Title:      Over the River (One More River)
            Book III of End of The Chapter
Author:     John Galsworthy
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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      Over the River (One More River)
            Book III of End of The Chapter
Author:     John Galsworthy





To Rudolf and Viola Sauter




OVER THE RIVER



CHAPTER I


Clare, who for seventeen months had been the wife of Sir Gerald
Corven of the Colonial Service, stood on the boat deck of an Orient
liner in the River Thames, waiting for it to dock.  It was ten
o'clock of a mild day in October, but she wore a thick tweed coat,
for the voyage had been hot.  She looked pale--indeed, a little
sallow--but her clear brown eyes were fixed eagerly on the land and
her slightly touched-up lips were parted, so that her face had the
vividness to which it was accustomed.  She stood alone, until a
voice said:

"Oh! HERE you are!" and a young man, appearing from behind a boat,
stood beside her.  Without turning, she said:

"Absolutely perfect day!  It ought to be lovely at home."

"I thought you'd be staying in Town for a night at least; and we
could have had a dinner and theatre.  Won't you?"

"My dear young man, I shall be met."

"Perfectly damnable, things coming to an end!"

"Often more damnable, things beginning."

He gave her a long look, and said suddenly:

"Clare, you realise, of course, that I love you?"

She nodded.  "Yes."

"But you don't love me?"

"Wholly without prejudice."

"I wish--I wish you could catch fire for a moment."

"I am a respectable married woman, Tony."

"Coming back to England because--"

"Of the climate of Ceylon."

He kicked at the rail.  "Just as it's getting perfect.  I've not
said anything, but I know that your--that Corven--"

Clare lifted her eyebrows, and he was silent; then both looked at
the shore, becoming momentarily more and more a consideration.

When two young people have been nearly three weeks together on
board a ship, they do not know each other half so well as they
think they do.  In the abiding inanity of a life when everything
has stopped except the engines, the water slipping along the ship's
sides, and the curving of the sun in the sky, their daily chair-to-
chair intimacy gathers a queer momentum and a sort of lazy warmth.
They know that they are getting talked about, and do not care.
After all, they cannot get off the ship, and there is nothing else
to do.  They dance together, and the sway of the ship, however
slight, favours the closeness of their contacts.  After ten days or
so they settle down to a life together, more continuous than that
of marriage, except that they still spend their nights apart.  And
then, all of a sudden, the ship stops, and they stop, and there is
a feeling, at least on one side, perhaps on both, that stocktaking
has been left till too late.  A hurried vexed excitement, not
unpleasurable, because suspended animation is at an end, invades
their faculties; they are faced with the real equation of land
animals who have been at sea.

Clare broke the silence.

"You've never told me why you're called Tony when your name is
James."

"That IS why.  I WISH you'd be serious, Clare; we haven't much time
before the darned ship docks.  I simply can't bear the thought of
not seeing you every day."

Clare gave him a swift look, and withdrew her eyes to the shore
again.  'How clean!' she was thinking.  He had, indeed, a clean
oval-shaped brown face, determined, but liable to good humour, with
dark grey eyes inclined to narrow with his thoughts, and darkish
hair; and he was thin and active.

He took hold of a button of her coat.

"You haven't said a word about yourself out there, but you aren't
happy, I know."

"I dislike people who talk about their private lives."

"Look!" he put a card into her hand:  "That club always finds me."

She read:


                     MR. JAMES BERNARD CROOM,

                        The Coffee House,

                        St. James' Street.


"Isn't the Coffee House very out of date?"

"Yes, but it's still rather 'the thing.'  My Dad put me down when I
was born."

"I have an uncle by marriage who belongs--Sir Lawrence Mont, tall
and twisty and thin; you'll know him by a tortoiseshell-rimmed
eyeglass."

"I'll look out for him."

"What are you going to do with yourself in England?"

"Hunt a job.  That's more than one man's work, it seems."

"What sort of job?"

"Anything except schoolmastering and selling things on commission."

"But does anybody ever get anything else nowadays?'

"No.  It's a bad look-out.  What I'd like would be an estate
agency, or something to do with horses."

"Estates and horses are both dying out."

"I know one or two racing men rather well.  But I expect I shall
end as a chauffeur.  Where are you going to stay?"

"With my people.  At first, anyway.  If you still want to see me
when you've been home a week, Condaford Grange, Oxfordshire, will
find me."

"Why did I ever meet you?" said the young man, with sudden gloom.

"Thank you."

"Oh! you know what I mean.  God! she's casting anchor.  Here's the
tender!  Oh!  Clare!"

"Sir?"

"Hasn't it meant anything to you?"

Clare looked at him steadily before answering.

"Yes.  But I don't know if it will ever mean any more.  If it
doesn't, thank you for helping me over a bad three weeks."

The young man stood silent, as only those can be silent whose
feelings are raging for expression. . . .



The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy:
the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of
a bridge, and, eminently, the finish of a voyage.  Clare landed
from the tender in the usual hurly-burly, and, still attended by
young Croom, came to rest in the arms of her sister.

"Dinny!  How sweet of you to face this bally-hooley!  My sister,
Dinny Cherrell--Tony Croom.  I shall be all right now, Tony.  Go
and look after your own things."

"I've got Fleur's car," said Dinny.  "What about your trunks?"

"They're booked through to Condaford."

"Then we can go straight off."

The young man, going with them to the car, said 'Good-bye' with a
jauntiness which deceived no one; and the car slid away from the
dock.

Side by side the sisters looked at each other, a long and
affectionate scrutiny; and their hands lay, squeezed together, on
the rug.

"Well, ducky!" said Dinny, at last.  "Lovely to see you!  Am I
wrong to read between the lines?"

"No.  I'm not going back to him, Dinny."

"No, never, non?"

"No, never, non!"

"Oh! dear!  Poor darling!"

"I won't go into it, but it became impossible."  Clare was silent,
then added suddenly, with a toss back of her head:  "Quite
impossible!"

"Did he consent to your coming?"

Clare shook her head.  "I slipped off.  He was away.  I wirelessed
him, and wrote from Suez."

There was another silence.  Then Dinny squeezed her hand and said:

"I was always afraid of it."

"The worst of it is I haven't a penny.  Is there anything in hats
now, Dinny?"

"'All British' hats--I wonder."

"Or, perhaps, I could breed dogs--bull terriers; what d'you think?"

"I don't at present.  We'll enquire."

"How are things at Condaford?"

"We rub on.  Jean has gone out to Hubert again, but the baby's
there--just a year old now.  Cuthbert Conway Cherrell.  I suppose
we shall call him 'Cuffs.'  He's rather a duck."

"Thank God I haven't that complication!  Certain things have their
advantages."  Her face had the hardness of a face on a coin.

"Have you had any word from him?"

"No, but I shall, when he realises that I mean it."

"Was there another woman?"

Clare shrugged.

Again Dinny's hand closed on hers.

"I'm not going to make a song of my affairs, Dinny."

"Is he likely to come home about it?"

"I don't know.  I won't see him if he does."

"But, darling, you'll be hopelessly hung up."

"Oh! don't let's bother about me.  How have you been?"  And she
looked critically at her sister:  "You look more Botticellian than
ever."

"I've become an adept at skimping.  Also, I've gone in for bees."

"Do they pay?"

"Not at present.  But on a ton of honey we could make about seventy
pounds."

"How much honey did you have this year?"

"About two hundredweight."

"Are there any horses still?"

"Yes, we've saved the horses, so far.  I've got a scheme for a
Condaford Grange bakery.  The home farm is growing wheat at double
what we sell it at.  I want to mill and bake our own and supply the
neighbourhood.  The old mill could be set going for a few pounds,
and there's a building for the bakery.  It wants about three
hundred to start it.  We've nearly decided to cut enough timber."

"The local traders will rage furiously."

"They will."

"Can it really pay?"

"At a ton of wheat to the acre--vide Whitaker--we reckon thirty
acres of our wheat, plus as much Canadian to make good light bread,
would bring us in more than eight hundred and fifty pounds, less,
say, five hundred, cost of milling and baking.  It would mean
baking one hundred and sixty two-pound loaves a day and selling
about 56,000 loaves a year.  We should need to supply eighty
households, but that's only the village, more or less.  And we'd
make the best and brightest bread."

"Three hundred and fifty a year profit," said Clare.  "I wonder."

"So do I," said Dinny.  "Experience doesn't tell me that every
estimate of profit should be halved, because I haven't had any, but
I suspect it.  But even half would just tip the beam the right way
for us, and we could extend operations gradually.  We could plough
a lot of grass in time."

"It's a scheme," said Clare, "but would the village back you?"

"So far as I've sounded them--yes."

"You'd want somebody to run it."

"M'yes.  It would have to be someone who didn't mind what he did.
Of course he'd have the future, if it went."

"I wonder," said Clare, again, and wrinkled her brows.

"Who," asked Dinny suddenly, "was that young man?"

"Tony Croom?  Oh!  He was on a tea plantation, but they closed
down."  And she looked her sister full in the face.

"Pleasant?"

"Yes, rather a dear.  HE wants a job, by the way."

"So do about three million others."

"Including me."

"You haven't come back to a very cheery England, darling."

"I gather we fell off the gold standard or something while I was in
the Red Sea.  What is the gold standard?"

"It's what you want to be on when you're off, and to be off when
you're on."

"I see."

"The trouble, apparently, is that our exports and carrying-trade
profits and interests from investments abroad don't any longer pay
for our imports; so we're living beyond our income.  Michael says
anybody could have seen that coming; but we thought 'it would be
all right on the night.'  And it isn't.  Hence the National
Government and the election."

"Can they do anything if they remain in?"

"Michael says 'yes'; but he's notably hopeful.  Uncle Lawrence says
they can put a drag on panic, prevent money going out of the
country, keep the pound fairly steady, and stop profiteering; but
that nothing under a wide and definite reconstruction that will
take twenty years will do the trick; and during that time we shall
all be poorer.  Unfortunately no Government, he says, can prevent
us liking play better than work, hoarding to pay these awful taxes,
or preferring the present to the future.  He also says that if we
think people will work as they did in the war to save the country,
we're wrong; because, instead of being one people against an
outside enemy, we're two peoples against the inside enemy of
ourselves, with quite opposite views as to how our salvation is to
come."

"Does he think the socialists have a cure?"

"No; he says they've forgotten that no one will give them food if
they can neither produce it nor pay for it.  He says that communism
or free trade socialism only has a chance in a country which feeds
itself.  You see, I've been learning it up.  They all use the word
Nemesis a good deal."

"Phew!  Where are we going now, Dinny?"

"I thought you'd like lunch at Fleur's; afterwards we can take the
three-fifty to Condaford."

Then there was silence, during which each thought seriously about
the other, and neither was happy.  For Clare was feeling in her
elder sister the subtle change which follows in one whose springs
have been broken and mended to go on with.  And Dinny was thinking:
'Poor child!  Now we've both been in the wars.  What will she do?
And how can I help her?'



CHAPTER II


"What a nice lunch!" said Clare, eating the sugar at the bottom of
her coffee cup:  "The first meal on shore is lovely!  When you get
on board a ship and read the first menu, you think:  'My goodness!
What an enchanting lot of things!' and then you come down to cold
ham at nearly every meal.  Do you know that stealing disappointment?"

"Don't I?" said Fleur.  "The curries used to be good, though."

"Not on the return voyage.  I never want to see a curry again.
How's the Round Table Conference going?"

"Plodding on.  Is Ceylon interested in India?"

"Not very.  Is Michael?"

"We both are."

Clare's brows went up with delightful suddenness.

"But you can't know anything about it."

"I WAS in India, you know, and at one time I saw a lot of Indian
students."

"Oh! yes, students.  That's the trouble.  They're so advanced and
the people are so backward."

"If Clare's to see Kit and Kat before we start," said Dinny, "we
ought to go up, Fleur."

The visit to the nurseries over, the sisters resumed their seats in
the car.

"Fleur always strikes me," said Clare, "as knowing so exactly what
she wants."

"She gets it, as a rule; but there've been exceptions.  I've always
doubted whether she really wanted Michael."

"D'you mean a love affair went wrong?"

Dinny nodded.  Clare looked out of the window.

"Well, she's not remarkable in that."

Her sister did not answer.

"Trains," Dinny said, in their empty third-class compartment,
"always have great open spaces now."

"I rather dread seeing Mother and Dad, Dinny, having made such an
almighty bloomer.  I really must get something to do."

"Yes, you won't be happy at Condaford for long."

"It isn't that.  I want to prove that I'm not the complete idiot.
I wonder if I could run an hotel.  English hotels are still pretty
backward."

"Good idea.  It's strenuous, and you'd see lots of people."

"Is that caustic?"

"No, darling, just common sense; you never liked being buried."

"How does one go to work to get such a thing?"

"You have me there.  But now's the time if ever, nobody's going to
be able to travel.  But I'm afraid there's a technical side to
managing hotels that has to be learned.  Your title might help."

"I shouldn't use his name.  I should call myself Mrs. Clare."

"I see.  Are you sure it wouldn't be wise to tell me more about
things?"

Clare sat silent for a little, then said suddenly:  "He's a
sadist."

Looking at her flushed face, Dinny said:  "I've never understood
exactly what that means."

"Seeking sensation, and getting more sensation when you hurt the
person you get it from.  A wife is most convenient."

"Oh! darling!"

"There was a lot first, my riding whip was only the last straw."

"You don't mean--!" cried Dinny, horrified.

"Oh! yes."

Dinny came over to her side and put her arms round her.

"But, Clare, you must get free!"

"And how?  My word against his.  Besides, who would make a show of
beastliness?  You're the only person I could ever ever speak to of
it."

Dinny got up and let down the window.  Her face was as flushed as
her sister's.  She heard Clare say dully:

"I came away the first moment I could.  It's none of it fit for
publication.  You see, ordinary passion palls after a bit, and it's
a hot climate."

"Oh! heaven!" said Dinny, and sat down again opposite.

"My own fault.  I always knew it was thin ice, and I've popped
through, that's all."

"But, darling, at twenty-four you simply can't stay married and not
married."

"I don't see why not; mariage manqué is very steadying to the
blood.  All I'm worrying about is getting a job.  I'm not going to
be a drag on Dad.  Is his head above water, Dinny?"

