish, Dinny; we’re certain to be seen.”
“And if we are? Look, there’s a horse!”
Quite a number of horses, indeed, were being led round in a ring. Dinny moved quickly towards them.
“They all look beautiful to me,” she said in a hushed voice, “and just as good one as the other — except this one; I don’t like his back.”
Wilfrid consulted his card. “That’s the favourite.”
“I still don’t. D’you see what I mean? It comes to a point too near the tail, and then droops.”
“I agree, but horses run in all shapes.”
“I’ll back the horse you fancy, Wilfrid.”
“Give me time, then.”
The people to her left and right kept on saying the horses’ names as they passed. She had a place on the rail with Wilfrid standing close behind her.
“He’s a pig of a horse,” said a man on her left, “I’ll never back the brute again.”
She took a glance at the speaker. He was broad and about five feet six, with a roll of fat on his neck, a bowler hat, and a cigar in his mouth. The horse’s fate seemed to her the less dreadful.
A lady sitting on a shooting-stick to her right said:
“They ought to clear the course for the horses going out. That lost me my money two years ago.”
Wilfrid’s hand rested on her shoulder.
“I like that one,” he said, “Blenheim. Let’s go and put our money on.”
They went to where people were standing in little queues before a row of what looked like pigeon-holes.
“Stand here,” he said. “I’ll lay my egg and come back to you.”
Dinny stood watching.
“How d’you do, Miss Cherrell?” A tall man in a grey top-hat, with a very long case of field-glasses slung round him, had halted before her. “We met at the Foch statue and your sister’s wedding — remember?”
“Oh! yes. Mr. Muskham.” Her heart was hurrying, and she restrained herself from looking towards Wilfrid.
“Any news of your sister?”
“Yes, we heard from Egypt. They must have had it terribly hot in the Red Sea.”
“Have you backed anything?”
“Not yet.”
“I shouldn’t touch the favourite — he won’t stay.”
“We thought of Blenheim.”
“Well, nice horse, and handy for the turns. But there’s one more fancied in his stable. I take it you’re a neophyte. I’ll give you two tips, Miss Cherrell. Look for one or both of two things in a horse: leverage behind, and personality — not looks, just personality.”
“Leverage behind? Do you mean higher behind than in front?”
Jack Muskham smiled. “That’s about it. If you see that in a horse, especially where it has to come up a hill, back it.”
“But personality? Do you mean putting his head up and looking over the tops of people into the distance? I saw one horse do that.”
“By Jove, I should like you as a pupil! That’s just about what I do mean.”
“But I don’t know which horse it was,” said Dinny.
“That’s awkward.” And then she saw the interested benevolence on his face stiffen. He lifted his hat and turned away. Wilfrid’s voice behind her said:
“Well, you’ve got a tenner on.”
“Let’s go to the Stand and see the race.” He did not seem to have seen Muskham; and, with his hand within her arm, she tried to forget the sudden stiffening of Jack Muskham’s face. The crowd’s multiple entreaty that she should have her ‘fortune told’ did its best to distract her, and she arrived at the Stand in a mood of indifference to all but Wilfrid and the horses. They found standing room close to the bookmakers near the rails.
“Green and chocolate — I can remember that. Pistache is my favourite-chocolate filling. What shall I win if I do win, darling?”
“Listen!”
They isolated the words “Eighteen to one Blenheim!”
“A hundred and eighty!” said Dinny. “Splendid!”
“Well, it means that he’s not fancied by the stable; they’ve got another running. Here they come! Two with chocolate and green. The second of them is ours.”
The parade, enchanting to all except the horses, gave her the chance to see the brown horse they had backed adorning its perched rider.
“How d’you like him, Dinny?”
“I love them nearly all. How can people tell which is the best by looking at them?”
“They can’t.”
The horses were turning now and cantering past the Stand.
“Would you say Blenheim is higher behind than in front?” murmured Dinny.
“No. Very nice action. Why?”
But she only pressed his arm and gave a little shiver.
Neither of them having glasses, all was obscure to them when the race began. A man just behind kept saying: “The favourite’s leadin’! The favourite’s leadin’!”
As the horses came round Tattenham Corner, the same man burbled: “The Pasha — the Pasha’ll win — no, the favourite — the favourite wins!— no, he don’t — Iliad — Iliad wins.”
Dinny felt Wilfrid’s hand grip her arm.
“Ours,” he said, “on this side — look!”
Dinny saw a horse on the far side in pink and brown, and nearer her the chocolate and green. It was ahead, it was ahead! They had won!
Amidst the silence and discomfiture those two stood smiling at each other. It seemed an omen!
“I’ll draw your money, and we’ll go to the car and be off.”
He insisted on her taking all the money, and she ensconced it with her other wealth — so much more insurance against any sudden decision to deprive her of himself.
