“Well, if there’s time.”
“When?”
“To-night? I have to go up after shooting tomorrow.”
“Any time that suits you,” she said, hardily.
“There won’t be a chance before dinner. I’ve got some letters that must go.”
“I can stay up till any hour.” She saw him give her a quick, all-over glance.
“We’ll see,” he said, abruptly. And at this minute they were joined by the others.
Escaping the last drive, Dinny walked home by herself. Her sense of humour was tickled, but she was in a quandary. She judged shrewdly that the diary would not produce the desired effect unless Lord Saxenden felt that he was going to get something out of listening to it; and she was perceiving more clearly than ever before how difficult it was to give anything without parting from it. A fluster of wood-pigeons rose from some stooks on her left and crossed over to the wood by the river; the light was growing level, and evening sounds fluttered in the crisper air. The gold of sinking sunlight lay on the stubbles; the leaves, hardly turned as yet, were just promising colour, and away down there the blue line of the river glinted through its bordering trees. In the air was the damp, slightly pungent scent of early autumn with wood smoke drifting already from cottage chimneys. A lovely hour, a lovely evening!
What passages from the diary should she read? Her mind faltered. She could see Saxenden’s face again when he said: “Your brother? Ah!” Could see the hard direct calculating insensitive character behind it. She remembered Sir Lawrence’s words: “Were there not, my dear?… Most valuable fellows!” She had just been reading the memoirs of a man, who, all through the war, had thought in moves and numbers, and, after one preliminary gasp, had given up thinking of the sufferings behind those movements and those numbers: in his will to win the war, he seemed to have made it his business never to think of its human side, and, she was sure, could never have visualised that side if he HAD thought of it. Valuable fellow! She had heard Hubert talk, with a curling lip, of ‘armchair strategists’—who had enjoyed the war, excited by the interest of combining movements and numbers and of knowing this and that before someone else did, and by the importance they had gained therefrom. Valuable fellows! In another book she had lately read, she remembered a passage about the kind of men who directed what was called progress: sat in Banks, City offices, Governmental departments, combining movements and numbers, not bothered by flesh and blood, except their own; men who started this enterprise and that, drawing them up on sheets of paper, and saying to these and those: ‘Do this, and see you dam’ well do it properly.’ Men, silk-hatted or plus-foured, who guided the machine of tropic enterprise, of mineral getting, of great shops, of railway building, of concessions here and there and everywhere. Valuable fellows! Cheery, healthy, well-fed, indomitable fellows with frosty eyes. Always dining, always in the know, careless of the cost in human feelings and human life. ‘And yet,’ she thought, ‘they really must be valuable, or how should we have rubber or coal, or pearls or railways or the Stock Exchange, or wars and win them!’ She thought of Hallorsen; he at least worked and suffered for his ideas, led his own charges; did not sit at home, knowing things, eating ham, tailoring hares, and ordering the movements of others. She turned into the Manor grounds and paused on the croquet lawn. Aunt Wilmet and Lady Henrietta appeared to be agreeing to differ. They appealed to her:
“Is that right, Dinny?”
“No. When the balls touch you just go on playing, but you mustn’t move Lady Henrietta’s ball, Auntie, in hitting your own.”
“I said so,” said Lady Henrietta.
“Of course you said so, Hen. Nice position I’m in. Well, I shall just agree to differ and go on,” and Aunt Wilmet hit her ball through a hoop, moving her opponent’s several inches in so doing.
“Isn’t she an unscrupulous woman?” murmured Lady Henrietta, plaintively, and Dinny saw at once the great practical advantages inherent in ‘agreeing to differ.’
“You’re like the Iron Duke, Auntie,” she said, “except that you don’t use the word ‘damn’ quite so often.”
“She does,” said Lady Henrietta; “her language is appalling.”
“Go on, Hen!” said Aunt Wilmet in a flattered voice.
Dinny left them and retired towards the house.
When she was dressed she went to Fleur’s room.
