“I knew him.”

“Only a week.”

“And ten years.”

“Oh! don’t tell me that a glimpse and three words at a wedding—”

“The grain of mustard-seed, dear. Besides, I’d read the poem, and knew from that all his feelings. He isn’t a believer; it must have seemed to him like some monstrous practical joke.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve read his verse—scepticism and love of beauty. His type blooms after long national efforts, when the individual’s been at a discount, and the State has exacted everything. Ego crops out and wants to kick the State and all its shibboleths. I understand all that. But—You’ve never been out of England, Dinny.”

“Only Italy, Paris, and the Pyrenees.”

“They don’t count. You’ve never been where England has to have a certain prestige. For Englishmen in such parts of the world it’s all for one and one for all.”

“I don’t think he realised that at the time, Uncle.”

Adrian looked at her, and shook his head.

“I still don’t,” said Dinny. “And thank God he didn’t, or I should never have known him. Ought one to sacrifice oneself for false values?”

“That’s not the point, my dear. In the East, where religion still means everything, you can’t exaggerate the importance attached to a change of faith. Nothing could so damage the Oriental’s idea of the Englishman as a recantation at the pistol’s point. The question before him was: Do I care enough for what is thought of my country and my people to die sooner than lower that conception? Forgive me, Dinny, but that was, brutally, the issue.”

She was silent for a minute and then said:

“I’m perfectly sure Wilfrid would have died sooner than do lots of things that would have lowered that conception; but he simply couldn’t admit that the Eastern conception of an Englishman ought to rest on whether he’s a Christian or not.”

“That’s special pleading; he not only renounced Christianity, he accepted Islam—one set of superstitions for another.”

“But, can’t you see, Uncle, the whole thing was a monstrous jest to him?”

“No, my dear, I don’t think I can.”

Dinny leaned back, and he thought how exhausted she looked.

“Well, if YOU can’t, no one else will. I mean no one of our sort, and that’s what I wanted to know.”

A bad ache started in Adrian’s midriff. “Dinny, there’s a fortnight of this behind you, and the rest of your life before you; you told me he’d give you up—for which I respect him. Now, doesn’t it need a wrench, if not for your sake—for his?”

Dinny smiled.

“Uncle, you’re so renowned for dropping your best pals when they’re in a mess. And you know so little about love! You only waited eighteen years. Aren’t you rather funny?”

“Admitted,” said Adrian. “I suppose the word ‘Uncle’ came over me. If I knew that Desert was likely to be as faithful as you, I should say: ‘Go to it and be damned in your own ways, bless you!’”

“Then you simply MUST see him.”

“Yes; but I’ve seen people seem so unalterably in love that they were divorced within the year. I knew a man so completely satisfied by his honeymoon that he took a mistress two months later.”

“We,” murmured Dinny, “are not of that devouring breed. Seeing so many people on the screen examining each other’s teeth has spiritualised me, I know.”

“Who has heard of this development?”

“Michael and Uncle Lawrence, possibly Aunt Em. I don’t know whether to tell them at Condaford.”

“Let me talk to Hilary. He’ll have another point of view; and it won’t be orthodox.”

“Oh! Yes, I don’t mind Uncle Hilary.” And she rose. “May I bring Wilfrid to see you, then?”

Adrian nodded, and, when she had gone, stood again in front of a map of Mongolia, where the Gobi desert seemed to bloom like the rose in comparison with the wilderness across which his favourite niece was moving.

CHAPTER 12

Dinny stayed on at Mount Street for dinner to see Sir Lawrence. She was in his study when he came in, and said at once: “Uncle Lawrence, Aunt Em knows what you and Michael know, doesn’t she?”

“She does, Dinny. Why?”

“She’s been so discreet. I’ve told Uncle Adrian; he seems to think Wilfrid has lowered English prestige in the East. Just what is this English prestige? I thought we were looked on as a race of successful hypocrites. And in India as arrogant bullies.”

Sir Lawrence wriggled.

“You’re confusing national with individual reputation. The things are totally distinct. The individual Englishman in the East is looked up to as a man who isn’t to be rattled, who keeps his word, and sticks by his own breed.”

Dinny flushed. The implication was not lost on her.

“In the East,” Sir Lawrence went on, “the Englishman, or rather the Briton, because as often as not he’s a Scot or a Welshman or a North Irishman, is generally isolated: traveller, archæologist, soldier, official, civilian, planter, doctor, engineer, or missionary, he’s almost always head man of a small separate show; he maintains himself against odds on the strength of the Englishman’s reputation. If a single Englishman is found wanting, down goes the stock of all those other isolated Englishmen. People know that and recognise its importance. That’s what you’re up against, and it’s no use underestimating. You can’t expect Orientals, to whom religion means something, to understand that to some of us it means nothing. An Englishman to them is a believing Christian, and if he recants, he’s understood as recanting his most precious belief.”

Dinny said drily: “In fact, then, Wilfrid has no case in the eyes of our world.”

“In the eyes of the world that runs the Empire, I’m afraid—none, Dinny. Could it be otherwise? Unless there were complete mutual confidence between these isolated beings that none of them will submit to dictation, take a dare, or let the others down, the thing wouldn’t work at all. Now would it?”

“I never thought about it.”

“Well, you can take it from me. Michael has explained to me how Desert’s mind worked; and from the point of view of a disbeliever like myself, there’s a lot to be said. I should intensely dislike being wiped out over such an issue. But it wasn’t the real issue; and if you say: ‘He didn’t see that,’ then I’m afraid my answer is he didn’t because he has too much spiritual pride. And that won’t help him as a defence, because spiritual pride is anathema to the Services, and indeed to the world generally. It’s the quality, you remember, that got Lucifer into trouble.”

Dinny, who had listened with her eyes fixed on her uncle’s twisting features, said:

“It’s extraordinary the things one can do without.”

Sir Lawrence screwed in a puzzled eyeglass.

“Have you caught the jumping habit from your aunt?”

“If one can’t have the world’s approval, one can do without it.”

“‘The world well lost for love,’ sounds gallant, Dinny, but it’s been tried out and found wanting. Sacrifice on one side is the worst foundation for partnership, because the other side comes to resent it.”

“I don’t expect more happiness than most people get.”

“That’s not as much as I want for you, Dinny.”

“Dinner!” said Lady Mont, in the doorway: “Have you a vacuum, Dinny? They use those cleaners,” she went on, as they went towards the dining-room, “for horses now.”

“Why not for human beings,” murmured Dinny, “and clear out their fears and superstitions? Uncle wouldn’t approve, though.”

“You’ve been talkin’, then. Blore, go away!”

When he had gone, she added: “I’m thinkin’ of your father, Dinny.”

“So am I.”

“I used to get over him. But daughters! Still, he must.”

“Em!” said Sir Lawrence, warningly, as Blore came back.

“Well,” said Lady Mont, “beliefs and that—too fatiguin’. I never liked christenin’s—so unfeelin’ to the baby; and puttin’ it upon other people; only they don’t bother, except for cups and Bibles. Why do they put fern-leaves on cups? Or is that archery? Uncle Cuffs won a cup at archery when he was a curate. They used. It’s all very agitatin’.”