‘And the other American causes, sir?’
‘The Americans certainly have over-produced and over-speculated. And they’ve been living so high that they’ve mortgaged their future – instalment system and all that. Then they’re sitting on gold, and gold doesn’t hatch out. And, more than all, they don’t realize yet that the money they lent to Europe during the war was practically money they’d made out of the war. When they agree to general cancellation of debts they’ll be agreeing to general recovery, including their own.’
‘But will they ever agree?’
‘You never know what the Americans will do, they’re looser-jointed than we of the old world. They’re capable of the big thing, even in their own interests. Are you out of a job?’
‘Very much so.’
‘What’s your record?’
‘I was at Wellington and at Cambridge for two years. Then this tea thing came along, and I took it like a bird.’
‘What age are you?’
‘Twenty-six.’
‘Any notion of what you want to do?’
Young Croom sat forward.
‘Really, sir, I’d have a shot at anything. But I’m pretty good with horses. I thought possibly I might get into a training stable; or with a breeder; or get a riding mastership.’
‘Quite an idea. It’s queer about the horse – he’s coming in as he goes out. I’ll talk to my cousin Jack Muskham – he breeds bloodstock. And he’s got a bee in his bonnet about the reintroduction of Arab blood into the English thoroughbred. In fact he’s got some Arab mares coming over. Just possibly he might want someone.’
Young Croom flushed and smiled.
‘That would be frightfully kind of you, sir. It sounds ideal. I’ve had Arab polo ponies.’
‘Well,’ murmured Sir Lawrence thoughtfully, ‘I don’t know that anything excites my sympathy more than a man who really wants a job and can’t find one. We must get this election over first, though. Unless the socialists are routed horse-breeders will have to turn their stock into potted meat. Imagine having the dam of a Derby winner between brown bread and butter for your tea – real “Gentleman’s Relish!” ’
He got up.
‘I’ll say good-night, now. My cigar will just last me home.’
Young Croom rose too, and remained standing till that spare and active figure had vanished.
‘Frightfully nice old boy!’ he thought, and in the depths of his armchair he resigned himself to hope and to Clare’s face wreathed by the fumes of his pipe.
Chapter Five
ON that cold and misty evening, which all the newspapers had agreed was to ‘make history,’ the Charwells sat in the drawing-room at Condaford round the portable wireless, a present from Fleur. Would the voice breathe o’er Eden, or would it be the striking of Fate’s clock? Not one of those five but was solemnly convinced that the future of Great Britain hung in the balance; convinced, too, that their conviction was detached from class or party. Patriotism divorced from thought of vested interest governed, as they supposed, their mood. And if they made a mistake in so thinking, quite a number of other Britons were making it too. Across Dinny’s mind, indeed, did flit the thought: ‘Does anyone know what will save the country and what won’t?’ But, even by her, time and tide, incalculably rolling, swaying and moulding the lives of nations, was ungauged. Newspapers and politicians had done their work and stamped the moment for her as a turning point. In a sea-green dress, she sat, close to the ‘present from Fleur,’ waiting to turn it on at ten o’clock, and regulate its stridency. Aunt Em was working at a new piece of French Tapestry, her slight aquilinity emphasized by tortoise-shell spectacles. The General nervously turned and re-turned The Times and kept taking out his watch. Lady Charwell sat still and a little forward, like a child in Sunday School before she has become convinced that she is going to be bored. And Clare lay on the sofa, with the dog Foch on her feet.
‘Time, Dinny,’ said the General; ‘turn the thing on.’
Dinny fingered a screw, and ‘the thing’ burst into music.
‘ “Rings on our fingers and bells on our toes,” ’ she murmured, ‘ “We have got music wherever we goes.” ’
The music stopped, and the voice spoke:
‘This is the first election result: Hornsey… Conservative, no change.’
The General added: ‘H’m!’ and the music began again.
Aunt Em, looking at the portable, said: ‘Coax it, Dinny. That burrin’!’
‘It always has that, Auntie.’