“It’s all right.”
Dinny spun round to the window. Dark had fallen, and if it hadn’t, she couldn’t have seen. All right! All right! She dashed her knuckles across her eyes, turned round, and held out both hands, without seeing where to hold them.
They were not taken, but his voice said:
“I’m very happy.”
“I thought I’d spoiled it.”
She saw his eyes then, round as a puppy dog’s.
“If he hadn’t made up his mind already he wouldn’t have seen you, Miss Cherrell. He’s not as case-hardened as all that. As a matter of fact, he’d seen the Magistrate about it at lunch time—that helped a lot.”
‘Then I had all that agony for nothing,’ thought Dinny.
“Did he have to see the preface, Mr. Ferrar?”
“No, and just as well—it might have worked the other way. We really owe it to the Magistrate. But you made a good impression on him. He said you were transparent.”
“Oh!”
Bobbie Ferrar took the little red book from the table, looked at it lovingly, and placed it in his pocket. “Shall we go?”
In Whitehall Dinny took a breath so deep that the whole November dusk seemed to pass into her with the sensation of a long, and desperately wanted drink.
“A Post Office!” she said. “He couldn’t change his mind, could he?”
“I have his word. Your brother will be released to-night.”
“Oh! Mr. Ferrar!” Tears suddenly came out of her eyes. She turned away to hide them, and when she turned back to him, he was not there.
CHAPTER 37
When from that Post Office she had despatched telegrams to her father and Jean, and telephoned to Fleur, to Adrian and Hilary, she took a taxi to Mount Street, and opened the door of her Uncle’s study. Sir Lawrence, before the fire with a book he was not reading, looked up.
“What’s your news, Dinny?”
“Saved!”
“Thanks to you!”
“Bobbie Ferrar says, thanks to the Magistrate. I nearly wrecked it, Uncle.”
“Ring the bell!” Dinny rang.
“Blore, tell Lady Mont I want her.”
“Good news, Blore; Mr. Hubert’s free.”
“Thank you, Miss; I was laying six to four on it.”
“What can we do to relieve our feelings, Dinny?”
“I must go to Condaford, Uncle.”
“Not till after dinner. You shall go drunk. What about Hubert? Anybody going to meet him?”
“Uncle Adrian said I’d better not, and he would go. Hubert will make for the flat, of course, and wait for Jean.”
Sir Lawrence gave her a whimsical glance.
“Where will she be flying from?”
“Brussels.”
“So that was the centre of operations! The closing down of that enterprise gives me almost as much satisfaction, Dinny, as Hubert’s release. You can’t get away with that sort of thing, nowadays.”
“I think they might have,” said Dinny, for with the removal of the need for it, the idea of escape seemed to have become less fantastic. “Aunt Em! What a nice wrapper!”
“I was dressin’. Blore’s won four pounds. Dinny, kiss me. Give your Uncle one, too. You kiss very nicely—there’s body in it. If I drink champagne, I shall be ill tomorrow.”
“But need you, Auntie?”
“Yes. Dinny, promise me to kiss that young man.”
“Do you get a commission on kissing, Aunt Em?”
“Don’t tell me he wasn’t goin’ to cut Hubert out of prison, or something. The Rector said he flew in with a beard one day, and took a spirit level and two books on Portugal. They always go to Portugal. The Rector’ll be so relieved; he was gettin’ thin about it. So I think you ought to kiss him.”
“A kiss means nothing nowadays, Auntie. I nearly kissed Bobbie Ferrar; only he saw it coming.”
“Dinny can’t be bothered to do all this kissing,” said Sir Lawrence; “she’s got to sit to my miniature painter. The young man will be at Condaford tomorrow, Dinny.”
“Your Uncle’s got a bee, Dinny; collectin’ the Lady. There aren’t any, you know. It’s extinct. We’re all females now.”
By the only late evening train Dinny embarked for Condaford. They had plied her with wine at dinner, and she sat in sleepy elation, grateful for everything—the motion, and the moon-ridden darkness flying past the windows. Her exhilaration kept breaking out in smiles. Hubert free! Condaford safe! Her father and mother at ease once more! Jean happy! Alan no longer threatened with disgrace! Her fellow-passengers, for she was travelling third-class, looked at her with the frank or furtive wonderment that so many smiles will induce in the minds of any taxpayers. Was she tipsy, weak-minded, or merely in love? Perhaps all three! And she looked back at them with a benevolent compassion because they were obviously not half-seas-over with happiness. The hour and a half seemed short, and she got out on to the dimly lighted platform, less sleepy, but as elated as when she had got into the train. She had forgotten to add in her telegram that she was coming, so she had to leave her things and walk. She took the main road; it was longer, but she wanted to swing along and breathe home air to the full. In the night, as always, things looked unfamiliar, and she seemed to pass houses, hedges, trees that she had never known. The road dipped through a wood. A car came with its headlights glaring luridly, and in that glare she saw a weasel slink across just in time—queer little low beast, snakily humping its long back. She stopped a moment on the bridge over their narrow twisting little river. That bridge was hundreds of years old, nearly as old as the oldest parts of the Grange, and still very strong. Just beyond it was their gate, and when the river flooded, in very wet years, it crept up the meadow almost to the shrubbery where the moat had once been. Dinny pushed through the gate and walked on the grass edging of the drive between the rhododendrons. She came to the front of the house, which was really its back—long, low, unlighted. They did not expect her, and it was getting on for midnight; and the idea came to her to steal round and see it all grey and ghostly, tree-and-creeper-covered in the moonlight. Past the yew trees, throwing short shadows under the raised garden, she came round on to the lawn, and stood breathing deeply, and turning her head this way and that, so as to miss nothing that she had grown up with. The moon flicked a ghostly radiance on to the windows, and shiny leaves of the magnolias; and secrets lurked all over the old stone face. Lovely! Only one window was lighted, that of her father’s study. It seemed strange that they had gone to bed already, with relief so bubbling in them. She stole from the lawn on to the terrace and stood looking in through the curtains not quite drawn. The General was at his desk with a lot of papers spread before him, sitting with his hands between his knees, and his head bent. She could see the hollow below his temple, the hair above it, much greyer of late, the set mouth, the almost beaten look on the face. The whole attitude was that of a man in patient silence, preparing to accept disaster. Up in Mount Street she had been reading of the American Civil War, and she thought that just so, but for his lack of beard, might some old Southern General have looked, the night before Lee’s surrender. And, suddenly, it came to her that by an evil chance they had not yet received her telegram. She tapped on the pane. Her father raised his head. His face was ashen grey in the moonlight, and it was evident that he mistook her apparition for confirmation of the worst; he opened the window. Dinny leaned in, and put her hands on his shoulders.