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CHAPTER 4
Adrian Cherrell was one of those confirmed countrymen who live in towns. His job confined him to London, where he presided over a collection of anthropological remains. He was poring over a maxilla from New Guinea, which had been accorded a very fine reception in the Press, and had just said to himself: ‘The thing’s a phlizz. Just a low type of Homo Sapiens,’ when his janitor a
“Young lady to see you, sir—Miss Cherrell, I think.”
“Ask her in, James”; and he thought: ‘If that’s Di
“Oh! Di
“I do, Uncle Adrian.”
“Too human altogether. That man had toothache. Toothache was probably the result of artistic development. Altamiran art and Cromagnon cavities are found together. Homo Sapiens, this chap.”
“No toothache without wisdom—how cheery! I’ve come up to see Uncle Hilary and Uncle Lawrence, but I thought if I had lunch with you first, I should feel stronger.”
“We shall,” said Adrian, “therefore go to the Bulgarian cafй.”
“Why?”
“Because for the moment we shall get good food there. It’s the latest propaganda restaurant, my dear, so we are probably safe at a moderate price. Do you want to powder your nose?”
“Yes.”
“In here, then.”
While she was gone Adrian stood and stroked his goatee and wondered exactly what he could order for eighteen and sixpence; for, being a public servant without private means, he rarely had more than a pound in his pocket.
“What,” said Di
“The man who set out to discover the sources of civilisation in Bolivia?”
“Yes; and took Hubert with him.”
“Ah! But left him behind, I gather?”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“I did. I met him in 1920, climbing the ‘Little Si
“Did you like him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Well, he was so aggressively young, he beat me to the top, and—he reminded me of baseball. Did you ever see baseball played?”
“No.”
“I saw it once in Washington. You insult your opponent so as to shake his nerve. You call him doughboy and attaboy, and President Wilson and Old Man Ribber, and things like that, just when he’s going to hit the ball. It’s ritual. The point is to win at any cost.”
“Don’t you believe in wi
“Nobody says they do, Di
“And we all try to when it comes to the point?”
“I have known it occur, even with politicians, Di
“Would you try to win at any cost, Uncle?”
“Probably.”
“You wouldn’t. I should.”
“You are very kind, my dear; but why this local disparagement?”
“Because I feel as bloodthirsty as a mosquito about Hubert’s case. I spent last night reading his diary.”
“Woman,” said Adrian, slowly, “has not yet lost her divine irresponsibility.”
“Do you think we’re in danger of losing it?”
“No, because whatever your sex may say, you never will a
“What is the best way to a
“Apart from a club, ridicule.”
“His notion about Bolivian civilisation was absurd, I suppose?”
“Wholly. There are, we know, some curious and unexplained stone monsters up there, but his theory, if I understand it, won’t wash at all. Only, my dear, Hubert would appear to be involved in it.”
“Not scientifically; he just went as transport officer.” And Di
“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 soufflй Sofia?”
They ate in silence, each studying sympathetically the other’s face. Di
“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?”
Di
“No sensitive and honest person can pull strings successfully, Di
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 tiptop propaganda. Have one?”
Di
“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.”
“Ma
“Ma
“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 ma