CHAPTER VII

Diana liked Bobbie Selsbury the moment she saw him. He was a smaller edition of his brother, a brusque, cynical young man, with a passion for revue and the more clingy variations of modern dancing. Also he was engaged to a girl in Canada, and had no intense interest in any other woman. She liked him most because he was entirely without that brand of soul which wriggled so frequently under the scalpel of his brother.

He came to dinner twice, and on the second occasion Gordon thought his relative was on sufficiently good terms with his unwanted guest, to discuss openly the impropriety of her continued stay.

“Bobbie is what is known as a man of the world,” said Gordon. When Gordon introduced the virtues of his friends, he did so in the manner of a chairman at a public meeting bringing an unknown speaker to the notice of an audience. “He has a keener concept of relative social values than either I, who am a little old-fashioned, or you, my child, who have led a cloistered life. I think we can safely leave the issue in Bobbie’s hands. Now, Bobbie, I’m going to put the matter to you without prejudice. Is it right that Diana should be staying in the same house as I, without a chaperone?”

“I don’t see why she should want a chaperone with a dry old stick like you,” said Bobbie instantly. “Besides, you’re cousins. She has certainly made Cheynel Gardens a place worth visiting, which it never was before.”

“But the world--” protested Gordon.

“The other day you were telling me how superior you were to the world and its opinions,” said the traitor Bobbie. “You told me that the views of the hoi polloi passed you by without making the least impression. You said that a man should rise superior to the test of public approval. You said----”

“What I said,” snapped Gordon testily, “had a general application to certain schools of philosophical thought. It did not apply, and never will apply, to questions of behaviour and propriety.”

“Diana is here, and you’re a lucky devil to have somebody to darn your socks. Does he pay you anything, Diana?”

She shook her head.

“I am living on my little capital,” she said plaintively, and Gordon felt a brute, but it was not until the next morning that he raised the subject again.

“I’m afraid I’ve been rather thoughtless, Diana,” he said. “Will you please buy anything you want and give me a note of any money you require?”

She leant back in her chair, laughing softly.

“You dear goop!” she said. “Of course I don’t want money! I am rolling in riches.”

“Then why did you tell Bobbie----”

“I like sympathy,” she said calmly. “And nobody gives me sympathy except Eleanor. She’s rather a pretty girl, isn’t she?”

“I haven’t noticed,” said Gordon.

“I knew you hadn’t,” she said, “when I discovered that you’d never kissed her.”

Gordon’s mouth was occupied with bacon at the moment, but he stood up and made an unearthly noise of protest.

“No, I don’t ask servants such questions,” said Diana primly, “but a woman has instincts, and there’s always a way of finding these things out. Gordon, you are exonerated,” she added with a generous gesture.

“Your philosophy of life is amazing,” he said, after he had recovered some of his calm. “Whatever made you think I should kiss her?”

“Because she’s pretty,” said Diana. “All men want to kiss pretty girls if they’re normal. Lots of people have wanted to kiss me.”

Gordon raised his eyebrows without looking up. He was not revolted; he was simply resigned.

“You haven’t asked me whether I let them,” she said after waiting.

“I’m not interested,” said Gordon coldly.

“Not a teeny weeny bit?”

Anxiety was in her voice, but he was not deceived. He had learnt by hard experience that when Diana was most wistful, she was usually gurgling with internal laughter. A terrible girl.

“I’ve only had two affairs,” she went on, regardless of his distaste. “There was Dempsi and there was Dingo.”

“Who was Dingo?” he was trapped into asking.

“His name wasn’t really Dingo, it was Mr. Theophilus Shawn. He was a married man with five children.”

“Good God!” Gordon dropped his knife and fork on the plate helplessly.

“He never kissed me,” she said. “His wife came and took him away just as I was getting to like the smell of cloves--he used to eat cloves. He said it made his hair grow. Whenever he ran short of cloves he got into his car and drove to the hotel to get some. He’d go a dozen times a day. He was staying with Auntie; she met him at a lecture on sunspots, but she didn’t know anything about his wife until she came for him. She was an awfully nice woman, and thanked me for looking after her husband. She said she hadn’t seen him sober before--she was awfully interested in him. I think wives should get to know their husbands before they’re married, don’t you?”

