“How?”
“Chopping and changing shape and hair and all that.”
“Good for trade. We consent to be in the hands of men in order that they may be in ours. Philosophy of vamping.”
“That girl won’t have much chance of keeping straight as a mannequin, will she?”
“More, I should say. She might even marry. But I always refuse to worry about my neighbour’s morals. I suppose you have to keep up the pretence at Condaford, having been there since the Conquest. By the way, has your father made provision against Death Duties?”
“He’s not old, Fleur.”
“No, but people do die. Has he got anything besides the estate?”
“Only his pension.”
“Is there plenty of timber?”
“I loathe the idea of cutting down trees. Two hundred years of shape and energy all gone in half an hour. It’s revolting.”
“My dear, there’s generally nothing else for it, except selling, and clearing out.”
“We shall manage somehow,” said Dinny shortly; “we’d never let Condaford go.”
“Don’t forget Jean.”
Dinny sat up very straight.
“She’d never, either. The Tasburghs are just as old as we are.”
“Admitted; but that’s a young woman of infinite variety and go. She’ll never vegetate.”
“Condaford is not vegetation.”
“Don’t get ruffled, Dinny; I’m only thinking for the best. I don’t want to see you outed, any more than I want Kit to lose Lippinghall. Michael is thoroughly unsound. He says that if he’s one of the country’s roots he’s sorry for the country, which is silly of course. No one,” added Fleur, with a sudden queer depth, “will ever know from me what pure gold Michael is.” Then, seeming to notice Dinny’s surprised eyes, she added: “So, I can wash out the American?”
“You can. Three thousand miles between me and Condaford—no, Ma’am!”
“Then I think you should put the poor brute out of his misery, for he confided to me that you were what he called his ‘ideal.’”
“Not that again!” cried Dinny.
“Yes, indeed; and he further said that he was crazy about you.”
“That means nothing.”
“From a man who goes to the ends of the earth to discover the roots of civilisation it probably does. Most people would go to the ends of the earth to avoid discovering them.”
“The moment this thing of Hubert’s is over,” said Dinny, “I will put an end to him.”
“I think you’ll have to take the veil to do it. You’ll look very nice in the veil, Dinny, walking down the village aisle with the sailor, in a feudal atmosphere, to a German tune. May I be there to see!”
“I’m not going to marry anyone.”
“Well, in the meantime shall we ring up Adrian?”
From Adrian’s rooms came the message that he was expected back at four o’clock. He was asked to come on to South Square, and Dinny went up to put her things together. Coming down again at half past three, she saw on the coat ‘sarcophagus’ a hat whose brim she seemed to recognize. She was slinking back towards the stairs when a voice said:
“Why! This is fine! I was scared I’d missed you.”
Dinny gave him her hand, and together they entered Fleur’s ‘parlour’; where, among the Louis Quinze furniture, he seemed absurdly male.
“I wanted to tell you, Miss Cherrell, what I’ve done about your brother. I’ve fixed it for our Consul in La Paz to get that boy Manuel to cable his sworn testimony that the Captain was attacked with a knife. If your folk here are anyway sensible, that should clear him. This fool game’s got to stop if I have to go back to Bolivia myself.”
“Thank you ever so, Professor.”
“Why! There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for your brother, now. I’ve come to like him as if he were my own.”
Those ominous words had a large simplicity, a generous warmth, which caused her to feel small and thin.
“You aren’t looking all that well,” he said, suddenly. “If there’s anything worrying you, tell me and I’ll fix it.”
Dinny told him of Ferse’s return.
“That lovely lady! Too bad! But maybe she’s fond of him, so it’ll be a relief to her mind after a time.”
“I am going to stay with her.”
“That’s bully of you! Is this Captain Ferse dangerous?”
“We don’t know yet.”
He put his hand into a hip pocket and brought out a tiny automatic.
“Put that in your bag. It’s the smallest made. I bought it for this country, seeing you don’t go about with guns here.”
Dinny laughed.
