“Yes, miss?”

“I am Mrs. Hubert Cherrell. Does Mr. Desert live here?”

“Yes, ma’am; but whether you can see him I don’t know. Here, Foch, good dog! If you’ll wait a minute I’ll find out.”

A minute later Jean, swallowing resolutely, was in the presence. ‘After all,’ she was thinking, ‘he can’t be worse than a parish meeting when you want money from it.’

Wilfrid was standing at the window, with his eyebrows raised.

“I’m Dinny’s sister-inlaw,” said Jean. “I beg your pardon for coming, but I wanted to see you.”

Wilfrid bowed.

“Come here, Foch.”

The spaniel, who was sniffing round Jean’s skirt, did not respond until he was called again. He licked Wilfrid’s hand and sat down behind him. Jean had flushed.

“It’s frightful cheek on my part, but I thought you wouldn’t mind. We’ve just come back from the Soudan.”

Wilfrid’s face remained ironic, and irony always upset her. Not quite stammering, she continued:

“Dinny has never been in the East.”

Again Wilfrid bowed. The affair was not going like a parish meeting.

“Won’t you sit down?” he said.

“Oh, thank you, no; I shan’t be a minute. You see, what I wanted to say was that Dinny can’t possibly realise what certain things mean out there.”

“D’you know, that’s what occurred to me.”

“Oh!”

A minute of silence followed, while the flush on her face and the smile on Wilfrid’s deepened. Then he said:

“Thank you so much for coming. Anything else?”

“Er—no! Good-bye!”

All the way downstairs she felt shorter than she had ever felt in her life. And the first man she passed in the street jumped, her eyes had passed through him like a magnetic shock. He had once been touched by an electric eel in Brazil, and preferred the sensation. Yet, curiously, while she retraced her steps towards her car, though worsted, she bore no grudge. Even more singularly, she had lost most of her feeling that Dinny was in danger.

Regaining her car, she had a slight altercation with a policeman and took the road for Condaford. Driving to the danger of the public all the way, she was home to lunch. All she said of her adventure was that she had been for a long drive. Only in the four-poster of the chief spare room did she say to Hubert:

“I’ve been up and seen him. D’you know, Hubert, I really believe Dinny will be all right. He’s got charm.”

“What on earth,” said Hubert, turning on his elbow, “has that to do with it?”

“A lot,” said Jean. “Give me a kiss, and don’t argue…”

When his strange young visitor had gone, Wilfrid flung himself on the divan and stared at the ceiling. He felt like a general who has won a ‘victory’—the more embarrassed. Having lived for thirty-five years, owing to a variety of circumstances, in a condition of marked egoism, he was unaccustomed to the feelings which Dinny from the first had roused within him. The old-fashioned word ‘worship’ was hardly admissible, but no other adequately replaced it. When with her his sensations were so restful and refreshed that when not with her he felt like one who had taken off his soul and hung it up. Alongside this new beatitude was a growing sense that his own happiness would not be complete unless hers was too. She was always telling him that she was only happy in his presence. But that was absurd, he could never replace all the interests and affections of her life before the statue of Foch had made them acquainted. And, if not, for what was he letting her in? The young woman with the eyes, who had just gone, had stood there before him like an incarnation of this question. Though he had routed her, she had left the query printed on the air.

The spaniel, seeing the incorporeal more clearly than his master, was resting a long nose on his knee. Even this dog he owed to Dinny. He had got out of the habit of people. With this business hanging over him, he was quite cut off. If he married Dinny, he took her with him into isolation. Was it fair?

But, having appointed to meet her in half an hour, he rang the bell.

“I’m going out now, Stack.”

“Very good, sir.”

Leading the dog, he made his way to the Park. Opposite the Cavalry Memorial he sat down to wait for her, debating whether he should tell her of his visitor. And just then he saw her coming.

She was walking quickly from Park Lane, and had not yet seen him. She seemed to skim, straight, and—as those blasted novelists called it—‘willowy’! She had a look of spring, and was smiling as if something pleasant had just happened to her. This glimpse of her, all unaware of him, soothed Wilfrid. If she could look so pleased and care-free, surely he need not worry. She halted by the bronze horse which she had dubbed ‘the jibbing barrel,’ evidently looking for him. Though she turned her head so prettily this way and that, her face had become a little anxious. He stood up. She waved her hand and came quickly across the drive.

“Been sitting to Botticelli, Dinny?”

“No—to a pawnbroker. If you ever want one I recommend Frewens of South Molton Street.”

“YOU, at a pawnbroker’s?”

“Yes, darling. I’ve got more money of my own on me than I ever had in my life.”

“What do you want it for?”

Dinny bent and stroked the dog.

“Since I knew you I’ve grasped the real importance of money.”

“And what’s that?”

“Not to be divided from you by the absence of it. The great open spaces are what we want now. Take Foch off the lead, Wilfrid; he’ll follow, I’m sure.”

CHAPTER 19

In a centre of literature such as London, where books come out by the half-dozen almost every day, the advent of a slender volume of poems is commonly of little moment. But circumstances combined to make the appearance of The Leopard, and other Poems a ‘literary event.’ It was Wilfrid’s first production for four years. He was a lonely figure, marked out by the rarity of literary talent among the old aristocracy, by the bitter, lively quality of his earlier poems, by his Eastern sojourn and isolation from literary circles, and finally by the report that he had embraced Islam. Someone, on the appearance of his third volume four years ago, had dubbed him ‘a sucking Byron’; the phrase had caught the ear. Finally, he had a young publisher who understood the art of what he called ‘putting it over.’ During the few weeks since he received Wilfrid’s manuscript, he had been engaged in lunching, dining, and telling people to look out for ‘The Leopard,’ the most sensation-making poem since ‘The Hound of Heaven.’ To the query “Why?” he replied in nods and becks and wreathed smiles. Was it true that young Desert had become a Mussulman? Oh! Yes. Was he in London? Oh! yes, but, of course, the shyest and rarest bird in the literary flock.

He who was Compson Grice Ltd. had from the first perceived that in ‘The Leopard’ he had ‘a winner’—people would not enjoy it, but they would talk about it. He had only to start the snowball rolling down the slope, and when moved by real conviction no one could do this better than he. Three days before the book came out he met Telfourd Yule by a sort of accidental prescience.

“Hallo, Yule, back from Araby?”

“As you see.”

“I say, I’ve got a most amazing book of poems coming out on Monday. The Leopard, by Wilfrid Desert. Like a copy? The first poem’s a corker.”

“Oh!”

“Takes the wind clean out of that poem in Alfred Lyall’s Verses written in India, about the man who died sooner than change his faith. Remember?”

“I do.”

“What’s the truth about Desert taking to Islam?”

“Ask him.”

“That poem’s so personal in feeling—it might be about himself.”

“Indeed?”

And Compson Grice thought, suddenly: ‘If it were! What a stunt!’

“Do you know him, Yule?”

“No.”

“You must read the thing; I couldn’t put it down.”