They drove again into Richmond Park on the way home, and sat a long time among the young bracken, listening to the cuckoos, very happy in the sunny, peaceful, whispering afternoon.
They dined together in a Kensington restaurant, and he left her finally at the top of Mount Street.
That night she slept unvisited by doubts or dreams, and went down to breakfast with clear eyes and a flush of sunburn on her cheeks. Her uncle was reading The Daily Phase. He put it down and said:
“When you’ve had your coffee, Dinny, you might glance at this. There is something about publishers,” he added, “which makes one doubt sometimes whether they are men and brothers. And there is something about editors which makes it certain sometimes that they are not.”
Dinny read Compson Grice’s letter, printed under the headlines:
“MR. DESERT’S APOSTASY.
OUR CHALLENGE TAKEN UP.
A CONFESSION.”
Two stanzas from Sir Alfred Lyall’s poem Theology in Extremis followed:
“Why? Am I bidding for glory’s roll?
I shall be murdered and clean forgot;
Is it a bargain to save my soul?
God, whom I trust in, bargains not.
Yet for the honour of English race
May I not live or endure disgrace . . .
“I must be gone to the crowd untold
Of men by the Cause which they served unknown,
Who moulder in myriad graves of old;
Never a story and never a stone
Tells of the martyrs who die like me,
Just for the pride of the old countree.”
And the pink of sunburn gave way to a flood of crimson.
“Yes,” murmured Sir Lawrence, watching her, “‘the fat is in the fire,’ as old Forsyte would have said. Still, I was talking to a man last night who thought that nowadays nothing makes an indelible mark. Cheating at cards, boning necklaces — you go abroad for two years and it’s all forgotten. As for sex abnormality, according to him it’s no longer abnormal. So we must cheer up!”
Dinny said passionately: “What I resent is that any worm will have the power to say what he pleases.”
Sir Lawrence nodded: “The greater the worm, the greater the power. But it’s not the worms we need bother about; it’s the people with ‘pride of English race,’ and there are still a few about.”
“Uncle, is there any way in which Wilfrid can show publicly that he’s not a coward?”
“He did well in the war.”
“Who remembers the war?”
“Perhaps,” muttered Sir Lawrence, “we could throw a bomb at his car in Piccadilly, so that he could look at it over the side and light a cigarette. I can’t think of anything more helpful.”
“I saw Mr. Muskham yesterday.”
“Then you were at the Derby?” He took a very little cigar from his pocket. “Jack takes the view that you are being victimised.”
“Oh! Why can’t people leave one alone?”
“Attractive nymphs are never left alone. Jack’s a misogynist.”
Dinny gave a little desperate laugh.
“I suppose one’s troubles ARE funny.”
She got up and went to the window. It seemed to her that all the world was barking, like dogs at a cornered cat, and yet there was nothing in Mount Street but a van from the Express Dairy.
Jack Muskham occupied a bedroom at Burton’s Club when racing kept him overnight in town. Having read an account of the Derby in The Daily Phase, he turned the paper idly. The other features in ‘that rag’ were commonly of little interest to him. Its editing shocked his formalism, its news jarred his taste, its politics offended him by being so like his own. But his perusal was not perfunctory enough to prevent him from seeing the headline ‘Mr. Desert’s Apostasy.’ Reading the half column that followed it, he pushed the paper away and said: “That fellow must be stopped.”
Glorying in his yellow streak, was he, and taking that nice girl with him to Coventry! Hadn’t even the decency to avoid being seen with her in public on the very day when he was confessing himself as yellow as that rag!
In an age when tolerations and condonations seemed almost a disease, Jack Muskham knew and registered his own mind. He had disliked young Desert at first sight. The fellow’s name suited him! And to think that this nice girl, who, without any training, had made those shrewd remarks about the racehorse, was to have her life ruined by this yellow-livered young braggart! It was too much! If it hadn’t been for Lawrence, indeed, he would have done something about it before now. But there his mind stammered. What? . . . Here was the fellow publicly confessing his disgrace! An old dodge, that — taking the sting out of criticism! Making a virtue of necessity! Parading his desertion! That cock shouldn’t fight, if he had his way! But once more his mind stammered . . . No outsider could interfere. And yet, unless there were some outward and visible sign condemning the fellow’s conduct, it would look as if nobody cared.
‘By George!’ he thought. ‘This Club, at least, can sit up and take notice. We don’t want rats in Burton’s!’
He brought the matter up in Committee meeting that very afternoon, and was astonished almost to consternation by the apathy with which it was received. Of the seven members present —‘the Squire,’ Wilfrid Bentworth, being in the Chair — four seemed to think it was a matter between young Desert and his conscience, and, besides, it looked like being a newspaper stunt. Times had changed since Lyall wrote that poem. One member went so far as to say he didn’t want to be bothered, he hadn’t read The Leopard, he didn’t know Desert, and he hated The Daily Phase.