Her aunt’s maid was passing a minute mowing-machine over the back of Fleur’s neck, while Michael, in the doorway of his dressing-room, had his fingers on the tips of his white tie.
Fleur turned.
“Hallo, Dinny! Come in, and sit down. That’ll do, thank you, Powers. Now, Michael.”
The maid faded out and Michael advanced to have a twist given to the ends of his tie.
“There!” said Fleur; and, looking at Dinny, added: “Have you come about Saxenden?”
“Yes. I’m to read him bits of Hubert’s diary to-night. The question is: Where will be suitable to my youth and—”
“Not innocence, Dinny; you’ll never be innocent, will she, Michael?”
Michael grinned. “Never innocent but always virtuous. You were a most sophisticated little angel as a kid, Dinny; looked as if you were wondering why you hadn’t wings. Wistful is the word.”
“I expect I was wondering why you’d pulled them off.”
“You ought to have worn trouserettes and chased butterflies, like the two little Gainsborough girls in the National Gallery.”
“Cease these amenities,” said Fleur; “the gong’s gone. You can have my little sitting-room next door, and, if you knock, Michael can come round with a boot, as if it were rats.”
“Perfect,” said Dinny; “but I expect he’ll behave like a lamb, really.”
“You never can tell,” said Michael; “he’s a bit of a goat.”
“That’s the room,” said Fleur, as they passed out. “Cabinet particulier. Good luck!…”
CHAPTER 10
Seated between Hallorsen and young Tasburgh, Dinny had a slanting view of her Aunt and Lord Saxenden at the head of the table, with Jean Tasburgh round the corner on his right. “She was a ‘leopardess’ oh! so fair!” The tawnied skin, oblique face, and wonderful eyes of the young woman fascinated her. They appeared also to fascinate Lord Saxenden, whose visage was redder and more genial than Dinny had seen it yet. His attentions to Jean, indeed, were throwing Lady Mont to the clipped tongue of Wilfred Bentworth. For ‘the Squire,’ though a far more distinguished personality, too distinguished to accept a peerage, was, in accordance with the table of precedence, seated on her left. Next to him again Fleur was engaging Hallorsen; so that Dinny herself was exposed to the broadside of young Tasburgh. He talked easily, directly, frankly, like a man not yet calloused by female society, and manifested what Dinny described to herself as ‘transparent admiration’; yet twice at least she went into what he described as a ‘near-dream,’ her head turned high, and motionless, towards his sister.
“Ah!” he said. “What do you think of her?”
“Fascinating.”
“I’ll tell her that, she won’t turn a hair. The earth’s most matter-of-fact young woman. She seems to be vamping her neighbour all right. Who is he?”
“Lord Saxenden.”
“Oh! And who’s the John Bull at the corner on our side?”
“Wilfred Bentworth, ‘the Squire,’ they call him.”
“And next to you—talking to Mrs. Michael?”
“That’s Professor Hallorsen from America.”
“He’s a fine-looking chap.”
“So everybody says,” said Dinny, drily.
“Don’t you think so?”
“Men oughtn’t to be so good-looking.”
“Delighted to hear you say that.”
“Why?”
“It means that the ugly have a look in.”
“Oh! Do you often go trawling?”
“You know, I’m terribly glad I’ve met you at last.”
“At last? You
’d never even heard of me this morning.”
“No. But that doesn’t prevent you from being my ideal.”
“Goodness! Is this the way they have in the Navy?”
“Yes. The first thing they teach us is to make up our minds quickly.”
“Mr. Tasburgh—”
“Alan.”
“I begin to understand the wife in every port.”
“I,” said young Tasburgh, seriously, “haven’t a single one. And you’re the first I’ve ever wanted.”
“Oo! Or is it: Coo!”
“Fact! You see, the Navy is very strenuous. When we see what we want, we have to go for it at once. We get so few chances.”
Dinny laughed. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Then you weren’t at Zeebrugge?”
“I was.”
