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How dared he have anything to break, and yet how dared he break it? "Good-night, Miss Forsyde! Remember me to Mrs. Dartie. I'm not so bad, really. Good-night!" Fleur left him standing there with his hat raised. Stealing a look round, she saw him stroll immaculate and heavy back towards his Club. 'He can't even love with conviction, she thought. 'What will Mother do?
Observant, quick, resourceful, Val went straight to the heart of a transaction, a horse, a drink; and he was on his way to the heart of a Mayfly filly, when a slow voice said at his elbow: "Mr. Val Dartie? How's Mrs. Val Dartie? She's well, I hope." And he saw beside him the Belgian he had met at his sister Imogen's. "Prosper Profond I met you at lunch," said the voice.
A shrug moved Jolyon's shoulders. "I don't know at all. I imagine you may have both lived as if the other were dead. It's usual in these cases." Soames turned to the window. A few early fallen oak-leaves strewed the terrace already, and were rolling round in the wind. Jolyon saw the figures of Holly and Val Dartie moving across the lawn towards the stables.
Despite the comfortable efforts of Emily, Winifred's composure, Imogen's enquiring friendliness, Dartie's showing-off, and James' solicitude about her food, it was not, Soames felt, a successful lunch for his bride. He took her away very soon. "That Monsieur Dartie," said Annette in the cab, "je n'aime pas ce type-la!" "No, by George!" said Soames.
With some such feeling did Val Dartie, in the fortieth year of his age, set out that same Thursday morning very early from the old manor-house he had taken on the north side of the Sussex Downs. His destination was Newmarket, and he had not been there since the autumn of 1899, when he stole over from Oxford for the Cambridgeshire.
Soames interrupted suddenly: "If he doesn't comply we can't bring proceedings for six months. I want to get on with the matter, Bellby." Mr. Bellby, who had the ghost of an Irish brogue, smiled at Winifred and murmured: "The Law's delays, Mrs. Dartie." "Six months!" repeated Soames; "it'll drive it up to June! We shan't get the suit on till after the long vacation.
In the unsettled state of the country as full a house as could be expected. Mrs. Val Dartie, who sat with her husband in the third row, squeezed his hand more than once during the performance. To her, who knew the plot of this tragi-comedy, its most dramatic moment was well-nigh painful. 'I wonder if Jon knows by instinct, she thought Jon, out in British Columbia.
They would go down in hansoms and meet at the Crown and Sceptre at 7.45. Dartie, on being told, was pleased enough. It was better than going down with your back to the horses! He had no objection to driving down with Irene. He supposed they would pick up the others at Montpellier Square, and swop hansoms there?
Val Dartie, it was true, was a second-cousin, but it was not the thing for Holly to go about with him. And yet to 'tell' of what he had chanced on was against his creed. In this dilemma he went and sat in the old leather chair and crossed his legs.
Of course he understands that it's to lead to a divorce; but you must seem genuinely anxious to get Dartie back you might practice that attitude to-day." Winifred sighed. "Oh! What a clown Monty's been!" she said. Soames gave her a sharp look. It was clear to him that she could not take her Dartie seriously, and would go back on the whole thing if given half a chance.
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