“So do I,” said Jack Muskham, “but here’s the poem.” He had sent out for it and spent an hour after lunch reading it. “Let me read you a bit. It’s poisonous.”
“For heaven’s sake no, Jack!”
The fifth member, who had so far said nothing, supposed that if Muskham pressed it they must all read the thing.
“I do press it.”
‘The Squire,’ hitherto square and silent, remarked: “The secretary will get copies and send them round to the Committee. Better send them, too, a copy of today’s Daily Phase. We’ll discuss it at the meeting next Friday. Now about this claret?” And they moved to consideration of important matters.
It has been noticed that when a newspaper of a certain type lights on an incident which enables it at once to exhibit virtue and beat the drum of its own policy, it will exploit that incident, within the limits of the law of libel, without regard to the susceptibilities of individuals. Secured by the confession in Compson Grice’s letter, The Daily Phase made the most of its opportunity, and in the eight days intervening before the next Committee meeting gave the Committeemen little chance of professing ignorance or indifference. Everybody, indeed, was reading and talking about The Leopard and, on the morning of the adjourned meeting, The Daily Phase had a long allusive column on the extreme importance of British behaviour in the East. It had also a large-type advertisement. “The Leopard and other Poems, by Wilfrid Desert: published by Compson Grice: 40,000 copies sold: Third Large Impression ready.”
A debate on the ostracism of a fellow-being will bring almost any man to a Committee meeting; and the attendance included some never before known to come.
A motion had been framed by Jack Muskham.
“That the Honourable Wilfrid Desert be requested, under Rule 23, to resign his membership of Burton’s Club, because of conduct unbecoming to a member.”
He opened the discussion in these words:
“You’ve all had copies of Desert’s poem The Leopard and The Daily Phase of yesterday week. There’s no doubt about the thing. Desert has publicly owned to having ratted from his religion at the pistol’s point, and I say he’s no longer fit to be a member of this Club. It was founded in memory of a very great traveller who’d have dared Hell itself. We don’t want people here who don’t act up to English traditions, and make a song about it into the bargain.”
There was a short silence, and then the fifth member of the Committee at the previous meeting remarked:
“It’s a deuced fine poem, all the same.”
A well-known K.C., who had once travelled in Turkey, added:
“Oughtn’t he to have been asked to attend?”
“Why?” asked Jack Muskham. “He can’t say more than is said in that poem, or in that letter of his publisher’s.”
The fourth member of the Committee at the previous meeting muttered: “I don’t like paying attention to The Daily Phase.”
“We can’t help his having chosen that particular rag,” said Jack Muskham.
“Very distasteful,” continued the fourth member, “diving into matters of conscience. Are we all prepared to say we wouldn’t have done the same?”
There was a sound as of feet shuffling, and a wrinkled expert on the early civilisations of Ceylon murmured: “To my mind, Desert is on the carpet — not for apostasy, but for the song he’s made about it. Decency should have kept him quiet. Advertising his book! It’s in a third edition, and everybody reading it. Making money out of it seems to me the limit.”
“I don’t suppose,” said the fourth member, “that he thought of that. It’s the accident of the sensation.”
“He could have withdrawn the book.”
“Depends on his contract. Besides, that would look like running from the storm he’s roused. As a matter of fact, I think it’s rather fine to have made an open confession.”
“Theatrical!” murmured the K.C.
“If this,” said Jack Muskham, “were one of the Service Clubs, they wouldn’t think twice about it.”
An author of Mexico Revisited said drily:
“But it is not.”
“I don’t know if you can judge poets like other people,” mused the fifth member.
“In matters of ordinary conduct,” said the expert on the civilisation of Ceylon, “why not?”
A little man at the end of the table opposite the Chairman remarked, “The D-d-daily Ph-Phase,” as if releasing a small spasm of wind.
“Everybody’s talking about the thing,” said the K.C.
“My young people,” put in a man who had not yet spoken, “scoff. They say: ‘What does it matter what he did?’ They talk about hypocrisy, laugh at Lyall’s poem, and say it’s good for the Empire to have some wind let out of it.”
“Exactly!” said Jack Muskham: “That’s the modern jargon. All standards gone by the board. Are we going to stand for that?”
“Anybody here know young Desert?” asked the fifth member.
“To nod to,” replied Jack Muskham.
Nobody else acknowledged acquaintanceship.
A very dark man with deep lively eyes said suddenly:
“All I can say is I trust the story has not got about in Afghanistan; I’m going there next month.”
“Why?” said the fourth member.
“Merely because it will add to the contempt with which I shall be regarded, anyway.”
Coming from a well-known traveller, this remark made more impression than anything said so far. Two members, who, with the Chairman, had not yet spoken, said simultaneously: “Quite!”
“I don’t like condemning a man unheard,” said the K.C.
“What about that, ‘Squire’?” asked the fourth member.
The Chairman, who was smoking a pipe, took it from his mouth.
