Part Two: Sir Gratian

Lord Enstone and the Viscount had compromised on wearing Court dress. Archie had adopted the powdered wig, brocade skirted coat, knee breeches and sword of the third Earl’s portrait at the time of his marriage in 1745. John and his wife were coming to stay, and were dressing as Romeo

and Juliet, which everyone thought was rather odd as they had been married several years and didn’t get along very well. Mrs. John, whose name was Iris, was a pallid, timorous woman, and John was like Alwyn except that where the Viscount had merely a sort of natural animal arrogance of good looks and superb health, John was domineering and humourless. Sir Gratian was wearing something Wellingtonian with a very high collar, black stock, tail coat and tight pantaloons. Sue had a simple Hogarthian costume that was quite irresistible on her.

At Nathan’s in Coventry Street they had found for Dinah a gipsy dress of no particular period–a white cotton blouse with a round gathered neck, quite low, and very short puffed sleeves, and a wide apple-green sash that tied around her slim hips above a flaring, brightly flowered skirt. Heavy bracelets and ropes of gay beads went with it. Virginia reported that she looked adorable in it and was excited completely out of her usual composure. She was still not to come down to dinner, but only after the dancing began.

Bracken endured with resentment the knowing glances brought about by his Elizabethan dress partnered at dinner with Clare’s Tudor queen. He realized that Virginia was right and he must somehow convey to them soon that he was—encumbered. What effect that fact might have on Dinah’s attitude towards him he could not decide. Meanwhile he observed that Alwyn’s rather florid attentions to Virginia were also attracting notice. It was impossible to tell by Virginia’s habitual play of eyelashes and smiles whether she was unduly impressed.

After dinner Bracken strolled on the lawn with Sue and Sir Gratian, who were as handsome a pair as there was in the whole company, while a tuning of instruments sounded from the open windows of the ballroom.

The Hall had returned for that single night to its past glory, and was full of lights and music and crowds of expensive people behaving in an expensive way. The grand staircase was alive again with silks and velvets and cambric, hooped skirts, powdered hair, and the clink of sword-belts.

Just as the music began Bracken went into the entrance and saw Dinah peeping over the banister. He motioned her to come down and she shook her head, looking shy and frightened, eyeing his unfamiliar dress critically.

Bracken started impulsively for the stairs, and ran into Lord Alwyn, who caught his arm and said, “Hullo, come along to the ballroom, old boy, that’s

the first dance.”

“Yes, I’m already engaged for it,” Bracken replied.

“Clare just went in. Probably looking for you.”

“I’m dancing this one with Dinah,” said Bracken.

“With Dinah! Oh, come, now, you’ll have her poor little head completely turned. She’s only supposed to look on, you know, at her age.”

Bracken felt one of his rare furies rising within him, and except for that sudden urge of rage he was entirely responsible as he said quietly:

“Alwyn, it will doubtless surprise you to hear that I intend to marry Dinah as soon as she’s old enough.”

The Viscount stared at him, still holding fast to his arm with one heavy hand. The idea passed plainly across his mind that one or the other of them was drunk, or that Bracken was joking. Reluctantly he abandoned both those surmises.

“Well, uh—have you told her so?”

“Of course not. And I would be grateful if you’d leave me to do it in my own good time.”

“But she’s—let me see, not sixteen yet!”

“I can wait. In fact, that’s not the only difficulty. I have a wife, though we haven’t lived together for several years. Her religion makes it convenient for her to refuse divorce, but I hope to get round that before long.”

“I see,” said Alwyn, obviously not seeing at all.

“I am speaking in strictest confidence, naturally.”

“Oh, naturally.”

“But I thought it would help you to understand my interest in Dinah.”

“Quite. Quite.”

Alwyn let go of his arm and Bracken ran up the stairs to where Dinah still stood watching.

“What on earth did you say to Edward?” she greeted him. “He looks simply floored.”

“I only let him know that I always choose my own partners for dancing.

Come along.”

“Me?”

“Please.”

“No wonder he was surprised!”

“You can waltz, can’t you? If not, I’ll teach you.”

“At dancing school. But never with a real partner.” At the door of the ballroom she shrank back against him with wide, apprehensive eyes on the whirling couples. “I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can.” His arm went round her waist. “Just relax and listen to the music.”

After only a minute their steps matched perfectly.

“It’s like floating,” said Dinah.

“You’re wonderful,” he said. “There’s nothing you can’t do when you try. How much do you weigh?”

“About seven stone. Why?”

“I just wondered.” Not a hundred pounds, he thought. And in that slim body he held so lightly was all his hope of happiness. Her throat and breast in the low-cut blouse showed that they were losing their childish thinness, her upper arms had still that heart-catching frailty of the very young. God forgive me for a cradle-snatcher, Bracken thought. If I were Alwyn I’d call me out. But I will be very careful of her. And I promise to wait patiently.

Well—I’ll wait.

