“Is he a terribly good judge of a horse?”
“Yes. Of anything else, Dinny—no. They seldom are. The horse is an animal that seems to close the pores of the spirit. He makes you too watchful. You don’t only have to watch him, but everybody connected with him. How was young Desert looking?”
“Oh!” said Dinny, almost taken aback: “a sort of dark yellow.”
“That’s the glare of the sand. He’s a kind of Bedouin, you know. His father’s a recluse, so it’s a bit in his blood. The best thing I know about him is that Michael likes him, in spite of that business.”
“His poetry?” said Dinny.
“Disharmonic stuff, he destroys with one hand what he gives with the other.”
“Perhaps he’s never found his home. His eyes are rather beautiful, don’t you think?”
“It’s his mouth I remember best, sensitive and bitter.”
“One’s eyes are what one is, one’s mouth what one becomes.”
“That and the stomach.”
“He hasn’t any,” said Dinny. “I noticed.”
“The handful of dates and cup of coffee habit. Not that the Arabs drink coffee—green tea is their weakness, with mint in it. My God! Here’s your aunt. When I said ‘My God!’ I was referring to the tea with mint.”
Lady Mont had removed her paper headdress and recovered her breath.
“Darling,” said Dinny, “I DID forget your birthday, and I haven’t got anything for you.”
“Then give me a kiss, Dinny. I always say your kisses are the best. Where have you sprung from?”
“I came up to shop for Clare at the Stores.”
“Have you got your night things with you?”
“No.”
“That doesn’t matter. You can have one of mine. Do you still wear nightdresses?”
“Yes,” said Dinny.
“Good girl! I don’t like pyjamas for women—your uncle doesn’t either. It’s below the waist, you know. You can’t get over it– you try to, but you can’t. Michael and Fleur will be stayin’ on to dinner.”
“Thank you, Aunt Em; I do want to stay up. I couldn’t get half the things Clare needs today.”
“I don’t like Clare marryin’ before you, Dinny.”
“But she naturally would, Auntie.”
“Fiddle! Clare’s brilliant—they don’t as a rule. I married at twenty-one.”
“You see, dear!”
“You’re laughin’ at me. I was only brilliant once. You remember, Lawrence—about that elephant—I wanted it to sit, and it would kneel. All their legs bend one way, Dinny. And I said it WOULD follow its bent.”
“Aunt Em! Except for that one occasion you’re easily the most brilliant woman I know. Women are so much too consecutive.”
“Your nose is a comfort, Dinny, I get so tired of beaks, your Aunt Wilmet’s, and Hen Bentworth’s, and my own.”
“Yours is only faintly aquiline, darling.”
“I was terrified of its gettin’ worse, as a child. I used to stand with the tip pressed up against a wardrobe.”
“I’ve tried that too, Auntie, only the other way.”
“Once while I was doin’ it your father was lyin’ concealed on the top, like a leopard, you know, and he hopped over me and bit through his lip. He bled all down my neck.”
“How nasty!”
“Yes. Lawrence, what are you thinking about?”
“I was thinking that Dinny has probably had no lunch. Have you, Dinny?”
“I was going to have it tomorrow, Uncle.”
“There you are!” said Lady Mont. “Ring for Blore. You’ll never have enough body until you’re married.”
“Let’s get Clare over first, Aunt Em.”
“St. George’s. I suppose Hilary’s doin’ them?”
“Of course!”
“I shall cry.”
“Why, exactly, do you cry at weddings, Auntie?”
“She’ll look like an angel; and the man’ll be in black tails and a toothbrush moustache, and not feelin’ what she thinks he is. Saddenin’!”
“But perhaps he’s feeling more. I’m sure Michael was about Fleur, or Uncle Adrian when he married Diana.”
“Adrian’s fifty-three and he’s got a beard. Besides, he’s Adrian.”
“I admit that makes a difference. But I think we ought rather to cry over the man. The woman’s having the hour of her life and the man’s waistcoat is almost certain to be too tight.”