“Anybody anything more to say?”
“Yes,” said the author of Mexico Revisited, “let’s put it on his conduct in publishing that poem.”
“You can’t,” growled Jack Muskham; “the whole thing’s of a piece. The point is simply: Is he fit to be a member here or not? I ask the Chairman to put that to the meeting.”
But the ‘Squire’ continued to smoke his pipe. His experience of Committees told him that the time was not yet. Separate or ‘knot’ discussions would now set in. They led nowhere, of course, but ministered to a general sense that the subject was having justice done to it.
Jack Muskham sat silent, his long face impassive and his long legs stretched out. The discussion continued.
“Well?” said the member who had revisited Mexico, at last.
The ‘Squire’ tapped out his pipe.
“I think,” he said, “that Mr. Desert should be asked to give us his reasons for publishing that poem.”
“Hear, hear!” said the K.C.
“Quite!” said the two members who had said it before.
“I agree,” said the authority on Ceylon.
“Anybody against that?” said the ‘Squire.’
“I don’t see the use of it,” muttered Jack Muskham. “He ratted, and he’s confessed it.”
No one else objecting, the ‘Squire’ continued:
“The Secretary will ask him to see us and explain. There’s no other business, gentlemen.”
In spite of the general understanding that the matter was sub judice, these proceedings were confided to Sir Lawrence before the day was out by three members of the Committee, including Jack Muskham. He took the knowledge out with him to dinner at South Street.
Since the publication of the poems and Compson Grice’s letter, Michael and Fleur had talked of little else, forced to by the comments and questionings of practically every acquaintance. They differed radically. Michael, originally averse to publication of the poem, now that it was out, stoutly defended the honesty and courage of Wilfrid’s avowal. Fleur could not forgive what she called the ‘stupidity of the whole thing.’ If he had only kept quiet and not indulged his conscience or his pride, the matter would have blown over, leaving practically no mark. It was, she said, unfair to Dinny, and unnecessary so far as Wilfrid himself was concerned; but of course he had always been like that. She had not forgotten the uncompromising way in which eight years ago he had asked her to become his mistress, and the still more uncompromising way in which he had fled from her when she had not complied. When Sir Lawrence told them of the meeting at Burton’s, she said simply:
“Well, what could he expect?”
Michael muttered:
“Why is Jack Muskham so bitter?”
“Some dogs attack each other at sight. Others come to it more meditatively. This appears to be a case of both. I should say Dinny is the bone.”
Fleur laughed.
“Jack Muskham and Dinny!”
“Sub-consciously, my dear. The workings of a misogynist’s mind are not for us to pry into, except in Vienna. They can tell you everything there; even to the origin of hiccoughs.”
“I doubt if Wilfrid will go before the Committee,” said Michael, gloomily. Fleur confirmed him.
“Of course he won’t, Michael.”
“Then what will happen?”
“Almost certainly he’ll be expelled under rule whatever it is.”
Michael shrugged. “He won’t care. What’s a Club more or less?”
“No,” said Fleur; “but at present the thing is in flux — people just talk about it; but expulsion from his Club will be definite condemnation. It’s just what’s wanted to make opinion line up against him.”
“And FOR him.”
“Oh! for him, yes; but we know what that amounts to — the disgruntled.”
“That’s all beside the point,” said Michael gruffly. “I know what he’s feeling: his first instinct was to defy that Arab, and he bitterly regrets that he went back on it.”
Sir Lawrence nodded.
“Dinny asked me if there was anything he could do to show publicly that he wasn’t a coward. You’d think there might be, but it’s not easy. People object to be put into positions of extreme danger in order that their rescuers may get into the papers. Van horses seldom run away in Piccadilly. He might throw someone off Westminster Bridge, and jump in after him; but that would merely be murder and suicide. Curious that, with all the heroism there is about, it should be so difficult to be deliberately heroic.”
“He ought to face the Committee,” said Michael; “and I hope he will. There’s something he told me. It sounds silly; but, knowing Wilfrid, one can see it made all the difference.”
Fleur had planted her elbows on the polished table and her chin on her hands. So, leaning forward, she looked like the girl contemplating a china image in her father’s picture by Alfred Stevens.
“Well?” she said. “What is it?”
“He said he felt sorry for his executioner.”
Neither his wife nor his father moved, except for a slight raising of the eyebrows. He went on defiantly:
“Of course, it sounds absurd, but he said the fellow begged him not to make him shoot — he was under a vow to convert the infidel.”
“To mention that to the Committee,” Sir Lawrence said slowly, “would certainly be telling it to the marines.”
“He’s not likely to,” said Fleur; “he’d rather die than be laughed at.”
“Exactly! I only mentioned it to show that the whole thing’s not so simple as it appears to the pukka sahib.”
“When,” murmured Sir Lawrence, in a detached voice, “have I heard anything so nicely ironical? But all this is not helping Dinny.”