“It was kind of you to make them let me come tonight,” she was saying.

“Oh, Virginia too, but I’m sure it was you in the beginning, wasn’t it?”

“It was, as a matter of fact. But Virginia agreed with me that you had a right to come.”

“You’re the kindest man in the world, I think. I do appreciate it.”

Bracken winced.

“Can’t you think of another word?” he asked.

“What did I say?”

“Kind. It makes me sound like a very old gentleman who keeps up his charities.”

“How old are you?” she asked directly, as though it had occurred to her for the first time.

“Twenty-seven, nearly twenty-eight.” It sounded awful as he said it.

“Lord help us, that’s almost twice your age!”

“It’s the same age as my brother John,” she said unconcernedly. “I don’t think that’s bad at all.”

“Of course when you’re twenty, I shall be only thirty-two instead of nearly forty,” he reminded himself.

“I wonder where we’ll be then.”

“I wonder.” His arm tightened involuntarily.

“Have you got a birthday coming too?” she suggested.

“November third. I’ll give a party. Will you come?”

She nodded. Her eyes were gay and confident.

“I’ll beat you, though. I shall be sixteen before you’re twenty-eight,” she boasted.

“That’s a comfort!”

“I have the strangest feeling with you sometimes,” she said after a minute.

“What sort of feeling?” he asked hopefully, all attention.

“I can’t describe it. It’s as though I mattered to you a great deal, the way Virginia does. I expect it’s just because you’re so k—”

“Kind!” he said bitterly. “Will you stop it, Dinah?”

She laughed.

“Well, it’s a very flattering feeling, all the same. Miss French says I mustn’t presume on it. I’ll try not to.”

“I’ll tell you how it is,” he said, choosing his words. “I like to see people having a good time. There’s so much unhappiness in the world we can do nothing about, and when the expenditure of a little thought or money does give somebody something pleasant to remember. I like to do it, that’s all. I sound like a parson, don’t I, preaching sweetness and light. Maybe what it all comes to is that I happen to like you rather a lot, ever since that first morning on the hill.”

“I like you too,” Dinah said frankly. “I’d be crazy not to, after all you’ve done for me!”

“Then will you do me a favour?” he asked, feeling his way.

“Yes, of course.” No arrière-pensées for Dinah.

“If there’s anything I can do to—brighten things up a bit for you—

promise to let me know, hm?”

“Why, yes—I will.” She looked a little puzzled.

“I’ll be around, you know. You can always reach me at the office if I’m not at Farthingale. By the way, I’ve decided to buy it.”

“Buy Farthingale? Oh, how lovely. That means the Major won’t be so poor.”

“It also means I can keep an eye on you,” he said, piqued that her first thought had been of someone else. “That may be a silly thing to say to a girl with a lot of brothers, but sometimes an outsider can be more useful than one of the family. Don’t you agree?”

“I suppose so. I never thought about it.”

“And after Virginia and Aunt Sue have gone back to America you’ll have to keep an eye on me, how’s that?”

“Do you—really think I’m old enough to be your friend?”

“Don’t see why not.”

“I’d be proud. Not that I could ever do anything for you, I know that, but sometimes one wishes there was somebody one could just talk to. At least I do.”

“So do I. We’ll talk to each other, shall we?”

She nodded gravely, and then the music stopped.

“Now I will have to dance with Clare,” he said. “Come and see my aunt’s dress. Isn’t she sweet?” He took her to where Sue and the Major were seating themselves on a sofa and left her with them.

Later, while he was dancing with Virginia he suggested a supper party of six—himself and Dinah, Sue and Sir Gratian, and whatever partner Virginia already had.

She made a face.

“Ed-ward!” she said.

“Oh, dear, that won’t do! Can’t you swap him for Archie?”

“Too late. And Archie hasn’t even asked me to dance.”

“What’s the matter with him? Nobody can be as shy as all that.”

“I begin to think he just doesn’t like me.” Her eyes were hurt, and it occurred to Bracken that he might have to take notice of Archie.

“Is there some other girl he’s after?” Bracken gave a quick glance around.

“Oh, no, he seems mostly to be making himself agreeable to the chaperones and wall-flowers.”

“The man’s a fool.”

“Or a saint.”

“I hope not! They’re very uncomfortable people to have around!”

“I think it would be fun,” said Virginia reflectively, “to make Edward dance with Dinah. It would sort of establish her prestige for the evening.”

“He’s pretty busy, I expect.”

“He’ll do what I tell him to,” Virginia said darkly.

“Oh, that’s how it is, is it!” her brother remarked uneasily.

And sure enough, before very long the Viscount led out his younger sister. The triumph was Virginia’s. She had been engaged to him for that dance and she contrived at the last moment to catch hold of the elusive Archie and persuade Alwyn that she would be well taken care of while he made Dinah’s evening by conferring himself upon her for one waltz. Alwyn had observed that Dinah did herself credit on the dance floor, with Archie as well as Bracken, and he consented graciously enough. Dinah’s face was a study, and being nervous she did not do as well as with her other partners.