Mr. Selsbury sighed.

“I think you’re talking a lot of abject nonsense,” he said, “and I wish to heaven you’d get to know your husband!”

She smiled, but did not reply. She felt that he had been shocked enough for one day.

He was making as if to get up from the breakfast table when she remembered a question she wanted to ask him.

“Gordon, that man who came yesterday, the man with the Hebrew name----”

“Roman. You mean Superbus?”

She nodded.

“Whom did he want?” she asked, playing with her serviette ring.

“He was looking for a robber, a man named”--he cast up his eyes, trying to recall the title--“Double Dan, a swindler.”

“Is that so?” drawled Diana, her eyes on the tablecloth. “Are you going, Gordon? What time will you be home?”

“When my business permits me to return,” he said in his stateliest fashion. “Do you realise, Diana, that nobody has ever asked me that question in my life?”

“Why, I ask you every day,” she said in wonder.

“I mean, nobody except you. My comings and goings have never been questioned, and for the life of me I don’t see why they should be questioned now.”

“I’m not questioning you, I’m merely asking you,” said Diana, aggrieved. “I only want to know because of dinner.”

“I may not be home to dinner,” said Gordon shortly, and went forth to an actuarial orgy, for business had improved at an enormous rate recently, and he was engaged in organising a new form of insurance.

He had at least the will power to put out of his head a problem which rippled the smooth current of his thoughts. Only in the luncheon hour did he return to grapple with the projected soul tour. He wished that Heloise had chosen some other venue than Ostend. Ostend in itself was improper, and associated in all respectable minds with licence and luxury. He felt that he might have been a little more firm about Diana staying on at Cheynel Gardens if he himself had not outraged, or contemplated the outrage of convention.... Convention was an ugly word, a bourgeois word.... What he really meant was ... he thought in vain for a synonym. The Ostend idea was a mad idea, and he wondered who had thought of it. At the same time, there was no reason why he should be recognised if he kept away from the quay, where the incoming Continental boats pull in; and, if necessary, he could alter his appearance slightly ... he went hot and cold at the thought. There was something furtive and underhand about the very notion. Diana had made mock of those little smears of sidewhiskers, and he never went to the barber but that individual made some reference to the appendages. He had seriously considered their removal. Especially since Heloise had wondered why he wore them. She thought they made him look rather older than he was. It would be in the nature of a subtle compliment to her if he appeared on The Day clean-shaven. As to the other matter, one did not go to Ostend in a morning coat and top hat. He might wear his sports suit or--but he had a tailor with views, and to this merchant of habit he appealed on his way home. The tailor listened alertly.

“If you are going abroad, I should advise a couple of tweed suits. Grey checks are being worn by everybody--a check with a little red in it. No, sir, oh dear, no! Lord Furnisham had a suit of that character only last month, and he, as you know, is a man of taste and refinement. _And_ one of the leading men at the Convocation of Laymen--a dear friend of the Archbishop’s.”

Gordon saw the patterns, was panic-stricken by their joviality. And yet.... Who would recognise Gordon Selsbury in a fashionable grey check with a little red in it?

“Rather noisy, don’t you think?” he wavered.

The tailor smiled tolerantly at a bolt of blue serge.

“My clients do not think so,” he said. He was so great a tailor that he had clients.

“Very well.”

Gordon gave the order. He told himself that he was not committed to the trip. But if he did go, he possessed an outfit. That was a comfort.

Heloise was staying at the Majestic (if it was still open). Gordon would arrange for rooms at the Splendid--with the same contingency. They were to meet after breakfast every morning and lunch together at a little café on Place des Armes. On one day they would go to Bruges together and see the pictures. A tour of the Littoral was a possibility. Between whiles there were books to be discussed, the lectures of a brand-new exponent of a brand-new philosophy to be attended. He held what may be described as an ethical clinic at Mariakirk and was the original excuse for the trip. A party of Thinkers was projected to sit at the feet of De Waal (that was his name) and learn laboriously the difference between right and wrong, right being what had hitherto appeared to be wrong, and wrong being proved, by the new school of thought and its principal exegete, to be so absurdly right that the wonder was that nobody had seen it all along. The party had fallen through. The new Master had been discredited by a newer, a German who demonstrated that there was neither right nor wrong in any kind of question whatsoever.