“I think I’ll go and see him again,” said Michael.
“The simplest thing,” said Fleur, “is for him to resign at once.”
And with that common-sense conclusion the discussion closed.
Those who love, when the object of their love is in trouble, must keep sympathy to themselves and yet show it. Dinny did not find this easy. She watched, lynx-eyed, for any chance to assuage her lover’s bitterness of soul; but though they continued to meet daily, he gave her none. Except for the expression of his face when he was off guard, he might have been quite untouched by tragedy. Throughout that fortnight after the Derby she came to his rooms, and they went joy-riding, accompanied by the spaniel Foch; and he never mentioned that of which all more or less literary and official London was talking. Through Sir Lawrence, however, she heard that he had been asked to meet the Committee of Burton’s Club and had answered by resignation. And, through Michael, who had been to see him again, she heard that he knew of Jack Muskham’s part in the affair. Since he so rigidly refused to open out to her, she, at great cost, tried to surpass him in obliviousness of purgatory. His face often made her ache, but she kept that ache out of her own face. And all the time she was in bitter doubt whether she was right to refrain from trying to break through to him. It was a long and terrible lesson in the truth that not even real love can reach and anoint deep spiritual sores. The other half of her trouble, the unending quiet pressure of her family’s sorrowful alarm, caused her an irritation of which she was ashamed.
And then occurred an incident which, however unpleasant and alarming at the moment, was almost a relief because it broke up that silence.
They had been to the Tate Gallery and, walking home, had just come up the steps leading to Carlton House Terrace. Dinny was still talking about the pre-Raphaelites, and saw nothing till Wilfrid’s changed expression made her look for the cause. There was Jack Muskham, with a blank face, formally lifting a tall hat as if to someone who was not there, and a short dark man removing a grey felt covering, in unison. They passed, and she heard Muskham say:
“That I consider the limit.”
Instinctively her hand went out to grasp Wilfrid’s arm, but too late. He had spun round in his tracks. She saw him, three yards away, tap Muskham on the shoulder, and the two face each other, with the little man looking up at them like a terrier at two large dogs about to fight. She heard Wilfrid say in a low voice:
“What a coward and cad you are!”
There followed an endless silence, while her eyes flitted from Wilfrid’s convulsed face to Muskham’s, rigid and menacing, and the terrier man’s black eyes snapping up at them. She heard him say: “Come on, Jack!” saw a tremor pass through the length of Muskham’s figure, his hands clench, his lips move:
“You heard that, Yule?”
The little man’s hand, pushed under his arm, pulled at him; the tall figure turned; the two moved away; and Wilfrid was back at her side.
“Coward and cad!” he muttered: “Coward and cad! Thank God I’ve told him!” He threw up his head, took a gulp of air, and said: “That’s better! Sorry, Dinny!”
In Dinny feeling was too churned up for speech. The moment had been so savagely primitive; and she had the horrid fear that it could not end there; an intuition, too, that she was the cause, the hidden reason of Muskham’s virulence. She remembered Sir Lawrence’s words: “Jack thinks you are being victimised.” What if she were! What business was it of that long, lounging man who hated women! Absurd! She heard Wilfrid muttering:
“‘The limit!’ He might know what one feels!”
“But, darling, if we all knew what other people felt, we should be seraphim, and he’s only a member of the Jockey Club.”
“He’s done his best to get me outed, and he couldn’t even refrain from THAT.”
“It’s I who ought to be angry, not you. It’s I who force you to go about with me. Only, you see, I like it so. But, darling, I don’t shrink in the wash. What IS the use of my being your love if you won’t let yourself go with me?”
“Why should I worry you with what can’t be cured?”
“I exist to be worried by you. PLEASE worry me!”
“Oh! Dinny, you’re an angel!”
“I repeat it is not so. I really have blood in my veins.”
“It’s like ear-ache; you shake your head, and shake your head, and it’s no good. I thought publishing The Leopard would free me, but it hasn’t. Am I ‘yellow,’ Dinny — am I?”
“If you were yellow I should not have loved you.”
“Oh! I don’t know. Women can love anything.”
“Proverbially we admire courage before all. I’m going to be brutal. Has doubt of your courage anything to do with your ache? Isn’t it just due to feeling that other people doubt?”
He gave a little unhappy laugh. “I don’t know; I only know it’s there.”
Dinny looked up at him.
“Oh! darling, don’t ache! I do so hate it for you.”
They stood for a moment looking deeply at each other, and a vendor of matches, without the money to indulge in spiritual trouble, said:
“Box o’ lights, sir?” . . .
Though she had been closer to Wilfrid that afternoon than perhaps ever before, Dinny returned to Mount Street oppressed by fears. She could not get the look on Muskham’s face out of her head, nor the sound of his: “You heard that, Yule?”