“I see. It’s become a habit to lay yourself alongside.”
“And get blown up for it.”
Her eyes rested on him kindly.
“I am now going to talk to my enemy.”
“Enemy? Can I do anything about that?”
“His demise would be of no service to me, till he’s done what I want.”
“Sorry for that; he looks to me dangerous.”
“Mrs. Charles is lying in wait for you,” murmured Dinny, and she turned to Hallorsen, who said deferentially: “Miss Cherrell,” as if she had arrived from the moon.
“I hear you shot amazingly, Professor.”
“Why! I’m not accustomed to birds asking for it as they do here. I’ll maybe get used to that in time. But all this is quite an experience for me.”
“Everything in the garden lovely?”
“It certainly is. To be in the same house with you is a privilege I feel very deeply, Miss Cherrell.”
“‘Cannon to right of me, cannon to left of me!’” thought Dinny.
“And have you,” she asked, suddenly, “been thinking what amend you can make to my brother?”
Hallorsen lowered his voice.
“I have a great admiration for you, Miss Cherrell, and I will do what you tell me. If you wish, I will write to your papers and withdraw the remarks in my book.”
“And what would you want for that, Professor Hallorsen?”
“Why, surely, nothing but your goodwill.”
“My brother has given me his diary to publish.”
“If that will be a relief to you—go to it.”
“I wonder if you two ever began to understand each other.”
“I judge we never did.”
“And yet you were only four white men, weren’t you? May I ask exactly what annoyed you in my brother?”
“You’d have it up against me if I were to tell you.”
“Oh! no, I CAN be fair.”
“Well, first of all, I found he’d made up his mind about too many things, and he wouldn’t change it. There we were in a country none of us knew anything about, amongst Indians and people that were only half civilised; but the captain wanted everything done as you might in England: he wanted rules, and he wanted ’em kept. Why, I judge he would have dressed for dinner if we’d have let him.”
“I think you should remember,” said Dinny, taken aback, “that we English have found formality pay all over the world. We succeed in all sorts of wild out of the world places because we stay English. Reading his diary, I think my brother failed from not being stolid enough.”
“Well, he is not your John Bull type,” he nodded towards the end of the table, “like Lord Saxenden and Mr. Bentworth there; maybe I’d have understood him better if he were. No, he’s mighty high-strung and very tight held-in; his emotions kind of eat him up from within. He’s like a race-horse in a hansom cab. Yours is an old family, I should judge, Miss Cherrell.”
“Not yet in its dotage.”
She saw his eyes leave her, rest on Adrian across the table, move on to her Aunt Wilmet, and thence to Lady Mont.
“I would like to talk to your uncle the Curator about old families,” he said.
“What else was there in my brother that you didn’t like?”
“Well, he gave me the feeling that I was a great husky.”
Dinny raised her brows a little.
“There we were,” went on Hallorsen, “in the hell of a country—pardon me!—a country of raw metal. Well, I was raw metal myself, out to meet and beat raw metal; and he just wouldn’t be.”
“Perhaps couldn’t be. Don’t you think what was really wrong was your being American and his being English? Confess, Professor, that you don’t like us English.”
Hallorsen laughed.
“I like YOU terribly.”
“Thank you, but every rule—”
“Well,” his face hardened, “I just don’t like the assumption of a superiority that I don’t believe in.”
“Have we a monopoly of that? What about the French?”
“If I were an orang-outang, Miss Cherrell, I wouldn’t care a hoot whether a chimpanzee thought himself superior.”
“I see; too far removed. But, forgive me, Professor, what about yourselves? Are you not the chosen people? And don’t you frequently say so? Would you exchange with any other people in the world?”
“I certainly would not.”
“But isn’t that an assumption of a superiority that WE don’t believe in?”
He laughed. “You have me there; but we haven’t touched rock-bottom in this matter. There’s a snob in every man. We’re a new people; we haven’t gotten your roots and your old things; we haven’t gotten your habit of taking ourselves for granted; we’re too multiple and various and too much in the making. We have a lot of things that you could envy us besides our dollars and our bathrooms.”