Gordon’s dilemma was born of this projected Pilgrimage of Reason, and one aspect of the holiday worried him: the possibility of something happening which would make it imperative that he should be communicated with.

In reality this was the strongest argument against the trip. Only by taking somebody into his confidence could such an adventure be undertaken. Diana was, of course, impossible. Gordon pinched his lip and rehearsed the terms in which he would convey to his agent the exact character of his journey. His attempt to put into words so remarkable and so unbelievable a project left him with a cold sense of dismay. Of all the people he thought likely he started with Bobbie; he also ended with Bobbie.

Robert G. Selsbury had an office on Mark Lane, where, from ten o’clock in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon, he bought and sold tea, coffee and sugar to his own considerable profit. Gordon had only been to the office once. He thought it was rather stuffy and rather redolent of the two principal commodities in which Bobbie dealt. His own office in Queen Victoria Street was both rich and chaste and odourless, except for the faint fragrance of lavender--Gordon was strong for germicides, and that mostly employed to destroy the ravaging microbe had that suggestion of the lavender fields. Bobbie never came to see his brother without the sense that he ought to be wearing a boudoir cap and bedroom slippers.

The principal stockholder of R. G. Selsbury Ltd. was examining a sample of china tea when his brother was announced.

“Mr. Gordon?” asked Bobbie incredulously, and when the girl confirmed the tidings: “Push him in,” he said, and Gordon, who would have resented even the gentlest of pushes, entered unaided.

“What’s the matter?” asked Bobbie.

Gordon seated himself very carefully, put down his glossy silk hat on the table and slowly stripped his gloves.

“Robert, I’m rather in a tangle and I want you to help me out.”

“It can’t be money--it must be love. Who is she?”

“It is neither money nor love,” retorted Gordon with some asperity. “It is ... well, a delicate matter.”

Bobbie whistled, and a whistle can be very offensive.

“I’m going to tell you the facts.” Gordon had to struggle with himself; he was on the point of inventing an excuse for calling and making a hasty retreat.

“Is it about Diana?”

“No, it _isn’t_ about Diana,” snapped the elder. “Diana has nothing whatever to do with it. It is like this--old man....”

The “old man” sobered Bobbie. It showed that his brother was not his normal self. So he listened without interruption to the lamest story he had ever heard; to the most transparent invention that had yet been displayed for the scorn of sceptic.

“Who is Mrs. van Oynne?” he asked at last.

“She’s ... well, I don’t want to discuss her. I met her at a conversazione of the Theosophical Society. She’s rather ... wonderful.”

“I should say so,” said Bobbie drily. “Of course you won’t go?”

It needed but this piece of assurance to decide Gordon.

“Of course I _shall_ go,” he said firmly. “I need the change; I need the intellectual recreation.”

“But why go to Ostend to discuss souls? What’s the matter with Battersea Park?” insisted Bobbie. “It’s the most lunatic idea I have heard! And of course, if you’re spotted in Ostend your name for henceforth and everlasting will be Waste Product Esquire. I suppose you’re telling the truth. From any other man I wouldn’t think twice about it; I’d know that it was a clumsy lie. Have you thought of Diana?”

A staggering question: Gordon was taken aback.

“I don’t see how this affects Diana. What the dickens has she got to do with it?”

“She’s an inmate of your house,” said Bobbie, in a serious mood. “Any reflection upon your good name is a reflection upon hers.”

“She can leave--I wish to heaven she would leave!” retorted Gordon viciously. “You don’t imagine that I intend allowing the possibility of Diana knowing to stand in my way? She is an interloper--in a way I despise her. She’s hateful to me sometimes. Are you going to help me or aren’t you?”

He flung the ultimatum across the table. Bobbie elected for peace.

“I don’t suppose I shall have to wire to you much,” he said. “Nothing is likely to turn up in your absence. What are you going to tell Diana?”