“Well, are you enjoying yourself, eh?” he inquired in the half-bullying, half-patronizing tone he had always used towards her ever since she had first been able to make intelligible sounds in reply.

“Yes, thank you, Edward.”

“Don’t thank me, thank your friend Murray. It was his idea.” Alwyn turned it over in his mind and decided to be clever. Cleverer, anyway, than Bracken Murray. “Queer chap,” he went on loftily. “Americans are all dashed queer, of course, one expects that. This fellow’s wife seems to have left him.”

“Why, I didn’t know he was married!” cried Dinah in quite natural surprise.

“To a Catholic, apparently. That rather rules out divorce, you know.

Seems a pity, what?”

“Yes, doesn’t it.”

But Alwyn had not been quite as clever as he thought. Dinah, who had never before thought of Bracken Murray as much but a pleasant phenomenon in her monotonous existence, now suddenly began to think of him as a man with a broken heart, who was being so brave and cheerful you would never guess.

In attempting to block off supposititious romantic yearnings on Dinah’s part, Alwyn had instead brought Bracken into focus for the first time and roused her compassion for him. She remembered that Virginia said he had had a lot of worry and was working too hard and needed rest. And this evening while they danced, he had asked her, Dinah, to be friends with him, after his womenfolk went back to America. Even with all that money to

spend, even in spite of his jokes and carefree ways and thoughtfulness for other people, and his light-hearted enjoyment of life as it came, there was some kind of tragedy behind him, and he must often be lonely and sad inside, and too proud to show it. Dinah could appreciate that. No matter how badly your feelings were hurt, or how blue you got, or how sick you felt about the way somebody treated you, you mustn’t ever show it. You had to keep your chin up and look people straight in the eye and not let them know your inside felt like a mass of screaming jelly. Bracken Murray had had to learn this too. Bracken Murray was better than anybody at looking people straight in the eye as though nothing was wrong with his inside. And he had asked her to be his friend….

Womanhood stirred in Dinah. She wondered what sort of creature could have failed to be happy with so kind and lovable a man as Bracken Murray.

And she was sure, passionately sure, that whatever happened, he was not to blame.

12

“ONE would think I had leprosy at least!” Virginia remarked when she and Archie had danced in silence for a full minute, and he glanced down at her in amazement, holding her off a little farther to see her face better under the becoming Stuart cap.

“I beg your pardon?” he said automatically, for surely she had not said what he thought she had said.

“Well, so you should. I’m not accustomed to have to wangle the privilege of dancing with someone I happen to like.”

“Meaning me?” He still looked somewhat stupefied.

“Meaning you.”

“I thought you were booked.”

“Well, you could have un-booked me! I did!”

“Should I apologize, or something?”

“You certainly should!”

“Then I do.”

She stole an upward look at him, through her lashes. Seen close in the dance, he was almost too handsome, his lean, fine jaw and brilliant blue eyes framed by the white wig and lace jabot. His mouth was like Dinah’s,

with long lips evenly divided. Virginia yielded herself a bit more to his arms, and his response was involuntary and quick. She smiled beneath his chin. Human, after all.

“Why do you avoid me so?” she murmured.

“But I—”

“Yes, you do, too!” she insisted crossly. “I can tell!”

“Well, if you must know, you’re too attractive.”

“Are you practising to be a monk or something?”

“No. Only a barrister.”

“That seems to be the next thing to it.”

“Yes, doesn’t it!” His encircling arm was once more impersonal, his face with its clean, sculptured lines was inscrutable.

Thwarted, Virginia danced in silence again to the end of the waltz. He thanked her formally and moved with her towards some chairs.

“Aunt Sue was here a moment ago. She must have gone outside. Oh, don’t bother about me if I bore you so!” she cried, rounding on him fiercely.

“I’ve got lots of other partners— willing ones!”

He looked as though she had hit him.

“Please, Miss Murray, I—”

“Ah, here you are, Virginia,” said Alwyn’s arrogant drawl just behind them. “All right, Dinah—now you can take on Archie again, what? This is a supper dance, I believe.”

Virginia took his arm, leaving Dinah beside Archie, who stood looking after them.

“Archie, what is it, did she hurt your feelings?” Dinah asked.

“She had a right,” he said after a moment. “It’s the only thing I can do, though.”

“Are you going to let Edward marry her?”

“Let him!” he repeated with irony. “Edward never waits to be let, does he? Besides—” He stopped.

“Well, of course, Edward has got the title and all,” she agreed understandingly. “But people do make money at the Bar, don’t they?”

“Sometimes. By the time they’re ninety. Would you like an ice?”

“Mr. Murray says I’m to have supper with him. Won’t you join us?” She laid her hand on his sleeve urgently. She was suddenly shy of Bracken now that she knew about his wife.

