In this mood he reached the Mecca of his hopes. It was one of those
quiet meetings favourable to such as wish to look into horses, rather
than into the mouths of bookmakers; and Val clung to the paddock. His
twenty years of Colonial life, divesting him of the dandyism in which he
had been bred, had left him the essential neatness of the horseman,
and given him a queer and rather blighting eye over what he called "the
silly haw-haw" of some Englishmen, the "flapping cockatoory" of
some English-women--Holly had none of that and Holly was his model.
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.
"How are you?" murmured Val.
"I'm very well," replied Monsieur Profond, smiling with a certain
inimitable slowness. "A good devil," Holly had called him. Well! He
looked a little like a devil, with his dark, clipped, pointed beard;
a sleepy one though, and good-humoured, with fine eyes, unexpectedly
intelligent.
"Here's a gentleman wants to know you--cousin of yours--Mr. George
Forsyde."
Val saw a large form, and a face clean-shaven, bull-like, a little
lowering, with sardonic humour bubbling behind a full grey eye; he
remembered it dimly from old days when he would dine with his father at
the Iseeum Club.
"I used to go racing with your father," George was saying: "How's the
stud? Like to buy one of my screws?"
Val grinned, to hide the sudden feeling that the bottom had fallen out
of breeding. They believed in nothing over here, not even in horses.
George Forsyte, Prosper Profond! The devil himself was not more
disillusioned than those two.
"Didn't know you were a racing man," he said to Monsieur Profond.
"I'm not. I don't care for it. I'm a yachtin' man. I don't care for
yachtin' either, but I like to see my friends. I've got some lunch,
Mr. Val Dartie, just a small lunch, if you'd like to 'ave some; not
much--just a small one--in my car."
"Thanks," said Val; "very good of you. I'll come along in about quarter
of an hour."
"Over there. Mr. Forsyde's comin'," and Monsieur Profond "poinded" with
a yellow-gloved finger; "small car, with a small lunch"; he moved on,
groomed, sleepy, and remote, George Forsyte following, neat, huge, and
with his jesting air.