Not Bobbie Ferrar, but a tall man with a reddish, clean-shaven face and silver hair brushed in a cockscomb off his forehead, was standing before the fire with his legs slightly apart and his hands under his coat tails; he was staring at her with very wide-opened light grey eyes, and his lips were just apart as if he were about to emit a remark. Dinny was too startled to rise, and she sat staring back at him.
“Miss Cherrell! Don’t get up.” He lifted a restraining hand from beneath a coat-tail. Dinny stayed seated—only too glad to, for she had begun to tremble violently.
“Ferrar tells me that you edited your brother’s diary?”
Dinny bowed her head. Take deep breaths!
“As printed, is it in its original condition?”
“Yes.”
“Exactly?”
“Yes. I haven’t altered or left out a thing.”
Staring at his face she could see nothing but the round brightness of the eyes and the slight superior prominence of the lower lip. It was almost like staring at God. She shivered at the queerness of the thought and her lips formed a little desperate smile.
“I have a question to ask you, Miss Cherrell.”
Dinny uttered a little sighing: “Yes.”
“How much of this diary was written since your brother came back?”
She stared; then the implication in the question stung her.
“None! Oh, none! It was all written out there at the time.” And she rose to her feet.
“May I ask how you know that?”
“My brother—” Only then did she realise that throughout she had nothing but Hubert’s word—“my brother told me so.”
“His word is gospel to you?”
She retained enough sense of humour not to ‘draw herself up,’ but her head tilted.
“Gospel. My brother is a soldier and—”
She stopped short, and, watching that superior lower lip, hated herself for using that clichй.
“No doubt, no doubt! But you realise, of course, the importance of the point?”
“There is the original—” stammered Dinny. Oh! Why hadn’t she brought it! “It shows clearly—I mean, it’s all messy and stained. You can see it at any time. Shall—?”
He again put out a restraining hand.
“Never mind that. Very devoted to your brother, Miss Cherrell?”
Dinny’s lips quivered.
“Absolutely. We all are.”
“He’s just married, I hear?”
“Yes, just married.”
“Your brother wounded in the war?”
“Yes. He had a bullet through his left leg.”
“Neither arm touched?”
Again that sting!
“No!” The little word came out like a shot fired. And they stood looking at each other half a minute—a minute; words of appeal, of resentment, incoherent words were surging to her lips, but she kept them closed; she put her hand over them. He nodded.
“Thank you, Miss Cherrell. Thank you.” His head went a little to one side; he turned, and rather as if carrying that head on a charger, walked to the inner door. When he had passed through, Dinny covered her face with her hands. What had she done? Antagonised him? She ran her hands down over her face, over her body, and stood with them clenched at her sides, staring at the door through which he had passed, quivering from head to foot. A minute passed. The door was opened again, and Bobbie Ferrar came in. She saw his teeth. He nodded, shut the door, and said:
“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.”