She stopped and turned. He was smiling and looking pleased.
“Anything I can do for you?”
She put out her hand.
“I’m awfully glad you’ve won. My sister and I just wanted to congratulate you.”
He squeezed her hand, and Dinny thought: ‘Oh! dear! this is the last moment to ask him,’ but she said:
“It’s perfectly splendid, there’s never been such a majority here.”
“And never will be again. That’s my luck. Where’s your sister?”
“In the car.”
“I’d like to thank her for canvassing.”
“Oh!” said Dinny, “she enjoyed it;” and, suddenly feeling that it was now or never, added: “She’s at a loose end, you know, badly wants something to do. Mr. Dornford, you don’t think—this is too bad—but I suppose she wouldn’t be of any use to you as a secretary, would she? There, it’s out! She does know the county pretty well; she can type, and speak French, and German a little, if that’s any use.” It had come with a rush, and she stood looking at him ruefully. But his eager expression had not changed.
“Let’s go and see her,” he said.
Dinny thought: ‘Gracious! I hope he hasn’t fallen in love with her!’ and she glanced at him sidelong. Still smiling, his face looked shrewd now. Clare was standing beside the car. ‘I wish,’ thought Dinny, ‘I had her coolness.’ Then she stood still and watched. All this triumphal business, these people coming and going, those two talking so readily and quickly; the clear and sparkling morning! He came back to her.
“Thank you most awfully, Miss Cherrell. It’ll do admirably. I did want someone, and your sister is very modest.”
“I thought you’d never forgive me for asking at such a moment.”
“Always delighted for you to ask anything at any moment. I must go back now, but I’ll hope to see you again very soon.”
Gazing after him as he re-entered the building, she thought: ‘He has very nicely cut riding breeches!’ And she got into the car.
“Dinny,” said Clare, with a laugh, “he’s in love with you.”
“What!”
“I asked for two hundred, and he made it two hundred and fifty at once. How did you do it in one evening?”
“I didn’t. It’s you he’s in love with, I’m afraid.”
“No, no, my dear. I have eyes, and I know it’s you; just as you knew that Tony Croom was in love with me.”
“I could see that.”
“And I could see this.”
Dinny said quietly: “That’s absurd. When do you begin?”
“He’s going back to Town today. He lives in the Temple—Harcourt Buildings. I shall go up this afternoon and start in the day after tomorrow.”
“Where shall you live?”
“I think I shall take an unfurnished room or a small studio, and decorate and furnish it gradually myself. It’ll be fun.”
“Aunt Em is going back this afternoon. She would put you up till you find it.”
“Well,” said Clare, pondering; “perhaps.”
Just before they reached home Dinny said:
“What about Ceylon, Clare? Have you thought any more?”
“What’s the good of thinking? I suppose he’ll do something, but I don’t know what, and I don’t care.”
“Haven’t you had a letter?”
“No.”
“Well, darling, be careful.”
Clare shrugged: “Oh! I’ll be careful.”
“Could he get leave if he wanted?”
“I expect so.”
“You’ll keep in touch with me, won’t you?”
Clare leaned sideways from the wheel and gave her cheek a kiss.
CHAPTER 6
Three days after their meeting at the Coffee House, young Croom received a letter from Sir Lawrence Mont, saying that his cousin Muskham was not expecting the Arab mares till the spring. In the meantime he would make a note of Mr. Croom and a point of seeing him soon. Did Mr. Croom know any vernacular Arabic?
‘No,’ thought young Croom, ‘but I know Stapylton.’
Stapylton, of the Lancers, who had been his senior at Wellington, was home from India on leave. A noted polo player, he would be sure to know the horse jargon of the East; but, having broken his thigh-bone schooling a steeplechaser, he would keep; the business of finding an immediate ‘job of work’ would not. Young Croom continued his researches. Everyone said: ‘Wait till the election’s over!’
On the morning after the election, therefore, he issued from Ryder Street with the greater expectation, and, on the evening after, returned to the Coffee House, with the less, thinking: ‘I might just as well have gone to Newmarket and seen the Cambridgeshire.’
The porter handed him a note, and his heart began to thump. Seeking a corner, he read:
“DEAR TONY—
“I have got the job of secretary to our new member, Eustace Dornford, who’s a K.C. in the Temple. So I’ve come up to Town. Till I find a tent of my own, I shall be at my Aunt Lady Mont’s in Mount Street. I hope you’ve been as lucky. I promised to let you know when I came up; but I adjure you to sense and not sensibility, and to due regard for pride and prejudice.
“Your shipmate and well-wisher,
“CLARE CORVEN.”
‘The darling!’ he thought. ‘What luck!’ He read the note again, placed it beneath the cigarette case in his left-hand waistcoat pocket, and went into the smoking-room. There, on a sheet of paper stamped with the Club’s immemorial design, he poured out an ingenuous heart:
“DARLING CLARE,—
“Your note has perked me up no end. That you will be in Town is magnificent news. Your uncle has been very kind to me, and I shall simply have to call and thank him. So do look out for me about six o’clock tomorrow. I spend all my time hunting a job, and am beginning to realise what it means to poor devils to be turned down day after day. When my pouch is empty, and that’s not far away, it’ll be even worse for me. No dole for this child, unfortunately. I hope the pundit you’re going to take in hand is a decent sort. I always think of M.P.‘s as a bit on the wooden side. And somehow I can’t see you among Bills and petitions and letters about public-house licences and so forth. However, I think you’re splendid to want to be independent. What a thumping majority! If they can’t do things with that behind them, they can’t do things at all. It’s quite impossible for me not to be in love with you, you know, and to long to be with you all day and all night, too. But I’m going to be as good as I can, because the very last thing I want is to cause you uneasiness of any sort. I think of you all the time, even when I’m searching the marble countenance of some fish-faced blighter to see if my piteous tale is weakening his judgment. The fact is I love you terribly. To-morrow, Thursday, about six! “Good-night, dear and lovely one,
“YOUR TONY.”
Having looked up Sir Lawrence’s number in Mount Street, he addressed the note, licked the envelope with passion, and went out to post it himself. Then, suddenly, he did not feel inclined to return to the Coffee House. The place had a grudge against his state of mind. Clubs were so damned male, and their whole attitude to women so after-dinnerish—half contempt, half lechery! Funk-holes they were, anyway, full of comfort, secured against women, immune from writs; and men all had the same armchair look once they got inside. The Coffee House, too, about the oldest of all clubs, was stuffed with regular buffers, men you couldn’t imagine outside a club. ‘No!’ he thought. ‘I’ll have a chop somewhere, and go to that thing at Drury Lane.’
He got a seat rather far back in the upper boxes, but, his sight being very good, he saw quite well. He was soon absorbed. He had been out of England long enough to have some sentiment about her. This pictorial pageant of her history for the last thirty years moved him more than he would have confessed to anyone sitting beside him. Boer war, death of the Queen, sinking of the Titanic, Great War, Armistice, health to 1931—if anyone asked him afterwards, he would probably say: ‘Marvellous! but gave me the pip rather!’ While sitting there it seemed more than the ‘pip’; the heartache of a lover, who wants happiness with his mistress and cannot reach it; the feeling of one who tries to stand upright and firm and is for ever being swayed this way and that. The last words rang in his ears as he went out: ‘Greatness and dignity and peace.’ Moving and damned ironical! He took a cigarette from his case and lighted it. The night was dry and he walked, threading his way through the streams of traffic, with the melancholy howling of street-singers in his ears. Sky-signs and garbage! People rolling home in their cars, and homeless night-birds! ‘Greatness and dignity and peace!’