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“The curse of Esau is on me.”
‘Some day,’ she thought, ‘I’ll make him tell me why. Only probably I shall never see him again.’ And a little chill ran down her back.
“I wonder if you know my Uncle Adrian. He was in the East during the war. He presides over bones at a museum. You probably know Diana Ferse, anyway. He married her last year.”
“I know nobody to speak of.”
“Our point of contact, then, is only Michael.”
“I don’t believe in contacts through other people. Where do you live, Miss Cherrell?”
Di
“A short biographical note seems to be indicated. Since the umpteenth century, my family has been ‘seated’ at Condaford Grange in Oxfordshire. My father is a retired General; I am one of two daughters; and my only brother is a married soldier just coming back from the Soudan on leave.”
“Oh!” said Desert, and again his face had that morose look.
“I am twenty-six, unmarried but with no children as yet. My hobby seems to be attending to other people’s business. I don’t know why I have it. When in Town I stay at Lady Mont’s in Mount Street. With a simple upbringing I have expensive instincts and no means of gratifying them. I believe I can see a joke. Now you?”
Desert smiled and shook his head.
“Shall I?” said Di
“Thank you—no. But will you lunch with me tomorrow and go to a matinée?”
“I will. Where?”
“Dumourieux’s, one-thirty.”
They exchanged hand-grips and parted, but as Di
CHAPTER 2
The smile faded off her lips under the fire of noises coming through the closed door.
‘My goodness!’ she thought: ‘Aunt Em’s birthday “pawty,” and I’d forgotten.’
Someone playing the piano stopped, there was a rush, a scuffle, the scraping of chairs on the floor, two or three squeals, silence, and the piano-playing began again.
‘Musical chairs!’ she thought, and opened the door quietly. She who had been Diana Ferse was sitting at the piano. To eight assorted chairs, facing alternatively east and west, were clinging one large and eight small beings in bright paper hats, of whom seven were just rising to their feet and two still sitting on one chair. Di
“Kit, get up! You were out.”
Kit sat firm and Adrian rose.
“All right, old man, you’re up against your equals now. Fire away!”
“Keep your hands off the backs,” cried Fleur. “Wu Fing, you mustn’t sit till the music stops. Dingo, don’t stick at the end chair like that.”
The music stopped. Scurry, hustle, squeals, and the smallest figure, little A
“All right, darling,” said Di
Again, and again, and again, till Sheila and Dingo and Kit only were left.
‘I back Kit,’ thought Di
Sheila out! Off with a chair! Dingo, so Scotch-looking, and Kit, so bright-haired, having lost his paper cap, were left padding round and round the last chair. Both were down; both up and on again, Diana carefully averting her eyes, Fleur standing back now with a little smile; Aunt Em’s face very pink. The music stopped, Dingo was down again; and Kit left standing, his face flushed and frowning.
“Kit,” said Fleur’s voice, “play the game!”
Kit’s head was thrown up and he rammed his hands into his pockets.
‘Good for Fleur!’ thought Di
A voice behind her said:
“Your aunt’s purple passion for the young, Di
Di
“I haven’t done my bit, Uncle Lawrence.”
“Time you learned not to. Let the heathen rage. Come down and have a quiet Christian talk.”
Subduing her instinct for service with the thought: ‘I SHOULD like to talk about Wilfrid Desert!’ Di
“What are you working on now, Uncle?”
“Resting for the minute and reading the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson—a remarkable young woman, Di
“And yet she believed in love?”
“Well, she was a kind-hearted baggage, and the others loved her. All the difference in the world between her and Ninon de l’Enclos, who loved them all; both vivid creatures. A duologue between those two on ‘virtue’? It’s to be thought of. Sit down!”
“While I was looking at Foch’s statue this afternoon, Uncle Lawrence, I met a cousin of yours, Mr. Muskham.”
“Jack?”
“Yes.”
“Last of the dandies. All the difference in the world, Di
“Horses, piquet and imperturbability.”
“Take your hat off, my dear. I like to see your hair.”
Di
“I met someone else there, too; Michael’s best man.”
“What! Young Desert? He back again?” And Sir Lawrence’s loose-eyebrow mounted.
A slight colour had stained Di
“Yes,” she said.
“Queer bird, Di
Within her rose a feeling rather different from any she had ever experienced. She could not have described it, but it reminded her of a piece of porcelain she had given to her father on his birthday, two weeks ago; a little china group, beautifully modelled, of a vixen and four fox cubs tucked in under her. The look on the vixen’s face, soft yet watchful, so completely expressed her own feeling at this moment.
“Why queer?”
“Tales out of school, Di
Was that, then, what he had meant when he mentioned Esau? No! By the look of his face when he spoke of Fleur, she did not think so.
“But that was ages ago,” she said.
“Oh, yes! Ancient story; but one’s heard other things. Clubs are the mother of all uncharitableness.”
The softness of Di
“What other things?”
Sir Lawrence shook his head.
“I rather like the young man; and not even to you, Di
“Who’s the little Chinese boy upstairs?”
“Son of a former Mandarin, who left his family here because of the ructions out there—quaint little image. A likeable people, the Chinese. When does Hubert arrive?”
“Next week. They’re flying from Italy. Jean flies a lot, you know.”