"Not quite.  We were breaking even, but this last taxation will
just duck us.  The trouble is how to get on without reducing staff.
Everyone's in the same boat.  I always feel that we and the village
are one.  We've got to sink or swim together, and somehow or other
we're going to swim.  Hence my bakery scheme."

"If I haven't got another job, could I do the delivering?  I
suppose we've still got the old car."

"Darling, you can help any way you like.  But it all has to be
started.  That'll take till after Christmas.  In the meantime
there's the election."

"Who is our candidate?"

"His name is Dornford--a new man, quite decent."

"Will he want canvassers?"

"Rather!"

"All right.  That'll be something to do for a start.  Is this
National Government any use?"

"They talk of 'completing their work'; but at present they don't
tell us how."

"I suppose they'll quarrel among themselves the moment a
constructive scheme is put up to them.  It's all beyond me.  But I
can go round saying 'Vote for Dornford.'  How's Aunt Em?"

"She's coming to stay to-morrow.  She suddenly wrote that she
hadn't seen the baby; says she's feeling romantic--wants to have
the priest's room, and will I see that 'no one bothers to do her up
behind, and that.'  She's exactly the same."

"I often thought about her," said Clare.  "Extraordinarily
restful."

After that there was a long silence, Dinny thinking about Clare and
Clare thinking about herself.  Presently, she grew tired of that
and looked across at her sister.  Had Dinny really got over that
affair of hers with Wilfrid Desert of which Hubert had written with
such concern when it was on, and such relief when it was off?  She
had asked that her affair should never be spoken of, Hubert had
said, but that was over a year ago.  Could one venture, or would
she curl up like a hedgehog?  'Poor Dinny!' she thought:  'I'm
twenty-four, so she's twenty-seven!'  And she sat very still
looking at her sister's profile.  It was charming, the more so for
that slight tip-tilt of the nose which gave to the face a touch of
adventurousness.  Her eyes were as pretty as ever--that cornflower
blue wore well; and their fringing was unexpectedly dark with such
chestnut hair.  Still, the face was thinner, and had lost what
Uncle Lawrence used to call its 'bubble and squeak.'  'I should
fall in love with her if I were a man,' thought Clare, 'she's GOOD.
But it's rather a sad face, now, except when she's talking.'  And
Clare drooped her lids, spying through her lashes:  No! one could
not ask!  The face she spied on had a sort of hard-won privacy that
it would be unpardonable to disturb.

"Darling," said Dinny, "would you like your old room?  I'm afraid
the fantails have multiplied exceedingly--they coo a lot just under
it."

"I shan't mind that."

"And what do you do about breakfast?  Will you have it in your
room?"

"My dear, don't bother about me in any way.  If anybody does, I
shall feel dreadful.  England again on a day like this!  Grass is
really lovely stuff, and the elm trees, and that blue look!"

"Just one thing, Clare.  Would you like me to tell Dad and Mother,
or would you rather I said nothing?"

Clare's lips tightened.

"I suppose they'll have to know that I'm not going back."

"Yes; and something of the reason."

"Just general impossibility, then."

Dinny nodded.  "I don't want them to think you in the wrong.  We'll
let other people think that you're home for your health."

"Aunt Em?" said Clare.

"I'll see to her.  She'll be absorbed in the baby, anyway.  Here we
are, very nearly."

Condaford Church came into view, and the little group of houses,
mostly thatched, which formed the nucleus of that scattered parish.
The home-farm buildings could be seen, but not the Grange, for,
situate on the lowly level dear to ancestors, it was wrapped from
the sight in trees.

Clare, flattening her nose against the window, said:

"It gives you a thrill.  Are you as fond of home as ever, Dinny?"

"Fonder."

"It's funny.  I love it, but I can't live in it."

"Very English--hence America and the Dominions.  Take your
dressing-case, and I'll take the suitcase."

The drive up through the lanes, where the elms were flecked by
little golden patches of turned leaves, was short and sweet in the
lowered sunlight, and ended with the usual rush of dogs from the
dark hall.

"This one's new," said Clare, of the black spaniel sniffing at her
stockings.

"Yes, Foch.  Scaramouch and he have signed the Kellogg Pact, so
they don't observe it.  I'm a sort of Manchuria."  And Dinny threw
open the drawing-room door.

"Here she is, Mother."

Advancing towards her mother, who stood smiling, pale and
tremulous, Clare felt choky for the first time.  To have to come
back like this and disturb their peace!

"Well, Mother darling," she said, "here's your bad penny!  You look
just the same, bless you!"

Emerging from that warm embrace, Lady Cherrell looked at her
daughter shyly and said:

"Dad's in his study."

"I'll fetch him," said Dinny.

In that barren abode, which still had its military and austere air,
the General was fidgeting with a gadget he had designed to save
time in the putting on of riding boots and breeches.

"Well?" he said.

"She's all right, dear, but it IS a split, and I'm afraid
complete."

"That's bad!" said the General, frowning.

Dinny took his lapels in her hands.

"It's not her fault.  But I wouldn't ask her any questions, Dad.
Let's take it that she's just on a visit; and make it as nice for
her as we can."

"What's the fellow been doing?"

"Oh! his nature.  I knew there was a streak of cruelty in him."

"How d'you mean--knew it, Dinny?"

"The way he smiled--his lips."

The General uttered a sound of intense discomfort.

"Come along!" he said:  "Tell me later."

With Clare he was perhaps rather elaborately genial and open,
asking no questions except about the Red Sea and the scenery of
Ceylon, his knowledge of which was confined to its spicy offshore
scent and a stroll in the Cinnamon Gardens at Colombo.  Clare,
still emotional from the meeting with her mother; was grateful for
his reticence.  She escaped rather quickly to her room, where her
bags had already been unpacked.

At its dormer window she stood listening to the coorooing of the
fantails and the sudden flutter and flip-flap of their wings
climbing the air from the yew-hedged garden.  The sun, very low,
was still shining through an elm tree.  There was no wind, and her
nerves sucked up repose in that pigeon-haunted stillness, scented
so differently from Ceylon.  Native air, deliciously sane, fresh
and homespun, with a faint tang of burning leaves.  She could see
the threading blue smoke from where the gardeners had lighted a
small bonfire in the orchard.  And almost at once she lit a
cigarette.  The whole of Clare was in that simple action.  She
could never quite rest and be still, must always move on to that
fuller savouring which for such natures ever recedes.  A fantail on
the gutter of the sloped stone roof watched her with a soft dark
little eye, preening itself slightly.  Beautifully white it was,
and had a pride of body; so too had that small round mulberry tree
which had dropped a ring of leaves, with their unders uppermost,
spangling the grass.  The last of the sunlight was stirring in what
yellowish-green foliage was left, so that the tree had an enchanted
look.  Seventeen months since she had stood at this window and
looked down over that mulberry tree at the fields and the rising
coverts!  Seventeen months of foreign skies and trees, foreign
scents and sounds and waters.  All new and rather exciting,
tantalising, unsatisfying.  No rest!  Certainly none in the white
house with the wide verandah she had occupied at Kandy.  At first
she had enjoyed, then she had wondered if she enjoyed, then she had
known she was not enjoying, lastly she had hated it.  And now it
was all over and she was back!  She flipped the ash off her
cigarette and stretched herself, and the fantail rose with a
fluster.



CHAPTER III


Dinny was 'seeing to' Aunt Em.  It was no mean process.  With
ordinary people one had question and answer and the thing was over.
But with Lady Mont words were not consecutive like that.  She stood
with a verbena sachet in her hand, sniffing, while Dinny unpacked
for her.

"This is delicious, Dinny.  Clare looks rather yellow.  It isn't a
baby, is it?"

"No, dear."

"Pity!  When we were in Ceylon everyone was havin' babies.  The
baby elephants--so enticin'!  In this room--we always played a game
of feedin' the Catholic priest with a basket from the roof.  Your
father used to be on the roof, and I was the priest.  There was
never anythin' worth eatin' in the basket.  Your Aunt Wilmet was
stationed in a tree to call 'Cooee' in case of Protestants."

"'Cooee' was a bit premature, Aunt Em.  Australia wasn't discovered
under Elizabeth."

"No.  Lawrence says the Protestants at that time were devils.  So
were the Catholics.  So were the Mohammedans."

Dinny winced and veiled her face with a corset belt.

"Where shall I put these undies?"

"So long as I see where.  Don't stoop too much!  They were all
devils then.  Animals were treated terribly.  Did Clare enjoy
Ceylon?"

Dinny stood up with an armful of underthings.

"Not much."

"Why not?  Liver?"

"Auntie, you won't say anything, except to Uncle Lawrence and
Michael, if I tell you?  There's been a split."

Lady Mont buried her nose in the verbena bag.

"Oh!" she said:  "His mother looked it.  D'you believe in 'like
mother like son'?"

"Not too much."

"I always thought seventeen years' difference too much, Dinny.
Lawrence says people say:  'Oh!  Jerry Corven!' and then don't say.
So, what was it?"

Dinny bent over a drawer and arranged the things.

"I can't go into it, but he seems to be quite a beast."

Lady Mont tipped the bag into the drawer, murmuring:  "Poor dear
Clare!"

"So, Auntie, she's just to be home for her health."

Lady Mont put her nose into a bowl of flowers.  "Boswell and
Johnson call them 'God-eat-yers.'  They don't smell.  What disease
could Clare have--nerves?"

"Climate, Auntie."

"So many Anglo-Indians go back and back, Dinny."

"I know, but for the present.  Something's bound to happen.  So not
even to Fleur, please."

"Fleur will know whether I tell her or not.  She's like that.  Has
Clare a young man?"

"Oh! no!"  And Dinny lifted a puce-coloured wrapper, recalling the
expression of the young man when he was saying good-bye.

"On board ship," murmured her Aunt dubiously.

Dinny changed the subject.

"Is Uncle Lawrence very political just now?"

"Yes, so borin'.  Things always sound so when you talk about them.
Is your candidate here safe, like Michael?"

"He's new, but he'll get in."

"Married?"

"No."

Lady Mont inclined her head slightly to one side and scrutinised
her niece from under half-drooped lids.

Dinny took the last thing out of the trunk.  It was a pot of
antiphlogistine.

"That's not British, Auntie."

"For the chest.  Delia puts it in.  I've had it, years.  Have you
talked to your candidate in private?"

"I have."

"How old is he?"

"Rather under forty, I should say."

"Does he do anything besides?"

"He's a K.C."

"What's his name?"

"Dornford."

"There were Dornfords when I was a girl.  Where was that?  Ah!
Algeciras!  He was a Colonel at Gibraltar."

"That would be his father, I expect."

"Then he hasn't any money."

"Only what he makes at the Bar."

"But they don't--under forty."

"He does, I think."

"Energetic?"

"Very."

"Fair?"

"No, darkish.  He won the Bar point-to-point this year.  Now,
darling, will you have a fire at once, or last till dressing time?"

"Last.  I want to see the baby."

"All right, he ought to be just in from his pram.  Your bathroom's
at the foot of these stairs, and I'll wait for you in the nursery."

The nursery was the same mullion-windowed, low-pitched room as that
wherein Dinny and Aunt Em herself had received their first
impressions of that jigsaw puzzle called life; and in it the baby
was practising his totter.  Whether he would be a Charwell or a
Tasburgh when he grew up seemed as yet uncertain.  His nurse, his
aunt and his great-aunt stood, in triangular admiration, for him to
fall alternatively into their outstretched hands.

"He doesn't crow," said Dinny.

"He does in the morning, Miss."

"Down he goes!" said Lady Mont.

"Don't cry, darling!"

"He never cries, Miss."

"That's Jean.  Clare and I cried a lot till we were about seven."

"I cried till I was fifteen," said Lady Mont, "and I began again
when I was forty-five.  Did you cry, Nurse?"

"We were too large a family, my lady.  There wasn't room like."

"Nanny had a lovely mother--five sisters as good as gold."

The nurse's fresh cheeks grew fresher; she drooped her chin,
smiling, shy as a little girl.

"Take care of bow legs!" said Lady Mont:  "That's enough
totterin'."

The nurse, retrieving the still persistent baby, placed him in his
cot, whence he frowned solemnly at Dinny, who said:

"Mother's devoted to him.  She thinks he'll be like Hubert."

Lady Mont made the sound supposed to attract babies.

"When does Jean come home again?"

"Not till Hubert's next long leave."

Lady Mont's gaze rested on her niece.

"The rector says Alan has another year on the China station."

Dinny, dangling a bead chain over the baby, paid no attention.
Never since the summer evening last year, when she came back home
after Wilfrid's flight, had she made or suffered any allusion to
her feelings.  No one, perhaps not even she herself, knew whether
she was heart-whole once more.  It was, indeed, as if she had no
heart.  So long, so earnestly had she resisted its aching, that it
had slunk away into the shadows of her inmost being, where even she
could hardly feel it beating.

"What would you like to do now, Auntie?  He has to go to sleep."

"Take me round the garden."

They went down and out on to the terrace.

"Oh!" said Dinny, with dismay, "Glover has gone and beaten the
leaves off the little mulberry.  They were so lovely, shivering on
the tree and coming off in a ring on the grass.  Really gardeners
have no sense of beauty."

"They don't like sweepin'.  Where's the cedar I planted when I was
five?"

They came on it round the corner of an old wall, a spreading
youngster of nearly sixty, with flattening boughs gilded by the
level sunlight.

"I should like to be buried under it, Dinny.  Only I suppose they
won't.  There'll be something stuffy."

"I mean to be burnt and scattered.  Look at them ploughing in that
field.  I do love horses moving slowly against a skyline of trees."

"'The lowin' kine,'" said Lady Mont irrelevantly.

A faint clink came from a sheepfold to the East.

"Listen, Auntie!"

Lady Mont thrust her arm within her niece's.

"I've often thought," she said, "that I should like to be a goat."

"Not in England, tied to a stake and grazing in a mangy little
circle."

"No, with a bell on a mountain.  A he-goat, I think, so as not to
be milked."

"Come and see our new cutting bed, Auntie.  There's nothing now, of
course, but dahlias, godetias, chrysanthemums, Michaelmas daisies,
and a few pentstemons and cosmias."

