“I wouldn’t mind that.”
She gave him a look half-shy, half-smiling; and Hilary thought: ‘Faces like that ought to be endowed by the State; there’s no other way to keep them safe.’
“Shake hands, Millie, and remember what I said. Your mother and father were friends of mine, and you’re going to remain a credit to them.”
“Yes, Mr. Cherrell.”
‘You bet!’ thought Hilary, and led her into the dining-room opposite, where his wife was working a typing machine. Back in his study he pulled out a drawer of his bureau and prepared to wrestle with accounts, for if there were a place where money was of more importance than in this slum centre of a Christendom whose religion scorns money, Hilary had yet to meet with it.
‘The lilies of the field,’ he thought, ‘toil not, neither do they spin, but they beg all right. How the deuce am I going to get enough to keep the Institute going over the year?’ The problem had not been solved when the maid said:
“Captain and Miss Cherrell, and Miss Tasburgh.”
‘Phew!’ he thought: ‘THEY don’t let grass grow.’
He had not seen his nephew since his return from the Hallorsen Expedition, and was struck by the darkened and aged look of his face.
“Congratulations, old man,” he said. “I heard something of your aspiration, yesterday.”
“Uncle,” said Dinny, “prepare for the role of Solomon.”
“Solomon’s reputation for wisdom, my irreverent niece, is perhaps the thinnest in history. Consider the number of his wives. Well?”
“Uncle Hilary,” said Hubert: “I’ve had news that a warrant may be issued for my extradition, over that muleteer I shot. Jean wants the marriage at once in spite of that—”
“Because of that,” put in Jean.
“I say it’s too chancey altogether; and not fair to her. But we agreed to put it to you, and abide by your judgment.”
“Thank you,” murmured Hilary; “and why to me?”
“Because,” said Dinny, “you have to make more decisions-while-they-wait than anybody, except police magistrates.”
Hilary grimaced. “With your knowledge of Scripture, Dinny, you might have remembered the camel and the last straw. However—!” And he looked from Jean to Hubert and back again.
“Nothing can possibly be gained by waiting,” said Jean; “because if they took him I should go out too, anyway.”
“You would?”
“Of course.”
“Could you prevent that, Hubert?”
“No, I don’t suppose I could.”
“Am I dealing, young people, with a case of love at first sight?”
Neither of them answered, but Dinny said:
“Very much so; I could see it from the croquet lawn at Lippinghall.”
Hilary nodded. “Well, that’s not against you; it happened to me and I’ve never regretted it. Is your extradition really likely, Hubert?”
“No,” said Jean.
“Hubert?”
“I don’t know; Father’s worried, but various people are doing their best. I’ve got this scar, you know,” and he drew up his sleeve.
Hilary nodded. “That’s a mercy.”
Hubert grinned. “It wasn’t at the time, in that climate, I can tell you.”
“Have you got the licence?”
“Not yet.”
“Get it, then. I’ll turn you off.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I may be wrong, but I don’t think so.”
“You aren’t.” And Jean seized his hand. “Will tomorrow at two o’clock be all right for you, Mr. Cherrell?”
“Let me look at my book.” He looked at it and nodded.
“Splendid!” cried Jean. “Now Hubert, you and I will go and get it.”
“I’m frightfully obliged to you, Uncle,” said Hubert; “if you really think it’s not rotten of me.”
“My dear boy,” said Hilary, “when you take up with a young woman like Jean here, you must expect this sort of thing. Au revoir, and God bless you both!”
When they had gone out, he turned to Dinny: “I’m much touched, Dinny. That was a charming compliment. Who thought of it?”
“Jean.”
“Then she’s either a very good or a very bad judge of character. I wonder which. That was quick work. It was ten five when you came in, it’s now ten fourteen; I don’t know when I’ve disposed of two lives in a shorter time. There’s nothing wrong about the Tasburghs, is there?”
“No, they seem rather sudden, that’s all.”
“On the whole,” said Hilary, “I like them sudden. It generally means sand.”
“The Zeebrugge touch.”
“Ah! Yes, there’s a sailor brother, isn’t there?”
Dinny’s eyelids fluttered.
“Has he laid himself alongside yet?”
“Several times.”
“And?”
“I’M not sudden, Uncle.”
“Backer and filler?”
“Especially backer.”
Hilary smiled affectionately at his favourite niece: “Blue eye true eye. I’ll marry you off yet, Dinny. Excuse me now, I have to see a man who’s in trouble with the hire-purchase system. He’s got in and he can’t get out—goes swimming about like a dog in a pond with a high bank. By the way, the girl you saw in Court the other day is in there with your Aunt. Like another look at her? She is, I fear, what we call an insoluble problem, which being interpreted means a bit of human nature. Have a shot at solving her.”
“I should love to, but she wouldn’t.”
“I don’t know that. As young woman to young woman you might get quite a lot of change out of her, and most of it bad, I shouldn’t wonder. That,” he added, “is cynical. Cynicism’s a relief.”
“It must be, Uncle.”
“It’s where the Roman Catholics have a pull over us. Well, good-bye, my dear. See you tomorrow at the execution.”
Locking up his accounts, Hilary followed her into the hall; opening the door of the dining-room, he said: “My Love, here’s Dinny! I’ll be back to lunch,” and went out, hatless.
CHAPTER 20
Towards South Square, where Fleur was to be asked to give another reference, the girls left the Vicarage together.
“I’m afraid,” said Dinny, overcoming her shyness, “that I should want to take it out of somebody, if I were you. I can’t see why you should have lost your place.” She could see the girl scrutinizing her askance, as if trying to make up her mind whether or no to say what was in it.
“I got meself talked about,” she said, at last.
“Yes, I happened to come into the Court the day you were acquitted. I thought it brutal to make you stand there.”
“I reely did speak to a man,” said the girl, surprisingly, “I wouldn’t tell Mr. Cherrell, but I did. I was just fed-up with wanting money. D’you think it was bad of me?”
“Well, personally, I should have to want more than money before I did it.”
“You never have wanted money—not reely.”
“I suppose you’re right, although I’ve never had much.”
“It’s better than stealin’,” said the girl, grimly: “after all, what is it? You can forget about it. At least, that’s what I thought. Nobody thinks the worse of a man or does anything to him for it. But you won’t tell Mrs. Mont what I’m telling you?’
“Of course not. Had things been going very badly?”
“Shockin’. Me and my sister make just enough when we’re in full work. But she was ill five weeks, and on the top of that I lost my purse one day, with thirty bob in it. That wasn’t my fault, anyway.”
“Wretched luck.”
“Rotten! If I’d been a reel one d’you think they’d have spotted me—it was just my being green. I bet girls in high life have no trouble that way when they’re hard up.”
“Well,” said Dinny, “I suppose there are girls not above helping out their incomes in all sorts of ways. All the same, I think that kind of thing ought only to go with affection; but I expect I’m old-fashioned.”
The girl turned another long and this time almost admiring look on her.