‘Aren’t you Wilfrid Desert?’
The youngish man bowed.
‘Then,’ said the young woman, ‘we’ve met. At Fleur Mont’s wedding. You were best man, if you remember, the first I’d seen. I was only sixteen. You wouldn’t remember me – Dinny Cherrell, baptized Elizabeth. They ran me in for bridesmaid at the last minute.’
The youngish man’s mouth lost its disdain.
‘I remember your hair perfectly.’
‘Nobody ever remembers me by anything else.’
‘Wrong! I remember thinking you’d sat to Botticelli. You’re still sitting, I see.’
Dinny was thinking: ‘His eyes were the first to flutter me. And they really are beautiful.’
The said eyes had been turned again upon the statue.
‘He did deliver us,’ said Desert.
‘You were there, of course.’
‘Flying, and fed up to the teeth.’
‘Do you like the statue?’
‘The horse.’
‘Yes,’ murmured Dinny, ‘it is a horse, not just a prancing barrel, with teeth, nostrils and an arch.’
‘The whole thing’s workmanlike, like Foch himself.’
Dinny wrinkled her brow.
‘I like the way it stands up quietly among those trees.’
‘How is Michael? You’re a cousin of his, if I remember.’
‘Michael’s all right. Still in the House; he has a seat he simply can’t lose.’
‘And Fleur?’
‘Flourishing. Did you know she had a daughter last year?’
‘Fleur? H’m! That makes two, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes; they call this one Catherine.’
‘I haven’t been home since 1927. Gosh! It’s a long time since that wedding.’
‘You look,’ said Dinny, contemplating the sallow darkness of his face, ‘as if you had been in the sun.’
‘When I’m not in the sun I’m not alive.’
‘Michael once told me you lived in the East.’
‘Well, I wander about there.’ His face seemed to darken still more, and he gave a little shiver. ‘Beastly cold, the English spring!’
‘And do you still write poetry?’
‘Oh! you know of that weakness?’
‘I’ve read them all. I like the last volume best.’
He grinned. ‘Thank you for stroking me the right way; poets, you know, like it. Who’s that tall man? I seem to know his face.’
The tall man, who had moved to the other side of the statue, was coming back.
‘Somehow,’ murmured Dinny, ‘I connect him with that wedding, too.’
The tall man came up to them.
‘The hocks aren’t all that,’ he said.
Dinny smiled.
‘I always feel so thankful I haven’t got hocks. We were just trying to decide whether we knew you. Weren’t you at Michael Mont’s wedding some years ago?’
‘I was. And who are you, young lady?’
‘We all met there. I’m his first cousin on his mother’s side, Dinny Cherrell. Mr Desert was his best man.’
The tall man nodded.
‘Oh! Ah! My name’s Jack Muskham, I’m a first cousin of his father’s.’ He turned to Desert. ‘You admired Foch, it seems.’
‘I did.’
Dinny was surprised at the morose look that had come on his face.
‘Well,’ said Muskham, ‘he was a soldier all right; and there weren’t too many about. But I came here to see the horse.’
‘It is, of course, the important part,’ murmured Dinny.
The tall man gave her his sceptical smile.
‘One thing we have to thank Foch for, he never left us in the lurch.’
Desert suddenly faced round:
‘Any particular reason for that remark?’
Muskham shrugged his shoulders, raised his hat to Dinny, and lounged away.
When he had gone there was a silence as over deep waters.
‘Which way were you going?’ said Dinny at last.
‘Any way that you are.’
‘I thank you kindly, sir. Would an aunt in Mount Street serve as a direction?’
‘Admirably.’
‘You must remember her, Michael’s mother; she’s a darling, the world’s perfect mistress of the ellipse – talks in stepping stones, so that you have to jump to follow her.’
They crossed the road and set out up Grosvenor Place on the Buckingham Palace side.
‘I suppose you find England changed every time you come home, if you’ll forgive me for making conversation?’
‘Changed enough.’
‘Don’t you “love your native land”, as the saying is?’
‘She inspires me with a sort of horror.’
‘Are you by any chance one of those people who wish to be thought worse than they are?’