"Dinny," said Lady Mont, from among the dahlias, "about Clare?
They say divorce is very easy now."

"Until you try for it, I expect."

"There's desertion and that."

"But you have to BE deserted."

"Well, you said he made her."

"It's not the same thing, dear."

"Lawyers are so fussy about the law.  There was that magistrate
with the long nose in Hubert's extradition."

"Oh! but he turned out quite human."

"How was that?"

"Telling the Home Secretary that Hubert was speaking the truth."

"A dreadful business," murmured Lady Mont, "but nice to remember."

"It had a happy ending," said Dinny quickly.

Lady Mont stood, ruefully regarding her.

And Dinny, staring at the flowers, said suddenly:  "Aunt Em,
somehow there must be a happy ending for Clare."



CHAPTER IV


The custom known as canvassing, more peculiar even than its name,
was in full blast round Condaford.  Every villager had been invited
to observe how appropriate it would be if they voted for Dornford,
and how equally appropriate it would be if they voted for Stringer.
They had been exhorted publicly and vociferously, by ladies in
cars, by ladies out of cars, and in the privacy of their homes by
voices speaking out of trumpets.  By newspaper and by leaflet they
had been urged to perceive that they alone could save the country.
They had been asked to vote early, and only just not asked to vote
often.  To their attention had been brought the startling dilemma
that whichever way they voted the country would be saved.  They had
been exhorted by people who knew everything, it seemed, except how
it would be saved.  Neither the candidates nor their ladies,
neither the mysterious disembodied voices, nor the still more
incorporeal print, had made the faintest attempt to tell them that.
It was better not; for, in the first place, no one knew.  And, in
the second place, why mention the particular when the general would
serve?  Why draw attention, even, to the fact that the general is
made up of the particular; or to the political certainty that
promise is never performance?  Better, far better, to make large
loose assertion, abuse the other side, and call the electors the
sanest and soundest body of people in the world.

Dinny was not canvassing.  She was 'no good at it,' she said; and,
perhaps, secretly she perceived the peculiarity of the custom.
Clare, if she noticed any irony about the business, was too anxious
to be doing something to abstain.  She was greatly helped by the
way everybody took it.  They had always been 'canvassed,' and they
always would be.  It was a harmless enough diversion to their ears,
rather like the buzzing of gnats that did not bite.  As to their
votes, they would record them for quite other reasons--because
their fathers had voted this or that before them, because of
something connected with their occupation, because of their
landlords, their churches, or their trades unions; because they
wanted a change, while not expecting anything much from it; and not
a few because of their common sense.

Clare, dreading questions, pattered as little as possible and came
quickly to their babies or their health.  She generally ended by
asking what time they would like to be fetched.  Noting the hour in
a little book, she would come out not much the wiser.  Being a
Charwell--that is to say, no 'foreigner'--she was taken as a matter
of course; and though not, like Dinny, personally known to them
all, she was part of an institution, Condaford without Charwells
being still almost inconceivable.

She was driving back from this dutiful pastime towards the Grange
about four o'clock on the Saturday before the election, when a
voice from an overtaking two-seater called her name, and she saw
young Tony Croom.

"What on earth are you doing here, Tony?"

"I couldn't go any longer without a glimpse of you."

"But, my dear boy, to come down here is too terribly pointed."

"I know, but I've seen you."

"You weren't going to call, were you?"

"If I didn't see you otherwise.  Clare, you look so lovely!"

"That, if true, is not a reason for queering my pitch at home."

"The last thing I want to do; but I've got to see you now and then,
otherwise I shall go batty."

His face was so earnest and his voice so moved, that Clare felt for
the first time stirred in that hackneyed region, the heart.

"That's bad," she said; "because I've got to find my feet, and I
can't have complications."

"Let me kiss you just once.  Then I should go back happy."

Still more stirred, Clare thrust forward her cheek.

"Well, quick!" she said.

He glued his lips to her cheek, but when he tried to reach her lips
she drew back.

"No.  Now Tony, you must go.  If you're to see me, it must be in
Town.  But what is the good of seeing me?  It'll only make us
unhappy."

"Bless you for that 'us.'"

Clare's brown eyes smiled; their colour was like that of a glass of
Malaga wine held up to the light.

"Have you found a job?"

"There are none."

"It'll be better when the election's over.  I'M thinking of trying
to get with a milliner."

"You!"

"I must do something.  My people here are as hard pressed as
everybody else.  Now, Tony, you said you'd go."

"Promise to let me know the first day you come up."

Clare nodded, and re-started her engine.  As the car slid forward
gently, she turned her face and gave him another smile.

He continued to stand with his hands to his head till the car
rounded a bend and she was gone.

Turning the car into the stable yard, she was thinking 'Poor boy!'
and feeling the better for it.  Whatever her position in the eyes
of the law, or according to morality, a young and pretty woman
breathes more easily when inhaling the incense of devotion.  She
may have strict intentions, but she has also a sense of what is due
to her, and a dislike of waste.  Clare looked the prettier and
felt the happier all that evening.  But the night was ridden by
the moon; nearly full, it soared up in front of her window,
discouraging sleep.  She got up and parted the curtains.  Huddling
into her fur coat, she stood at the window.  There was evidently a
frost, and a ground mist stretched like fleece over the fields.
The tall elms, ragged-edged, seemed to be sailing slowly along over
the white vapour.  The earth out there was unknown by her, as if it
had dropped from that moon.  She shivered.  It might be beautiful,
but it was cold, uncanny; a frozen glamour.  She thought of the
nights in the Red Sea, when she lay with bedclothes thrown off, and
the very moon seemed hot.  On board that ship people had 'talked'
about her and Tony--she had seen many signs of it, and hadn't
cared.  Why should she?  He had not even kissed her all those days.
Not even the evening he came to her state-room and she had shown
him photographs, and they had talked.  A nice boy, modest and a
gentleman!  And if he was in love, now, she couldn't help it--she
hadn't tried to 'vamp' him.  As to what would happen, life always
tripped one up, it seemed, whatever one did!  Things must take care
of themselves.  To make resolutions, plans, lay down what was
called 'a line of conduct,' was not the slightest use!  She had
tried that with Jerry.  She shivered, then laughed, then went rigid
with a sort of fury.  No!  If Tony expected her to rush into his
arms he was very much mistaken.  Sensual love!  She knew it inside
out.  No, thank you!  As that moonlight, now, she was cold!
Impossible to speak of it even to her Mother, whatever she and Dad
might be thinking.

Dinny must have told them something, for they had been most awfully
decent.  But even Dinny didn't know.  Nobody should ever know!  If
only she had money it wouldn't matter.  'Ruined life,' of course,
and all that, was just old-fashioned tosh.  Life could always be
amusing if one made it so.  She was not going to skulk and mope.
Far from that!  But money she must somehow make.  She shivered even
in her fur coat.  The moonlight seemed to creep into one's bones.
These old houses--no central heating, because they couldn't afford
to put it in!  The moment the election was over she would go up to
London and scout round.  Fleur might know of something.  If there
was no future in hats, one might get a political secretaryship.
She could type, she knew French well, people could read her
handwriting.  She could drive a car with anybody, or school a
horse.  She knew all about country house life, manners, and
precedence.  There must be lots of Members who wanted somebody like
her, who could tell them how to dress, and how to decline this and
that without anybody minding, and generally do their crossword
puzzles for them.  She'd had quite a lot of experience with dogs,
and some with flowers, especially the arrangement of them in bowls
and vases.  And if it were a question of knowing anything about
politics, she could soon mug that up.  So, in that illusory cold
moonshine, Clare could not see how they could fail to need her.
With a salary and her own two hundred a year she could get along
quite well!  The moon, behind an elm tree now, no longer had its
devastating impersonality, but rather an air of bright intrigue,
peeping through those still thick boughs with a conspiring eye.
She hugged herself, danced a few steps to warm her feet, and
slipped back into her bed. . . .

Young Croom, in his borrowed two-seater, had returned to Town at an
unobtrusive sixty miles an hour.  His first kiss on Clare's cold
but glowing cheek had given him slight delirium.  It was an immense
step forward.  He was not a vicious young man.  That Clare was
married was to him no advantage.  But whether, if she had not been
married, his feelings towards her would have been of quite the same
brand, was a question he left unexamined.  The subtle difference
which creeps into the charm of a woman who has known physical love,
and the sting which the knowledge of that implants in a man's
senses--such is food for a psychologist rather than for a
straightforward young man really in love for the first time.  He
wanted her, as his wife if possible; if that were not possible, in
any other way that was.  He had been in Ceylon three years, hard-
worked, seeing few white women, and none that he had cared for.
His passion had, hitherto, been for polo, and his meeting with
Clare had come just as he had lost both job and polo.  Clare filled
for him a yawning gap.  As with Clare, so with him in the matter of
money, only more so.

He had some two hundred pounds saved, and would then be 'bang up
against it' unless he got a job.  Having returned the two-seater to
his friend's garage, he considered where he could dine most
cheaply, and decided on his club.  He was practically living there,
except for a bedroom in Ryder Street, where he slept and
breakfasted on tea and boiled eggs.  A simple room it was, on the
ground floor, with a bed and a dress cupboard, looking out on the
tall back of another building, the sort of room that his father,
coming on the Town in the 'nineties, had slept and breakfasted in
for half the money.

On Saturday nights the Coffee House was deserted, save for a
certain number of 'old buffers' accustomed to week-ending in St.
James's Street.  Young Croom ordered the three-course dinner and
ate it to the last crumb.  He drank Bass, and went down to the
smoking-room for a pipe.  About to sink into an armchair, he
noticed standing before the fire a tallish thin man with twisting
dark eyebrows and a little white moustache, who was examining him
through a tortoiseshell-rimmed monocle.  Acting on the impulse of a
lover craving connection with his lady, he said:

"Excuse me, sir, but aren't you Sir Lawrence Mont?"

"That has been my lifelong conviction."

Young Croom smiled.

"Then, sir, I met your niece, Lady Corven, coming home from Ceylon.
She said you were a member here.  My name's Croom."

"Ah!" said Sir Lawrence, dropping his eyeglass:  "I probably knew
your father--he was always here, before the war."

"Yes, he put me down at birth.  I believe I'm about the youngest in
the Club."

Sir Lawrence nodded.  "So you met Clare.  How was she?"

"All right, I think, sir."

"Let's sit down and talk about Ceylon.  Cigar?"

"Thank you, sir, I have my pipe."

"Coffee, anyway?  Waiter, two coffees.  My wife is down at
Condaford staying with Clare's people.  An attractive young woman."

Noting those dark eyes, rather like a snipe's, fixed on him, young
Croom regretted his impulse.  He had gone red, but he said bravely:

"Yes, sir, I thought her delightful."

"Do you know Corven?"

"No," said young Croom shortly.

"Clever fellow.  Did you like Ceylon?"

"Oh! yes.  But it's given me up."

"Not going back?"

"Afraid not."

"It's a long time since I was there.  India has rather smothered
it.  Been in India?"

"No, sir."

"Difficult to know how far the people of India really want to cut
the painter.  Seventy per cent peasants!  Peasants want stable
conditions and a quiet life.  I remember in Egypt before the war
there was a strong nationalist agitation, but the fellaheen were
all for Kitchener and stable British rule.  We took Kitchener away
and gave them unstable conditions in the war, and so they went on
the other tack.  What were you doing in Ceylon?"

"Running a tea plantation.  But they took up economy, amalgamated
three plantations, and I wasn't wanted any more.  Do you think
there's going to be a recovery, sir?  I can't understand
economics."

"Nobody can.  There are dozens of causes of the present state of
things, and people are always trying to tie it to one.  Take
England:  There's the knock-out of Russian trade, the comparative
independence of European countries, the great shrinkage of Indian
and Chinese trade; the higher standard of British living since the
war; the increase of national expenditure from two hundred-odd
millions to eight hundred millions, which means nearly six hundred
millions a year less to employ labour with.  When they talk of
over-production being the cause, it certainly doesn't apply to us.
We haven't produced so little for a long time past.  Then there's
dumping, and shocking bad organisation, and bad marketing of what
little food we produce.  And there's our habit of thinking it'll be
'all right on the night,' and general spoiled-child attitude.
Well, those are all special English causes, except that the too
high standard of living and the spoiled-child attitude are American
too."

"And the other American causes, sir?"

"The Americans certainly have over-produced and over-speculated.
And they've been living so high that they've mortgaged their
future--instalment system and all that.  Then they're sitting on
gold, and gold doesn't hatch out.  And, more than all, they don't
realise yet that the money they lent to Europe during the war was
practically money they'd made out of the war.  When they agree to
general cancellation of debts they'll be agreeing to general
recovery, including their own."

"But will they ever agree?"

"You never know what the Americans will do, they're looser-jointed
than we of the old world.  They're capable of the big thing, even
in their own interests.  Are you out of a job?"

"Very much so."

"What's your record?"

"I was at Wellington and at Cambridge for two years.  Then this tea
thing came along, and I took it like a bird."

"What age are you?"

"Twenty-six."

"Any notion of what you want to do?"

Young Croom sat forward.

"Really, sir, I'd have a shot at anything.  But I'm pretty good
with horses.  I thought possibly I might get into a training
stable; or with a breeder; or get a riding mastership."

"Quite an idea.  It's queer about the horse--he's coming in as he
goes out.  I'll talk to my cousin Jack Muskham--he breeds
bloodstock.  And he's got a bee in his bonnet about the re-
introduction of Arab blood into the English thoroughbred.  In fact
he's got some Arab mares coming over.  Just possibly he might want
someone."

Young Croom flushed and smiled.

"That would be frightfully kind of you, sir.  It sounds ideal.
I've had Arab polo ponies."

"Well," murmured Sir Lawrence thoughtfully, "I don't know that
anything excites my sympathy more than a man who really wants a job
and can't find one.  We must get this election over first, though.
Unless the socialists are routed horse-breeders will have to turn
their stock into potted meat.  Imagine having the dam of a Derby
winner between brown bread and butter for your tea--real
'Gentleman's Relish!'"

He got up.

"I'll say good-night, now.  My cigar will just last me home."

Young Croom rose too, and remained standing till that spare and
active figure had vanished.