He came up just then, dodging through the dancers at the edge of the floor, and said, “Hullo, Archie, may I borrow her till supper? Join us then, won’t you?”

“Thanks, I will.”

Archie watched them dance away. Dinah thought he looked rather forlorn, standing there alone, and much too thin. He must be studying too hard.

“You’re very silent,” said Bracken. “Aren’t you having a good time?”

“Oh, yes, lovely,” she answered absently. “I think Archie and Virginia have had a quarrel.”

“Oh, that. He missed his cue. Didn’t ask her to dance. She’ll get over it.”

“Do you think she’s in love with Edward?”

“I don’t know.” He had nearly said, I hope not. “Do you?”

“I hope not,” said Dinah. “Archie is much nicer. For marrying, I mean.”

“Just what are your requirements for marrying, Dinah?”

“I’ve never thought much about it. Except—”

“Yes?” he encouraged her.

“I’d never marry a man I was afraid of.”

“Naturally not.”

“People do, though. Iris did. I’m sure she’s terrified of John sometimes.

It sends cold shivers down my spine, the way she looks at him when he starts bullying her. Perhaps I shall never marry,” said Dinah, quailing suddenly before immensities.

“That’s a strange thing to say at your age,” he remarked lightly.

Dinah felt the subject might be painful to him and ought to be changed.

Already the idea of his mysterious wife was clouding their relationship, which had been so uncomplicated and serene. She glanced up to find him looking down, and his eyes were just the same as before Edward had spoken. She considered that Edward had betrayed him to mention his private affairs even to her, and a quickening, protective affection for him ran through her. She would do everything she could to spare his pride, and would never let him know that she knew. Perhaps some day he would speak of it to her himself, if he really thought of her as a friend. How could he smile like that, with a droll, slanting eyebrow, after what he must have been through? She smiled back, hesitantly, and Bracken, conscious of a new

warmth in her steady regard, which he took to be gratitude for a happy evening, caught her closer in an exultant pirouette.

“Glad you came to the party?” he whispered, his lips near her hair.

“Oh, yes! And it was a good idea to ask Archie to have supper with us.

Let’s be very gay so he doesn’t miss Virginia.”

“Let’s,” said Bracken, and once more he wondered if Archie was going to have to be seriously reckoned with, and his eyes fell on Virginia who appeared to be sulking in Alwyn’s arms as they danced. “There will be you and me and Aunt Sue and Sir Gratian and Archie—and lots of champagne.”

“Do you think I could have some?”

“Champagne? Certainly.”

She looked up at him again, gratefully.

“You make everything seem so simple!” she marvelled.

“A little champagne never hurt anybody.”

“Have you ever been very, very drunk?” Dinah asked seriously.

“Will this be used against me?”

“No. I just wondered.”

“Well, then, I have,” he confessed. “But don’t you try it. It’s not worth the hangover. I’m warning you.”

“I do like the things you say!” she laughed.

“And have I said that I like the way you look tonight?”

“Am I really all right?” she queried anxiously.

“You’re sweet, Dinah. You’re a credit to me.”

“I’m glad.”

Still no coquetry or self-consciousness, no apparent awareness of him as a male. Virginia at fifteen would have bridled and made eyes. He didn’t want that from Dinah, but at the same time he found the total lack of it discouraging.

Sue was being, in her own quiet way, one of the belles of the ball. Sir Gratian had managed to secure her for the supper dance, and before it began they went out on the terrace under the moon and among the coloured lights, and he allowed the talk to run on freely, enjoying her confidence that he was going to make no more embarrassing proposals. It wouldn’t do to chivvy her, but his time was running out.

Sue had, it was true, regained a feeling of security with him, and decided that he had accepted her refusal with resignation. She was so without conceit or experience that it did not occur to her that she might be worth a little caution and manœuvring and then another try. She convinced herself that he had proposed to her on an impulse and that by now he was glad she had not taken him up on it. The strong attraction between them was still there, in his lingering gaze, in her own heightened pleasure in his company.

But she had been through all that with Sedgwick, and it had never come to anything more. So she was caught off guard when he said, quite casually:

“My orders came today, Susannah.”

“Oh, does that mean you must go?”

“The end of this month.”

“Back to Egypt?”

“And on up the Nile towards Omdurman, dragging the railroad with us.”

He sighed. “I dread to think of your leaving England, even though I shan’t be here to see you go.”

“It will be sad, in a way, for me to go. I’ve come to feel very much at home.”

“Perhaps if I could have given you Farthingale along with my worthless self I might have kept you here,” he suggested ruefully.

“Oh, Gratian, I won’t allow you to say such a thing, even in fun!

Farthingale has nothing to do with it!”

“Susannah, they say the British never know when they are beaten, which is why they usually win. I’m afraid I haven’t been able to give up hoping

—”

Sue rose hastily.

“Sh! There’s Archie, looking for us, I think. The music has stopped. It must be supper.”