“What ought we to envy you? I should very much like it made clear to me.”
“Well, Miss Cherrell, we know that we have qualities and energy and faith and opportunities that you just ought to envy; and when you don’t do it, we feel we’ve no use for that kind of gone-dead, bone-superior attitude. It’s like a man of sixty looking down his nose at a youth of thirty; and there’s no such God-darned—pardon me!—mistake as that.”
Dinny sat looking at him, silent and impressed.
“Where,” Hallorsen went on, “you British irritate us is that you’ve lost the spirit of enquiry; or if you’ve still gotten it, you have a dandy way of hiding it up. I judge there are many ways in which we irritate you. But we irritate your epidermis and you irritate our nerve centres. That’s about all there is to it, Miss Cherrell.”
“I see,” said Dinny; “that’s terribly interesting and I daresay quite true. My aunt’s getting up, so I must remove my epidermis and leave your nerve centres to quiet down.” She rose, and over her shoulder smiled back at him.
Young Tasburgh was at the door. At him too she smiled, and murmured: “Talk to my friend the enemy; he’s worth it.”
In the drawing-room she sought out the ‘leopardess,’ but converse between them suffered from the inhibition of a mutual admiration which neither wished to show. Jean Tasburgh was just twenty-one, but she impressed Dinny as older than herself. Her knowledge of things and people seemed precise and decided, if not profound; her mind was made up on all the subjects they touched on; she would be a marvellous person—Dinny thought—in a crisis, or if driven to the wall; would be loyal to her own side, but want to rule whatever roost she was in. But alongside her hard efficiency Dinny could well perceive a strange, almost feline fascination that would go to any man’s head, if she chose that it should. Hubert would succumb to her at once! And at that conclusion his sister was the more doubtful whether she wished him to. Here was the very girl to afford the swift distraction she was seeking for her brother. But was he strong enough and alive enough for the distractor? Suppose he fell in love with her and she would have none of him? Or suppose he fell in love with her and she had all of him! And then—money! If Hubert received no appointment or lost his commission what would they live on? He had only three
hundred a year without his pay, and the girl presumably nothing. The situation was perverse. If Hubert could plunge again into soldiering, he would not need distraction. If he continued to be shelved, he would need distraction but could not afford it. And yet—was not this exactly the sort of girl who would carve out a career somehow for the man she married? So they talked of Italian pictures.
“By the way,” said Jean, suddenly, “Lord Saxenden says you want him to do something for you.”
“Oh!”
“What is it? Because I’ll make him.”
Dinny smiled.
“How?”
Jean gave her a look from under her lashes.
“It’ll be quite easy. What is it you want from him?”
“I want my brother back in his regiment, or, better—some post for him. He’s under a cloud owing to that Bolivian expedition with Professor Hallorsen.”
“The big man? Is that why you had him down here?”
Dinny had a feeling that she would soon have no clothes on.
“If you want frankness, yes.”
“He’s rather fine to look at.”
“So your brother said.”
“Alan’s the most generous person in the world. He’s taken a toss over you.”
“So he was telling me.”
“He’s an ingenuous child. But, seriously, shall I go for Lord Saxenden?”
“Why should you worry?”
“I like to put my fingers into pies. Give me a free hand, and I’ll bring you that appointment on a charger.”
“I am credibly informed,” said Dinny, “that Lord Saxenden is a tough proposition.”
Jean stretched herself.
“Is your brother Hubert like you?”
“Not a scrap; he’s dark, and brown-eyed.”
“You know our families intermarried a long way back. Are you interested in breeding? I breed Airedales, and I don’t believe much in either the tail male or the tail female theories. Prepotency can be handed down through either male or female, and at any point of the pedigree.”
“Perhaps, but except for not being covered with yellow varnish, my father and my brother are both very like the earliest portrait we have of a male ancestor.”
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