'Frightfully nice old boy!' he thought, and in the depths of his
armchair he resigned himself to hope and to Clare's face wreathed
by the fumes of his pipe.



CHAPTER V


On that cold and misty evening, which all the newspapers had agreed
was to 'make history,' the Charwells sat in the drawing-room at
Condaford round the portable wireless, a present from Fleur.  Would
the voice breathe o'er Eden, or would it be the striking of Fate's
clock?  Not one of those five but was solemnly convinced that the
future of Great Britain hung in the balance; convinced, too, that
their conviction was detached from class or party.  Patriotism
divorced from thought of vested interest governed, as they
supposed, their mood.  And if they made a mistake in so thinking,
quite a number of other Britons were making it too.  Across Dinny's
mind, indeed, did flit the thought:  'Does anyone know what will
save the country and what won't?'  But, even by her, time and tide,
incalculably rolling, swaying and moulding the lives of nations,
was ungauged.  Newspapers and politicians had done their work and
stamped the moment for her as a turning point.  In a sea-green
dress, she sat, close to the 'present from Fleur,' waiting to turn
it on at ten o'clock, and regulate its stridency.  Aunt Em was
working at a new piece of French tapestry, her slight aquilinity
emphasised by tortoise-shell spectacles.  The General nervously
turned and re-turned The Times and kept taking out his watch.  Lady
Charwell sat still and a little forward, like a child in Sunday
School before she has become convinced that she is going to be
bored.  And Clare lay on the sofa, with the dog Foch on her feet.

"Time, Dinny," said the General; "turn the thing on."

Dinny fingered a screw, and 'the thing' burst into music.  "'Rings
on our fingers and bells on our toes,'" she murmured, "'We have
got music wherever we goes.'"

The music stopped, and the voice spoke:

"This is the first election result:  Hornsey . . . Conservative, no
change."

The General added:  "H'm!" and the music began again.

Aunt Em, looking at the portable, said:  "Coax it, Dinny.  That
burrin'!"

"It always has that, Auntie."

"Blore does something to ours with a penny.  Where is Hornsey--Isle
of Wight?"

"Middlesex, darling."

"Oh! yes!  I was thinkin' of Southsea.  There he goes again."

"These are some more election results. . . .  Conservative, gain
from Labour. . . .  Conservative, no change. . . .  Conservative,
gain from Labour."

The General added:  "Ha!" and the music began again.

"What nice large majorities!" said Lady Mont:  "Gratifyin'!"

Clare got off the sofa and squatted on a footstool against her
mother's knees.  The General had dropped The Times.  The 'voice'
spoke again:

". . . Liberal National, gain from Labour. . . .  Conservative, no
change. . . .  Conservative, gain from Labour."

Again and again the music spurted up and died away; and the voice
spoke.

Clare's face grew more and more vivid, and above her Lady
Charwell's pale and gentle face wore one long smile.  From time to
time the General said:  "By George!" and "This is something like!"

And Dinny thought:  'Poor Labour!'

On and on and on the voice breathed o'er Eden.

"Crushin'," said Lady Mont:  "I'm gettin' sleepy."

"Go to bed, Auntie.  I'll put a slip under your door when I come
up."

Lady Charwell, too, got up.  When they were gone, Clare went back
to the sofa and seemed to fall asleep.  The General sat on,
hypnotised by the chant of victory.  Dinny, with knees crossed and
eyes closed, was thinking:  'Will it really make a difference; and,
if it does, shall I care?  Where is HE?  Listening as we are?
Where?  Where?'  Not so often now, but quite often enough, that
sense of groping for Wilfrid returned to her.  In all these sixteen
months since he left her she had found no means of hearing of him.
For all she knew he might be dead.  Once--only once--she had broken
her resolve never to speak of her disaster, and had asked Michael.
Compson Grice, his publisher, had, it seemed received a letter from
him written in Bangkok, which said he was well and had begun to
write.  That was nine months ago.  The veil, so little lifted, had
dropped again.  Heartache--well, she was used to it.

"Dad, it's two o'clock.  It'll be like this all the time now.
Clare's asleep."

"I'm not," said Clare.

"You ought to be.  I'll let Foch out for his run, and we'll all go
up."

The General rose.

"Enough's as good as a feast.  I suppose we'd better."

Dinny opened the French window and watched the dog Foch trotting
out in semblance of enthusiasm.  It was cold, with a ground mist,
and she shut the window.  If she didn't he would neglect his ritual
and with more than the semblance of enthusiasm trot in again.
Having kissed her father and Clare, she turned out the lights and
waited in the hall.  The wood fire had almost died.  She stood with
her foot on the stone hearth, thinking.  Clare had spoken of trying
to get a secretaryship to some new Member of Parliament.  Judging
by the returns that were coming in, there would be plenty of them.
Why not to their own new member?  He had dined with them, and she
had sat next him.  A nice man, well read, not bigoted.  He even
sympathised with Labour, but did not think they knew their way
about as yet.  In fact he was rather notably what the drunken youth
in the play called:  'A Tory Socialist.'  He had opened out to her
and been very frank and pleasant.  An attractive man, with his
crisp dark hair, brown complexion, little dark moustache and rather
high soft voice; a good sort, energetic and upright-looking.  But
probably he already had a secretary.  However, if Clare was in
earnest, one could ask.  She crossed the hall to the garden door.
There was a seat in the porch outside, and under it Foch would be
crouched, waiting to be let in.  Sure enough, he emerged,
fluttering his tail, and padded towards the dogs' communal water-
bowl.  How cold and silent!  Nothing on the road; even the owls
quiet; the garden and the fields frozen, moonlit, still, away up to
that long line of covert!  England silvered and indifferent to her
fate, disbelieving in the Voice o'er Eden; old and permanent and
beautiful, even though the pound had gone off gold.  Dinny gazed at
the unfeverish night.  Men and their policies--how little they
mattered, how soon they passed, a dissolving dew on the crystal
immensity of God's toy!  How queer--the passionate intensity of
one's heart, and the incalculable cold callousness of Time and
Space!  To join, to reconcile? . . .

She shivered and shut the door.

At breakfast the next morning she said to Clare:

"Shall we strike while the iron's hot, and go and see Mr.
Dornford?"

"Why?"

"In case he wants a secretary, now he's in."

"Oh!  Is he in?"

"Very much so."

Dinny read the figures.  The usual rather formidable Liberal
opposition had been replaced by a mere five thousand Labour votes.

"The word 'national' is winning this election," said Clare.  "Where
I went canvassing in the town they were all Liberals.  I just used
the word 'national,' and they fell."

Hearing that the new Member would be at his headquarters all the
morning, the sisters started about eleven o'clock.  There was so
much coming and going round the doors that they did not like to
enter.

"I do hate asking for things," said Clare.

Dinny, who hated it quite as much, answered:

"Wait here and I'll just go in and congratulate him.  I might have
a chance of putting in a word.  He's seen you, of course."

"Oh! yes, he's seen me all right."

Eustace Dornford, K.C., new member elect, was sitting in a room
that seemed all open doors, running his eye over the lists his
agent was putting on the table before him.  From one of those doors
Dinny could see his riding boots under the table, and his bowler
hat, gloves and riding whip upon it.  Now that she was nearly in
the presence it seemed impossible to intrude at such a moment, and
she was just slipping away when he looked up.

"Excuse me a moment, Minns.  Miss Cherrell!"

She stopped and turned.  He was smiling and looking pleased.

"Anything I can do for you?"

She put out her hand.

"I'm awfully glad you've won.  My sister and I just wanted to
congratulate you."

He squeezed her hand, and Dinny thought:  'Oh! dear! this is the
last moment to ask him,' but she said:

"It's perfectly splendid, there's never been such a majority here."

"And never will be again.  That's my luck.  Where's your sister?"

"In the car."

"I'd like to thank her for canvassing."

"Oh!" said Dinny, "she enjoyed it;" and, suddenly feeling that it
was now or never, added:  "She's at a loose end, you know, badly
wants something to do.  Mr. Dornford, you don't think--this is too
bad--but I suppose she wouldn't be of any use to you as a
secretary, would she?  There, it's out!  She does know the county
pretty well; she can type, and speak French, and German a little,
if that's any use."  It had come with a rush, and she stood looking
at him ruefully.  But his eager expression had not changed.

"Let's go and see her," he said.

Dinny thought:  'Gracious!  I hope he hasn't fallen in love with
her!' and she glanced at him sidelong.  Still smiling, his face
looked shrewd now.  Clare was standing beside the car.  'I wish,'
thought Dinny, 'I had her coolness.'  Then she stood still and
watched.  All this triumphal business, these people coming and
going, those two talking so readily and quickly; the clear and
sparkling morning!  He came back to her.

"Thank you most awfully, Miss Cherrell.  It'll do admirably.  I did
want someone, and your sister is very modest."

"I thought you'd never forgive me for asking at such a moment."

"Always delighted for you to ask anything at any moment.  I must go
back now, but I'll hope to see you again very soon."

Gazing after him as he re-entered the building, she thought:  'He
has very nicely cut riding breeches!'  And she got into the car.

"Dinny," said Clare, with a laugh, "he's in love with you."

"What!"

"I asked for two hundred, and he made it two hundred and fifty at
once.  How did you do it in one evening?"

"I didn't.  It's you he's in love with, I'm afraid."

"No, no, my dear.  I have eyes, and I know it's you; just as you
knew that Tony Croom was in love with me."

"I could see that."

"And I could see this."

Dinny said quietly:  "That's absurd.  When do you begin?"

"He's going back to Town to-day.  He lives in the Temple--Harcourt
Buildings.  I shall go up this afternoon and start in the day after
to-morrow."

"Where shall you live?"

"I think I shall take an unfurnished room or a small studio, and
decorate and furnish it gradually myself.  It'll be fun."

"Aunt Em is going back this afternoon.  She would put you up till
you find it."

"Well," said Clare, pondering; "perhaps."

Just before they reached home Dinny said:

"What about Ceylon, Clare?  Have you thought any more?"

"What's the good of thinking?  I suppose he'll do something, but I
don't know what, and I don't care."

"Haven't you had a letter?"

"No."

"Well, darling, be careful."

Clare shrugged:  "Oh!  I'll be careful."

"Could he get leave if he wanted?"

"I expect so."

"You'll keep in touch with me, won't you?"

Clare leaned sideways from the wheel and gave her cheek a kiss.



CHAPTER VI


Three days after their meeting at the Coffee House, young Croom
received a letter from Sir Lawrence Mont, saying that his cousin
Muskham was not expecting the Arab mares till the spring.  In the
meantime he would make a note of Mr. Croom and a point of seeing
him soon.  Did Mr. Croom know any vernacular Arabic?

'No,' thought young Croom, 'but I know Stapylton.'

Stapylton, of the Lancers, who had been his senior at Wellington,
was home from India on leave.  A noted polo player, he would be
sure to know the horse jargon of the East; but, having broken his
thigh-bone schooling a steeplechaser, he would keep; the business
of finding an immediate 'job of work' would not.  Young Croom
continued his researches.  Everyone said:  'Wait till the
election's over!'

On the morning after the election, therefore, he issued from Ryder
Street with the greater expectation, and, on the evening after,
returned to the Coffee House, with the less, thinking:  'I might
just as well have gone to Newmarket and seen the Cambridgeshire.'

The porter handed him a note, and his heart began to thump.
Seeking a corner, he read:


"DEAR TONY--

"I have got the job of secretary to our new member, Eustace
Dornford, who's a K.C. in the Temple.  So I've come up to Town.
Till I find a tent of my own, I shall be at my Aunt Lady Mont's in
Mount Street.  I hope you've been as lucky.  I promised to let you
know when I came up; but I adjure you to sense and not sensibility,
and to due regard for pride and prejudice.

"Your shipmate and well-wisher,

"CLARE CORVEN."


'The darling!' he thought.  'What luck!'  He read the note again,
placed it beneath the cigarette case in his left-hand waistcoat
pocket, and went into the smoking-room.  There, on a sheet of paper
stamped with the Club's immemorial design, he poured out an
ingenuous heart:


"DARLING CLARE,--

"Your note has perked me up no end.  That you will be in Town is
magnificent news.  Your uncle has been very kind to me, and I shall
simply have to call and thank him.  So do look out for me about six
o'clock to-morrow.  I spend all my time hunting a job, and am
beginning to realise what it means to poor devils to be turned down
day after day.  When my pouch is empty, and that's not far away,
it'll be even worse for me.  No dole for this child, unfortunately.
I hope the pundit you're going to take in hand is a decent sort.  I
always think of M.P.'s as a bit on the wooden side.  And somehow I
can't see you among Bills and petitions and letters about public-
house licences and so forth.  However, I think you're splendid to
want to be independent.  What a thumping majority!  If they can't
do things with that behind them, they can't do things at all.  It's
quite impossible for me not to be in love with you, you know, and
to long to be with you all day and all night, too.  But I'm going
to be as good as I can, because the very last thing I want is to
cause you uneasiness of any sort.  I think of you all the time,
even when I'm searching the marble countenance of some fish-faced
blighter to see if my piteous tale is weakening his judgment.  The
fact is I love you terribly.  To-morrow, Thursday, about six!
"Good-night, dear and lovely one,

"YOUR TONY."


Having looked up Sir Lawrence's number in Mount Street, he
addressed the note, licked the envelope with passion, and went out
to post it himself.  Then, suddenly, he did not feel inclined to
return to the Coffee House.  The place had a grudge against his
state of mind.  Clubs were so damned male, and their whole attitude
to women so after-dinnerish--half contempt, half lechery!  Funk-
holes they were, anyway, full of comfort, secured against women,
immune from writs; and men all had the same armchair look once they
got inside.  The Coffee House, too, about the oldest of all clubs,
was stuffed with regular buffers, men you couldn't imagine outside
a club.  'No!' he thought.  'I'll have a chop somewhere, and go to
that thing at Drury Lane.'