It was silly! Out of such explosive encounters nothing but legal remedies came nowadays; and of all people she had ever seen, she could least connect Jack Muskham with the Law. She noticed a hat in the hall, and heard voices, as she was passing her uncle’s study. She had barely taken off her own hat when he sent for her. He was talking to the little terrier man, who was perched astride of a chair, as if riding a race.
“Dinny, Mr. Telfourd Yule; my niece Dinny Cherrell.”
The little man bowed over her hand.
“Yule has been telling me,” said Sir Lawrence, “of that encounter. He’s not easy in his mind.”
“Neither am I,” said Dinny.
“I’m sure Jack didn’t mean those words to be heard, Miss Cherrell.”
“I don’t agree; I think he did.”
Yule shrugged. The expression on his face was rueful, and Dinny liked its comical ugliness.
“Well, he certainly didn’t mean YOU to hear them.”
“He ought to have, then. Mr. Desert would prefer not to be seen with me in public. It’s I who make him.”
“I came to your Uncle because when Jack won’t talk about a thing, it’s serious. I’ve known him a long time.”
Dinny stood silent. The flush on her cheeks had dwindled to two red spots. And the two men stared at her, thinking, perhaps, that, with her cornflower-blue eyes, slenderness, and that hair, she looked unsuited to the matter in hand. She said quietly: “What can I do, Uncle Lawrence?”
“I don’t see, my dear, what anyone can do at the moment. Mr. Yule says that he left Jack going back to Royston. I thought possibly I might take you down to see him tomorrow. He’s a queer fellow; if he didn’t date so, I shouldn’t worry. Such things blow over, as a rule.”
Dinny controlled a sudden disposition to tremble.
“What do you mean by ‘date’?”
Sir Lawrence looked at Yule and said: “We don’t want to seem absurd. There’s been no duel fought between Englishmen, so far as I know, for seventy or eighty years; but Jack is a survival. We don’t quite know what to think. Horse-play is not in his line; neither is a law court. And yet we can’t see him taking no further notice.”
“I suppose,” said Dinny, with spirit, “he won’t see, on reflection, that he’s more to blame than Wilfrid?”
“No,” said Yule, “he won’t. Believe me, Miss Cherrell, I am deeply sorry about the whole business.”
Dinny bowed. “I think it was very nice of you to come; thank you!”
“I suppose,” said Sir Lawrence, doubtfully, “you couldn’t get Desert to send him an apology?”
‘So THAT,’ she thought, ‘is what they wanted me for.’ “No, Uncle, I couldn’t — I couldn’t even ask him. I’m quite sure he wouldn’t.”
“I see,” said Sir Lawrence glumly.
Bowing to Yule, Dinny turned towards the door. In the hall she seemed to be seeing through the wall behind her the renewed shrugging of their shoulders, the ruefulness on their glum faces, and she went up to her room. Apology! Thinking of Wilfrid’s badgered, tortured face, the very idea of it offended her. Stricken to the quick already on the score of personal courage, it was the last thing he would dream of. She wandered unhappily about her room, then took out his photograph. The face she loved looked back at her with the sceptical indifference of an effigy. Wilful, sudden, proud, self-centred, deeply dual; but cruel, no, and cowardly — NO!
‘Oh! my darling!’ she thought, and put it away.
She went to her window and leaned out. A beautiful evening — the Friday of Ascot week, the first of those two weeks when in England fine weather is almost certain! On Wednesday there had been a deluge, but today had the feel of real high summer. Down below a taxi drew up — her Uncle and Aunt were going out to dinner. There they came, with Blore putting them in and standing to look after them. Now the staff would turn on the wireless. Yes! Here it was! She opened her door. Grand opera! Rigoletto! The twittering of those tarnished melodies came up to her in all the bravura of an age which knew better than this, it seemed, how to express the emotions of wayward hearts.
The gong! She did not want to go down and eat, but she must, or Blore and Augustine would be upset. She washed hastily, compromised with her dress, and went down.
But while she ate she grew more restless, as if sitting still and attending to a single function were sharpening the edge of her anxiety. A duel! Fantastic, in these days! And yet — Uncle Lawrence was uncanny, and Wilfrid in just the mood to do anything to show himself unafraid. Were duels illegal in France? Thank heaven she had all that money. No! It was absurd! People had called each other names with impunity for nearly a century. No good to fuss; tomorrow she would go with Uncle Lawrence and see that man. It was all, in some strange way, on her account. What would one of her own people do if called a coward and a cad — her father, her brother, Uncle Adrian? What COULD they do? Horsewhips, fists, law courts — all such hopeless, coarse, ugly remedies! And she felt for the first time that Wilfrid had been wrong to use such words. Ah! But was he not entitled to hit back? Yes, indeed! She could see again his head jerked up and hear his: ‘Ah! That’s better!’
