Dinny took his hand again.
‘I’m very glad to have seen you, Stack.’
‘Come in, miss. You’ll see I keep the room just as it was.’
Dinny followed to the doorway of the sitting-room.
‘Exactly the same, Stack; he might almost be there.’
‘I like to think so, miss.’
‘Perhaps he is,’ said Dinny. ‘They say we have astral bodies. Thank you.’ She touched his arm, passed him, and went down the stairs. Her face quivered and was still, and she walked rapidly away.
A river! Her dream! ‘One more river!’
In Bond Street a voice said: ‘Dinny!’ and she turned to see Fleur.
‘Whither away, my dear? Haven’t seen you for an age. I’ve just been to the French pictures. Aren’t they divine? I saw Clare there with a young man in tow. Who is he?’
‘A shipmate – Tony Croom.’
‘More to come?’
Dinny shrugged, and, looking at her trim companion, thought: ‘I wish Fleur didn’t always go so straight to the point.’
‘Any money?’
‘No. He’s got a job, but it’s very slender – Mr Muskham’s Arab mares.’
‘Oh! Three hundred a year – five at the outside. That’s no good at all. You know, really, she’s making a great mistake. Jerry Corven will go far.’
Dinny said drily: ‘Further than Clare, anyway.’
‘You mean it’s a complete breach?’
Dinny nodded. She had never been so near disliking Fleur.
‘Well, Clare’s not like you. She belongs to the new order, or disorder. That’s why it’s a mistake. She’d have a much better time if she stuck to Jerry, nominally at least. I can’t see her poor.’
‘She doesn’t care about money,’ said Dinny coldly.
‘Oh, nonsense! Money’s only being able to do what you want to do. Clare certainly cares about that.’
Dinny, who knew that this was true, said, still more coldly:
‘It’s no good to try and explain.’
‘My dear, there’s nothing to explain. He’s hurt her in some way, as, of course, he would. That’s no reason in the long run. That perfectly lovely Renoir – the man and woman in the box! Those people lived lives of their own – together. Why shouldn’t Clare?’
‘Would you?’
Fleur gave a little shrug of her beautifully fitted shoulders.
‘If Michael wasn’t such a dear. Besides – children.’ Again she gave that little shrug.
Dinny thawed. ‘You’re a fraud, Fleur. You don’t practise what you preach.’
‘My dear, my case is exceptional.’
‘So is everybody’s.’
‘Well, don’t let’s squabble. Michael says your new Member, Dornford, is after his own heart. They’re working together on pigs, poultry, and potatoes. A great stunt, and the right end of the stick, for once.’
‘Yes, we’re going all out for pigs at Condaford. Is Uncle Lawrence doing anything at Lippinghall?’
‘No. He invented the plan, so he thinks he’s done his bit. Michael will make him do more when he’s got time. Em is screamingly funny about it. How do you like Dornford?’
Asked this question twice in one morning, Dinny looked her cousin by marriage full in the face.
‘He seems to me almost a paragon.’
She felt Fleur’s hand slip suddenly under her arm.
‘I wish you’d marry him, Dinny dear. One doesn’t marry paragons, but I fancy one could “fault” him if one tried.’
It was Dinny’s turn to give a little shrug, looking straight before her.
Chapter Eighteen
THE third of February was a day so bland and of such springlike texture that the quickened blood demanded adventure.
This was why Tony Croom sent an early wire and set out at noon from Bablock Hythe in his old but newly-acquired two-seater. The car was not his ‘dream,’ but it could do fifty at the pinch he liked to give it. He took the nearest bridge, ran for Abingdon, and on past Benson to Henley. There he stopped to snatch a sandwich and ‘fill up,’ and again on the bridge for a glimpse at the sunlit river softly naked below the bare woods. From there on he travelled by the clock, timing himself to reach Melton Mews at two o’clock.
Clare was not ready, having only just come in. He sat in the downstairs room, now furnished with three chairs, a small table, of quaint design, cheap owing to the slump in antiques, and an amethyst-coloured chased decanter containing sloe gin. Nearly half an hour he sat there before she came down the spiral stairs in fawn-coloured tweeds and hat, with a calfskin fur coat over her arm.
‘Well, my dear! Sorry to have kept you. Where are we going?’