He got a seat rather far back in the upper boxes, but, his sight
being very good, he saw quite well.  He was soon absorbed.  He had
been out of England long enough to have some sentiment about her.
This pictorial pageant of her history for the last thirty years
moved him more than he would have confessed to anyone sitting
beside him.  Boer war, death of the Queen, sinking of the Titanic,
Great War, Armistice, health to 1931--if anyone asked him
afterwards, he would probably say:  'Marvellous! but gave me the
pip rather!'  While sitting there it seemed more than the 'pip';
the heartache of a lover, who wants happiness with his mistress and
cannot reach it; the feeling of one who tries to stand upright and
firm and is for ever being swayed this way and that.  The last
words rang in his ears as he went out:  'Greatness and dignity and
peace.'  Moving and damned ironical!  He took a cigarette from his
case and lighted it.  The night was dry and he walked, threading
his way through the streams of traffic, with the melancholy howling
of street-singers in his ears.  Sky-signs and garbage!  People
rolling home in their cars, and homeless night-birds!  'Greatness
and dignity and peace!'

'I must absolutely have a drink,' he thought.  The Club seemed
possible again now, even inviting, and he made towards it.
'"Farewell, Piccadilly!  Good-bye, Leicester Square!"'  Marvellous
that scene, where those Tommies marched up in a spiral through the
dark mist, whistling; while in the lighted front of the stage three
painted girls rattled out:  '"We don't want to lose you, but we
think you ought to go."'  And from the boxes on the stage at the
sides people looked down and clapped!  The whole thing there!  The
gaiety on those girls' painted faces getting more and more put-on
and heart-breaking!  He must go again with Clare!  Would it move
her?  And suddenly he perceived that he didn't know.  What did one
know about anyone, even the woman one loved?  His cigarette was
scorching his lip, and he spat out the butt.  That scene with the
honeymooning couple leaning over the side of the Titantic,
everything before them, and nothing before them but the cold deep
sea!  Did that couple know anything except that they desired each
other?  Life was damned queer, when you thought about it!  He
turned up the Coffee House steps, feeling as if he had lived long
since he went down them. . . .



It was just six o'clock when he rang the bell at Mount Street on
the following day.

A butler, with slightly raised eyebrows, opened the door.

"Is Sir Lawrence Mont at home?"

"No, sir.  Lady Mont is in, sir."

"I'm afraid I don't know Lady Mont.  I wonder if I could see Lady
Corven for a moment?"

One of the butler's eyebrows rose still higher.  'Ah!' he seemed to
be thinking.

"If you'll give me your name, sir."

Young Croom produced a card.

"'Mr. James Bernard Croom,'" chanted the butler.

"Mr. Tony Croom, tell her, please."

"Quite!  If you'll wait in here a moment.  Oh! here is Lady
Corven."

A voice from the stairs said:

"Tony?  What punctuality!  Come up and meet my Aunt."

She was leaning over the stair-rail, and the butler had
disappeared.

"Put your hat down.  How can you go about without a coat?  I shiver
all the time."

Young Croom came close below her.

"Darling!" he murmured.

She placed one finger to her lips, then stretched it down to him,
so that he could just reach it with his own.

"Come along!"  She had opened a door when he reached the top, and
was saying:  "This is a shipmate, Aunt Em.  He's come to see Uncle
Lawrence.  Mr. Croom, my Aunt, Lady Mont."

Young Croom was aware of a presence slightly swaying towards him.
A voice said:  "Ah!  Ships!  Of course!  How d'you do?"

Young Croom, aware that he had been 'placed,' saw Clare regarding
him with a slightly mocking smile.  If only they could be alone
five minutes, he would kiss that smile off her face!  He would--!

"Tell me about Ceylon, Mr. Craven."

"Croom, Auntie.  Tony Croom.  Better call him Tony.  It isn't his
name, but everybody does."

"Tony!  Always heroes.  I don't know why."

"This Tony is quite ordinary."

"Ceylon.  Did you know her there, Mr.--Tony?"

"No.  We only met on the ship."

"Ah!  Lawrence and I used to sleep on deck.  That was in the
'naughty nineties.'  The river here used to be full of punts, I
remember."

"It still is, Aunt Em."

Young Croom had a sudden vision of Clare and himself in a punt up a
quiet backwater.  He roused himself and said:

"I went to Cavalcade last night.  Great!"

"Ah!" said Lady Mont.  "That reminds me."  She left the room.

Young Croom sprang up.

"Tony!  Behave!"

"But surely that's what she went for!"

"Aunt Em is extraordinarily kind, and I'm not going to abuse her
kindness."

"But, Clare, you don't know what--"

"Yes, I do.  Sit down again."

Young Croom obeyed.

"Now listen, Tony!  I've had enough physiology to last me a long
time.  If you and I are going to be pals, it's got to be platonic."

"Oh, God!" said young Croom.

"But it's got to; or else--we simply aren't going to see each
other."

Young Croom sat very still with his eyes fixed on hers, and there
passed through her the thought:  'It's going to torture him.  He
looks too nice for that.  I don't believe we ought to see each
other.'

"Look!" she said, gently, "you want to help me, don't you?  There's
lots of time, you know.  Some day--perhaps."

Young Croom grasped the arms of his chair.  His eyes had a look of
pain.

"Very well," he said slowly, "anything so long as I can see you.
I'll wait till it means something more than physiology to you."

Clare sat examining the glacé toe of her slowly wiggling shoe;
suddenly she looked straight into his brooding eyes.

"If," she said, "I had not been married, you would wait cheerfully
and it wouldn't hurt you.  Think of me like that."

"Unfortunately I can't.  Who could?"

"I see.  I am fruit, not blossom--tainted by physiology."

"Don't!  Oh! Clare, I will be anything you want to you.  And if I'm
not always as cheery as a bird, forgive me."

She looked at him through her eyelashes and said:  "Good!"

Then came silence, during which she was conscious that he was
fixing her in his mind from her shingled dark head to her glacé kid
toe.  She had not lived with Jerry Corven without having been made
conscious of every detail of her body.  She could not help its
grace or its provocation.  She did not want to torture him, but she
could not find it unpleasant that she did.  Queer how one could be
sorry and yet pleased, and, withal, sceptical and a little bitter.
Give yourself, and after a few months how much would he want you!
She said abruptly:

"Well, I've found rooms--a quaint little hole--used to be an
antique shop, in a disused mews."

He said eagerly:  "Sounds jolly.  When are you going in?"

"Next week."

"Can I help?"

"If you can distemper walls."

"Rather!  I did all my bungalow in Ceylon, two or three times
over."

"We should have to work in the evenings, because of my job."

"What about your boss?  Is he decent?"

"Very, and in love with my sister.  At least, I think so."

"Oh!" said young Croom dubiously.

Clare smiled.  He was so obviously thinking:  'Could a man be that
when he sees YOU every day?'

"When can I come first?"

"To-morrow evening, if you like.  It's 2, Melton Mews, off
Malmesbury Square.  I'll get the stuff in the morning, and we'll
begin upstairs.  Say six-thirty."

"Splendid!"

"Only, Tony--no importunities.  'Life is real, life is earnest.'"

Grinning ruefully, he put his hand on his heart.

"And you must go now.  I'll take you down and see if my Uncle's
come in."

Young Croom stood up.

"What is happening about Ceylon?" he said, abruptly.  "Are you
being worried?"

Clare shrugged.  "Nothing is happening so far."

"That can't possibly last.  Have you thought things out?"

"Thinking won't help me.  It's quite likely he'll do nothing."

"I can't bear your being--" he stopped.

"Come along," said Clare, and led the way downstairs.

"I don't think I'll try to see your Uncle," said young Croom.  "To-
morrow at half-past six, then."  He raised her hand to his lips,
and marched to the door.  There he turned.  She was standing with
her head a little on one side, smiling.  He went out, distracted.

A young man, suddenly awakened amid the doves of Cytherea,
conscious for the first time of the mysterious magnetism which
radiates from what the vulgar call 'a grass widow,' and withheld
from her by scruples or convention, is to be pitied.  He has not
sought his fate.  It comes on him by stealth, bereaving him
ruthlessly of all other interest in life.  It is an obsession
replacing normal tastes with a rapturous aching.  Maxims such as
'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' 'Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbour's wife,' 'Blessed are the pure in heart,' become
singularly academic.  Young Croom had been brought up to the
tinkling of the school bell:  'Play the game!'  He now perceived
its strange inadequacy.  What WAS the game?  Here was she, young
and lovely, fleeing from a partner seventeen years older than
herself, because he was a brute; she hadn't said so, but of course
he must be!  Here was himself, desperately in love with her, and
liked by her--not in the same way, but still as much as could be
expected!  And nothing to come of it but tea together!  There was a
kind of sacrilege in such waste.

Thus preoccupied he passed a man of middle height and alert
bearing, whose rather cat-like eyes and thin lips were set into a
brown face with the claws of many little wrinkles, and who turned
to look after him with a slight contraction of the mouth which
might have been a smile.



CHAPTER VII


After young Croom had gone Clare stood for a moment in the hall
recollecting the last time she had gone out of that front door, in
a fawn-coloured suit and a little brown hat, between rows of people
saying:  "Good luck!" and "Good-bye, darling!" and "Give my love to
Paris!"  Eighteen months ago, and so much in between!  Her lip
curled, and she went into her Uncle's study.

"Oh! Uncle Lawrence, you ARE in!  Tony Croom's been here to see
you."

"That rather pleasant young man without occupation?"

"Yes.  He wanted to thank you."

"For nothing, I'm afraid."  And Sir Lawrence's quick dark eyes,
like a snipe's or woodcock's, roved sceptically over his pretty
niece.  She was not, like Dinny, a special favourite, but she was
undoubtedly attractive.  It was early days to have messed up her
marriage; Em had told him and said that it wasn't to be mentioned.
Well, Jerry Corven!  People had always shrugged and hinted.  Too
bad!  But no real business of his.

A subdued voice from the door said:

"Sir Gerald Corven has called, Sir Lawrence."

Involuntarily Sir Lawrence put his finger to his lips.  The butler
subdued his voice still further.

"I put him in the little room and said I would see if Lady Corven
was in."

Sir Lawrence noted Clare's hands hard pressed down on the back of
the chair behind which she was standing.

"ARE you in, Clare?"

She did not answer, but her face was hard and pale as stone.

"A minute, Blore.  Come back when I ring."

The butler withdrew.

"Now, my dear?"

"He must have taken the next boat.  Uncle, I don't want to see
him."

"If we only say you're out, he'll probably come again."

Clare threw back her head.  "Well, I'll see him!"

Sir Lawrence felt a little thrill.

"If you'd tell me what to say, I'd see him for you."

"Thank you, Uncle, but I don't see why you should do my dirty
work."

Sir Lawrence thought:  'Thank God!'

"I'll be handy in case you want me.  Good luck, my dear!"  And he
went out.

Clare moved over to the fire; she wanted the bell within reach.
She had the feeling, well known to her, of settling herself in the
saddle for a formidable jump.  'He shan't touch me, anyway,' she
thought.  She heard Blore's voice say:

"Sir Gerald Corven, my lady."  Quaint!  Announcing a husband to his
wife!  But staff knew everything!

Without looking she saw perfectly well where he was standing.  A
surge of shamed anger stained her cheeks.  He had fascinated her;
he had used her as every kind of plaything.  He had--!

His voice, cuttingly controlled, said:

"Well, my dear, you were very sudden."  Neat and trim, as ever, and
like a cat, with that thin-lipped smile and those daring despoiling
eyes!

"What do you want?"

"Only yourself."

"You can't have me."

"Absurd!"

He made the quickest kind of movement and seized her in his arms.
Clare bent her head back and put her finger on the bell.

"Move back, or I ring!" and she put her other hand between his face
and hers.  "Stand over there and I'll talk to you, otherwise you
must go."

"Very well!  But it's ridiculous."

"Oh!  Do you think I should have gone if I hadn't been in earnest?"

"I thought you were just riled, and I don't wonder.  I'm sorry."

"It's no good discussing what happened.  I know you, and I'm not
coming back to you."

"My dear, you have my apology, and I give you my word against
anything of the sort again."

"How good of you!"

"It was only an experiment.  Some women adore it, if not at the
time."

"You are a beast."

"And beauty married me.  Come, Clare, don't be silly, and make us a
laughing-stock!  You can fix your own conditions."

"And trust you to keep them!  Besides, that's not my idea of a
life.  I'm only twenty-four."

The smile left his lips.

"I see.  I noticed a young man come out of this house.  Name and
estate?"

"Tony Croom.  Well?"

He walked over to the window, and after a moment's contemplation of
the street, turned and said:

"You have the misfortune to be my wife."

"So I was thinking."

"Quite seriously, Clare, come back to me."

"Quite seriously, no."

"I have an official position, and I can't play about with it.  Look
at me!"  He came closer.  "I may be all you think me, but I'm
neither a humbug nor old-fashioned.  I don't trade on my position,
or on the sanctity of marriage, or any of that stuff.  But they
still pay attention to that sort of thing in the Service, and I
can't afford to let you divorce me."

"I didn't expect it."

"What then?"

"I know nothing except that I'm not coming back."

"Just because of--?"

"And a great deal else."  The cat-like smile had come back and
prevented her from reading what he was thinking.

"Do you want me to divorce you?"

Clare shrugged.  "You have no reason."

"So you would naturally say."

"And mean."

"Now look here, Clare, this is all absurd, and quite unworthy of
anyone with your sense and knowledge of things.  You can't be a
perpetual grass widow.  You didn't dislike the life out there."

"There are some things that can't be done to me, and you have done
them."

"I've said that they shan't be done again."

"And I've said that I can't trust you."

"This is going round the mulberry bush.  Are you going to live on
your people?"

"No.  I've got a job."

"Oh!  What?"

"Secretary to our new Member."

"You'll be sick of that in no time."

"I don't think so."

He stood staring at her without his smile.  For a moment she could
read his thoughts, for his face had the expression which preludes
sex.  Suddenly he said:  "I won't stand for another man having
you."

It was a comfort to have seen for once the bottom of his mind.  She
did not answer.

"Did you hear me?"

"Yes."

"I meant it."

"I could see that."

"You're a stony little devil."

"I wish I had been."

He took a turn up and down the room, and came to a stand dead in
front of her.

"Look at me!  I'm not going back without you.  I'm staying at the
Bristol.  Be sensible, there's a darling, and come to me there.
We'll start again.  I'll be ever so nice to you."

Her control gave way, and she cried out:  "Oh, for God's sake,
understand!  You killed all the feeling I had for you."