Sir Gratian said something under his breath, and then Archie was upon them.

“They sent me to find you, sir,” he said. “Bracken and Dinah are saving places for us with them.”

There was no opportunity for Sir Gratian to speak to her alone again during the rest of the evening, but she knew now that she was in for it. They reached Farthingale in the carriage in the early summer dawn, sleepy and

silent and Virginia a little cross, and separated to their rooms with brief good nights.

But Sue, over-stimulated and over-tired, could not go to sleep. Soon after the sun was up she got out of bed and sat at her window in a dressing gown, apprehensive and unhappy over what was before her with Sir Gratian. Phrases formed themselves neatly in her mind—but suppose he said something quite different from what she expected and the phrases wouldn’t fit. She wasn’t writing him in a book.

Then for a time she tried, deliberately and in cold blood, to picture what her life as his wife would be—how it would feel to see Virginia start home without her, with Bracken as travelling companion while she herself stayed on in England—how it would seem to own allegiance only to a man who a few weeks before had not entered her life—how it would be to have to write a letter to Sedgwick to tell him she wasn’t coming back…. It was there that panic set in, and all she could think of was Sedgwick’s face at the station in Washington when he said, “Don’t get lost—” and turned and walked away from her.

Finally she went to her desk and took a sheet of notepaper.

DEAR, DEAR GRATIAN—[she wrote]

Please don’t ask me again, I dread saying No to you, and I must, I must go back to Williamsburg. Forgive me if I have made you unhappy, I thought you had got over it, and I do treasure your friendship and always shall.

Sincerely,

SUSANNAH.

Without even reading it over she put it in an envelope, sealed it, and leaving herself no time for indecision tiptoed down the passage and slid it under his door.

As she reached the door of her own room again she heard his door open behind her and faced about with a little gasp. He stood there, the envelope in his hand, fully dressed in his country tweeds for an early walk. Like herself, he had not slept.

For a moment they gazed silently at each other, the passage between them. Then she went into her room and closed the door.

Leaning against the inside of it, she heard his footsteps go past, with a heart-stopping pause opposite her threshold, and on down the passage towards the stairs. When she moved away from the door at last her cheeks were wet.

Bracken slept, for Dinah had given him back his rest along with his zest for life. But he woke quite early and lay congratulating himself on a successful evening all round. He had, he felt, made some progress with Dinah, even though she did not blush and stammer when he paid her a compliment. She seemed to be getting used to him, that was the thing. And she had seemed to absorb the idea that they might keep an eye on each other in a friendly way. Also, he reflected with some satisfaction as he rang for his shaving-water, he had settled Alwyn’s hash.

Finding himself the first one down, he went out into the yew walk to admire the bright new morning, and there he came suddenly around a corner on to a bench where Sir Gratian sat with his head in his hands. It was too late to retreat unseen, and as Bracken hesitated the Major looked up, his face drawn and tired in the revealing light.

“’Morning,” he said dryly, and rose from the bench with a weary slowness.

“Bit of a hangover?” asked Bracken sympathetically, hoping that would do.

“No. Crossed in love,” said Sir Gratian grimly, and turned to pace along beside him. “I don’t have to tell you more, do I!”

“There is a legend in our family,” Bracken began in a light, impersonal tone, and slid a hand through Sir Gratian’s elbow, matching his step, “which I had from my father, who got it from my mother, who was there at the time, that Aunt Sue fell in love at a tender age with a boy who was her double first cousin, plus. They weren’t allowed to marry, and he went away to join the cavalry. But now they still live in the same town, see each other every day, and seem to keep quite cheerful on it. This is the first time she has ever left him. I suppose she feels that no matter what has happened to her, he’s still waiting.”

“I didn’t know,” said Sir Gratian, after a moment. “She mentioned her father—”

“Her father was just an excuse. It’s Cousin Sedgwick that takes her back.

I’m supposed to be very like him, so you can see what bad taste she has.”

“She might do worse, at that,” said Sir Gratian. “Thank you for telling me.”

When they entered the dining room arm-in-arm ten minutes later, chatting of this and that, Bracken felt entirely justified in having suppressed the fact of Sedgwick’s happy marriage to Melicent.

13

THE purchase of Farthingale was completed in Mr. Partridge’s office in London before Sir Gratian departed for Egypt, and Bracken felt a new contentment, an end-of-the-journey peace, as though St. John Sprague had stretched out a friendly hand across the generations to guide him home.

Now his roots could go down into the soil of England where Dinah’s were, and their lives even now could run parallel until they became one. It gave him the right to be in Gloucestershire as much as he liked, to be casual and friendly and underfoot, and gradually she would learn to count on him.