“Lawrence’s wasn’t. He was always a thread-paper, and I was as slim as you, Dinny.”
“You must have looked lovely in a veil, Aunt Em. Didn’t she, Uncle?” The whimsically wistful look on both those mature faces stopped her, and she added: “Where did you first meet?”
“Out huntin’, Dinny. I was in a ditch, and your uncle didn’t like it, he came and pulled me out.”
“I think that’s ideal.”
“Too much mud. We didn’t speak to each other all the rest of the day.”
“Then what brought you together?”
“One thing and another. I was stayin’ with Hen’s people, the Corderoys, and your uncle called to see some puppies. What are you catechisin’ me for?”
“I only just wanted to know how it was done in those days.”
“Go and find out for yourself how it’s done in these days.”
“Uncle Lawrence doesn’t want to get rid of me.”
“All men are selfish, except Michael and Adrian.”
“Besides, I should hate to make you cry.”
“Blore, a cocktail and a sandwich for Miss Dinny, she’s had no lunch. And, Blore, Mr. and Mrs. Adrian and Mr. and Mrs. Michael to dinner. And, Blore, tell Laura to put one of my nightdresses and the other things in the blue spare room. Miss Dinny’ll stay the night. Those children!” And, swaying slightly, Lady Mont preceded her butler through the doorway.
“What a darling, Uncle!”
“I’ve never denied it, Dinny.”
“I always feel better after her. Was she ever out of temper?”
“She can begin to be, but she always goes on to something else before she’s finished.”
“What saving grace… !”
At dinner that evening, Dinny listened for any allusion by her uncle to Wilfred Desert’s return. There was none.
After dinner, she seated herself by Fleur in her habitual, slightly mystified admiration of this cousin by marriage, whose pretty poise was so assured, whose face and figure so beautifully turned out, whose clear eyes were so seeing, whose knowledge of self was so disillusioned, and whose attitude to Michael seemed at once that of one looking up and looking down.
‘If I ever married,’ thought Dinny, ‘I could never be like that to him. I would have to look him straight in the face as one sinner to another.’
“Do you remember your wedding, Fleur?” she said.
“I do, my dear. A distressing ceremony!”
“I saw your best man today.”
The clear white round Fleur’s eyes widened.
“Wilfrid? How did you remember him?”
“I was only sixteen, and he fluttered my young nerves.”
“That is, of course, the function of a best man. Well, and how was he?”
“Very dark and dissolvent.”
Fleur laughed. “He always was.”
Looking at her, Dinny decided to press on.
“Yes. Uncle Lawrence told me he tried to carry dissolution rather far.”
Fleur looked surprised. “I didn’t know Bart ever noticed that.”
“Uncle Lawrence,” said Dinny, “is a bit uncanny.”
“Wilfrid,” murmured Fleur, with a little reminiscent smile, “really behaved quite well. He went East like a lamb.”
“But surely that hasn’t kept him East ever since?”
“No more than measles keep you permanently to your room. Oh! no, he likes it. He’s probably got a harem.”
“No,” said Dinny, “he’s fastidious, or I should be surpris
ed.”
“Quite right, my dear; and one for my cheap cynicism. Wilfrid’s the queerest sort of person, and rather a dear. Michael loved him. But,” she said, suddenly looking at Dinny, “he’s impossible to be in love with—disharmony personified. I studied him pretty closely at one time—had to, you know. He’s elusive. Passionate, and a bundle of nerves. Soft-hearted and bitter. And search me for anything he believes in.”
“Except,” queried Dinny, “beauty, perhaps; and truth if he could find it?”
Fleur made the unexpected answer, “Well, my dear, we all believe in those, when they’re about. The trouble is they aren’t, unless– unless they lie in oneself, perhaps. And if you happen to be disharmonic, what chance have you? Where did you see him?”
“Staring at Foch.”