His eyes dilated and then narrowed, his lips became a line.  He
looked like a horse-breaker.

"And understand ME," he said, very low, "you either come back to me
or I divorce you.  I won't leave you here, to kick your heels."

"I'm sure you'll have the approval of every judicious husband."

The smile reappeared on his lips.

"For that," he said, "I'm going to have a kiss."  And before she
could stop him he had fastened his lips on hers.  She tore herself
away and pressed the bell.  He went quickly to the door.

"Au revoir!" he said, and went out.

Clare wiped her lips.  She felt bewildered and exhausted, and quite
ignorant whether to him or to her the day had gone.

She stood leaning her forehead on her hands over the fire, and
became aware that Sir Lawrence had come back and was considerately
saying nothing.

"Awfully sorry, Uncle; I shall be in my digs next week."

"Have a cigarette, my dear."

Clare took the cigarette, and inhaled its comfort.  Her uncle had
seated himself and she was conscious of the quizzical expression of
his eyebrows.

"Conference had its usual success?"

Clare nodded.

"The elusive formula.  The fact is, human beings are never
satisfied with what they don't want, however cleverly it's put.
Is it to be continued in our next?"

"Not so far as I'm concerned."

"Pity there are always two parties to a conference."

"Uncle Lawrence," she said suddenly, "what is the law of divorce
now?"

The baronet uncrossed his long thin legs.

"I've never had any particular truck with it.  I believe it's less
old-fashioned than it was, but see Whitaker."  He reached for the
red-backed volume.  "Page 258--here you are, my dear."

Clare read in silence, while he gazed at her ruefully.  She looked
up and said.

"Then, if I want him to divorce me, I've got to commit adultery."

"That is, I believe, the elegant way they put it.  In the best
circles, however, the man does the dirty work."

"Yes, but he won't.  He wants me back.  Besides, he's got his
position to consider."

"There is that, of course," said Sir Lawrence, thoughtfully; "a
career in this country is a tender plant."

Clare closed the Whitaker.

"If it weren't for my people," she said, "I'd give him cause to-
morrow and have done with it."

"You don't think a better way would be to give partnership another
trial?"

Clare shook her head.

"I simply couldn't."

"That's that, then," said Sir Lawrence, "and it's an awkward
'that.'  What does Dinny say?"

"I haven't discussed it with her.  She doesn't know he's here."

"At present, then, you've no one to advise you?"

"No.  Dinny knows why I left, that's all."

"I should doubt if Jerry Corven is a very patient man."

Clare laughed.

"We're neither of us long-suffering."

"Do you know where he is staying?"

"At the Bristol."

"It might," said Sir Lawrence slowly, "be worth while to keep an
eye on him."

Clare shivered.  "It's rather degrading; besides, Uncle, I don't
want to hurt his career.  He's very able, you know."

Sir Lawrence shrugged.  "To me," he said, "and to all your kin, his
career is nothing to your good name.  How long has he got over
here?"

"Not long, I should think."

"Would you like me to see him, and try to arrange that you go your
own ways?"

Clare was silent, and Sir Lawrence, watching her, thought:
'Attractive, but a lot of naughty temper.  Any amount of spirit,
and no patience at all.'  Then she said:

"It was all my fault, nobody wanted me to marry him.  I hate to
bother you.  Besides, he wouldn't consent."

"You never know," murmured Sir Lawrence.  "If I get a natural
chance, shall I?"

"It would be lovely of you, only--"

"All right, then.  In the meantime young men without jobs--are they
wise?"

Clare laughed.  "Oh, I've 'larned' him.  Well, thank you
frightfully, Uncle Lawrence.  You're a great comfort.  I was an
awful fool; but Jerry has a sort of power, you know; and I've
always liked taking risks.  I don't see how I can be my mother's
daughter, she hates them; and Dinny only takes them on principle."
She sighed.  "I won't bore you any more now."  And, blowing a kiss,
she went out.

Sir Lawrence stayed in his armchair thinking:  'Putting my oar in!
A nasty mess, and going to be nastier!  Still, at her age
something's got to be done.  I must talk to Dinny.'



CHAPTER VIII


From Condaford the hot airs of election time had cleared away, and
the succeeding atmosphere was crystallised in the General's saying:

"Well, those fellows got their deserts."

"Doesn't it make you tremble, Dad, to think what THESE fellows'
deserts will be if they don't succeed in putting it over now?"

The General smiled.

"'Sufficient unto the day,' Dinny.  Has Clare settled down?"

"She's in her diggings.  Her work so far seems to have been writing
letters of thanks to people who did the dirty work at the cross-
roads."

"Cars?  Does she like Dornford?"

"She says he's quite amazingly considerate."

"His father was a good soldier.  I was in his brigade in the Boer
War for a bit."  He looked at his daughter keenly, and added:  "Any
news of Corven?"

"Yes, he's over here."

"Oh!  I wish I wasn't kept so in the dark.  Parents have to stand
on the mat nowadays, and trust to what they can hear through the
keyhole."

Dinny drew his arm within hers.

"One has to be so careful of their feelings.  Sensitive plants,
aren't you, Dad?"

"Well, it seems to your mother and me an extraordinarily bad look-
out.  We wish to goodness the thing could be patched up."

"Not at the expense of Clare's happiness, surely?"

"No," said the General, dubiously, "no; but there you are at once
in all these matrimonial things.  What is and will be her
happiness?  She doesn't know, and you don't, and I don't.  As a
rule in trying to get out of a hole you promptly step into
another."

"Therefore don't try?  Stay in your hole?  That's rather what
Labour wanted to do, isn't it?"

"I ought to see him," said the General, passing over the simile,
"but I can't go blundering in the dark.  What do you advise,
Dinny?"

"Let the sleeping dog lie until it gets up to bite you."

"You think it will?"

"I do."

"Bad!" muttered the General.  "Clare's too young."

That was Dinny's own perpetual thought.  What at the first blush
she had said to her sister:  "You must get free," remained her
conviction.  But how was she to get free?  Knowledge of divorce had
been no part of Dinny's education.  She knew that the process was
by no means uncommon, and she had as little feeling against it as
most of her generation.  To her father and mother it would probably
seem lamentable, doubly so if Clare were divorced instead of
divorcing--that would be a stigma on her to be avoided at almost
all cost.  Since her soul-racking experience with Wilfrid, Dinny
had been very little in London.  Every street, and above all the
park, seemed to remind her of him and the desolation he had left in
her.  It was now, however, obvious to her that Clare could not be
left unsupported in whatever crisis was befalling.

"I think I ought to go up, Dad, and find out what's happening."

"I wish to God you would.  If it's at all possible to patch things
up, they ought to be."

Dinny shook her head.

"I don't believe it is, and I don't believe you'd wish it if Clare
had told you what she told me."

The General stared.  "There it is, you see.  In the dark."

"Yes, dear, but till she tells you herself I can't say more."

"Then the sooner you go up the better."

Free from the scent of horse, Melton Mews was somewhat strikingly
impregnated with the odour of petrol.  This bricked alley had
become, indeed, the haunt of cars.  To right and to left of her,
entering late that afternoon, the doors of garages gaped or
confronted her with more or less new paint.  A cat or two stole by,
and the hinder parts of an overalled chauffeur bending over a
carburettor could be seen in one opening; otherwise life was at a
discount, and the word 'mews' no longer justified by manure.

No. 2 had the peacock-green door of its former proprietress, whom,
with so many other luxury traders, the slump had squeezed out of
business.  Dinny pulled a chased bell-handle, and a faint tinkle
sounded, as from some errant sheep.  There was a pause, then a spot
of light showed for a moment on a level with her face, was
obscured, and the door was opened.  Clare, in a jade-green overall,
said:

"Come in, my dear.  This is the lioness in her den, 'the Douglas in
her hall!'"

Dinny entered a small, almost empty room hung with the green
Japanese silk of the antique dealer and carpeted with matting.  A
narrow spiral staircase wormed into it at the far corner, and a
subdued light radiated from a single green-paper-shaded bulb
hanging in the centre.  A brass electric heater diffused no heat.

"Nothing doing here so far," said Clare.  "Come upstairs."

Dinny made the tortuous ascent, and stepped into a rather smaller
sitting-room.  It had two curtained windows looking over the mews,
a couch with cushions, a little old bureau, three chairs, six
Japanese prints, which Clare had evidently just been hanging, an
old Persian rug over the matted floor, an almost empty bookcase,
and some photographs of the family standing on it.  The walls were
distempered a pale grey, and a gas fire was burning.

"Fleur gave me the prints and the rug, and Aunt Em stumped up the
bureau.  I took the other things over."

"Where do you sleep?"

"On that couch--quite comfy.  I've got a little bath-dressing-room
next door, with a geyser, and a what-d'ye-call-it, and a cupboard
for clothes."

"Mother told me to ask what you wanted."

"I could do with our old Primus stove, some blankets and a few
knives and forks and spoons, and a small tea-set, if there's one to
spare, and any spare books."

"Right!" said Dinny.  "Now, darling, how are you?"

"Bodily fine, mentally rather worried.  I told you he was over."

"Does he know of this place?"

"Not so far.  You and Fleur and Aunt Em--oh! and Tony Croom--are
the only people who know of it.  My official address is Mount
Street.  But he's bound to find out if he wants to."

"You saw him?"

"Yes, and told him I wasn't coming back; and I'm not, Dinny; that's
flat, to save breath.  Have some tea?  I can make it in a brown
pot."

"No, thank you, I had it on the train."  She was sitting on one of
the taken-over chairs, in a bottle-green suit that went beautifully
with her beech-leaf-coloured hair.

"How jolly you look, sitting there!" said Clare, curling up on the
sofa.  "Gasper?"

Dinny was thinking the same about her sister.  Graceful creature,
one of those people who couldn't look ungraceful; with her dark
short hair, and dark, alive eyes, and ivory pale face, and not too
brightened lips holding the cigarette, she looked--well,
'desirable.'  And, in all the circumstances, the word appeared to
Dinny an awkward one.  Clare had always been vivid and attractive,
but without question marriage had subtly rounded, deepened, and in
some sort bedevilled that attraction.  She said suddenly:

"Tony Croom, you said?"

"He helped me distemper these walls; in fact, he practically did
them, while I did the bathroom--these are better."

Dinny's eyes took in the walls with apparent interest.

"Quite neat.  Mother and Father are nervous, darling."

"They would be."

"Naturally, don't you think?"

Clare's brows drew down.  Dinny suddenly remembered how strenuously
they had once debated the question of whether eyebrows should be
plucked.  Thank heaven!  Clare never had yet.

"I can't help it, Dinny.  I don't know what Jerry's going to do."

"I suppose he can't stay long, without giving up his job?"

"Probably not.  But I'm not going to bother.  What will be will."

"How quickly could a divorce be got?  I mean against him?"

Clare shook her head, and a dark curl fell over her forehead,
reminding Dinny of her as a child.

"To have him watched would be pretty revolting.  And I'm not going
into court to describe being brutalised.  It's only my word against
his.  Men are safe enough."

Dinny got up and sat down beside her on the couch.

"I could kill him!" she said.

Clare laughed.

"He wasn't so bad in many ways.  Only I simply won't go back.  If
you've once been skinned, you can't."

Dinny sat, silent, with closed eyes.

"Tell me," she said, at last, "how you stand with Tony Croom."

"He's on probation.  So long as he behaves I like to see him."

"If," said Dinny slowly, "he were known to come here, it would be
all that would be wanted, wouldn't it?"

Clare laughed again.

"Quite enough for men of the world, I should think; I believe
juries can never withstand being called that.  But you see, Dinny,
if I begin to look at things from a jury's point of view, I might
as well be dead.  And, as a matter of fact, I feel very much alive.
So I'm going straight ahead.  Tony knows I've had enough physiology
to last me a long time."

"Is he in love with you?"

Their eyes, brown and blue, met.

"Yes."

"Are you in love with him?"

"I like him--quite a lot.  Beyond that I've no feeling at present."

"Don't you think that while Jerry is here--?"

"No.  I think I'm safer while he's here than when he goes.  If I
don't go back with him he'll probably have me watched.  That's one
thing about him--he does what he says he'll do."

"I wonder if that's an advantage.  Come out and have some dinner."

Clare stretched herself.

"Can't, darling.  I'm dining with Tony in a little grubby
restaurant suited to our joint means.  This living on next to
nothing is rather fun."

Dinny got up and began to straighten the Japanese prints.  Clare's
recklessness was nothing new.  To come the elder sister!  To be a
wet blanket!  Impossible!  She said:

"These are good, my dear.  Fleur has very jolly things."

"D'you mind if I change?" said Clare, and vanished into the
bathroom.

Left alone with her sister's problem, Dinny had the feeling of
helplessness which comes to all but such as constitutionally 'know
better.'  She went dejectedly to the window and drew aside the
curtain.  All was darkish and dingy.  A car had drawn out of a
neighbouring garage and stood waiting for its driver.

'Imagine trying to sell antiques here!' she thought.  She saw a man
come round the corner close by and stop, looking at the numbers.
He moved along the opposite side, then came back and stood still
just in front of No. 2.  She noted the assurance and strength in
that trim over-coated figure.

'Good heavens!' she thought:  'Jerry!'  She dropped the curtain and
crossed quickly to the bathroom door.  As she opened it she heard
the desolate tinkling of the sheep-bell installed by the antique
dealer.

Clare was standing in her underthings under the single bulb,
examining her lips with a hand-glass.  Dinny filled the remains of
the four feet by two of standing room.

"Clare," she said, "it's HIM!"

Clare turned.  The gleam of her pale arms, the shimmer of her silk
garments, the startled light in her dark eyes, made her even to her
sister something of a vision.

"Jerry?"

Dinny nodded.

"Well, I won't see him."  She looked at the watch on her wrist.
"And I'm due at seven.  Damn!"

Dinny, who had not the faintest desire that she should keep her
rash appointment, said, to her own surprise:

"Shall I go?  He must have seen the light."

"Could you take him away with you, Dinny?"

"I can try."

"Then do, darling.  It'd be ever so sweet of you.  I wonder how
he's found out.  Hell!  It's going to be a persecution."

