Husband and wife stood breathing as if they had run a hundred yards instead of walking three.
“Diana!” said Ferse: “Diana!”
It seemed as if she couldn’t speak, and his voice rose:
“I’m all right. Don’t you believe me?”
She bent her head, and still didn’t speak.
“Not a word to throw to a dog?”
“It’s—it’s the shock.”
“I have come back sane, I have been sane for three months now.”
“I am so glad, so glad.”
“My God! You’re as beautiful as ever.”
And suddenly he gripped her, pressed her hard against him, and began kissing her hungrily. When he let her go, she sank breathless into a chair, gazing at him with an expression of such terror that he put his hands over his face.
“Ronald—I couldn’t—I couldn’t let it be as it was before. I couldn’t—I couldn’t!”
He dropped on his knees at her feet. “I didn’t mean to be violent. Forgive me!”
And then, from sheer exhaustion of the power of feeling, both rose and moved apart.
“We had better talk it over quietly,” said Ferse.
“Yes.”
“Am I not to live here?”
“It’s your house. You must do whatever’s best for you.”
He uttered the sound that was so like a laugh.
“It would be best for me if you and everyone would treat me exactly as if nothing had happened to me.”
Diana was silent. She was silent so long that again he made that sound.
“Don’t!” she said. “I will try. But I must—I must have a separate room.”
Ferse bowed. Suddenly his eyes darted at her. “Are you in love with Cherrell?”
“No.”
“With anyone?”
“No.”
“Scared then?”
“Yes.”
“I see. Naturally. Well, it’s not for God’s playthings to make terms. We take what we can get. Will you wire for them to send my things from that place? That will save any fuss they might want to make. I came away without saying good-bye. There is probably something owing too.”
“Of course. I will see to all that.”
“Can we let Cherrell go now?”
“I will tell him.”
“Let me!”
“No, Ronald, I will,” and she moved resolutely past him.
Adrian was leaning against the wall opposite the door. He looked up at her and tried to smile; he had divined the upshot.
“He is to stay here, but apart. My dear, thank you so much for all. Will you see to that Home for me? I will let you know everything. I’ll take him up to the children now. Good-bye!” He kissed her hand and went out.
CHAPTER 16
Hubert Cherrell stood outside his father’s club in Pall Mall, a senior affair of which he was not yet a member. He was feeling concerned, for he had a respect for his father somewhat odd in days when fathers were commonly treated as younger brethren, or alluded to as ‘that old man.’ Nervously therefore he entered an edifice wherein more people had held more firmly to the prides and prejudices of a lifetime than possibly anywhere else on earth. There was little however, either of pride or prejudice, about the denizens of the room into which he was now shown. A short alert man with a pale face and a tooth-brush moustache was biting the end of a pen, and trying to compose a letter to ‘The Times’ on the condition of Iraq; a modest-looking little Brigadier General with a bald forehead and grey moustache was discussing with a tall modest-looking Lieutenant Colonel the flora of the island of Cyprus; a man of square build, square cheek-bones and lion-like eyes, was sitting in the window as still as if he had just buried an aunt and were thinking whether or not he would try and swim the Channel next year; and Sir Conway himself was reading ‘Whitaker’s Almanac.’
“Hallo, Hubert! This room’s too small. Come into the hall.” Hubert had the instant feeling not only that he wanted to say something to his father, but that his father wanted to say something to him. They sat down in a recess.
“What’s brought you up?”
“I want to get married, Sir.”
“Married?”
“To Jean Tasburgh.”
“Oh!”
“We thought of getting a special licence and having no fuss.”
The General shook his head. “She’s a fine girl, and I’m glad you feel like that, but the fact is your position’s queer, Hubert. I’ve just been hearing.”
Hubert noticed suddenly how worn-looking was his father’s face. “That fellow you shot. They’re pressing for your extradition on a charge of murder.”
“What?”
“It’s a monstrous business, and I can’t believe they’ll go on with it in the face of what you say about his going for you—luckily you’ve still got his scar on your arm; but it seems there’s the deuce of a fuss in the Bolivian papers; and those half-castes are sticking together about it.”
“I must see Hallorsen at once.”
“The authorities won’t be in a hurry, I expect.”
After this, the two sat silent in the big hall, staring in front of them with very much the same expression on their faces. At the back of both their minds the fear of this development had lurked, but neither had ever permitted it to take definite shape; and its wretchedness was therefore the more potent. To the General it was even more searing than to Hubert. The idea that his only son could be haled half across the world on a charge of murder was as horrible as a nightmare.
“No good to let it prey on our minds, Hubert,” he said at last; “if there’s any sense in the country at all we’ll get this stopped. I was trying to think of someone who knows how to get at people. I’m helpless in these matters—some fellows seem to know everybody and exactly how to work them. I think we’d better go to Lawrence Mont; he knows Saxenden anyway, and probably the people at the Foreign Office. It was Topsham who told me, but he can do nothing. Let’s walk, shall we? Do us good.”
Much touched by the way his father was identifying himself with his trouble, Hubert squeezed his arm, and they left the Club. In Piccadilly the General said, with a transparent effort: “I don’t much like all these changes.”
“Well, Sir, except for Devonshire House, I don’t believe I notice them.”
“No, it’s queer; the spirit of Piccadilly is stronger than the street itself, you can’t destroy its atmosphere. You never see a top hat now, and yet it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I felt the same walking down Piccadilly after the war as I did as a youngster back from India. One just had the feeling of having got there at last.”
“Yes; you get a queer sort of homesickness for it. I did in Mespot and Bolivia. If one closed one’s eyes the whole thing would start up.”
“Core of English life,” began the General, and stopped, as if surprised at having delivered a summary.
“Even the Americans feel it,” remarked Hubert, as they turned into Half–Moon Street. “Hallorsen was saying to me they had nothing like it over there; ‘no focus for their national influence’ was the way he put it.”
“And yet they HAVE influence,” said the General.
“No doubt about that, Sir, but can you define it? Is it their speed that gives it them?”
“Where does their speed get them? Everywhere in general; nowhere in particular. No, it’s their money, I think.”
“Well, I’ve noticed about Americans, and it’s where most people go wrong, that they care very little for money as money. They like to get it fast; but they’d rather lose it fast than get it slow.”
“Queer thing having no core,” said the General.
“The country’s too big, Sir. But they have a sort of core, all the same—pride of country.”
The General nodded.
“Queer little old streets these. I remember walking with my Dad from Curzon Street to the St. James’ Club in ‘82—day I first went to Harrow—hardly a stick changed.” And so, concerned in talk that touched not on the feelings within them, they reached Mount Street.
“There’s your Aunt Em, don’t tell her.”