“Ah! I seem to remember he rather idolised Foch. Poor Wilfrid, he hasn’t much chance. Shell-shock, poetry, and his breeding—a father who’s turned his back on life; a mother who was half an Italian, and ran off with another. Not restful. His eyes were his best point, they made you sorry for him; and they’re beautiful– rather a fatal combination. Did the young nerves flutter again?” She looked rather more broadly into Dinny’s face.
“No, but I wondered if yours would still if I mentioned him.”
“Mine? My child, I’m nearly thirty. I have two children, and”– her face darkened—“I have been inoculated. If I ever told anyone about THAT, Dinny, I might tell you, but there are things one doesn’t tell.”
Up in her room, somewhat incommoded by the amplitude of Aunt Em’s nightgown, Dinny stared into a fire lighted against protest. She felt that what she was feeling was absurd—a queer eagerness, at once shy and bold, the sensations, as it were, of direct action impending. And why? She had seen again a man who ten years before had made her feel silly; from all accounts a most unsatisfactory man. Taking a looking-glass, she scrutinised her face above the embroidery on the too ample gown. She saw what might have satisfied but did not.
‘One gets tired of it,’ she thought—‘always the same Botticellian artifact,
‘The nose that’s snub,
The eyes of blue!
‘Ware self, you red-haired nymph,
And shun the image that is you!’
HE was so accustomed to the East, to dark eyes through veils, languishing; to curves enticingly disguised; to sex, mystery, teeth like pearls—vide houri! Dinny showed her own teeth to the glass. There she was on safe ground—the best teeth in her family. Nor was her hair really red—more what Miss Braddon used to call auburn. Nice word! Pity it had gone out. With all that embroidery it was no good examining herself below the Victorian washing line. Remember that tomorrow before her bath! For what she was about to examine might the Lord make her truly thankful! Putting down the glass with a little sigh, she got into bed.
CHAPTER 3
Wilfred Desert still maintained his chambers in Cork Street. They were, in fact, paid for by Lord Mullyon, who used them on the rare occasions when he emerged from rural retreat. It was not saying much that the secluded peer had more in common with his second than with his eldest son, who was in Parliament. It gave him, however, no particular pain to encounter Wilfrid; but as a rule the chambers were occupied only by Stack, who had been Wilfrid’s batman in the war, and had for him one of those sphinx-like habits which wear better than expressed devotions. When Wilfrid returned, at a moment or two’s notice, his rooms were ever exactly as he left them, neither more or less dusty and unaired; the same clothes hung on the same clothes-stretchers; and the same nicely cooked steak and mushrooms appeased his first appetite. The ancestral ‘junk,’ fringed and dotted by Eastern whims brought home, gave to the large sitting-room the same castled air of immutable possession. And the divan before the log fire received Wilfrid as if he had never left it. He lay there the morning after his encounter with Dinny, wondering why he could only get really good coffee when Stack made it. The East was the home of coffee, but Turkish coffee was a rite, a toy; and, like all rites and toys, served but to titillate the soul. This was his third day in London after three years; and in the last two years he had been through a good deal more than he would ever care to speak of, or even wish to remember; including one experience which still divided him against himself, however much he affected to discredit its importance. In other words, he had come back with a skeleton in his cupboard. He had brought back, too, enough poems for a fourth slender volume. He lay there, debating whether its slender bulk could not be increased by inclusion of the longest poem he had ever written, the outcome of that experience; in his view, too, the best poem he had ever written—a pity it should not be published, but—! And the ‘but’ was so considerable that he had many times been on the point of tearing the thing up, obliterating all trace of it, as he would have wished to blot remembrance from his mind. Again, but—! The poem expressed his defence for allowing what he hoped no one knew had happened to him. To tear it up would be parting with his defence. For he could never again adequately render his sensations in that past dilemma. He would be parting with his best protection from his own conscience, too; and perhaps with the only means of laying a ghost. For he sometimes thought that, unless he proclaimed to the world what had happened to him, he would never again feel quite in possession of his soul.
