‘Sir Lawrence’s idea,’ he said, ‘is the English lady; culture deep but not apparent. Turn a little sideways. Thank you – the nose – ’
‘Yes,’ said Dinny; ‘hopeless.’
‘Oh! no, no! Charming. Sir Lawrence, I understand, wants you for his collection of types. I’ve done two for him. Would you look down? No! Now full at me! Ah! The teeth – admirable!’
‘All mine, so far.’
‘That smile is just right, Miss Cherrell: it gives us the sense of spoof we want; not too much spoof, but just spoof enough.’
‘You don’t want me to hold a smile with exactly three ounces of spoof in it?’
‘No, no, my dear young lady; we shall chance on it. Now suppose you turn three-quarters. Ah! Now I get the line of the hair; the colour of it admirable.’
‘Not too much ginger, but just ginger enough?’
The ‘young man’ was silent. He had begun with singular concentration to draw and to write little notes on the margin of the paper.
Dinny, with crinkled eyebrows, did not like to move. He paused and smiled at her with a sort of winey sweetness.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I see, I see.’
What did he see? The nervousness of the victim seized her suddenly, and she pressed her open hands together.
‘Raise the hands, Miss Cherrell. No! Too Madonnaish. We must think of the devil in the hair. The eyes to me, full.’
‘Glad?’ asked Dinny.
‘Not too glad; just – Yes, an English eye; candid but reserved. Now the turn of the neek. Ah! A leetle tilt. Ye—es. Almost stag-like; almost – a touch of the – not startled – no, of the aloof.’
He again began to draw and write with a sort of remoteness, as if he were a long way off.
And Dinny thought: ‘If Uncle Lawrence wants self-consciousness he’ll get it all right.’
The ‘young man’ stopped and stood back, his head very much on one side, so that all his attention seemed to come out of his eyeglass.
‘The expression,’ he muttered.
‘I expect,’ said Dinny, ‘you want an unemployed look.’
‘Naughty!’ said the ‘young man’: ‘Deeper. Could I play that piano for a minute?’
‘Of course. But I’m afraid it’s not been played on lately.’
‘It will serve.’ He sat down, opened the piano, blew on the keys, and began playing. He played strongly, softly, well. Dinny stood in the curve of the piano, listening, and speedily entranced. It was obviously Bach, but she did not know what. An endearing, cool, and lovely tune, coming over and over and over, monotonous, yet moving as only Bach could be.
‘What is it?’
‘A Chorale of Bach, set by a pianist.’ And the ‘young man’ nodded his eyeglass towards the keys.
‘Glorious! Your ears on heaven and your feet in flowery fields,’ murmured Dinny.
The ‘young man’ closed the piano and stood up.
‘That’s what I want, that’s what I want, young lady!’
‘Oh!’ said Dinny. ‘Is that all?’
FLOWERING WILDERNESS
TO
Herman Ould
Chapter One
IN 1930, shortly after the appearance of the Budget, the eighth wonder of the world might have been observed in the neighbourhood of Victoria Station – three English people, of wholly different type, engaged in contemplating simultaneously a London statue. They had come separately, and stood a little apart from each other in the south-west corner of the open space clear of the trees, where the drifting late afternoon light of spring was not in their eyes. One of these three was a young woman of about twenty-six, one a youngish man of perhaps thirty-four, and one a man of between fifty and sixty. The young woman, slender and far from stupid-looking, had her head tilted slightly upward to one side, and a faint smile on her parted lips. The younger man, who wore a blue overcoat with a belt girt tightly round his thin middle, as if he felt the spring wind chilly, was sallow from fading sunburn; and the rather disdainful look of his mouth was being curiously contradicted by eyes fixed on the statue with real intensity of feeling. The elder man, very tall, in a brown suit and brown buckskin shoes, lounged, with his hands in his trouser pockets, and his long, weathered, good-looking face masked in a sort of shrewd scepticism.
In the meantime the statue, which was that of Marshal Foch on his horse, stood high up among those trees, stiller than any of them.
The youngish man spoke suddenly.
‘He delivered us.’
The effect of this breach of form on the others was diverse; the elder man’s eyebrows went slightly up, and he moved forward as if to examine the horse’s legs. The young woman turned and looked frankly at the speaker, and instantly her face became surprised.