Mr. Selsbury closed his eyes wearily.

“Does it matter what I tell Diana?”

A brave question. In his heart he knew that a story must be invented, and a very plausible story.

“I’m not a particularly nimble liar,” he said. “Think out something for me.”

Bobbie sniffed.

“I am on my knees to you for the compliment,” he said, but irony was wasted on Gordon. “Why not tell her you are going north for the shooting?”

“I dislike subterfuge,” Gordon deprecated with a wry face. “Why should I tell her anything? When does shooting start?”

“It has started. Go to Scotland: it is remote. You’re not likely to meet anybody you know because you won’t be there.”

Gordon thought the flippancy in bad taste.

“It is repugnant to me--this necessity for invention,” he said. “Why must I give an account of my comings and goings? It is preposterous! I had better make my objective Aberdeen, I suppose?”

Diana! Of all the absurd arguments that had been raised against the Ostend trip, this was the most futile. The very mention of her name was a spur. By the time he had reached Cheynel Gardens the trip was definitely and irrevocably settled.

He found a cable waiting for him at home. It was from his New York agent, advising him that Mr. Tilmet would call upon him on the Friday, and he realised with a shock that the to be, or not to be, of Ostend had put out of his mind an important business deal. His agent had purchased on his behalf the business of Tilmet and Voight, a none too prosperous firm of marine insurance brokers, operating in one of those queerly ancient offices on the Water Front. Mr. Tilmet had expressed a desire to be paid the money, fifty thousand dollars, in London, which he would visit _en route_ to the Continent. The documents had arrived by an earlier mail, and Gordon had been advised that, the hour of Mr. Tilmet’s arrival being uncertain, and his immediate departure for the more attractive countries of Europe being very likely, Mr. Tilmet would call at Cheynel Gardens to settle the deal. He glanced at the _Times_ shipping list, noted that the _Mauretania_ had been signalled five hundred miles west of the Lizard at twelve o’clock on the previous day, and made a mental calculation. He must have the money in the house to-morrow, though he objected emphatically to doing business except at his office. Still, the circumstances were unusual and the bargain excellent. He was not prepared to develop a grievance.

Making a note on his memorandum pad, and a second note on the cover of his cheque-book, he went up to dress. He was dining with Heloise, and was carrying to her the news that he had made a decision in the matter which she had thought, and which she had had every right to think, had been settled beyond doubt.

Coming down, he saw Diana on the stairs below. She also was in evening dress, a wonderful creamy white. There were two ropes of pearls about her neck; she wore no other jewellery. He followed her into The Study, and, as she turned, stared. It was a transfigured Diana, something ethereal, unearthly in her loveliness.

“Why, Diana, you look awfully pretty,” he said.

The generosity of his race compelled the statement.

“Thank you,” she said indifferently. “I always look well in this colour. You are dining out too, I see? Where are you going?”

He hesitated.

“I’m dining at the Ritz,” he said. “And you?”

“I’m going to the Embassy. Mr. Collings is over here on business; he called this afternoon. He’s my lawyer and a darling.”

Gordon murmured something agreeable. Diana, at any rate, was off his conscience for the night. And she certainly was lovely.

Receptive to his unspoken admiration, she purred a little to herself, then, to his wrath, undid the excellent impression that she had made by unlocking a drawer in his sacred table.

“I say, who gave you the key of that?” he asked indignantly.

“I found one that fitted,” she said, without embarrassment. “The drawer was empty except for a few queer German books, so I threw them out and had the lock changed. I must have some place to keep my things.”

He choked down his rising ire.

“What things have you got?” he asked.

“My jewel case.”

“That ought to be in the safe.”

“What is the combination?” she asked.

“Telma,” he said, before he knew what he was saying. And not another soul in the world knew that secret!

Before his exasperation could find adequate expression, she had taken from the drawer and laid on the desk a small black object, at the sight of which Gordon recoiled.

“You really ought not to keep firearms in the house, Diana,” he said nervously. “If you go fooling with a thing like that, you might do yourself an enormous amount of harm--in fact, kill yourself.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Diana. “I know that gun inside out. I could hit that keyhole three times in the five”--she pointed to the door.

