“Well, my dear,” he said, “that looks a nice dog; is he yours?”
“Yes. Uncle Lawrence, will you do something for me?”
“Surely.”
“Wilfrid has gone. He went this morning. He is not coming back. Would you be so very kind as to let my people know, and Michael, and Aunt Em, and Uncle Adrian. I don’t want ever to have to speak of it.”
Sir Lawrence inclined his head, took her hand and put it to his lips. “There was something I wanted to show you, Dinny.” He took from his table a little statuette of Voltaire. “I picked that up two days ago. Isn’t he a delightful old cynic? Why the French should be so much pleasanter as cynics than other people is mysterious, except, of course, that cynicism, to be tolerable, must have grace and wit; apart from those, it’s just bad manners. An English cynic is a man with a general grievance. A German cynic is a sort of wild boar. A Scandinavian cynic is a pestilence. An American jumps around too much to make a cynic, and a Russian’s state of mind is not constant enough. You might get a perfectly good cynic in Austria, perhaps, or northern China—possibly it’s a question of latitude.”
Dinny smiled.
“Give my love to Aunt Em, please. I’m going home this afternoon.”
“God bless you, my dear,” said Sir Lawrence. “Come here, or to Lippinghall, whenever you want; we love having you.” And he kissed her forehead.
When she had gone, he went to the telephone, and then sought his wife.
“Em, poor Dinny has just been here. She looks like a smiling ghost. It’s all over. Desert went off for good this morning. She doesn’t want ever to speak of it. Can you remember that?”
Lady Mont, who was arranging some flowers in a Chinese ginger jar, dropped them and turned round.
“Oh! dear!” she said. “Kiss me, Lawrence!”
They stood for a moment embraced. Poor Em! Her heart was soft as butter! She said into his shoulder: “Your collar’s all covered with hairs. You WILL brush your hair after you’ve put your coat on. Turn! I’ll pick them off.”
Sir Lawrence turned.
“I’ve telephoned to Condaford and Michael and Adrian. Remember, Em! The thing is as if it never was.”
“Of course I shall remember. Why did she come to you?”
Sir Lawrence shrugged. “She’s got a new dog, a black spaniel.”
“Very faithful, but they get fat. There! Did they say anything on the telephone?”
“Only: ‘Oh!’ and ‘I see,’ and ‘Of course.’”
“Lawrence, I want to cry; come back presently and take me somewhere.”
Sir Lawrence patted her shoulders and went out quickly. He, too, felt peculiar. Back in his study, he sat in thought. Desert’s flight was the only possible solution! Of all those affected by this incident, he had the clearest and most just insight into Wilfrid. True, probably, that the fellow had a vein of gold in him which his general nature did its best to hide! But to live with? Not on your life! Yellow? Of course he wasn’t that! The thing was not plain-sailing, as Jack Muskham and the pukka sahibs supposed, with their superstition that black was not white, and so on. No, no! Young Desert had been snared in a most peculiar way. Given his perverse nature, its revolts, humanitarianism, and want of belief, given his way of hob-nobbing with the Arabs, his case was as different from that of the ordinary Englishman as chalk from cheese. But, whatever his case, he was not a man to live with! Poor Dinny was well out of that! What pranks Fate played! Why should her choice have fallen there? If you came to that, why anything where love was concerned? It knew no laws, not even those of common sense. Some element in her had flown straight to its kindred element in him, disregarding all that was not kindred, and all outside circumstance. She might never get again the chance of that particular ‘nick,’ as Jack Muskham would call it. But—good Gad!—marriage was a lifelong business; yes, even in these days, no passing joke! For marriage you wanted all the luck and all the give and take that you could get. Not much give and take about Desert—restless, disharmonic, and a poet! And proud—with that inner self-depreciative pride which never let up on a man! A liaison, one of those leaping companionships young people went in for now—possibly; but that didn’t fit Dinny; even Desert must have felt so. In her the physical without the spiritual seemed out of place. Ah! Well! Another long heartache in the world—poor Dinny.
‘Where,’ he thought, ‘can I take Em at this time in the morning? The Zoo she doesn’t like; I’m sick of the Wallace. Madame Tussaud’s! Gaiety will break through. Madame Tussaud’s!’
CHAPTER 37
At Condaford Jean went straight from the telephone to find her mother-inlaw, and repeated Sir Lawrence’s words with her usual decision. The gentle rather timid expression on Lady Cherrell’s face changed to a startled concern.
“Oh!”
“Shall I tell the General?”
“Please, dear.”
Alone again with her accounts, Lady Cherrell sat thinking. The only one of the family, except Hubert, who had never seen Wilfrid Desert, she had tried to keep an open mind, and had no definite opposition on her conscience. She felt now only a troubled sympathy. What could one do? And, as is customary in the case of another’s bereavement, she could only think of flowers.
She slipped out into the garden and went to the rose beds, which, flanked by tall yew hedges, clustered round the old sundial. She plucked a basket full of the best blossoms, took them up to Dinny’s narrow and conventual bedroom, and disposed them in bowls by the bedside and on the window-sill. Then, opening the door and mullioned window wide, she rang for the room to be dusted and the bed made. The Medici prints on the walls she carefully set exactly straight, and said:
“I’ve dusted the pictures, Annie. Keep the window and door open. I want it all to smell sweet. Can you do the room now?”
“Yes, m’lady.”
“Then I think you’d better, I don’t know what time Miss Dinny will be here.”
Back with her accounts, she could not settle to them, and, pushing them into a drawer, went to find her husband. He, too, was seated before bills and papers without sign of animation. She went up to him and pressed his head against her.
“Jean’s told you, Con?”
“Yes. It’s the only thing, of course; but I hate Dinny to be sad.”
They were silent till Lady Cherrell said:
“I’d tell Dinny about our being so hard up. It would take her mind off.”
The General ruffled his hair. “I shall be three hundred down on the year. I might get a couple of hundred for the horses, the rest must come out of trees. I don’t know which I dislike more. Do you think she could suggest something?”
“No, but she would worry, and that would prevent her troubling so much over the other thing.”
“I see. Well, Jean or you tell her, then. I don’t like to. It looks like hinting that I want to reduce her allowance. It’s a pittance as it is. Make it plain there’s no question of that. Travel would have been the thing for her, but where’s the money to come from?”
Lady Cherrell did not know, and the conversation lapsed.
Into that old house, which for so many centuries human hopes, fears, births, deaths, and all the medley of everyday emotions had stamped with a look of wary age, had come an uneasiness which showed in every word and action, even of the maids. What attitude to adopt? How to show sympathy, and yet not show it? How to welcome, and yet make it clear that welcome did not carry rejoicing? Even Jean was infected. She brushed and combed the dogs, and insisted on taking the car to meet every afternoon train.
Dinny came by the third. Leading Foch, she stepped out of the carriage almost into Jean’s arms.
“Hallo, my dear,” said Jean, “here you are! New dog?”
“Yes; a darling.”
“What have you got?”
“Only these things. It’s no use looking for a porter, they’re always trundling bicycles.”