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She stopped and turned. He was smiling and looking pleased.
“Anything I can do for you?”
She put out her hand.
“I’m awfully glad you’ve won. My sister and I just wanted to congratulate you.”
He squeezed her hand, and Di
“It’s perfectly splendid, there’s never been such a majority here.”
“And never will be again. That’s my luck. Where’s your sister?”
“In the car.”
“I’d like to thank her for canvassing.”
“Oh!” said Di
“Let’s go and see her,” he said.
Di
“Thank you most awfully, Miss Cherrell. It’ll do admirably. I did want someone, and your sister is very modest.”
“I thought you’d never forgive me for asking at such a moment.”
“Always delighted for you to ask anything at any moment. I must go back now, but I’ll hope to see you again very soon.”
Gazing after him as he re-entered the building, she thought: ‘He has very nicely cut riding breeches!’ And she got into the car.
“Di
“What!”
“I asked for two hundred, and he made it two hundred and fifty at once. How did you do it in one evening?”
“I didn’t. It’s you he’s in love with, I’m afraid.”
“No, no, my dear. I have eyes, and I know it’s you; just as you knew that Tony Croom was in love with me.”
“I could see that.”
“And I could see this.”
Di
“He’s going back to Town today. He lives in the Temple—Harcourt Buildings. I shall go up this afternoon and start in the day after tomorrow.”
“Where shall you live?”
“I think I shall take an unfurnished room or a small studio, and decorate and furnish it gradually myself. It’ll be fun.”
“Aunt Em is going back this afternoon. She would put you up till you find it.”
“Well,” said Clare, pondering; “perhaps.”
Just before they reached home Di
“What about Ceylon, Clare? Have you thought any more?”
“What’s the good of thinking? I suppose he’ll do something, but I don’t know what, and I don’t care.”
“Haven’t you had a letter?”
“No.”
“Well, darling, be careful.”
Clare shrugged: “Oh! I’ll be careful.”
“Could he get leave if he wanted?”
“I expect so.”
“You’ll keep in touch with me, won’t you?”
Clare leaned sideways from the wheel and gave her cheek a kiss.
CHAPTER 6
Three days after their meeting at the Coffee House, young Croom received a letter from Sir Lawrence Mont, saying that his cousin Muskham was not expecting the Arab mares till the spring. In the meantime he would make a note of Mr. Croom and a point of seeing him soon. Did Mr. Croom know any vernacular Arabic?
‘No,’ thought young Croom, ‘but I know Stapylton.’
Stapylton, of the Lancers, who had been his senior at Wellington, was home from India on leave. A noted polo player, he would be sure to know the horse jargon of the East; but, having broken his thigh-bone schooling a steeplechaser, he would keep; the business of finding an immediate ‘job of work’ would not. Young Croom continued his researches. Everyone said: ‘Wait till the election’s over!’
On the morning after the election, therefore, he issued from Ryder Street with the greater expectation, and, on the evening after, returned to the Coffee House, with the less, thinking: ‘I might just as well have gone to Newmarket and seen the Cambridgeshire.’
The porter handed him a note, and his heart began to thump. Seeking a corner, he read:
“DEAR TONY—
“I have got the job of secretary to our new member, Eustace Dornford, who’s a K.C. in the Temple. So I’ve come up to Town. Till I find a tent of my own, I shall be at my Aunt Lady Mont’s in Mount Street. I hope you’ve been as lucky. I promised to let you know when I came up; but I adjure you to sense and not sensibility, and to due regard for pride and prejudice.
“Your shipmate and well-wisher,
“CLARE CORVEN.”
‘The darling!’ he thought. ‘What luck!’ He read the note again, placed it beneath the cigarette case in his left-hand waistcoat pocket, and went into the smoking-room. There, on a sheet of paper stamped with the Club’s immemorial design, he poured out an ingenuous heart:
“DARLING CLARE,—
“Your note has perked me up no end. That you will be in Town is magnificent news. Your uncle has been very kind to me, and I shall simply have to call and thank him. So do look out for me about six o’clock tomorrow. I spend all my time hunting a job, and am begi
“YOUR TONY.”
Having looked up Sir Lawrence’s number in Mount Street, he addressed the note, licked the envelope with passion, and went out to post it himself. Then, suddenly, he did not feel inclined to return to the Coffee House. The place had a grudge against his state of mind. Clubs were so damned male, and their whole attitude to women so after-di
He got a seat rather far back in the upper boxes, but, his sight being very good, he saw quite well. He was soon absorbed. He had been out of England long enough to have some sentiment about her. This pictorial pageant of her history for the last thirty years moved him more than he would have confessed to anyone sitting beside him. Boer war, death of the Queen, sinking of the Titanic, Great War, Armistice, health to 1931—if anyone asked him afterwards, he would probably say: ‘Marvellous! but gave me the pip rather!’ While sitting there it seemed more than the ‘pip’; the heartache of a lover, who wants happiness with his mistress and ca