Dinny stepped back into the sitting-room, turned out the light
there, and went down the twisting stair.  The sheep-bell tinkled
again above her as she went.  Crossing that little empty room to
the door, she thought:  'It opens inwards, I must pull it to behind
me.'  Her heart beat fast, she took a deep breath, opened the door
swiftly, stepped out and pulled it to with a slam.  She was chest
to chest with her brother-in-law, and she started back with an
admirably impromptu:  "Who is it?"

He raised his hat, and they stood looking at each other.

"Dinny!  Is Clare in?"

"Yes; but she can't see anyone."

"You mean she WON'T see ME?"

"If you like to put it that way."

He stood looking intently at her with his daring eyes.

"Another day will do.  Which way are you going?"

"To Mount Street."

"I'll come with you, if I may."

"Do."

She moved along at his side, thinking:  'Be careful!'  For in his
company she did not feel towards him quite as in his absence.  As
everybody said, Jerry Corven had charm!

"Clare's been giving me bad marks, I suppose?"

"We won't discuss it, please; whatever she feels, I do too."

"Naturally.  Your loyalty's proverbial.  But consider, Dinny, how
provocative she is."  His eyes smiled round at her.  That vision--
of neck, and curve, and shimmer, dark hair and eyes!  Sex appeal--
horrible expression!  "You've no idea how tantalising.  Besides, I
was always an experimentalist."

Dinny stood still suddenly:  "This is my sister, you know."

"You're sure, I suppose?  It seems queer when one looks at you
both."

Dinny walked on, and did not answer.

"Now listen, Dinny," began that pleasant voice.  "I'm a sensualist,
if you like, but what does it matter?  Sex is naturally
aberrational.  If anyone tells you it isn't, don't believe them.
These things work themselves out, and anyway they're not important.
If Clare comes back to me, in two years' time she won't even
remember.  She likes the sort of life, and I'm not fussy.  Marriage
is very much a go-as-you-please affair."

"You mean that by that time you'll be experimenting with someone
else?"

He shrugged, looked round at her, and smiled.

"Almost embarrassing this conversation, isn't it?  What I want you
to grasp is that I'm two men.  One, and it's the one that matters,
has his work to do and means to do it.  Clare should stick to that
man, because he'll give her a life in which she won't rust; she'll
be in the thick of affairs and people who matter; she'll have stir
and movement--and she loves both.  She'll have a certain power, and
she's not averse from that.  The other man--well, he wants his
fling, he takes it, if you like; but the worst is over so far as
she's concerned--at least, it will be when we've settled down
again.  You see, I'm honest, or shameless if you like it better."

"I don't see, in all this," said Dinny drily, "where love comes
in."

"Perhaps it doesn't.  Marriage is composed of mutual interest and
desire.  The first increases with the years, the latter fades.
That ought to be exactly what she wants."

"I can't speak for Clare, but I don't see it that way."

"You haven't tried yourself out, my dear."

"No," said Dinny, "and on those lines I trust I never may.  I
should dislike alternation between commerce and vice."

He laughed.

"I like your bluntness.  But seriously, Dinny, you ought to
influence her.  She's making a great mistake."

A sudden fury seized on Dinny.

"I think," she said, between her teeth, "it was you who made the
great mistake.  If you do certain things to certain horses you're
never on terms with them again."

He was silent at that.

"You don't want a divorce in the family," he said at last, and
looked round at her steadily.  "I've told Clare that I can't let
her divorce me.  I'm sorry, but I mean that.  Further, if she won't
come back to me, she can't go as she pleases."

"You mean," said Dinny, between her teeth, "that if she does come
back to you she can?"

"That's what it would come to, I daresay."

"I see.  I think I'll say good-night."

"As you please.  You think me cynical.  That's as may be.  I shall
do my best to get Clare back.  If she won't come she must watch
out."

They had stopped under a lamp-post and with an effort Dinny forced
her eyes to his.  He was as formidable, shameless, and mesmerically
implacable as a cat, with that thin smile and unflinching stare.
She said, quietly:  "I quite understand.  Goodnight!"

"Good-night, Dinny!  I'm sorry, but it's best to know where we
stand.  Shake hands?"

Rather to her surprise she let him take her hand, then turned the
corner into Mount Street.



CHAPTER IX


She entered her Aunt's house with all her passionate loyalty to her
own breed roused, yet understanding better what had made Clare take
Jerry Corven for husband.  There WAS mesmerism about him, and a
clear shameless daring which had its fascination.  One could see
what a power he might be among native peoples, how ruthlessly, yet
smoothly, he would have his way with them; and how he might lay a
spell over his associates.  She could see, too, how difficult he
might be to refuse physically, until he had outraged all personal
pride.

Her Aunt's voice broke her painful absorption with the words:
"Here she is, Adrian."

At the top of the stairs her Uncle Adrian's goatee-bearded face was
looking over his sister's shoulder.

"Your things have come, my dear.  Where have you been?"

"With Clare, Auntie."

"Dinny," said Adrian, "I haven't seen you for nearly a year."

"This is where we kiss, Uncle.  Is all well in Bloomsbury, or has
the slump affected bones?"

"Bones in esse are all right; in posse they look dicky--no money
for expeditions.  The origin of Homo sapiens is more abstruse than
ever."

"Dinny, we needn't dress.  Adrian's stoppin' for dinner.  Lawrence
will be so relieved.  You can pow-wow while I loosen my belt, or do
you want to tighten yours?"

"No, thank you, Auntie."

"Then go in there."

Dinny entered the drawing-room and sat down beside her Uncle.
Grave and thin and bearded, wrinkled, and brown even in November,
with long legs crossed and a look of interest in her, he seemed as
ever the ideal pillar-box for confidences.

"Heard about Clare, Uncle?"

"The bare facts, no whys or wherefores."

"They're not 'nice.'  Did you ever know a sadist?"

"Once--at Margate.  My private school.  I didn't know at the time,
of course, but I've gathered it since.  Do you mean that Corven is
one?"

"So Clare says.  I walked here with him from her rooms.  He's a
very queer person."

"Not mentally abnormal?" said Adrian, with a shudder.

"Saner than you or I, dear; he wants his own way regardless of
other people; and when he can't get it he bites.  Could Clare get a
divorce from him without publicly going into their life together?"

"Only by getting evidence of a definite act of misconduct."

"Would that have to be over here?"

"Well, to get it over there would be very expensive, and doubtful
at that."

"Clare doesn't want to have him watched at present."

"It's certainly an unclean process," said Adrian.

"I know, Uncle; but if she won't, what chance is there?"

"None."

"At present she's in the mood that they should leave each other
severely alone; but if she won't go back with him, he says she must
'look out for herself.'"

"Is there anybody else involved, then, Dinny?"

"There's a young man in love with her, but she says it's quite all
right."

"H'm!  'Youth's a stuff--' as Shakespeare said.  Nice young man?"

"I've only seen him for a few minutes; he looked quite nice, I
thought."

"That cuts both ways."

"I trust Clare completely."

"You know her better than I do, my dear; but I should say she might
get very impatient.  How long can Corven stay over here?"

"Not more than a month at most, she thinks; he's been here a week
already."

"He's seen her?"

"Once.  He tried to again to-day.  I drew him off.  She dreads
seeing him, I know."

"As things are he has every right to see her, you know."

"Yes," said Dinny, and sighed.

"Can't your Member that she's with suggest a way out?  He's a
lawyer."

"I wouldn't like to tell him.  It's so private.  Besides, people
don't like being involved in matrimonial squabbles."

"Is he married?"

"No."

She saw him look at her intently, and remembered Clare's laugh and
words:  "Dinny, he's in love with you."

"You'll see him here to-morrow night," Adrian went on.  "Em's asked
him to dinner, I gather; Clare too, I believe.  Quite candidly,
Dinny, I don't see anything to be done.  Clare may change her mind
and go back, or Corven may change his and let her stay without
bothering about her."

Dinny shook her head.  "They're neither of them like that.  I must
go and wash, Uncle."

Adrian reflected upon the undeniable proposition that everyone had
his troubles.  His own at the moment were confined to the fact that
his step-children, Sheila and Ronald Ferse, had measles, so that he
was something of a pariah in his own house, the sanctity attaching
to an infectious disease having cast his wife into purdah.  He was
not vastly interested in Clare.  She had always been to him one of
those young women who took the bit between their teeth and were
bound to fetch up now and again with broken knees.  Dinny, to him,
was worth three of her.  But if Dinny were going to be worried out
of her life by her sister's troubles, then, indeed, they became
important to Adrian.  She seemed to have the knack of bearing
vicarious burdens:  Hubert's, his own, Wilfrid Desert's, and now
Clare's.

And he said to his sister's parakeet:  "Not fair, Polly, is it?"

The parakeet, who was used to him, came out of its open cage on to
his shoulder and tweaked his ear.

"You don't approve, do you?"

The green bird emitted a faint chattering sound and clutched its
way on to his waistcoat.  Adrian scratched its poll.

"Who's going to scratch her poll?  Poor Dinny!"

His sister's voice startled him:

"I can't have Dinny scratched again."

"Em," said Adrian, "did any of US worry about the others?"

"In large families you don't.  I was the nearest--gettin' Lionel
married, and now he's a judge--depressin'.  Dornford--have you seen
him?"

"Never."

"He's got a face like a portrait.  They say he won the long jump at
Oxford.  Is that any good?"

"It's what you call desirable."

"Very well made," said Lady Mont.  "I looked him over at
Condaford."

"My dear Em!"

"For Dinny, of course.  What do you do with a gardener who WILL
roll the stone terrace?"

"Tell him not to."

"Whenever I look out at Lippin'hall, he's at it, takin' the roller
somewhere else.  There's the gong, and here's Dinny; we'll go in."

Sir Lawrence was at the sideboard in the dining-room, extracting a
crumbled cork.

"Lafite '65.  Goodness knows what it'll be like.  Decant it very
gently, Blore.  What do you say, Adrian, warm it a little or no?"

"I should say no, if it's that age."

"I agree."

Dinner began in silence.  Adrian was thinking of Dinny, Dinny of
Clare, and Sir Lawrence of the claret.

"French art," said Lady Mont.

"Ah!" said Sir Lawrence: "that reminds me, Em; some of old
Forsyte's pictures are going to be lent.  Considering he died
saving them, they owe it to him."

Dinny looked up.

"Fleur's father?  Was he a nice man, Uncle?"

"Nice?" repeated Sir Lawrence:  "It's not the word.  Straight, yes:
careful, yes--too careful for these times.  He got a picture on his
head, you know, in the fire--poor old chap.  He knew something
about French art, though.  This exhibition that's coming would have
pleased him."

"There'll be nothing in it to touch 'The Birth of Venus,'" said
Adrian.

Dinny gave him a pleased look.

"That was divine," she said.

Sir Lawrence cocked his eyebrow.

"I've often thought of going into the question:  Why a nation
ceases to be poetic.  The old Italians--and look at them now!"

"Isn't poetry an effervescence, Uncle?  Doesn't it mean youth, or
at least enthusiasm?"

"The Italians were never young, and they're enthusiastic enough
now.  When we were in Italy last May you should have seen the
trouble they took over our passports."

"Touchin'!" agreed Lady Mont.

"It's only a question," said Adrian, "of the means of expression.
In the fourteenth century the Italians were expressing themselves
in daggers and verse, in the fifteenth and sixteenth in poison,
sculpture and painting, in the seventeenth in music, in the
eighteenth in intrigue, in the nineteenth in rebellion, and in the
twentieth their poetry is spelled in wireless and rules."

"I did get so tired," murmured Lady Mont, "of seein' rules I
couldn't read."

"You were fortunate, my dear; I could."

"There's one thing about the Italians," continued Adrian; "century
by century they throw up really great men of one sort or another.
Is that climate, blood, or scenery, Lawrence?"

Sir Lawrence shrugged.  "What do you think of the claret?  Put your
nose to it, Dinny.  Sixty years ago, you two young women wouldn't
be here, and Adrian and I would be soppy about it.  It's as near
perfect as makes no matter."

Adrian sipped and nodded.

"Absolutely prime!"

"Well, Dinny?"

"I'm sure it's perfect, dear--wasted on me."

"Old Forsyte would have appreciated this; he had wonderful sherry.
Do you get the bouquet, Em?"

Lady Mont, who was holding her glass with her elbow on the table,
moved her nostrils delicately.

"Such nonsense," she murmured, "almost any flower beats it."

The remark caused complete silence.

Dinny's eyes were the first to come to the level.

"How are Boswell and Johnson, Auntie?"

"I was tellin' Adrian:  Boswell's taken to rollin' the stone
terrace, and Johnson's lost his wife--poor thing.  He's a different
man.  Whistles all the time.  His tunes ought to be collected."

"Survivals of old England?"

"No, modern--he just wanders."

"Talking of survivals," said Sir Lawrence, "did you ever read Ask
Mamma, Dinny?"

"No; who wrote it?"

"Surtees.  You should.  It's a corrective."

"Of what, Uncle?"

"Modernity."

Lady Mont lowered her glass; it was empty.

"So wise of them to be stoppin' this picture exhibition at 1900.
D'you remember, Lawrence--in Paris, all those wiggly things we saw,
and so much yellow and light blue--scrolls and blobs and faces
upside-down?  Dinny, we'd better go up."

And when presently Blore brought the message--Would Miss Dinny go
down to the study?  She murmured:

"It's about Jerry Corven.  Don't encourage your Uncle--he thinks he
can do good, but he can't." . . .

"Well, Dinny?" said Sir Lawrence:  "I always like talking to
Adrian; he's a well-tempered fellow with a mind of his own.  I told
Clare I would see Corven, but it's no good seeing him without
knowing what one wants to say.  And not much then, I'm afraid.
What do YOU think?"

Dinny, who had seated herself on the edge of her chair, set her
elbows on her knees.  It was an attitude from which Sir Lawrence
augured ill.

"Judging from what he said to me to-day, Uncle Lawrence, his mind's
made up.  Either Clare must go back to him or he'll try to divorce
her."

"How will your people feel about that?"

"Very badly."

"You know there's a young man hanging round?"

"Yes."

"He hasn't a bean."

Dinny smiled.  "We're used to that."

"I know, but no beans when you're out of bounds is serious.  Corven
might claim damages, he looks a vindictive sort of chap."