“Thank you, Professor, but it would only go off in the wrong place. And, even if there were danger, it wouldn’t be fair.”
“That’s so! It didn’t occur to me, but that’s so. A man afflicted that way has every consideration due to him. But I don’t like to think of you going into danger.”
Remembering Fleur’s exhortation, Dinny said hardily:
“Why not?”
“Because you are very precious to me.”
“That’s frightfully nice of you; but I think you ought to know, Professor, that I’m not in the market.”
“Surely every woman’s in the market till she marries.”
“Some think that’s when she begins to be.”
“Well,” said Hallorsen gravely, “I’ve no use for adultery myself. I want a straight deal in sex as in everything else.”
“I hope you will get it.”
He drew himself up. “And I want it from you. I have the honour to ask you to become Mrs. Hallorsen, and please don’t say ‘No’ right away.”
“If you want a straight deal, Professor, I must.”
She saw his blue eyes film as if with pain, and felt sorry. He came a little closer, looking, as it seemed to her, enormous, and she gave a shiver.
“Is it my nationality?”
“I don’t know what it is.”
“Or the grouch you had against me over your brother?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can’t I hope?”
“No. I am flattered, and grateful, believe me. But no.”
“Pardon me! Is there another man?”
Dinny shook her head.
Hallorsen stood very still; his face wore a puzzled expression, then cleared suddenly.
“I judge,” he said, “I haven’t done enough for you. I’ll have to serve a bit.”
“I’m not worth service. It’s simply that I don’t feel like that towards you.”
“I have clean hands and a clean heart.”
“I’m sure you have; I admire you, Professor, but I should never love you.”
Hallorsen drew back again to his original distance, as if distrusting his impulses. He gave her a grave bow. He looked really splendid standing there, full of simple dignity. There was a long silence, then he said:
“Well, I judge there’s no use crying over spilt milk. Command me in any way. I am your very faithful servant.” And, turning round, he went out.
Dinny heard the front door close with a slight choke in her throat. She felt pain at having caused him pain, but relief, too, the relief one feels when something very large, simple, primitive—the sea, a thunderstorm, a bull—is no longer imminent. In front of one of Fleur’s mirrors she stood despitefully, as though she had just discovered the over-refinement of her nerves. How could that great handsome, healthy creature care for one so spindly and rarefied as she looked reflected there? He could snap her off with his hands. Was that why she recoiled? The great open spaces of which he seemed a part, with his height, strength, colour, and the boom of his voice! Funny, silly perhaps—but very real recoil! She belonged where she belonged—not to such as them, to such as him. About such juxtapositions there was even something comic. She was still standing there with a wry smile when Adrian was ushered in.
She turned to him impulsively. Sallow and worn an
d lined, subtle, gentle, harassed, no greater contrast could have appeared, not any that could have better soothed her jangled nerves. Kissing him, she said:
“I waited to see you before going to stay at Diana’s!”
“You ARE going, Dinny?”
“Yes. I don’t believe you’ve had lunch or tea or anything,” and she rang the bell. “Coaker, Mr. Adrian would like—”
“A brandy and soda, Coaker, thank you!”
“Now, Uncle?” she said, when he had drunk it.
“I’m afraid, Dinny, one can’t set much store by what they say down there. According to them Ferse ought to go back. But why he should, so long as he acts sanely, I don’t know. They query the idea of his recovery, but they can bring nothing abnormal against him for some weeks past. I got hold of his personal attendant and questioned him. He seems a decent chap, and he thinks Ferse at the moment is as sane as himself. But—and the whole trouble lies there—he says he was like this once before for three weeks, and suddenly lapsed again. If anything really upsets him—opposition or what not—he thinks Ferse will be just as bad again as ever, perhaps worse. It’s a really terrible position.”
“When he’s in mania is he violent?”
“Yes; a kind of gloomy violence, more against himself than anyone else.”
“They’re not going to do anything to get him back?”
“They can’t. He went there voluntarily; I told you he hasn’t been certified. How is Diana?”
