“Did you talk to her about her affair?”

“Yes.”

“Is she immovable?”

“Quite.”

Mrs. Hilary sighed. “It’s an awful pity. Do you think a man could ever live that down?”

“Twenty years ago I should have said ‘No.’ Now I’m not sure. It seems a queer thing to say, but it’s not the really religious people who’ll matter.”

“Why?”

“Because they won’t come across them. It’s the army, and Empire people, and Englishmen overseas, whom they will come across continually. The hub of unforgiveness is in her own family to start with. It’s the yellow label. The gum they use putting that on is worse than the patent brand of any hotel that wants to advertise itself.”

“I wonder,” said Mrs. Hilary, “what the children would say about it?”

“Queer that we don’t know.”

“We know less about our children than any of their friends do. Were we like that to our own elders, I wonder?”

“Our elders looked on us as biological specimens; they had us at an angle, and knew quite a lot about us. WE’VE tried to put ourselves on a level with our youngsters, elder brother and sister business, and we don’t know a thing. We’ve missed the one knowledge, and haven’t got the other. A bit humiliating, but they’re a decent crowd. It’s not the young people I’m afraid of in Dinny’s business, it’s those who’ve had experience of the value of English prestige, and they’ll be justified; and those who like to think he’s done a thing they wouldn’t have done themselves—and they won’t be justified a bit.”

“I think Dinny’s over-estimating her strength, Hilary.”

“No woman really in love could do otherwise. To find out whether she is or not will be her job. Well, she won’t rust.”

“You speak as if you rather liked it.”

“The milk is spilled, and it’s no good worrying. Let’s get down to the wording of that new appeal. There’s going to be a bad trade slump. Just our luck! All the people who’ve got money will be sticking to it.”

“I wish people wouldn’t be less extravagant when times are bad. It only means less work still. The shopkeepers are moaning about that already.”

Hilary reached for a notebook and began writing. His wife looked over his shoulder presently and read:

“To all whom it may concern:

“And whom does it not concern that there should be in our midst thousands of people so destitute from birth to death of the bare necessities of life that they don’t know what real cleanliness, real health, real fresh air, real good food are?”

“One ‘real’ will cover the lot, dear.”

CHAPTER 17

Arriving at the Chelsea Flower Show, Lady Mont said thoughtfully: “I’m meetin’ Boswell and Johnson at the calceolarias, Dinny. What a crowd!”

“Yes, and all plain. Do they come, Auntie, because they’re yearning for beauty they haven’t got?”

“I can’t get Boswell and Johnson to yearn. There’s Hilary! He’s had that suit ten years. Take this and run for tickets, or he’ll try and pay.”

With a five-pound note Dinny slid towards the wicket, avoiding her uncle’s eyes. She secured four tickets, and turned smiling.

“I saw you being a serpent,” he said. “Where are we going first? Azaleas? I like to be thoroughly sensual at a flower show.”

Lady Mont’s deliberate presence caused a little swirl in the traffic, while her eyes from under slightly drooped lids took in the appearance of people selected, as it were, to show off flowers.

The tent they entered was warm with humanity and perfume, though the day was damp and cool. The ingenious beauty of each group of blossoms was being digested by variegated types of human being linked only through that mysterious air of kinship which comes from attachment to the same pursuit. This was the great army of flower-raisers—growers of primulas in pots, of nasturtiums, gladioli and flags in London back gardens, of stocks, hollyhocks and sweet-williams in little provincial plots; the gardeners of larger grounds; the owners of hothouses and places where experiments are made—but not many of these, for they had already passed through or would come later. All moved with a prying air, as if marking down their own next ventures; and alongside the nurserymen would stop and engage as if making bets. And the subdued murmur of voices, cockneyfied, countrified, cultivated, all commenting on flowers, formed a hum like that of bees, if not so pleasing. This subdued expression of a national passion, walled-in by canvas, together with the scent of the flowers, exercised on Dinny an hypnotic effect, so that she moved from one brilliant planted posy to another, silent and with her slightly upturned nose twitching delicately.

Her aunt’s voice roused her.

“There they are!” she said, pointing with her chin.

Dinny saw two men standing so still that she wondered if they had forgotten why they had come. One had a reddish moustache and sad cow-like eyes; the other looked like a bird with a game wing; their clothes were stiff with Sundays. They were not talking, nor looking at the flowers, but as if placed there by Providence without instructions.

“Which is Boswell, Auntie?”

“No moustache,” said Lady Mont; “Johnson has the green hat. He’s deaf. So like them.”

She moved towards them, and Dinny heard her say:

“Ah!”

The two gardeners rubbed their hands on the sides of their trousered legs, but did not speak.

“Enjoyin’ it?” she heard her aunt say. Their lips moved, but no sound came forth that she could catch. The one she had called Boswell lifted his cap and scratched his head. Her aunt was pointing now at the calceolarias, and suddenly the one in the green hat began to speak. He spoke so that, as Dinny could see, not even her aunt could hear a word, but his speech went on and on and seemed to afford him considerable satisfaction. Every now and then she heard her aunt say: “Ah!” But Johnson went on. He stopped suddenly; her aunt said “Ah!” again and came back to her.

“What was he saying?” asked Dinny.

“No,” said Lady Mont, “not a word. You can’t. But it’s good for him.” She waved her hand to the two gardeners, who were again standing without sign of life, and led the way.

They passed into the rose tent now, and Dinny looked at her watch. She had appointed to meet Wilfrid at the entrance of it.

She cast a hurried look back. There he was! She noted that Hilary was following his nose, Aunt May following Hilary, Aunt Em talking to a nurseryman. Screened by a prodigious group of ‘K. of Ks.’ she skimmed over to the entrance, and, with her hands in Wilfrid’s, forgot entirely where she was.

“Are you feeling strong, darling? Aunt Em is here, and my Uncle Hilary and his wife. I should so like them to know you, because they all count in our equation.”

He seemed to her at that moment like a highly-strung horse asked to face something it has not faced before.

“If you wish, Dinny.”

They found Lady Mont involved with the representatives of ‘Plantem’s Nurseries.’

“That one—south aspect and chalk. The nemesias don’t. It’s cross-country—they do dry so. The phloxes came dead. At least they said so: you can’t tell. Oh! Here’s my niece! Dinny, this is Mr. Plantem. He often sends—Oh!… ah! Mr. Desert! How d’you do? I remember you holdin’ Michael’s arms up at his weddin’.” She had placed her hand in Wilfrid’s and seemingly forgotten it, the while her eyes from under their raised brows searched his face with a sort of mild surprise.

“Uncle Hilary,” said Dinny.

“Yes,” said Lady Mont, coming to herself. “Hilary, May—Mr. Desert.”

Hilary, of course, was entirely his usual self, but Aunt May looked as if she were greeting a dean. And almost at once Dinny was tacitly abandoned to her lover.

“What do you think of Uncle Hilary?”

“He looks like a man to go to in trouble.”

“He is. He knows by instinct how not to run his head against brick walls, and yet he’s always in action. I suppose that comes of living in a slum. He agrees with Michael that to publish ‘The Leopard’ is a mistake.”