Swallowing down her coffee, she got up and sought the drawing-room. On the sofa was her Aunt’s embroidery thrown down, and she gazed at it with a feeble interest. An intricate old French design needing many coloured wools — grey rabbits looking archly over their shoulders at long, curious, yellow dogs seated on yellower haunches, with red eyes and tongues hanging out; leaves and flowers, too, and here and there a bird, all set in a background of brown wool. Tens of thousands of stitches, which, when finished, would lie under glass on a little table, and last till they were all dead and no one knew who had wrought them. “Tout lasse, tout passe! The strains of Rigoletto still came floating from the basement. Really Augustine must have drama in her soul, to be listening to a whole opera.
“La Donna è mobile!”
Dinny took up her book, the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson; a tome in which no one kept any faith to speak of except the authoress, and she only in her own estimation; a loose, bright, engaging, conceited minx, with a good heart and one real romance among a peck of love affairs.
“La Donna è mobile!” It came mocking up the stairs, fine and free, as if the tenor had reached his Mecca. Mobile! No! That was more true of men than of women! Women did not change. One loved — one lost, perhaps! She sat with closed eyes till the last notes of that last act had died away, then went up to bed. She passed a night broken by dreams, and was awakened by a voice saying:
“Someone on the telephone for you, Miss Dinny.”
“For me? Why! What time is it?”
“Half-past seven, miss.”
She sat up startled.
“Who is it?”
“No name, miss; but he wants to speak to you special.”
With the thought ‘Wilfrid!’ she jumped up, put on a dressing-gown and slippers, and ran down.
“Yes. Who is it?”
“Stack, miss. I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but I thought it best. Mr. Desert, miss, went to bed as usual last night, but this morning the dog was whining in his room, and I went in, and I see he’s not been in bed at all. He must have gone out very early, because I’ve been about since half-past six. I shouldn’t have disturbed you, miss, only I didn’t like the look of him last night . . . Can you hear me, miss?”
“Yes. Has he taken any clothes or anything?”
“No, miss.”
“Did anybody come to see him last night?”
“No, miss. But a letter came by hand about half-past nine. I noticed him distraight, miss, when I took the whisky in. Perhaps it’s nothing, but being so sudden, I . . . Can you hear me, miss?”
“Yes. I’ll dress at once and come round. Stack, can you get me a taxi, or, better, a car, by the time I’m there?”
“I’ll get a car, miss.”
“Is there any service to the Continent he could have caught?”
“Nothing before nine o’clock.”
“I’ll be round as quick as I can.”
“Yes, miss. Don’t you worry, miss; he might be wanting exercise or something.”
Dinny replaced the receiver and flew upstairs.
Wilfred’s taxi-cab, whose tank he had caused to be filled to the brim, ground slowly up Haverstock Hill towards the Spaniard’s Road. He looked at his watch. Forty miles to Royston — even in this growler he would be there by nine! He took out a letter and read it through once more.
“Liverpool Street Station.
“Friday.
“SIR,
“You will agree that the matter of this afternoon cannot rest there. Since the Law denies one decent satisfaction, I give you due notice that I shall horsewhip you publicly whenever and wherever I first find you unprotected by the presence of a lady.
“Yours faithfully,
“J. MUSKHAM.
“The Briery, Royston.”
‘Whenever and wherever I first find you unprotected by the presence of a lady!’ That would be sooner than the swine thought! A pity the fellow was so much older than himself.
The cab had reached the top now, and was speeding along the lonely Spaniard’s Road. In the early glistening morning the view was worth a poet’s notice, but Wilfrid lay back in the cab, unseeing, consumed by his thoughts. Something to hit at. This chap, at any rate, should no longer sneer at him! He had no plan except to be publicly on hand at the first possible moment after reading those words: “Unprotected by the presence of a lady!” Taken as sheltering behind a petticoat? Pity it was not a real duel! The duels of literature jig-sawed in his brain — Bel Ami, Bazarov, Dr. Slammer, Sir Lucius O’Trigger, D’Artagnan, Sir Toby, Winkle — all those creatures of fancy who had endeared the duel to readers. Duels and runs on banks, those two jewels in the crown of drama — gone! Well, he had shaved — with cold water!— and dressed with as much care as if he were not going to a vulgar brawl. The dandified Jack Muskham and a scene of low violence! Very amusing! The cab ground and whirred its way on through the thin early traffic of market and milk carts; and Wilfrid sat drowsing after his almost sleepless night. Barnet he passed, and Hatfield, and the confines of Welwyn Garden City, then Knebworth, and the long villages of Stevenage, Graveley and Baldock. Houses and trees seemed touched by unreality in the fine haze. Postmen, and maids on doorsteps, boys riding farm horses, and now and then an early cyclist, alone inhabited the outdoor world. And, with that wry smile on his lips and his eyes half closed, he lay back, his feet pressed against the seat opposite. He had not to stage the scene, nor open the brawl. He had but to deliver himself, as it were registered, so that he could not be missed.
The cab slowed up.