“She looks tired, but lovely. She says she is going to do everything she can to give him a chance.”
Adrian nodded.
“That’s like her; she has wonderful pluck. And so have you, my dear. It’s a great comfort to know you’ll be with her. Hilary is ready to take Diana and the children if she’d go, but she won’t, you say.”
“Not at present, I’m sure.”
Adrian sighed.
“Well, we must chance it.”
“Oh! Uncle,” said Dinny. “I AM so sorry for you.”
“My dear, what happens to the fifth wheel doesn’t matter so long as the car runs. Don’t let me keep you. You can get at me any time either at the Museum or my rooms. Good-bye and bless you! My love to her, and tell her all I’ve told you.”
Dinny kissed him again, and soon after in a cab set forth with her things to Oakley Street.
CHAPTER 22
Bobbie Ferrar had one of those faces which look on tempests and are never shaken; in other words, he was an ideal permanent official—so permanent that one could not conceive of the Foreign Office functioning without him. Secretaries of State might come, might go, Bobbie Ferrar remained, bland, inscrutable, and with lovely teeth. Nobody knew whether there was anything in him except an incalculable number of secrets. Of an age which refused to declare itself, short and square, with a deep soft voice, he had an appearance of complete detachment. In a dark suit with a little light line, and wearing a flower, he existed in a large ante-room wherein was almost nothing except those who came to see the Foreign Minister and instead saw Bobbie Ferrar. In fact the perfect buffer. His weakness was criminology. No murder trial of importance ever took place without the appearance, if only for half-an-hour, of Bobbie Ferrar in a seat more or less kept for him. And he preserved the records of all those trials in a specially bound edition. Perhaps the greatest testimony to his character, whatever that might be, lay in the fact that no one ever threw his acquaintanceship with nearly everybody up against him. People came to Bobbie Ferrar, not he to them. Yet why? What had he ever done that he should be ‘Bobbie’ Ferrar to all and sundry? Not even ‘the honourable,’ merely the son of a courtesy lord, affable, unfathomable, always about, he was unquestionably a last word. Without him, his flower, and his faint grin, Whitehall would have been shorn of something that made it almost human. He had been there since before the war, from which he had been retrieved just in time, some said, to prevent the whole place from losing its character, just in time, too, to stand, as it were, between England and herself. She could not become the shrill edgy hurried harridan the war had tried to make her while his square, leisurely, beflowered, inscrutable figure passed daily up and down between those pale considerable buildings.
He was turning over a Bulb Catalogue, on the morning of Hubert’s wedding day, when the card of Sir Lawrence Mont was brought to him, followed by its owner, who said at once:
“You know what I’ve come about, Bobbie?”
“Completely,” said Bobbie Ferrar, his eyes round, his head thrown back, his voice deep.
“Has the Marquess seen you?”
“I had breakfast with him yesterday. Isn’t he amazing?”
“Our finest old boy,” said Sir Lawrence. “What are you going to do about it? Old Sir Conway Cherrell was the best Ambassador to Spain you ever turned out of the shop, and this is his grandson.”
“Has he really got a scar?” asked Bobbie Ferrar, through a faint grin.
“Of course he has.”
“Did he really get it over that?”
“Sceptical image! Of course he did.”
“Amazing!”
“Why?”
Bobbie Ferrar showed his teeth. “Who can prove it?”
“Hallorsen is getting evidence.”
“It’s not in our department, you know.”
“No? But you can get at the Home Secretary.”
“Um!” said Bobbie Ferrar, deeply.
“You can see the Bolivians about it, anyway.”
“Um!” said Bobbie Ferrar still more deeply, and handed him the catalogue. “Do you know this new tulip? Complete, isn’t it?”
“Now, look you, Bobbie,” said Sir Lawrence, “this is my nephew; emphatically a ‘good egg,’ as you say, and it won’t do! See!”
“The age is democratic,” said Bobbie Ferrar cryptically; “it came up in the House, didn’t it—flogging?”