The Græco-Turkish war had come to a disastrous end for the Greeks, and the Powers were negotiating a laborious peace. The news from the North-West Indian Frontier became increasingly grave, and young Hilton was ordered on to Calcutta. Kitchener, who abhorred correspondents, was conducting his campaign towards Omdurman in Egyptian darkness so far as the Press was concerned. He kept the men from the London dailies boxed up in a fortified village a hundred miles behind the end of the railway, and remained impervious, unlike the British Indian régime, to blandishment or prayers. The Kaiser visited the Czar in August, with a full programme of manœuvres, fireworks, illuminations, processions, and State banquets. The two absolute monarchs pledged each other publicly as gentlemen, emperors, and friends, to keep the peace of Europe, and the next day witnessed together the most impressive military review of their respective reigns.

Suddenly it was August. You knew the summer was nearly gone because the sweet, melancholy cry of the lavender-women was heard in dusty Mayfair. The West End of London emptied itself into the country houses, the clubs closed for cleaning, the streets came up for repairs, and the City dozed. August was the Silly Season in the journalistic world, which as usual abandoned itself to stories about sea serpents, prize marrows, lost causes,

and weather superstitions, so Bracken allowed himself a few days in the country.

He had subscribed three hundred pounds to the Hunt, and had bought Sunbeam from Lord Alwyn for sentimental reasons, with the provision that she was to return to her home stables to board during his necessary absences from England. They all went out for a day’s cubbing, though the scent was catchy owing to drought and the ground was hard enough to lame a carelessly ridden horse. “The thing about cubbing,” said Alwyn, though not in any spirit of real complaint, “is that you have to get up so bloody early in the morning, what?” He was at first inclined to pamper Virginia, and held back to see her over the walls. This got her dander up, and Bracken’s heart was in his mouth more than once while she demonstrated to Alwyn that she was as good a horsewoman at least as his sister Clare. Even Sue did a bit of larking over a locked gate for the honour of the family.

Bracken found it good to hear hound music again, and the lovely heart-shaking double notes of the horn blowing them out, and the stout Hunt-servant noises in the coverts. And next year, he promised himself, he would have Dinah at his side on a good horse of her very own.

Her sixteenth birthday was celebrated by a luncheon party at Farthingale early in September which Archie came all the way down from London to attend. But the presence of Alwyn and her father lay heavy on the meal, which never achieved either the dignity of a real anniversary nor the spontaneous gaiety of a children’s party. Because the music box gift was already in her possession, Bracken had brought the largest and most assorted box of sweets Fortnum and Mason could supply, and was not aware that it passed for his only present to her in the eyes of her family.

Some cautious instinct had prompted Dinah not to exhibit the music box, which she regarded as their secret.

Sue had chosen for her a pink coral pin set with pearls; the Queen of Italy was said to have brought coral back into fashion. Virginia gave Dinah a tiny live Indian tortoise, its shell studded with jewels. These were worn on the shoulder with a gold chain, watch-fashion, by prankish élegantes in Town, but everyone agreed that it would be best for Dinah’s to live in a basin with a bit of sand and greenery, where it would be much happier, and it was plied with titbits from her plate which it would have none of. Virginia explained at some length that the man in the shop had said it would eat bits

of raw meat chopped up fine, and had shown her how to tickle it under the chin to make it open its mouth. Lord Enstone at that point decreed that the tortoise could wait for its lunch until after they had left the table.

By September Sue had got thoroughly homesick, and Bracken promised her that just as soon as things let up a little more and he felt sure that the London office could run on its own feet for a few weeks he would leave Nelson in charge there and accompany them home to spend Christmas as usual in Williamsburg, returning to London in January. Virginia heard him without enthusiasm. Archie had pelted back to Town the day after the birthday luncheon, and there he stuck, eating his dinners for the Bar and reading Law day and night in his chambers in Half Moon Street. Lord Alwyn, meanwhile, was becoming a bit tiresome. But all the same, to give up and go home, to turn her back on the man who by his seeming indifference had caught her butterfly heart, was a very difficult dose to take.

Bracken pestered Partridge for news and there was none, until a letter arrived from Eden in New York.

MY DEAR PEOPLE—[Eden wrote to all of them]

You must be wondering about things here, but I have been kept very busy. You will have had Cabot’s cable about Marietta’s baby, a pretty eight-pound girl, and all is well in that direction, and I can breathe again.

I can, that is, theoretically, but there always seems to be something in our family to work up a good worry about if we try. There is no sense in keeping from Bracken the enclosed letter from Sally, who says that Lisl has been at Cannes with her diamond merchant, cutting a wide swath.

She is using her maiden name of Oleszi, which is a blessing as even the French demi-monde seems to have been a little scandalized at her goings-on. I can find it in my heart to hope that Lisl will come to her bad end quickly, but I am haunted by a foolish fear that if she did die abroad somewhere we might never know that Bracken was free. Cabot says they have taken precautions against that very thing, but when I am low in my mind it always seems a most likely thing to happen, and after all, they had lost track of her, hadn’t they, until this news of Sally’s!

