They had walked up the Burlington Arcade, when Adrian was suddenly startled by the pallor of her face.
“What’s the matter, Dinny? You look like a ghost!”
“If you don’t mind, Uncle, I’d like a cup of coffee.”
“There’s a place in Bond Street.” Scared by the bloodlessness of her smiling lips, he held her arm firmly till they were seated at a little table round the corner.
“Two coffees—extra strong,” said Adrian, and with that instinctive consideration which caused women and children to confide in him, he made no attempt to gain her confidence.
“Nothing so tiring as picture-gazing. I’m sorry to emulate Em and suspect you of not eating enough, my dear. That sort of sparrow-pecking we did before going in doesn’t really count.” But colour had come back to her lips.
“I’m very tough, Uncle; but food IS rather a bore.”
“You and I must go a little tour in France. Their grub can move one’s senses if their pictures can’t move one’s spirit.”
“Did you feel THAT?”
“Compared with the Italian—emphatically. It’s all so beautifully thought out. They make their pictures like watches. Perfectly art-conscious and thorough workmen. Unreasonable to ask for more, and yet—perhaps fundamentally unpoetic. And that reminds me, Dinny, I do hope Clare can be kept out of the Divorce Court, for of all unpoetic places that is IT.”
Dinny shook her head.
“I’d rather she got it over. I even think she was wrong to promise. She’s not going to change her mind about Jerry. She’ll be like a bird with one leg. Besides, who thinks the worse of you nowadays!”
Adrian moved uncomfortably.
“I dislike the thought of those hard-boiled fellows playing battledore with my kith and kin. If they were like Dornford—but they aren’t. Seen anything more of him?”
“He was down with us for one night when he had to speak.”
He noticed that she spoke without ‘batting an eyelid,’ as the young men called it nowadays. And, soon after, they parted, Dinny assuring him that she had “come over quite well again.”
He had said that she looked like a ghost; he might better have said she looked as if she had seen one. For, coming out of that Arcade, all her past in Cork Street had come fluttering like some lonely magpie towards her, beaten wings in her face and swerved away. And now, alone, she turned and walked back there. Resolutely she went to the door, climbed the stairs to Wilfrid’s rooms, and rang the bell. Leaning against the window-sill on the landing, she waited with elapsed hands, thinking: ‘I wish I had a muff!” Her hands felt so cold. In old pictures they stood with veils down and their hands in muffs; but ‘the old order changeth,’ and she had none. She was just going away when the door was opened. Stack! In slippers! His glance, dark and prominent as ever, fell to those slippers and his demeanour seemed to stammer.
“Pardon me, miss, I was just going to change ’em.”
Dinny held out her hand, and he took it with his old air, as if about to ‘confess’ her.
“I was passing, and thought I’d like to ask how you were.”
“Fine, thank you, miss! Hope you’ve been keeping well, and the dog?”
“Quite well, both of us. Foch likes the country.”
“Ah! Mr. Desert always thought he was a country dog.”
“Have you any news?”
“Not to say news, miss. I understand from his bank that he’s still in Siam. They forward his letters to their branch in Bangkok. His lordship was here not long ago, and I understood him to say that Mr. Desert was up a river somewhere.”
“A river!”
“The name escapes me, something with a ‘Yi’ in it, and a ‘sang’—was it? I believe it’s very ‘ot there. If I may say so, miss, you haven’t much colour considering the country. I was down home in Barnstaple at Christmas, and it did me a power of good.”
Dinny took his hand again.
“I’m very glad to have seen you, Stack.”
“Come in, miss. You’ll see I keep the room just as it was.”
Dinny followed to the doorway of the sitting-room.
“Exactly the same, Stack; he might almost be there.”
“I like to think so, miss.”
“Perhaps he is,” said Dinny. “They say we have astral bodies. Thank you.” She touched his arm, passed him, and went down the stairs. Her face quivered and was still, and she walked rapidly away.
A river! Her dream! ‘One more river!’
In Bond Street a voice said: “Dinny!” and she turned to see Fleur.
“Whither away, my dear? Haven’t seen you for an age. I’ve just been to the French pictures. Aren’t they divine? I saw Clare there with a young man in tow. Who is he?”
“A shipmate—Tony Croom.”
“More to come?”
Dinny shrugged, and, looking at her trim companion, thought: ‘I wish Fleur didn’t always go so straight to the point.’
“Any money?”
“No. He’s got a job, but it’s very slender—Mr. Muskham’s Arab mares.”
“Oh! Three hundred a year—five at the outside. That’s no good at all. You know, really, she’s making a great mistake. Jerry Corven will go far.”
Dinny said drily: “Further than Clare, anyway.”
“You mean it’s a complete breach?”
Dinny nodded. She had never been so near disliking Fleur.
“Well, Clare’s not like you. She belongs to the new order, or disorder. That’s why it’s a mistake. She’d have a much better time if she stuck to Jerry, nominally at least. I can’t see her poor.”
“She doesn’t care about money,” said Dinny coldly.
“Oh, nonsense! Money’s only being able to do what you want to do. Clare certainly cares about that.”
Dinny, who knew that this was true, said, still more coldly:
“It’s no good to try and explain.”
“My dear, there’s nothing to explain. He’s hurt her in some way, as, of course, he would. That’s no reason in the long run. That perfectly lovely Renoir—the man and woman in the box! Those people lived lives of their own—together. Why shouldn’t Clare?”
“Would you?”
Fleur gave a little shrug of her beautifully fitted shoulders.
“If Michael wasn’t such a dear. Besides—children.” Again she gave that little shrug.
Dinny thawed. “You’re a fraud, Fleur. You don’t practise what you preach.”
“My dear, my case is exceptional.”
“So is everybody’s.”
“Well, don’t let’s squabble. Michael says your new Member, Dornford, is after his own heart. They’re working together on pigs, poultry, and potatoes. A great stunt, and the right end of the stick, for once.”
“Yes, we’re going all out for pigs at Condaford. Is Uncle Lawrence doing anything at Lippinghall?”
“No. He invented the plan, so he thinks he’s done his bit. Michael will make him do more when he’s got time. Em is screamingly funny about it. How do you like Dornford?”
Asked this question twice in one morning, Dinny looked her cousin by marriage full in the face.
“He seems to me almost a paragon.”
She felt Fleur’s hand slip suddenly under her arm.
“I wish you’d marry him, Dinny dear. One doesn’t marry paragons, but I fancy one could ‘fault’ him if one tried.”
It was Dinny’s turn to give a little shrug, looking straight before her.
CHAPTER 18
The third of February was a day so bland and of such spring-like texture that the quickened blood demanded adventure.
This was why Tony Croom sent an early wire and set out at noon from Bablock Hythe in his old but newly-acquired two-seater. The car was not his ‘dream,’ but it could do fifty at the pinch he liked to give it. He took the nearest bridge, ran for Abingdon, and on past Benson to Henley. There he stopped to snatch a sandwich and ‘fill up,’ and again on the bridge for a glimpse at the sunlit river softly naked below the bare woods. From there on he travelled by the dock, timing himself to reach Melton Mews at two o’clock.