“There was a question I wanted to ask you, Dornford. Someone had settled the costs granted against young Croom in that case.” The eyebrows were raised now, but the face said nothing. “I thought you might have known who. The lawyers will only say that it wasn’t the other side.”
“I’ve no idea.”
‘So!’ thought Adrian. ‘No nearer, except that, if a liar, he’s a good one!’
“I like young Croom,” said Dornford; “he’s behaved decently, and had hard luck. That’ll save him from bankruptcy.”
“Bit mysterious, though,” murmured Adrian.
“It is.”
‘On the whole,’ Adrian thought, ‘I believe he did. But what a poker face!’ He said, however:
“How do you find Clare since the case?”
“A little more cynical. She expressed her views on my profession rather freely when we were riding this morning.”
“Do you think she’ll marry young Croom?”
Dornford shook his head.
“I doubt it, especially if what you say about those costs is true. She might have out of a sense of obligation, but otherwise I think the case has worked against his chance. She’s no real feeling for him—at least that’s my view.”
“Corven disillusioned her thoroughly.”
“I’ve certainly seldom seen a more disillusioning face than his,” murmured Dornford. “But she seems to me headed for quite an amusing life on her own. She’s got pluck and, like all these young women now, she’s essentially independent.”
“Yes, I can’t see Clare being domestic.”
Dornford was silent. “Would you say that of Dinny, too?” he asked suddenly.
“Well, I can’t see Clare as a mother; Dinny I can. I can’t see Dinny here, there and everywhere; Clare I can. All the same—‘domestic’ of Dinny! It’s not the word.”
“No!” said Dornford fervently. “I don’t know what is. You believe very much in her, don’t you?”
Adrian nodded.
“Enormously.”
“It’s been tremendous for me,” said Dornford, very low, “to have come across her; but I’m afraid so far it’s been nothing to her.”
“Much to allow for,” suggested Adrian. “‘Patience is a virtue,’ or so it used to be before the world went up in that blue flame and never came down again.”
“But I’m rising forty.”
“Well, Dinny’s rising twenty-nine.”
“What you told me just now makes a difference, or—doesn’t it?”
“About Siam? I think it does—a great difference.”
“Well thank you.”
They parted with a firm clasp, and Adrian branched off northwards. He walked slowly, thinking of the balance-sheet that confronts each lover’s unlimited liability. No waterings of capital nor any insurance could square or guarantee that shifting lifelong document. By love was man flung into the world; with love was he in business nearly all his days, making debts or profit; and when he died was by the results of love, if not by the parish, buried and forgotten. In this swarming London not a creature but was deeply in account with a Force so whimsical, inexorable, and strong, that none, man or woman, in their proper senses would choose to do business with it. ‘Good match,’ ‘happy marriage,’ ‘ideal partnership,’ ‘life-long union,’ ledgered against ‘don’t get on,’ ‘just a flare up,’ ‘tragic state of things,’ ‘misfit’! All his other activities man could insure, modify, foresee, provide against (save the inconvenient activity of death); love he could not. It stepped to him out of the night, into the night returned. It stayed, it fled. On one side or the other of the balance sheet it scored an entry, leaving him to cast up and wait for the next entry. It mocked dictators, parliaments, judges, bishops, police, and even good intentions; it maddened with joy and grief; wantoned, procreated, thieved, and murdered; was devoted, faithful, fickle. It had no shame, and owned no master; built homes and gutted them; passed by on the other side; and now and again made of two hearts one heart till death. To think of London, Manchester, Glasgow without love appeared to Adrian, walking up the Charing Cross Road, to be easy; and yet without love not one of these passing citizens would be sniffing the petrol of this night air, not one grimy brick would have been laid upon brick, not one bus be droning past, no street musician would wail, nor lamp light up the firmament. A somewhat primary concern! And he, whose primary concern was with the bones of ancient men, who but for love would have had no bones to be dug up, classified and kept under glass, thought of Dornford and Dinny, and whether they would ‘click’…
And Dornford, on his way to Harcourt Buildings, thought even more intensively of himself and her. Rising forty! This overmastering wish of his—for its fulfilment it was now or never with him! If he were not to become set in the groove of a ‘getter-on,’ he must marry and have children. Life had become a half-baked thing without Dinny to give it meaning and savour. She had become—what had she not become? And, passing through the narrow portals of Middle Temple Lane, he said to a learned brother, also moving towards his bed:
“What’s going to win the Derby, Stubbs?”
“God knows!” said his learned brother, wondering why he had played that last trump when he did, instead of when he didn’t…
And in Mount Street Sir Lawrence, coming into her room to say ‘Good-night,’ found his wife sitting up in bed in the lace cap which always made her look so young, and, on the edge of the bed, in his black silk dressing-gown, sat down.
“Well, Em?”
“Dinny will have two boys and a girl.”
“Deuce she will! That’s counting her chickens rather fast.”
“Somebody must. Give me a nice kiss.”
Sir Lawrence stooped over and complied.
“When she marries,” said Lady Mont, shutting her eyes, “she’ll only be half there for a long time.”
“Better half there at the beginning than not at all at the end. But what makes you think she’ll take him?”
“My bones. We don’t like being left out when it comes to the point, Lawrence.”
“Continuation of the species. H’m!”
“If he’d get into a scrape, or break his leg.”
“Better give him a hint.”
“His liver’s sound.”
“How do you know that?”
“The whites of his eyes are blue. Those browny men often have livers.”
Sir Lawrence stood up.
“My trouble,” he said, “is to see Dinny sufficiently interested in herself again to get married. After all, it IS a personal activity.”
“Harridge’s for beds,” murmured Lady Mont.
Sir Lawrence’s eyebrow rose. Em was inexhaustible!
CHAPTER 37
She whose abstinence from interest in herself was interesting so many people, received three letters on Wednesday morning. That which she opened first said:
“DINNY DARLING,—
“I tried to pay, but Tony would have none of it, and went off like a rocket; so I’m a wholly unattached female again. If you hear any news of him, let me have it.
“Dornford gets more ‘interesting-looking’ every day. We only talk of you, and he’s raising my salary to three hundred as compensation.
“Love to you and all,
“CLARE.”
That which she opened second said:
“MY DEAR DINNY,—
“I’m going to stick it here. The mares arrive on Monday. I had Muskham down yesterday, and he was jolly decent, didn’t say a word about the case. I’m trying to take up birds. There is one thing you could do for me if you would—find out who paid those costs. It’s badly on my mind.
“Ever so many thanks for always being so nice to me.
“Yours ever,
“TONY CROOM.”
That which she read last said:
“DINNY, MY DEAR,—
“Nothing doing. He either didn’t, or else played ‘possum,’ but if so it was very good ‘possum.’ All the same, I wouldn’t put it past him that it WAS ‘possum.’ If you really set store by knowing, I think I should ask him point-blank. I don’t believe he would tell YOU a lie, even ‘a little one.’ As you know, I like him. In my avuncular opinion he is still on the gold standard.