My other fret is Fitz, who I am positive has fallen in love, but short of asking him outright we are unable to learn anything definite. Oddly

enough, he is doing well at the tasks assigned to him, and what’s more he has sold two of his songs to a music publisher, which pleased him any amount and actually brought him in a little extra cash. A few weeks ago he announced suddenly that he wanted to live according to the money he earned and not under our gilded roof any longer, and has taken a cheap room in a respectable house—he says!—on West Twenty-ninth Street. Cabot is convinced that it is a case of cherchez la femme, and talks darkly of detectives, but I hate to think of starting that again, what with Lisl too! And yet if the girl he has taken up with is all that she ought to be, why hasn’t he brought her to see me?

You had probably better not write anything to Sedgwick about this. I haven’t and it may resolve itself any day. I have decided to leave Fitz alone till Sue gets back to New York and see if he won’t confide in her, he always does.

And if you don’t all come home soon I shall have to come and fetch you. I am glad Bracken has decided to keep the house, and am laying down plans to see it myself in the spring.

Love to you all from all of us,

EDEN

Sue was for sailing at once to attend to Fitz, but Bracken, reading Sally’s letter, had gone rather white and didn’t seem to hear. The next day he left for the Continent and was gone nearly a week, and returned looking sleepless and depressed without having accomplished anything.

Whether or not she had got wind of his coming and wished to avoid him and the small, smooth-shaven man Partridge had sent with him, Lisl had vanished from the gaming tables, taking the man Hutchinson with her.

Bracken had gone to see Sally at Cannes, while Partridge’s representative joined up with the sleuth-hound already on the job and they went poking about on their own, as they said, turning over stones.

It was the first time Sally and her cousin Eden’s son had ever met, and they formed a strange, immediate friendship. There was much in her fantastic household which revolted him–the little yapping dogs, the soft-footed, knowing servants, the unexplained presence of a handsome, sullen French youth she called Paul—but Sally herself, with paint on her face and henna on her hair and a French r on her tongue when she spoke English,

was somehow still kin, and their blood bond spoke as soon as they touched hands.

From her he received further unsavoury details of Lisl’s career. Lisl passed openly as Hutchinson’s mistress, but apparently took satisfaction in considering him beneath her, and treated him with flagrant contempt, while he on his side was subject to wild, jealous rages when he even threatened to take her life, and their quarrels could be heard half-way to Paris. Sally thought Lisl was acting like a fool, for if she drove Hutchinson away from her, at least unless she had found another wealthy protector, where would she be? Sally was full of impractical suggestions for hurrying on the divorce, most of them requiring some highly improbable coincidence as a starting point, and Bracken tried rather wearily to explain Partridge’s course of legal procedure. In the end he had come back to London with nothing to show for his journey but Sally’s faithful promise to keep a sharp eye and ear, and let him know the minute Lisl showed her nose again.

“Let’s go home for Christmas, then,” said Virginia listlessly, laying her arm around his shoulders the evening he arrived in London and told them how it was. “I don’t care if I never see England again!”

Bracken patted her hand sympathetically. Once he had suspected that her perverse interest in Archie Campion arose mainly from the fact that Archie was the only man she had ever looked twice at who had not instantly grovelled. Now he had begun to fear that it went deeper than that. He was glad that she had had the good sense to prefer a younger son to the heir, since Archie was so patently preferable to Alwyn, as Dinah had said, for marrying. No title went with Archie except the mere Honourable. It was pretty obvious that no money went with him either. Lots of money would go with Virginia when she married. Bracken wondered if possibly that was what was biting Archie, and at the same time surmised that Virginia’s money was no drawback in Alwyn’s estimation….

14

THEIR earliest possible sailing date fell so near to Bracken’s birthday that he talked them into waiting over so that he might have the day at Farthingale.

The house was taking on the Murray imprint now. Some needed repairs to the roof and the drains were under way. Wire gauze had been fitted to the

windows to keep the flies out. The sparrows’ nests had been cleaned out of the gutterpipes, and the jackdaws’ nests were gone from the chimneys. An extra maid was being trained. The coachman had been put into the claret-coloured livery of Eden’s men-servants in New York, and a smart dog-cart with red wheels and a high-stepping two-year-old had been purchased for station work in place of Aunt Sophie’s stately barouche and matched bays.

The cellar was being stocked by a London wine merchant. It would take the hocks two years to settle after the move. And Bracken was looking into the matter of installing a small dynamo for electric light and getting in another bathroom next spring before his parents arrived.

A note from Dinah was waiting for him at Farthingale.

DEAR MR. MURRAY—[it said]

Could you ride out to our hill quite early on the morning of the third?

I should hate to have to give you your birthday present before everybody at luncheon, and besides, it isn’t much.

DINAH

This left Bracken feeling distinctly cheerful. Our hill. The one where she had first ridden towards him in the sunrise. He had not known she thought of it as their hill.

