A very dark man with deep lively eyes said suddenly:

“All I can say is I trust the story has not got about in Afghanistan; I’m going there next month.”

“Why?” said the fourth member.

“Merely because it will add to the contempt with which I shall be regarded, anyway.”

Coming from a well-known traveller, this remark made more impression than anything said so far. Two members, who, with the Chairman, had not yet spoken, said simultaneously: “Quite!”

“I don’t like condemning a man unheard,” said the K.C.

“What about that, ‘Squire’?” asked the fourth member.

The Chairman, who was smoking a pipe, took it from his mouth.

“Anybody anything more to say?”

“Yes,” said the author of Mexico Revisited, “let’s put it on his conduct in publishing that poem.”

“You can’t,” growled Jack Muskham; “the whole thing’s of a piece. The point is simply: Is he fit to be a member here or not? I ask the Chairman to put that to the meeting.”

But the ‘Squire’ continued to smoke his pipe. His experience of Committees told him that the time was not yet. Separate or ‘knot’ discussions would now set in. They led nowhere, of course, but ministered to a general sense that the subject was having justice done to it.

Jack Muskham sat silent, his long face impassive and his long legs stretched out. The discussion continued.

“Well?” said the member who had revisited Mexico, at last.

The ‘Squire’ tapped out his pipe.

“I think,” he said, “that Mr. Desert should be asked to give us his reasons for publishing that poem.”

“Hear, hear!” said the K.C.

“Quite!” said the two members who had said it before.

“I agree,” said the authority on Ceylon.

“Anybody against that?” said the ‘Squire.’

“I don’t see the use of it,” muttered Jack Muskham. “He ratted, and he’s confessed it.”

No one else objecting, the ‘Squire’ continued:

“The Secretary will ask him to see us and explain. There’s no other business, gentlemen.”

In spite of the general understanding that the matter was sub judice, these proceedings were confided to Sir Lawrence before the day was out by three members of the Committee, including Jack Muskham. He took the knowledge out with him to dinner at South Street.

Since the publication of the poems and Compson Grice’s letter, Michael and Fleur had talked of little else, forced to by the comments and questionings of practically every acquaintance. They differed radically. Michael, originally averse to publication of the poem, now that it was out, stoutly defended the honesty and courage of Wilfrid’s avowal. Fleur could not forgive what she called the ‘stupidity of the whole thing.’ If he had only kept quiet and not indulged his conscience or his pride, the matter would have blown over, leaving practically no mark. It was, she said, unfair to Dinny, and unnecessary so far as Wilfrid himself was concerned; but of course he had always been like that. She had not forgotten the uncompromising way in which eight years ago he had asked her to become his mistress, and the still more uncompromising way in which he had fled from her when she had not complied. When Sir Lawrence told them of the meeting at Burton’s, she said simply:

“Well, what could he expect?”

Michael muttered:

“Why is Jack Muskham so bitter?”

“Some dogs attack each other at sight. Others come to it more meditatively. This appears to be a case of both. I should say Dinny is the bone.”

Fleur laughed.

“Jack Muskham and Dinny!”

“Sub-consciously, my dear. The workings of a misogynist’s mind are not for us to pry into, except in Vienna. They can tell you everything there; even to the origin of hiccoughs.”

“I doubt if Wilfrid will go before the Committee,” said Michael, gloomily. Fleur confirmed him.

“Of course he won’t, Michael.”

“Then what will happen?”

“Almost certainly he’ll be expelled under rule whatever it is.”

Michael shrugged. “He won’t care. What’s a Club more or less?”

“No,” said Fleur; “but at present the thing is in flux—people just talk about it; but expulsion from his Club will be definite condemnation. It’s just what’s wanted to make opinion line up against him.”

“And FOR him.”

“Oh! for him, yes; but we know what that amounts to—the disgruntled.”

“That’s all beside the point,” said Michael gruffly. “I know what he’s feeling: his first instinct was to defy that Arab, and he bitterly regrets that he went back on it.”

Sir Lawrence nodded.

“Dinny asked me if there was anything he could do to show publicly that he wasn’t a coward. You’d think there might be, but it’s not easy. People object to be put into positions of extreme danger in order that their rescuers may get into the papers. Van horses seldom run away in Piccadilly. He might throw someone off Westminster Bridge, and jump in after him; but that would merely be murder and suicide. Curious that, with all the heroism there is about, it should be so difficult to be deliberately heroic.”

“He ought to face the Committee,” said Michael; “and I hope he will. There’s something he told me. It sounds silly; but, knowing Wilfrid, one can see it made all the difference.”

Fleur had planted her elbows on the polished table and her chin on her hands. So, leaning forward, she looked like the girl contemplating a china image in her father’s picture by Alfred Stevens.

“Well?” she said. “What is it?”

“He said he felt sorry for his executioner.”

Neither his wife nor his father moved, except for a slight raising of the eyebrows. He went on defiantly:

“Of course, it sounds absurd, but he said the fellow begged him not to make him shoot—he was under a vow to convert the infidel.”

“To mention that to the Committee,” Sir Lawrence said slowly, “would certainly be telling it to the marines.”

“He’s not likely to,” said Fleur; “he’d rather die than be laughed at.”

“Exactly! I only mentioned it to show that the whole thing’s not so simple as it appears to the pukka sahib.”

“When,” murmured Sir Lawrence, in a detached voice, “have I heard anything so nicely ironical? But all this is not helping Dinny.”

“I think I’ll go and see him again,” said Michael.

“The simplest thing,” said Fleur, “is for him to resign at once.”

And with that common-sense conclusion the discussion closed.

CHAPTER 23

Those who love, when the object of their love is in trouble, must keep sympathy to themselves and yet show it. Dinny did not find this easy. She watched, lynx-eyed, for any chance to assuage her lover’s bitterness of soul; but though they continued to meet daily, he gave her none. Except for the expression of his face when he was off guard, he might have been quite untouched by tragedy. Throughout that fortnight after the Derby she came to his rooms, and they went joy-riding, accompanied by the spaniel Foch; and he never mentioned that of which all more or less literary and official London was talking. Through Sir Lawrence, however, she heard that he had been asked to meet the Committee of Burton’s Club and had answered by resignation. And, through Michael, who had been to see him again, she heard that he knew of Jack Muskham’s part in the affair. Since he so rigidly refused to open out to her, she, at great cost, tried to surpass him in obliviousness of purgatory. His face often made her ache, but she kept that ache out of her own face. And all the time she was in bitter doubt whether she was right to refrain from trying to break through to him. It was a long and terrible lesson in the truth that not even real love can reach and anoint deep spiritual sores. The other half of her trouble, the unending quiet pressure of her family’s sorrowful alarm, caused her an irritation of which she was ashamed.

And then occurred an incident which, however unpleasant and alarming at the moment, was almost a relief because it broke up that silence.