‘Serpent!’
‘But isn’t it the duty of serious scientists to ridicule stunts?’
‘If Hallorsen were an Englishman – perhaps; but his being an American brings in other considerations.’
‘Why? I thought Science paid no regard to frontiers.’
‘In theory. In practice we close the other eye. Americans are very touchy. You remember a certain recent attitude towards Evolution; if we had let out our shout of laughter over that, there might almost have been a war.’
‘But most Americans laughed at it too.’
‘Yes; but they won’t stand for outsiders laughing at their kith and kin. Have some of this soufflé Sofia?’
They ate in silence, each studying sympathetically the other’s face. Dinny was thinking: ‘I love his wrinkles, and it’s a nice little beard for a beard.’ Adrian was thinking: ‘I’m glad her nose turns up a little. I have very engaging nieces and nephews.’ At last she said:
‘Well, Uncle Adrian, will you try and think of any way of strafing that man for the scurvy way he’s treated Hubert?’
‘Where is he?’
‘Hubert says in the States.’
‘Have you considered, my dear, that nepotism is undesirable?’
‘So is injustice, Uncle; and blood is thicker than water.’
‘And this wine,’ said Adrian, with a grimace, ‘is thicker than either. What are you going to see Hilary about?’
‘I want to scrounge an introduction to Lord Saxenden.’
‘Why?’
‘Father says he’s important.’
‘So you are out to “pull strings”, as they say?’
Dinny nodded.
‘No sensitive and honest person can pull strings successfully, Dinny.’
Her eyebrows twitched and her teeth, very white and even, appeared in a broad smile.
‘But I’m neither, dear.’
‘We shall see. In the meantime these cigarettes are really tip-top propaganda. Have one?’
Dinny took a cigarette, and, with a long puff, said:
‘You saw great-Uncle “Cuffs”, didn’t you, Uncle Adrian?’
‘Yes. A dignified departure. He died in amber, as you might say. Wasted on the Church; he was the perfect diplomat, was Uncle “Cuffs”.’
‘I only saw him twice. But do you mean to say that he couldn’t get what he wanted, without loss of dignity, by pulling strings?’
‘It wasn’t exactly pulling strings with him, my dear; it was suavity and power of personality.’
‘Manners?’
‘Manner – the Grand; it about died with him.’
‘Well, Uncle, I must be going; wish me dishonesty and a thick skin.’
‘And I,’ said Adrian, ‘will return to the jawbone of the New Guinean with which I hope to smite my learned brethren. If I can help Hubert in any decent way, I will. At all events I’ll think about it. Give him my love, and good-bye, my dear!’
They parted, and Adrian went back to his museum. Regaining his position above the maxilla, he thought of a very different jawbone. Having reached an age when the blood of spare men with moderate habits has an even-tempered flow, his ‘infatuation’ with Diana Ferse, dating back to years before her
fatal marriage, had a certain quality of altruism. He desired her happiness before his own. In his almost continual thoughts about her the consideration ‘What’s best for her?’ was ever foremost. He had done without her for so long that importunity (never in his character) was out of the question where she was concerned. But her face, oval and dark-eyed, delicious in lip and nose, and a little sad in repose, constantly blurred the outlines of maxillae, thighbones, and the other interesting phenomena of his job. She and her two children lived in a small Chelsea house on the income of a husband who for four years had been a patient in a private Mental Home, and was never expected to recover his equilibrium. She was nearly forty, and had been through dreadful times before Ferse had definitely toppled over the edge. Of the old school in thought and manner, and trained to a coherent view of human history, Adrian accepted life with half-humorous fatalism. He was not of the reforming type, and the position of his lady love did not inspire him with a desire for the scalp of marriage. He wanted her to be happy, but did not see how in the existing circumstances he could make her so. She had at least peace and the sufficient income of him who had been smitten by Fate. Moreover, Adrian had something of the superstitious regard felt by primitive men for those afflicted with this particular form of misfortune. Ferse had been a decent fellow till the taint began to wear through the coatings of health and education, and his conduct for the two years before his eclipse was only too liberally explained by that eclipse. He was one of God’s afflicted; and his helplessness demanded of one the utmost scrupulosity. Adrian turned from the maxilla and took down a built-up cast of Pithecanthropus, that curious being from Trinil, Java, who for so long has divided opinion as to whether he shall be called man-ape or ape-man. What a distance from him to that modern English skull over the mantelpiece! Ransack the authorities as one might, one never received an answer to the question: Where was the cradle of Homo Sapiens, the nest where he had developed from Trinil, Piltdown, Neanderthal man, or from some other undiscovered collateral of those creatures? If Adrian had a passion, indeed, except for Diana Ferse, it was a