"D'you really think he would?  It's very bad form, nowadays, isn't
it?"

"Form matters very little when a man's monkey is up.  I suppose you
couldn't get Clare to apply the closure to young Croom?"

"I'm afraid Clare will refuse to be dictated to about whom she
sees.  She thinks the break-up is entirely Jerry's fault."

"I," said Sir Lawrence, emitting a slow puff, "am in favour of
having Corven watched while he's over here, and collecting a shot,
if possible, to fire across his bows, but she doesn't like the idea
of that."

"She believes in his career, and doesn't want to spoil it.
Besides, it's so revolting."

Sir Lawrence shrugged.

"What would you?  The law's the law.  He belongs to Burton's.
Shall I waylay him there and appeal to him to leave her here
quietly, and see if absence will make her heart grow fond again?"

Dinny wrinkled her brows.

"It might be worth trying, but I don't believe he'll budge."

"What line are you going to take yourself?"

"Back Clare in whatever she does or doesn't do."

Sir Lawrence nodded, having received the answer he expected.



CHAPTER X


The quality which from time immemorial has made the public men of
England what they are, tempted so many lawyers into Parliament,
caused so many divines to put up with being bishops, floated so
many financiers, saved so many politicians from taking thought for
the morrow, and so many judges from the pangs of remorse, was
present in Eustace Dornford to no small degree.  Put more shortly,
he had an excellent digestion; could eat and drink at all times
without knowing anything about it afterwards.  He was an
indefatigably hard worker even at play; and there was in him just
that added fund of nervous energy which differentiates the man who
wins the long jump from the man who loses it.  And now, though his
practice was going up by leaps and bounds since, two years ago, he
had taken silk, he had stood for Parliament.  And yet he was the
last sort of man to incur the epithet 'go-getter.'  His pale-brown,
hazel-eyed, well-featured face had a considerate, even a sensitive
look, and a pleasant smile.  He had kept a little fine dark
moustache, and his wig had not yet depleted his natural hair, which
was dark and of rather curly texture.  After Oxford he had eaten
dinners and gone into the Chambers of a well-known Common Law
Junior.  Being a subaltern in the Shropshire Yeomanry when the war
broke out, he had passed into the Cavalry, and not long after into
the trenches, where he had known better luck than most people.  His
rise at the Bar after the war had been rapid.  Solicitors liked
him.  He never fell foul of judges, and as a cross-examiner stood
out, because he almost seemed to regret the points he scored.  He
was a Roman Catholic, from breeding rather than observance.
Finally, he was fastidious in matters of sex, and his presence at a
dinner-table on circuit had, if not a silencing, at least a
moderating effect on tongues.

He occupied in Harcourt Buildings a commodious set of chambers
designed for life as well as learning.  Early every morning, wet or
fine, he went for a ride in the Row, having already done at least
two hours' work on his cases.  By ten o'clock, bathed, breakfasted,
and acquainted with the morning's news, he was ready for the
Courts.  When at four those Courts rose, he was busy again till
half-past six on his cases.  The evenings, hitherto free, would now
be spent at the House: and since it would be seldom that he could
go to bed without working an hour or so on some case or other, his
sleep was likely to be curtailed from six hours to five, or even
four.

The arrangement come to with Clare was simple.  She arrived at a
quarter to ten, opened his correspondence, and took his
instructions from ten to a quarter past.  She remained to do what
was necessary, and came again at six o'clock, ready for anything
fresh or left over.

On the evening after that last described, at the hour of eight-
fifteen, he entered the drawing-room in Mount Street, was greeted,
and introduced to Adrian, who had again been bidden.  Discussing
the state of the pound and other grave matters, they waited, till
Lady Mont said suddenly:  "Soup.  What have you done with Clare,
Mr. Dornford?"

His eyes, which had hitherto taken in little but Dinny, regarded
his hostess with a faint surprise.

"She left the Temple at half-past six, saying we should meet
again."

"Then," said Lady Mont, "we'll go down."

There followed one of those discomfortable hours well known to
well-bred people, when four of them are anxious upon a subject
which they must not broach to the fifth, and the fifth becomes
aware of this anxiety.

They were, indeed, too few for the occasion, for all that each one
of them said could be heard by the others.  It was impossible for
Eustace Dornford to be confidential with either of his neighbours;
and since he instinctively felt that without a preliminary
confidence he would only put his foot into it, he was careful to be
public-minded and keep to such topics as the Premier, the
undiscovered identity of certain poisoners, the ventilation of the
House of Commons, the difficulty of knowing exactly what to do with
one's hat there, and other subjects of general interest.  But, by
the end of dinner he was so acutely aware that they were burning to
say things he mustn't hear, that he invented a professional
telephone call, and was taken out of the room by Blore.

The moment he had gone Dinny said:

"She must have been waylaid, Auntie.  Could I be excused and go and
see?"

Sir Lawrence answered:

"Better wait till we break, Dinny; a few minutes can't matter now."

"Don't you think," said Adrian, "that Dornford ought to know how
things stand?  She goes to him every day."

"I'll tell him," said Sir Lawrence.

"No," said Lady Mont.  "Dinny must tell him.  Wait for him here,
Dinny.  We'll go up."

Thus it was that, returning to the dining-room after his trunk-call
to someone whom he knew to be away from home, Dornford found Dinny
waiting.  She handed him the cigars and said:

"Forgive us, Mr. Dornford.  It's about my sister.  Please light up,
and here's coffee.  Blore, would you mind getting me a taxi?"

When they had drunk their coffee, and were standing together by the
fire, she turned her face to it and went on hurriedly:

"You see, Clare has split from her husband, and he's just come over
to take her back.  She won't go, and it's rather a difficult time
for her."

Dornford made a considerate sound.

"I'm very glad you told me.  I've been feeling unhappy all dinner."

"I must go now, I'm afraid, and find out what's happened."

"Could I come with you?"

"Oh! thank you, but--"

"It would be a real pleasure."

Dinny stood hesitating.  He looked like a present help in trouble;
but she said:  "Thank you, but perhaps my sister wouldn't like it."

"I see.  Any time I can help, please let me know."

"Your taxi's at the door, Miss."

"Some day," she said, "I'd like to ask you about divorce."

In the taxi she wondered what she would do if she could not get in;
and then what she would do if she could get in and Corven were
there.  She stopped the cab at the corner of the Mews.

"Stay here, please, I'll let you know in a minute if I want you
again."

Dark and private loomed that little backwater.

'Like one's life,' thought Dinny, and pulled at the ornamental
bell.  It tinkled all forlorn, and nothing happened.  Again and
again she rang, then moved backward to look up at the windows.  The
curtains--she remembered they were heavy--had been drawn close; she
could not decide whether or no there was light behind them.  Once
more she rang and used the knocker, holding her breath to listen.
No sound at all!  At last, baffled and disquiet, she went back to
the cab.  Clare had said Corven was staying at the Bristol, and she
gave that address.  There might be a dozen explanations; only why,
in a town of telephones, had Clare not let them know?  Half-past
ten!  Perhaps she had by now!

The cab drew up at the hotel.  "Wait, please!"  Entering its
discreetly gilded hall, she stood for a moment at a loss.  The
setting seemed unsuitable for private trouble.

"Yes, madam?" said a page-boy's voice.

"Could you find out for me, please, if my brother-in-law, Sir
Gerald Corven, is in the hotel?"

What should she say if they brought him to her?  Her figure in its
evening cloak was reflected in a mirror, and that it was straight
filled her with a sort of surprise--she felt so as if she were
curling and creeping this way and that.  But they did not bring him
to her.  He was not in his room, nor in any of the public rooms.
She went out again to her cab.

"Back to Mount Street, please."

Dornford and Adrian were gone, her Aunt and Uncle playing piquet.

"Well, Dinny?"

"I couldn't get into her rooms, and he was not in his hotel."

"You went there?"

"It was all I could think of to do."

Sir Lawrence rose.  "I'll telephone to Burton's."  Dinny sat down
beside her Aunt.

"I feel she's in trouble, Auntie.  Clare's never rude."

"Kidnapped or locked up," said Lady Mont.  "There was a case when I
was young.  Thompson, or Watson--a great fuss.  Habeas corpus, or
something--husbands can't now.  Well, Lawrence?"

"He hasn't been in the Club since five o'clock.  We must just wait
till the morning.  She may have forgotten, you know; or got the
evening mixed."

"But she told Mr. Dornford that they would meet again."

"So they will, to-morrow morning.  No good worrying, Dinny."

Dinny went up, but did not undress.  Had she done all she could?
The night was clear and fine and warm for November.  Only a quarter
of a mile or so away, was that backwater of Mews--should she slip
out and go over there again?

She threw off her evening frock, put on a day dress, hat and fur
coat, and stole downstairs.  It was dark in the hall.  Quietly
drawing back the bolts, she let herself out, and took to the
streets.  When she entered the Mews--where a couple of cars were
being put away for the night--she saw light coming from the upper
windows of No. 2.  They had been opened and the curtains drawn
aside.  She rang the bell.

After a moment Clare, in her dressing-gown, opened the door.

"Was it you who came before, Dinny?"

"Yes."

"Sorry I couldn't let you in.  Come up!"

She led the way up the spiral stairs, and Dinny followed.

Upstairs it was warm and light, the door into the tiny bathroom
open, and the couch in disorder.  Clare looked at her sister with a
sort of unhappy defiance.

"Yes, I've had Jerry here, he's not been gone ten minutes."

A horrified shiver went down Dinny's spine.

"After all, he's come a long way," said Clare; "good of you to
worry, Dinny."

"Oh! darling!"

"He was outside here when I got back from the Temple.  I was an
idiot to let him in.  After that--oh! well, it doesn't matter!
I'll take care it doesn't happen again."

"Would you like me to stay?"

"Oh! no.  But have some tea.  I've just made it.  I don't want
anyone to know of this."

"Of course not.  I'll say you had a bad headache and couldn't get
out to telephone."

When they were drinking the tea Dinny said:

"This hasn't altered your plans?"

"God! no!"

"Dornford was there to-night.  We thought it best to tell him you
were having a difficult time."

Clare nodded.

"It must all seem very funny to you."

"It seems to me tragic."

Clare shrugged, then stood up and threw her arms round her sister.
After that silent embrace, Dinny went out into the Mews, now dark
and deserted.  At the corner leading into the Square she almost
walked into a young man.

"Mr. Croom, isn't it?"

"Miss Cherrell?  Have you been at Lady Corven's?"

"Yes."

"Is she all right?"

His face was worried, and his voice anxious.  Dinny took a deep
breath before answering:

"Oh! yes.  Why not?"

"She was saying last night that man was over here.  It worries me
terribly."

Through Dinny shot the thought:  'If he'd met "that man"!'  But she
said, quietly:

"Walk with me as far as Mount Street."

"I don't mind your knowing," he said, "I'm over head and ears in
love with her.  Who wouldn't be?  Miss Cherrell, I don't think she
ought to be in that place alone.  She told me he came yesterday
while you were there."

"Yes.  I took him away with me, as I'm taking you.  I think my
sister should be left to herself."

He seemed to hunch himself together.

"Have YOU ever been in love?"

"Yes."

"Well, then you know."

Yes, she knew!

"It's absolute torture not to be with her, able to see that she's
all right.  She takes it all lightly, but I can't."

Takes it all lightly!  Clare's face looking at her!  She did not
answer.

"The fact is," said young Croom, with incoherence, "people can say
and think what they like, but if they felt as I feel, they simply
couldn't.  I won't bother her, I really won't; but I can't stand
her being in danger from that man."

Dinny controlled herself to say quietly:  "I don't think Clare's in
any danger.  But she might be if it were known that you--"  He met
her eyes squarely.

"I'm glad she's got you.  For God's sake look after her, Miss
Cherrell."

They had reached the corner of Mount Street, and she held out her
hand.

"You may be certain that whatever Clare does I shall stick by her.
Good-night!  And cheer up!"

He wrung her hand, and went off as if the devil were after him.
Dinny went in, and slid the bolts quietly.

On what thin ice!  She could hardly drag one foot before the other
as she went upstairs, and sank down on her bed exhausted.



CHAPTER XI


When Sir Lawrence Mont reached Burton's Club the following
afternoon he was feeling, in common with many who undertake to
interfere in the affairs of others, an uneasy self-importance
coupled with a desire to be somewhere else.  He did not know what
the deuce he was going to say to Corven, or why the deuce he should
say it, since, in his opinion, by far the best solution would be
for Clare to give her marriage another trial.  Having discovered
from the porter that Sir Gerald was in the Club, he poked his nose
gingerly into three rooms before locating the back of his quarry
seated in the corner of an apartment too small to be devoted to
anything but writing.  He sat down at a table close to the door, so
that he could simulate surprise when Corven came up to leave the
room.  The fellow was an unconscionable time.  Noting a copy of the
British Statesman's vade-mecum beside him, he began idly looking up
the figures of British imports.  He found potatoes: consumption
sixty-six million five hundred thousand tons, production eight
million eight hundred and seventy-four thousand tons!  Somebody the
other day had written to say that we imported forty million pounds'
worth of bacon every year.  Taking a sheet of paper he wrote:
"Prohibition and protection, in regard to food that we CAN
produce here.  Annual Imports:  Pigs, £40,000,000; Poultry say,
£12,000,000; Potatoes--God knows how much!  All this bacon, all
these eggs, and half these potatoes could be produced here.  Why
not a five-year plan?  By prohibition lessen the import of bacon
and eggs one-fifth every year, and the import of potatoes by one-
tenth every year, increasing home production gradually to replace
them.  At the end of five years our bacon and eggs and half our
potatoes would be all-British.  We should save eighty millions on
our Imports Bill and our trade would practically be balanced."

Taking another sheet of paper, he wrote:


"To the Editor of The Times.

"The Three P. Plan.

"SIR--

"A simple plan for the balancing of our trade would seem to merit
the attention of all those not wedded to the longest way round.
There are three articles of food on importing which we expend
annually some ------ pounds, but which could be produced in our own
country without, I venture to think, causing the price of living to
rise to any material extent if we took the simple precaution of
hanging a profiteer at the beginning.  These articles are Pigs,
Poultry, Potatoes.  There would be no need to put on duties,