“Well, I judge there’s no use crying over spilt milk. Command me in any way. I am your very faithful servant.” And, turning round, he went out.

Dinny heard the front door close with a slight choke in her throat. She felt pain at having caused him pain, but relief, too, the relief one feels when something very large, simple, primitive—the sea, a thunderstorm, a bull—is no longer imminent. In front of one of Fleur’s mirrors she stood despitefully, as though she had just discovered the over-refinement of her nerves. How could that great handsome, healthy creature care for one so spindly and rarefied as she looked reflected there? He could snap her off with his hands. Was that why she recoiled? The great open spaces of which he seemed a part, with his height, strength, colour, and the boom of his voice! Funny, silly perhaps—but very real recoil! She belonged where she belonged—not to such as them, to such as him. About such juxtapositions there was even something comic. She was still standing there with a wry smile when Adrian was ushered in.

She turned to him impulsively. Sallow and worn and lined, subtle, gentle, harassed, no greater contrast could have appeared, not any that could have better soothed her jangled nerves. Kissing him, she said:

“I waited to see you before going to stay at Diana’s!”

“You ARE going, Dinny?”

“Yes. I don’t believe you’ve had lunch or tea or anything,” and she rang the bell. “Coaker, Mr. Adrian would like—”

“A brandy and soda, Coaker, thank you!”

“Now, Uncle?” she said, when he had drunk it.

“I’m afraid, Dinny, one can’t set much store by what they say down there. According to them Ferse ought to go back. But why he should, so long as he acts sanely, I don’t know. They query the idea of his recovery, but they can bring nothing abnormal against him for some weeks past. I got hold of his personal attendant and questioned him. He seems a decent chap, and he thinks Ferse at the moment is as sane as himself. But—and the whole trouble lies there—he says he was like this once before for three weeks, and suddenly lapsed again. If anything really upsets him—opposition or what not—he thinks Ferse will be just as bad again as ever, perhaps worse. It’s a really terrible position.”

“When he’s in mania is he violent?”

“Yes; a kind of gloomy violence, more against himself than anyone else.”

“They’re not going to do anything to get him back?”

“They can’t. He went there voluntarily; I told you he hasn’t been certified. How is Diana?”

“She looks tired, but lovely. She says she is going to do everything she can to give him a chance.”

Adrian nodded.

“That’s like her; she has wonderful pluck. And so have you, my dear. It’s a great comfort to know you’ll be with her. Hilary is ready to take Diana and the children if she’d go, but she won’t, you say.”

“Not at present, I’m sure.”

Adrian sighed.

“Well, we must chance it.”

“Oh! Uncle,” said Dinny. “I AM so sorry for you.”

“My dear, what happens to the fifth wheel doesn’t matter so long as the car runs. Don’t let me keep you. You can get at me any time either at the Museum or my rooms. Good-bye and bless you! My love to her, and tell her all I’ve told you.”

Dinny kissed him again, and soon after in a cab set forth with her things to Oakley Street.

CHAPTER 22

Bobbie Ferrar had one of those faces which look on tempests and are never shaken; in other words, he was an ideal permanent official—so permanent that one could not conceive of the Foreign Office functioning without him. Secretaries of State might come, might go, Bobbie Ferrar remained, bland, inscrutable, and with lovely teeth. Nobody knew whether there was anything in him except an incalculable number of secrets. Of an age which refused to declare itself, short and square, with a deep soft voice, he had an appearance of complete detachment. In a dark suit with a little light line, and wearing a flower, he existed in a large ante-room wherein was almost nothing except those who came to see the Foreign Minister and instead saw Bobbie Ferrar. In fact the perfect buffer. His weakness was criminology. No murder trial of importance ever took place without the appearance, if only for half-an-hour, of Bobbie Ferrar in a seat more or less kept for him. And he preserved the records of all those trials in a specially bound edition. Perhaps the greatest testimony to his character, whatever that might be, lay in the fact that no one ever threw his acquaintanceship with nearly everybody up against him. People came to Bobbie Ferrar, not he to them. Yet why? What had he ever done that he should be ‘Bobbie’ Ferrar to all and sundry? Not even ‘the honourable,’ merely the son of a courtesy lord, affable, unfathomable, always about, he was unquestionably a last word. Without him, his flower, and his faint grin, Whitehall would have been shorn of something that made it almost human. He had been there since before the war, from which he had been retrieved just in time, some said, to prevent the whole place from losing its character, just in time, too, to stand, as it were, between England and herself. She could not become the shrill edgy hurried harridan the war had tried to make her while his square, leisurely, beflowered, inscrutable figure passed daily up and down between those pale considerable buildings.

He was turning over a Bulb Catalogue, on the morning of Hubert’s wedding day, when the card of Sir Lawrence Mont was brought to him, followed by its owner, who said at once:

“You know what I’ve come about, Bobbie?”

“Completely,” said Bobbie Ferrar, his eyes round, his head thrown back, his voice deep.

“Has the Marquess seen you?”

“I had breakfast with him yesterday. Isn’t he amazing?”

“Our finest old boy,” said Sir Lawrence. “What are you going to do about it? Old Sir Conway Cherrell was the best Ambassador to Spain you ever turned out of the shop, and this is his grandson.”

“Has he really got a scar?” asked Bobbie Ferrar, through a faint grin.

“Of course he has.”

“Did he really get it over that?”

“Sceptical image! Of course he did.”

“Amazing!”

“Why?”

Bobbie Ferrar showed his teeth. “Who can prove it?”

“Hallorsen is getting evidence.”

“It’s not in our department, you know.”

“No? But you can get at the Home Secretary.”

“Um!” said Bobbie Ferrar, deeply.

“You can see the Bolivians about it, anyway.”

“Um!” said Bobbie Ferrar still more deeply, and handed him the catalogue. “Do you know this new tulip? Complete, isn’t it?”

“Now, look you, Bobbie,” said Sir Lawrence, “this is my nephew; emphatically a ‘good egg,’ as you say, and it won’t do! See!”

“The age is democratic,” said Bobbie Ferrar cryptically; “it came up in the House, didn’t it—flogging?”

“We can pull out the national stop if there’s any more fuss there. Hallorsen has taken back his criticism. Well, I’ll leave it to you; you won’t commit yourself if I stay here all the morning. But you’ll do your best because it really is a scandalous charge.”

“Completely,” said Bobbie Ferrar. “Would you like to see the Croydon murder trial? It’s amazing. I’ve got two seats; I offered one to my Uncle. But he won’t go to any trial until they bring in electrocution.”

“Did the fellow do it?”

Bobbie Ferrar nodded.

“The evidence is very shaky,” he added.

“Well, good-bye, Bobbie; I rely on you.”

Bobbie Ferrar grinned faintly, and held out his hand.

“Good-bye,” he said, through his teeth.

Sir Lawrence went westward to the Coffee House where the porter handed him a telegram: “Am marrying Jean Tasburgh two o’clock today St. Augustine’s-inthe-Meads delighted to see you and Aunt Em Hubert.”

Passing into the coffee-room, Sir Lawrence said to the Chief Steward: “Butts, I am about to see a nephew turned off. Fortify me quickly.”