It was a very different sort of morning, though, from the one which saw their first meeting. A frosty night had given way to a threat of drizzle, and wisps of mist clung to the hollows. The sky was low and grey. Even the swallows had gone, and the leafless trees were silent and empty. In London they would be eating breakfast by gaslight and setting forth into a real pea-souper. Here in the Hills, Sunbeam’s feet rustled through brown fallen leaves, and the bare patches were studded with toadstools.

Dinah was riding side-saddle on a respectable little mare this time, obviously with the benediction of the grooms. Dewdrop was getting old and was considered safe. Clare had learned on her. It was not the first time he had seen Dinah mounted and dressed as it was considered proper she should be. But he noticed that her face was childish and aglow between the severe white stock and the hard bowler hat of her habit, and she was genuinely glad to see him.

“Many happy returns,” she recited punctiliously as she rode up to him, and held out a small square parcel wrapped in white paper. “It isn’t anything, really, I only have a shilling a week pocket-money, and you can’t do much with that.”

It was a music box; not one of the best ones, but he saw that she must have begun to save almost the whole of her allowance as soon as she knew that his birthday was coming.

“Oh, Dinah, that’s very clever of you, we’ll start a collection,” he said much moved. “I’ll bring you back one from New York.”

“It plays something called L’Elisir d’Amour, ” she said without embarrassment. “But I’m not responsible for that, I had to write and send them the money and let them choose.”

“That’s funny,” he said. “Aunt Sue has one that plays the same thing.”

He pressed the catch and the music box tinkled its tiny tune in the morning stillness. “I’ll take it home with me when I go, for company.”

“Are you sure to come back?” she asked, and the words were anxious.

“Very sure.” The music box had gone silent with a little click, and his eyes held hers solemnly. “I swear to come back, Dinah,” he said. “You can count on that.”

“I do. I do count on you. It’s a very cosy feeling. You don’t make half-promises like other people and then forget all about them. When you say you’ll do a thing I feel as though nothing can stop you.”

“Under Providence,” he said. “You’ll never be rid of me now. How do you like the prospect?”

“I shall bear up under it, I think,” she said, with her rare, wide smile, and it was only by the greatest effort that he removed his gaze from her face and forbore to pursue the subject further.

Their horses moved on slowly down the slope while they laid confident plans for things to happen after his return early in the year. He would be back in time for the best of the hunting in February when the big dog-foxes were travelling—Dinah told him how last year they had killed one in the Friday country up near Stow-in-the-Wold which had weighed close to sixty pounds. She pointed out to him, a little farther on, what Archie always said was the prettiest find in England, where the Field gathered on a hill above the covert so they saw the fox leave and the hounds gather on his line. By

now they had ridden behind a spinney which hid them from view on all sides, and Dinah glanced around and broke off in the middle of a sentence.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to say goodbye now instead of this afternoon with everyone looking,” she said, and drew off her glove and offered him her hand across the saddle. As he took it he saw with dismay that her eyes were full of tears.

“Here, Dinah, hold up, it’s not for long, only a couple of months, possibly three—and I’ll write to you every week, will that help?”

Her lips quivered. She couldn’t speak, but sat looking at him helplessly, her hand in his. He slid from the saddle and lifted her down against him and she buried her face in his coat and clung to him, sobbing. But it was a child’s grief only, at parting from a friend, and he held her like a child, patting her shoulder and murmuring nothings, while his heart sang because she cared so much, no matter how, and there was lots of time. On a sudden inspiration he put his hand into his breast pocket and brought out the flat box where the watch lived and flipped it open.

“Look!” he said, as though she were about two. “See the pretty toy”

“Oh! You brought it!” Her tears stopped. Her hands cupped the box lovingly, holding his between them.

“I always bring it. It never leaves me. It’s our luck, Dinah, whichever of us has it.”

“It’s the loveliest watch in the world. I’m glad it’s going with you because if it’s mine that means you’ll have to come back to give it to me, won’t you?”

“My darling, it is yours, and you’ll see it again in January, at the latest.”

Her tear-wet face was raised to his incredulously, while her eyes spilled over again.

“You called me—” With an arm thrown round his neck, she tiptoed quickly to kiss his cheek. “Goodbye till January,” she whispered.

“Thank you,” he managed to say quietly. “I’ll take the twin to that the day I get back.”

The farewell luncheon party that day was for Bracken something of an anti-climax. Archie was missing from the circle and Virginia’s spirits visibly drooped. Clara’s eyes were cool and reproachful because Bracken seemed to have nothing whatever on his mind with regard to her own valuable self, and Alwyn was aggressively cheerful to cover the shock of

Virgina’s having refused to become the future and eighth Countess of Enstone.

Only Sue was entirely composed and happy, for soon she would be able to see Fitz again, and come at the matter of his hypothetical love-affair. She felt as though she had narrowly missed the edge of a precipice, for suppose, oh, just suppose she had allowed herself to be bewitched by poor Gratian’s good looks and gold braid and sweet ways, and then Fitz had got into trouble and they wanted her at home!

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