Michael had just come in from the House; they met in the hall; and, with the instinct that Fleur, however acute, was not a fit person to share this particular consultation, Sir Lawrence demanded to be taken to his son’s study. He commenced by announcing Dinny’s engagement, which Michael heard with as strange a mixture of gratification and disquietude as could be seen on human visage.

“What a little cat, keeping it so dark!” he said. “Fleur did say something about her being too limpid just now; but I never thought! One’s got so used to Dinny being single. To Wilfrid, too? Well, I hope the old son has exhausted the East.”

“There’s this question of his religion,” said Sir Lawrence gravely.

“I don’t know why that should matter much; Dinny’s not fervent. But I never thought Wilfrid cared enough to change his. It rather staggered me.”

“There’s a story.”

When his father had finished, Michael’s ears stood out and his face looked haggard.

“You know him better than anyone,” Sir Lawrence concluded: “What do you think?”

“I hate to say it, but it might be true. It might even be natural for HIM; but no one would ever understand why. This is pretty ghastly, Dad, with Dinny involved.”

“Before we fash ourselves, my dear, we must find out if it’s true. Could you go to him?”

“In old days—easily.”

Sir Lawrence nodded. “Yes, I know all about that, but it’s a long time ago.”

Michael smiled faintly. “I never knew whether you spotted that, but I rather thought so. I’ve seen very little of Wilfrid since he went East. Still, I could—” He stopped, and added: “If it IS true, he must have told Dinny. He couldn’t ask her to marry him with that untold.”

Sir Lawrence shrugged. “If yellow in one way, why not in the other?”

“Wilfrid is one of the most perverse, complex, unintelligible natures one could come across. To judge him by ordinary standards is a wash-out. But if he HAS told Dinny, she’ll never tell us.”

And they stared at each other.

“Mind you,” said Michael, “there’s a streak of the heroic in him. It comes out in the wrong places. That’s why he’s a poet.”

Sir Lawrence began twisting at an eyebrow, always a sign that he had reached decision.

“The thing’s got to be faced; it’s not in human nature for a sleeping dog like that to be allowed to lie. I don’t care about young Desert—”

“I do,” said Michael.

“It’s Dinny I’m thinking of.”

“So am I. But there again, Dad, Dinny will do what she will do, and you needn’t think we can deflect her.”

“It’s one of the most unpleasant things,” said Sir Lawrence slowly, “that I’ve ever come across. Well, my boy, are you going to see him, or shall I?”

“I’ll do it,” said Michael, and sighed.

“Will he tell you the truth?”

“Yes. Won’t you stay to dinner?”

Sir Lawrence shook his head.

“Daren’t face Fleur with this on my mind. Needless to say, no one ought to know until you’ve seen him, not even she.”

“No. Dinny still with you?”

“She’s gone back to Condaford.”

“Her people!” and Michael whistled.

Her people! The thought remained with him all through a dinner during which Fleur discussed the future of Kit. She was in favour of his going to Harrow, because Michael and his father had been at Winchester. He was down for both, and the matter had not yet been decided.

“All your mother’s people,” she said, “were at Harrow. Winchester seems to me so superior and dry. And they never get any notoriety. If you hadn’t been at Winchester you’d have been a pet of the newspapers by now.”

“D’you want Kit to have notoriety?”

“Yes, the nice sort, of course, like your Uncle Hilary. You know, Michael, Bart’s a dear, but I prefer the Cherrell side of your family.”

“Well, I was wondering,” said Michael, “whether the Cherrel’s weren’t too straight-necked and servicey for anything,”

“Yes, they’re that, but they’ve got a quirk in them, and they look like gentlemen.”

“I believe,” said Michael, “that you really want Kit to go to Harrow because they play at Lords.”

Fleur straightened her own neck.

“Well, I do. I should have chosen Eton, only it’s so obvious, and I hate light blue.”

“Well,” said Michael, “I’m prejudiced in favour of my own school, so the choice is up to you. A school that produced Uncle Adrian will do for me, anyway.”

“No school produced your Uncle Adrian, dear,” said Fleur; “he’s palæolithic. The Cherrells are the oldest strain in Kit’s make-up, anyway, and I should like to breed to it, as Mr. Jack Muskham would say. Which reminds me that when I saw him at Clare’s wedding he wanted us to come down and see his stud farm at Royston. I should like to. He’s like an advertisement for shooting capes—divine shoes and marvellous control of his facial muscles.”

Michael nodded.

“Jack’s an example of so much stamp on the coin that there’s hardly any coin behind it.”

“Don’t you believe it, my dear. There’s plenty of metal at the back.”

“The ‘pukka sahib,’” said Michael. “I never can make up my mind whether that article is to the good or to the bad. The Cherrells are the best type of it, because there’s no manner to them as there is to Jack; but even with them I always have the feeling of too much in heaven and earth that isn’t dreamed of in their philosophy.”

“We can’t all have divine sympathy, Michael.”

Michael looked at her fixedly. He decided against malicious intent and went on: “I never know where understanding and tolerance ought to end.”

“That’s where men are inferior to us. We wait for the mark to fix itself; we trust our nerves. Men don’t, poor things. Luckily you’ve a streak of woman in you, Michael. Give me a kiss. Mind Coaker, he’s very sudden. It’s decided, then: Kit goes to Harrow.”

“If there’s a Harrow to go to by the time he’s of age.”

“Don’t be foolish. No constellations are more fixed than the public schools. Look at the way they flourished on the war.”

“They won’t flourish on the next war.”

“There mustn’t be one, then.”

“Under ‘pukka sahibism’ it couldn’t be avoided.”

“My dear, you don’t suppose that keeping our word and all that was not just varnish? We simply feared German preponderance.”

Michael rumpled his hair.

“It was a good instance, anyway, of what I said about there being more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of by the ‘pukka sahib’; yes, and of many situations that he’s not adequate to handle.”

Fleur yawned.

“We badly want a new dinner service, Michael.”

CHAPTER 10

After dinner Michael set forth, without saying where he was going. Since the death of his father-inlaw, and the disclosure then made to him about Fleur and John Forsyte, his relations with her had been the same, with a slight but deep difference. He was no longer a tied but a free agent in his own house. Not a word had ever been spoken between them on a matter now nearly four years old, nor had there been in his mind any doubt about her since; the infidelity was scotched and buried. But, though outwardly the same, he was inwardly emancipated, and she knew it. In this matter of Wilfrid, for instance, his father’s warning had not been needed. He would not have told her of it, anyway. Not because he did not trust her discretion—he could always trust that—but because he secretly felt that in a matter such as this he would not get any real help from her.

He walked, ‘Wilfrid’s in love,’ he thought, ‘so he ought to be in by ten, unless he’s got an attack of verse; but even then you can’t write poetry in this traffic or in a club, the atmosphere stops the flow.’ He crossed Pall Mall and threaded the maze of narrow streets dedicated to unattached manhood till he came to Piccadilly, quiet before its storm of after-theatre traffic. Passing up a side street devoted to those male ministering angels—tailors, bookmakers and moneylenders—he rounded into Cork Street. It was ten o’clock exactly when he paused before the well-remembered house. Opposite was the gallery where he had first met Fleur, and he stood for a moment almost dizzy from past feelings. For three years, before Wilfrid’s queer infatuation for Fleur had broken it all up, he had been Wilfrid’s fidus Achates. ‘Regular David and Jonathan stunt,’ he thought, and all his old feelings came welling up as he ascended the stairs.