“We can pull out the national stop if there’s any more fuss there. Hallorsen has taken back his criticism. Well, I’ll leave it to you; you won’t commit yourself if I stay here all the morning. But you’ll do your best because it really is a scandalous charge.”
“Completely,” said Bobbie Ferrar. “Would you like to see the Croydon murder trial? It’s amazing. I’ve got two seats; I offered one to my Uncle. But he won’t go to any trial until they bring in electrocution.”
“Did the fellow do it?”
Bobbie Ferrar nodded.
“The evidence is very shaky,” he added.
“Well, good-bye, Bobbie; I rely on you.”
Bobbie Ferrar grinned faintly, and held out his hand.
“Good-bye,” he said, through his teeth.
Sir Lawrence went westward to the Coffee House where the porter handed him a telegram: “Am marrying Jean Tasburgh two o’clock today St. Augustine’s-inthe-Meads delighted to see you and Aunt Em Hubert.”
Passing into the coffee-room, Sir Lawrence said to the Chief Steward: “Butts, I am about to see a nephew turned off. Fortify me quickly.”
Twenty minutes later he was on his way to St. Augustine’s, in a cab. He arrived a few minutes before two o’clock and met Dinny going up the steps.
“You look pale and interesting, Dinny.”
“I AM pale and interesting, Uncle Lawrence.”
“This proceeding appears to be somewhat sudden.”
“That’s Jean. I’m feeling terribly responsible. I found her for him, you see.”
They entered the church and moved up to the front pews. Apart from the General, Lady Cherrell, Mrs. Hilary and Hubert there was no one except two sightseers and a verger. Someone’s fingers were wandering on the organ. Sir Lawrence and Dinny took a pew to themselves.
“I’m not sorry Em isn’t here,” he whispered; “she still gives way. When you marry, Dinny, have ‘No tears by request’ on your invitation cards. What is it produces moisture at weddings? Even bailiffs weep.”
“It’s the veil,” said Dinny; “nobody will cry today because there is none. Look! Fleur and
Michael!”
Sir Lawrence turned his monocle on them as they came up the aisle.
“Eight years since we saw them married. Take it all round, they haven’t done so badly.”
“No,” whispered Dinny; “Fleur told me yesterday that Michael was pure gold.”
“Did she? That’s good. There have been times, Dinny, when I’ve had my doubts.”
“Not about Michael.”
“No, no; he’s a first-rate fellow. But Fleur has fluttered their dovecote once or twice; since her father’s death, however, she’s been exemplary. Here they come!”
The organ had broken into annunciation. Alan Tasburgh with Jean on his arm was coming up the aisle. Dinny admired his square and steady look. As for Jean, she seemed the very image of colour and vitality. Hubert, standing, hands behind him, as if at ease, turned as she came up, and Dinny saw his face, lined and dark, brighten as if the sun had shone on it. A choky feeling gripped her throat. Then she saw that Hilary in his surplice had come quietly and was standing on the step.
‘I do like Uncle Hilary,’ she thought.
Hilary had begun to speak.
Contrary to her habit in church, Dinny listened. She waited for the word ‘obey’—it did not come; she waited for the sexual allusions—they were omitted. Now Hilary was asking for the ring. Now it was on. Now he was praying. Now it was the Lord’s Prayer, and they were going to the vestry. How strangely short!
She rose from her knees.
“Amazingly complete,” whispered Sir Lawrence, “as Bobbie Ferrar would say. Where are they going after?”
“To the theatre. Jean wants to stay in Town. She’s found a workman’s flat.”
“Calm before the storm. I wish that affair of Hubert’s were over, Dinny.”
They were coming back from the vestry now, and the organ had begun to play the Mendelssohn march. Looking at those two passing down the aisle Dinny had feelings of elation and of loss, of jealousy and of satisfaction. Then, seeing that Alan looked as if he, too, had feelings, she moved out of her pew to join Fleur and Michael; but, catching sight of Adrian near the entrance, went to him instead.
“What news, Dinny?”
“All right so far, Uncle. I am going straight back now.”
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