“We’re gettin’ near Royston, governor; where d’you want to go?”
“Pull up at the inn.”
The cab resumed its progress. The morning light hardened. All, now, was positive, away to the round, high-lying clumps of beeches. On the grassy slope to his right he saw a string of sheeted race-horses moving slowly back from exercise. The cab entered a long village street, and near its end stopped at an hotel. Wilfrid got out.
“Garage your cab. I’ll want you to take me back.”
“Right, governor.”
He went in and asked for breakfast. Just nine o’clock! While eating he enquired of the waiter where the Briery was.
“It’s the long low ’ouse lying back on the right, sir; but if you want Mr. Muskham, you’ve only to stand in the street outside ’ere. ‘E’ll be passing on his pony at five past ten; you can set your watch by him going to his stud farm when there’s no racing.”
“Thank you, that will save me trouble.”
At five minutes before ten, smoking a cigarette, he took his position at the hotel gate. Girt-in, and with that smile, he stood motionless, and through his mind passed and repassed the scene between Tom Sawyer and the boy in the too-good clothes, walking round each other with an elaborate ritual of insults before the whirlwind of their encounter. There would be no ritual today! ‘If I can lay him out,’ he thought, ‘I will!’ His hands, concealed in the pockets of his jacket, kept turning into fists; otherwise he stood, still as the gatepost against which he leaned, his face veiled in the thin fume rising from his cigarette. He noticed with satisfaction his cabman talking to another chauffeur outside the yard, a man up the street opposite cleaning windows, and a butcher’s cart. Muskham could not pretend this was not a public occasion. If they had neither of them boxed since schooldays, the thing would be a crude mix-up; all the more chance of hurting or being hurt! The sun topped some trees on the far side and shone on his face. He moved a pace or two to get the full of it. The sun — all good in life came from the sun! And suddenly he thought of Dinny. The sun to her was not what it was to him. Was he in a dream — was she real? Or, rather, were she and all this English business some rude interval of waking? God knew! He stirred and looked at his watch. Three minutes past ten, and there, sure enough, as the waiter had said, coming up the street was a rider, unconcerned, sedate, with a long easy seat on a small well-bred animal. Closer and closer, unaware! Then the rider’s eyes came round, there was a movement of his chin. He raised a hand to his hat, checked the pony, wheeled it and cantered back.
‘H’m!’ thought Wilfrid. ‘Gone for his whip!’ And from the stump of his cigarette he lighted another. A voice behind him said:
“What’d I tell you, sir? That’s Mr. Muskham.”
“He seems to have forgotten something.”
“Ah!” said the waiter, “he’s regular as a rule. They say at the stud he’s a Turk for order. Here he comes again; not lost much time, ‘as ‘e?”
He was coming at a canter. About thirty yards away he reined up and got off. Wilfrid heard him say to the pony, “Stand, Betty!” His heart began to beat, his hands in his pockets were clenched fast; he still leaned against the gate. The waiter had withdrawn, but with the tail of his eye Wilfrid could see him at the hotel door, waiting as if to watch over the interview he had fostered. His cabman was still engaged in the endless conversation of those who drive cars; the shopman still cleaning his windows; the butcher’s man rejoining his cart. Muskham came deliberately, a cut-and-thrust whip in his hand.
‘Now!’ thought Wilfrid.
Within three yards Muskham stopped. “Are you ready?”
Wilfrid took out his hands, let the cigarette drop from his lips, and nodded. Raising the whip, the long figure sprang. One blow fell, then Wilfrid closed. He closed so utterly that the whip was useless and Muskham dropped it. They swayed back clinched together against the gate; then, both, as if struck by the same idea, unclinched and raised their fists. In a moment it was clear that neither was any longer expert. They drove at each other without science, but with a sort of fury, length and weight on one side, youth and agility on the other. Amidst the scrambling concussions of this wild encounter, Wilfrid was conscious of a little crowd collecting — they had become a street show! Their combat was so breathless, furious and silent, that its nature seemed to infect that gathering, and from it came nothing but a muttering. Both were soon cut on the mouth and bleeding, both were soon winded and half dazed. In sheer breathlessness they clinched again and stood swaying, striving to get a grip of each other’s throats.
“Go it, Mr. Muskham!” cried a voice.
As if encouraged, Wilfrid wrenched himself free and sprang; Muskham’s fist thumped into his chest as he came on, but his outstretched hands closed round his enemy’s neck. There was a long stagger, and then both went crashing to the ground. There, again as if moved by the same thought, they unclinched and scrambled up. For a moment they stood panting, glaring at each other for an opening. For a second each looked round him. Wilfrid saw Muskham’s blood-stained face change and become rigid, his hands drop and hide in his pockets; saw him turn away. And suddenly he realised why. Standing up in an open car, across the street, was Dinny, with one hand covering her lips and the other shading her eyes.
Wilfrid turned as abruptly and went into the hotel.