About fifty yards from the river he threw himself down in a little hollow. Rabbits and bees and birds—nothing else as yet awake. He lay on his back staring at the grass and the bushes and the early sky, blue and lightly fleeced. Perhaps because he could see so little from that hollow all England seemed to be with him. A wild bee close to his hand was digging into a flower, there was a faint scent, as of daisy-chains; but chiefly it was the quality of the grass—its close freshness, its true greenness. ‘Greatness and dignity and peace!’ That play! Those words had given him a choke. Other people had laughed, Clare had laughed. “Sentimental!” she had said. “No country ever had, or will have ‘Greatness and dignity and peace.’” Probably not, certainly not—a country, even one’s own, was a mish-mash of beauties and monstrosities, a vague generalisation that betrayed dramatists into over-writing, journalists into blurb. All the same, you couldn’t anywhere else in the world get just such a spot, or just such grass to feel and see, a scent that was wellnigh none, a tender fleecy sky, tiny flowers, birds’ songs, age and youth at once! Let people laugh—you couldn’t! Leave grass like this! He remembered the thrill he had felt six months ago, seeing again English grass! Leave his job before it had begun; chuck it back at Muskham, who had been so really decent to him! He turned over on to his face and laid his cheek to that grass. There he got the scent better—not sweet, not bitter, but fresh, intimate and delighting, a scent apprehended from his earliest childhood—the scent of England. If only those mares would come, and he could get at it! He sat up again, and listened. No sound of train or car or airplane, no human sound, no sound of any four-footed thing; just birds’ songs, and those indistinguishable and a little far—a long meandering tune wide above the grass. Well! No use making a song! If one couldn’t have a thing, one couldn’t!
CHAPTER 36
The moment Dinny had left, Adrian made the not uncommon discovery that he had promised what would need performance. To get one of His Majesty’s Counsel to commit himself—how? Too pointed to go to him! Impossible to pump a guest! Em, if he prompted her, would ask them both to dinner, especially if made to understand that the matter concerned Dinny; but even then—? He waited to consult Diana, and, after dining, went round to Mount Street. He found them playing piquet.
“Four kings,” said Lady Mont. “So old-fashioned—Lawrence and I and Mussolini. Have you come for something, Adrian?”
“Naturally, Em. I want you to ask Eustace Dornford to dinner, and me to meet him.”
“That’ll be Dinny. I can’t get Lawrence to be chivalrous; when I have four kings he always has four aces. When?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Ring, dear.”
Adrian rang.
“Blore, call up Mr. Dornford and ask him to dinner—black tie.”
“When, my lady?”
“The first evenin’ not in my book. Like dentists,” she added, as Blore withdrew. “Tell me about Dinny. She hasn’t been near us since the case.”
“The case,” repeated Sir Lawrence, “went much as one expected, didn’t you think, Adrian? Any repercussions?”
“Someone has settled the costs, and Dinny suspects Dornford.”
Sir Lawrence laid down his cards. “Bit too like a bid for her, that!”
“Oh, he won’t admit it, but she wants me to find out.”
“If he won’t admit it, why should he do it?”
“Knights,” murmured Lady Mont, “wearin’ a glove, and gettin’ killed, and nobody knowin’ whose glove. Yes, Blore?”
“Mr. Dornford will be happy to dine on Monday, my lady.”
“Put him in my book, then, and Mr. Adrian.”
“Go away with him after dinner, Adrian,” said Sir Lawrence, “and do it then—not so pointed; and, Em, not a hint, not even a sigh or a groan.”
“He’s a nice creature,” said Lady Mont, “so pale-brown…”
With the ‘nice creature so pale-brown’ Adrian walked away the following Monday night. Their directions were more or less the same, since Dornford was not yet in his new house. To Adrian’s relief, his companion seemed as glad of the opportunity as himself, for he began at once to talk of Dinny.
“Am I right in thinking something’s happened to Dinny lately—I don’t mean that case—but when she was ill and you went abroad together?”
“Yes. The man I told you of that she was in love with two years ago was drowned out in Siam.”
“Oh!”
Adrian stole a look. What should Dornford’s face express—concern, relief, hope, sympathy? It only wore a little frown.