Reading it through, he thought: ‘It’s a damned sight better and deeper than Lyall’s confounded poem.’ And without any obvious connection he began to think of the girl he had met the day before. Curious that he had remembered her from Michael’s wedding, a transparent slip of a young thing like a Botticelli Venus, Angel, or Madonna—so little difference between them. A charming young thing, then! Yes, and a charming young woman now, of real quality, with a sense of humour and an understanding mind. Dinny Cherrell! Charwell they spelled it, he remembered. He wouldn’t mind showing her his poems; he would trust her reactions.
Partly because he was thinking of her, and partly because he took a taxi, he was late for lunch, and met Dinny on the doorstep of Dumourieux’s just as she was about to go away.
There is perhaps no better test of woman’s character than to keep her waiting for lunch in a public place. Dinny greeted him with a smile.
“I thought you’d probably forgotten.”
“It was the traffic. How can philosophers talk of time being space or space time? It’s disproved whenever two people lunch together. I allowed ten minutes for under a mile from Cork Street, and here I am ten minutes late. Terribly sorry!”
“My father says you must add ten per cent to all timing since taxis took the place of hansoms. Do you remember the hansom?”
“Rather!”
“I never was in London till they were over.”
“If you know this place, lead on! I was told of it, but I’ve not yet been here.”
“It’s underground. The cooking’s French.”
Divested of their coats, they proceeded to an end table.
“Very little for me, please,” said Dinny. “Say cold chicken, a salad, and some coffee.”
“Anything the matter?”
“Only a spare habit.”
“I see. We both have it. No wine?”
“No, thanks. Is eating little a good sign, do you think?”
“Not if done on principle.”
“You don’t like things done on principle?”
“I distrust the people who do them—self-righteous.”
“I think that’s too sweeping. You are rather sweeping, aren’t you?”
“I was thinking of the sort of people who don’t eat because it’s sensual. That’s not your reason, is it?”
“Oh! no,” said Dinny, “I only dislike feeling full. And very little makes me feel that. I don’t know very much about them so far, but I think the senses are good things.”
“The only things, probably.”
“Is that why you write poetry?”
Desert grinned.
“I should think YOU might write verse, too.”
“Only rhy
mes.”
“The place for poetry is a desert. Ever seen one?”
“No. I should like to.” And, having said that, she sat in slight surprise, remembering her negative reaction to the American professor and his great open spaces. But no greater contrast was possible than between Hallorsen and this dark, disharmonic young man, who sat staring at her with those eyes of his till she had again that thrill down her spine. Crumbling her roll, she said: “I saw Michael and Fleur last night at dinner.”
“Oh!” His lips curled. “I made a fool of myself over Fleur once. Perfect, isn’t she—in her way?”
“Yes,” and her eyes added: ‘Don’t run her down!’
“Marvellous equipment and control.”
“I don’t think you know her,” said Dinny, “and I’m sure I don’t.”
He leaned forward. “You seem to me a loyal sort of person. Where did you pick that up?”
“Our family motto is the word ‘Leal.’ That ought to have cured me, oughtn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” he said, abruptly, “whether I understand what loyalty is. Loyalty to what? To whom? Nothing’s fixed in this world; everything’s relative. Loyalty’s the mark of the static mind, or else just a superstition, and anyway the negation of curiosity.”
“There ARE things worth being loyal to, surely. Coffee, for instance, or one’s religion.”
He looked at her so strangely that Dinny was almost scared.
“Religion? Have you one?”
“Well, roughly, I suppose.”
“What? Can you swallow the dogmas of any religious creed? Do you believe one legend more true than another? Can you suppose one set of beliefs about the Unknowable has more value than the rest? Religion! You’ve got a sense of humour. Does it leave you at the word?”
“No; only religion, I suppose, may be just a sense of an all-pervading spirit, and the ethical creed that seems best to serve it.”
“H’m! A pretty far cry from what’s generally meant, and even then how do you know what best serves an all-pervading spirit?”
“I take that on trust.”
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