“Well, don’t,” said he loudly. “Is it loaded?”

“Naturally it’s loaded,” she replied, handling the weapon tenderly. “There’s nothing in the breach, but the magazine is full. Shall I show you how it works?”

“No, put the beastly thing away.”

Diana obeyed, locked the drawer and put the key in her handbag.

“Telma--I must remember that,” she mused.

“I’d like you to forget it. I really never intended telling you or anybody else the combination of my safe. It isn’t right that you should know. You might inadvertently----”

“I never do things inadvertently,” said Diana. “I do them maliciously, or sinfully, but I do them deliberately. You can drop me at the Embassy,” she said, as Eleanor helped her on with her cloak. “You’re so near to the Ritz that you could fall into the front porch. Unless you’re going to pick up somebody?” She looked round at him suspiciously.

As a matter of fact, Gordon did intend picking up somebody, and his immediate objective was Buckingham Gate, where, in consequence of his change of plans, he arrived five minutes late. The restraint which Mrs. van Oynne showed was heroic. He was apologetic; under the influence of the bright restaurant and soft music, explanatory.

“Diana again!” she said petulantly. “I almost think I dislike that Jane.”

“Diana, you mean?”

“I meant Diana,” said Heloise hurriedly. “Gordon, you don’t know how I’m looking forward to Saturday.”

“It occurred to me,” said he, “that Saturday is rather a busy day, and the trains will be full with people going away for the week-end.”

She drew a long sigh.

“We need not be travelling together,” she said with resignation. “My, how scared you are!”

“I’m not scared,” protested the injured Gordon. “I’m scared for you--yes. That is the only thought I have. By the way, I told Robert.”

“That’s your brother? What did he say?”

She was curious.

“Well”--Gordon hesitated--“Robert is a man of affairs, with little or no imagination, and at first he thought ...” he shrugged his shoulders--“well, you know what a certain type of mind would think, my dear Heloise.”

“Couldn’t we go on Friday?”

“That’s impossible. I’ve got a man coming to see me on Friday.”

He explained at length Mr. Tilmet’s business, and the method he would follow to discharge the debt.

Throughout the meal she observed that he was a little _distrait_, and explained his long silences by his dormant uneasiness about the forthcoming trip. In this surmise she was wrong. Gordon was thinking of Diana, and wondering how it was that he had never observed those factors of colouring and feature which had been so emphatic that night. In a way he had begun to tolerate Diana, and to find a grim amusement in his own discomfiture. She had proved a wonderful manager, had reduced expenses perceptibly; though her record of excellence as a housekeeper had been somewhat spoiled by an incident which came to Gordon in a roundabout way. She had entered the kitchen just after the butcher had left. One glance at the joint had been sufficient, and, as the butcher boy was gathering up his reins to drive off, a small shoulder of mutton came hurtling through the kitchen window. The elevation was excellent, the direction slightly faulty; the shoulder of mutton caught the butcher on the side of the head and almost knocked him off his perch. Then Diana appeared in the doorway.

“Cold storage,” she said laconically. “Bring home-killed meat, or never darken our doors again!”

The driver went off in a condition bordering upon hysteria. Thereafter, the meat supply showed a marked improvement.

At first Gordon had been serious when this matter was reported to him respectfully and inoffensively by Trenter, who drew a small commission on all tradesmen’s bills and took a charitable view of their shortcomings. But now, sitting vis-à-vis his pretty companion, the matter occurred to him in a fresh light.

“Why are you smiling?” asked Heloise.

“Was I?” he said apologetically. “I hadn’t the slightest idea. I was thinking of something--er--something that happened in my office.”

Not in his wildest mood had he ever dreamt that he would lie about Diana.

Mr. Collings, that eminent lawyer, had many friends in London, including important personages at Australia House. Diana went into the Embassy expecting a tête-à-tête meal, and found herself greeted by stately and elderly men and their stately and middle-aged wives. She was introduced to an Under Secretary for the Colonies, and manœuvred herself to his side when she learnt that he was one of the coming men in the Government. Diana had suddenly decided that Gordon ought to have a title.