“Miss Cherrell. Professor Hallorsen.”
Dinny came in with her head held high, and Adrian augured but poorly from the expression of her eyes. He had seen schoolboys look like that when they were going to ‘roast’ a new-comer. After her came Hallorsen, immensely tall in that small drawing-room, his eyes swimming with health. He bowed low when presented to Dinny. “Your daughter, I presume, Mr. Curator?”
“No, my niece; a sister of Captain Hubert Cherrell.”
“Is that so? I am honoured to make your acquaintance, Ma’am.”
Adrian, noting that their eyes, having crossed, seemed to find it difficult to disengage, said:
“How are you liking the Piedmont, Professor?”
“The cooking’s fine, but there are too many of us Americans.”
“Perching just now like the swallows?”
“Ah! In a fortnight we’ll all have flitted.”
Dinny had come brimful of Anglo-femininity, and the contrast between Hallorsen’s overpowering health and Hubert’s haggard looks had at once sharpened the edge of her temper. She sat down beside that embodiment of the conquering male with the full intention of planting every dart she could in his epidermis. He was, however, at once engaged in conversation by Diana, and she had not finished her soup (clear, with a prune in it) before, stealing a look round at him, she revised her plan. After all, he was a stranger and a guest, and she was supposed to be a lady; there were other ways of killing a cat beside hanging it. She would not plant darts, she would ‘charm him with smiles and soap’; that would be more considerate towards Diana and her uncle, and more effective warfare in the long run. With a cunning worthy of her cause, she waited till he was in deep water over British politics, which he seemed to regard as serious manifestations of human activity; then, turning on him the Botticellian eye, she said:
“We should treat American politics just as seriously, Professor. But surely they’re not serious, are they?”
“I believe you are right, Miss Cherrell. There’s just one rule for politicians all over the world: Don’t say in Power what you say in Opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible. The only real difference, I judge, between Parties is that one Party sits in the National ‘Bus, and the other Party strap-hangs.”
“In Russia, what’s left of the other Party lies under the seat, doesn’t it?”
“So it does in Italy,” said Diana.
“And what about Spain?” added Adrian.
Hallorsen uttered his infectious laugh. “Dictatorships aren’t politics. They’re jokes.”
“NO jokes, Professor.”
“Bad jokes, Professor.”
“How do you MEAN—jokes, Professor?”
“Bluff. Just one long assumption that human nature’s on the mark the Dictator makes for it. The moment his bluff’s called—Why! Wump!”
“But,” said Diana, “suppose a majority of the people approve of their dictator, isn’t that democracy, or government by consent of the governed?”
“I would say no, Mrs. Ferse, unless he was confirmed by majority every year.”
“Dictators get things done,” said Adrian.
“At a price, Mr. Curator. But look at Diaz in Mexico. For twenty years he made it the Garden of Eden, but see what it’s been ever since he went. You can’t get out of a people for keeps what isn’t yet in them.”
“The fault,” replied Adrian, “in our political system and in yours, Professor, is that a whole lot of reforms latent in the common-sense of the people don’t get a chance of being carried out because our short-term politicians won’t give a lead, for fear of losing the power they haven’t got.”
“Aunt May,” Dinny murmured, “was saying: Why not cure Unemployment by a National Slum Clearance effort, and kill the two birds with one stone?”
“My! But that’s a mighty fine idea!” said Hallorsen, turning on her the full of his brimming face.
“Vested interests,” said Diana, “slum landlordism and the building trades are too strong for that.”
Adrian added: “And there’s the cash required.”
“Why! that’s all easy. Your Parliament could take what powers they need for a big national thing like that; and what’s wrong with a Loan, anyway?—the money would come back; it’s not like a Loan for war, all shot away in powder. What do you pay in doles?”
No one could answer him.
“I judge the saving would pay the interest on a pretty big Loan.”
“It just, in fact,” said Dinny, sweetly, “needs simple faith. That’s where you Americans beat us, Professor Hallorsen.”
A look slid over the American’s face as though he were saying: ‘Cats!’
“Well, we certainly had a pieful of simple faith when we came over to fight in France. But we ate the lot. It’ll be the home fires we keep burning next time.”
“Was your faith so simple even last time?”
“I fear it was, Miss Cherrell. Not one in twenty of us ever believed the Germans could get a cinch on us away over there.”
“I sit rebuked, Professor.”
“Why! Not at all! You judge America by Europe.”
“There was Belgium, Professor,” said Diana; “even we had some simple faith at the start.”
“Pardon me, but did the case of Belgium really move you, Ma’am?”
Adrian was drawing circles with a fork; he looked up.
“Speaking for onself, yes. I don’t suppose it made any difference to the Army people, Navy people, big business people, or even to a large section of Society, political and otherwise. They all knew that if war came we were practically committed to France. But to simple folk like myself and some two-thirds of the population not in the know, to the working classes, in fact, generally, it made all the difference. It was like seeing What’s-his-name—the Man Mountain—advancing on the smallest Flyweight in the ring, who was standing firm and squaring up like a man.”
“Mighty well put, Mr. Curator.”
Dinny flushed. Was there generosity in this man? Then, as if conscious of treachery to Hubert, she said acidly:
“I’ve read that the sight even ruffled Roosevelt.”
“It ruffled quite a few of us, Miss Cherrell; but we’re a long way off over there, and things have to be near before they stir the imagination.”
“Yes, and after all, as you said just now, you did come in at the end.”
Hallorsen looked fixedly at her ingenuous face, bowed and was silent.
Bet when, at the end of that peculiar evening, he was saying good-night, he added:
“I fear you’ve gotten a grouch against me, Miss Cherrell.”
Dinny smiled, without reply.
“All the same, I hope I may meet you again.”
“Oh! But why?”
“Well, I kind of have the feeling that I might change the view you have of me.”
“I am very fond of my brother, Professor Hallorsen.”
“I still think I’ve more against your brother than he has against me.”
“I hope you may be right before long.”
“That sounds like trouble.”
Dinny tilted her head.
She went up to bed, biting her lip with vexation. She had neither charmed nor assailed the enemy; and instead of clean-cut animosity, she had confused feelings about him.
His inches gave him a disconcerting domination. ‘He’s like those creatures in hairy trousers on the films,’ she thought, ‘carrying off the semi-distressed cow-girls—looks at one as if he thought one was on his pillion.’ Primitive Force in swallow-tails and a white waistcoat! A strong but not a silent man.
Her room looked over the street, and from her window she could see the plane trees on the Embankment, the river, and the wide expanse of starry night.
“Perhaps,” she said to herself, aloud, “you won’t leave England so soon as you thought.”
“Can I come in?”
She turned to see Diana in the doorway.
“Well, Dinny, what think you of our friend the enemy?”