‘No.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, imperturbably, ‘it’ll be all right on the night’ Too much experience to be surprised, and too much honesty to pretend not to understand.
She remembered what had happened four days earlier. He had brought her home after the theatre, and they were standing before the fire, when she had said something-quite casually, laughing at him. He had turned and said, suddenly and huskily:
‘Tu m’enivres!’
Language and voice together had been like a lightning-flash, showing up past and future in a single crack of fire that hurt your eyes and was followed by a darkness like thick, black velvet… When his lips had reluctantly freed themselves, he had said: ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake the whole zoo. But I’m glad, my God! to know it’s there-and no shabby tigers; either.’
‘Did you think mine would be a shabby tiger?’
‘I thought it might, perhaps, be a little daunted.’
‘Well, it isn’t. It seems to be an entirely new tiger. I never had one before-only kindness to animals.’
‘My lady gave me a tiger,
A sleek and splendid tiger,
A striped and shining tiger.
All under the leaves of life.’
Nobody else, thought Harriet, had apparently suspected the tiger-except of course, old Paul Delagardie, whose ironic eyes saw everything.
Peter’s final comment had been: ‘I have now completely given myself away. No English vocabulary. No other Englishwoman. And that is the most I can say for myself.’
Gradually, they were shaking off the clustering lights of London. The car gathered speed. Peter looked back over his shoulder.
‘Not waking the baby, are we, Bunter?’
‘The vibration is at present negligible, my lord.’
That led memory farther back.
‘This question of children, Harriet. Do you feel strongly about it?’
‘Well, I’m not quite sure. I’m not marrying you for the sake of having them, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Thank Heaven! He does not wish to regard himself, nor yet to be regarded, in that agricultural light…You don’t particularly care about children?’
‘Not children, in the lump. But I think it’s just possible that I might some day come to want-’
‘Your own?’
‘No-yours.’
‘Oh!’ he had said, unexpectedly disconcerted. ‘I see. That’s rather-Have you ever considered what kind of a father I should make?’
‘I know quite well. Casual, apologetic, reluctant, and adorable.’
‘If I was reluctant, Harriet, it would only be because I have a profound distrust of myself. Our family’s been going a pretty long time. There’s Saint-George, who has no character, and his sister, with no vitality-to say nothing of the next heir after Saint-George and myself, who is a third cousin and completely gaga. And if you think about my own compound of what Uncle Paul calls nerves and nose-’
‘I am reminded of what Clare Clairemont said to Byron: "I shall always remember the gentleness of your manners and the wild originality of your countenance."’
‘No, Harriet-I mean that.’
‘Your brother married his own cousin. Your sister married a commoner and her children are all right. You wouldn’t be doing it all yourself, you know-I’m common enough. What’s wrong with me?’
‘Nothing, Harriet. That’s true. By God, that’s true. The fact is, I’m a coward about responsibility and always have been. My dear-if you want it and are ready to take the risk-’
‘I don’t believe it’s such a risk as all that.’
‘Very well. I leave it to you. If you will and when you will. When I asked you, I rather expected you to say. No.’
‘But you had a horrible fear I might say, “Yes, of course!”‘
‘Well, perhaps. I didn’t expect what you did say. It’s embarrassing to be taken seriously-as a person.’
‘But, Peter, putting aside my own feelings and your morbid visions of twin gorgons or nine-headed hydras or whatever it is you look forward to-would you like children?’
She had been amused by the conflict in his self-conscious face. ‘Egotistical idiot that I am,’ he had said finally, ‘yes. Yes. I should. Heaven knows why. Why does one? To prove one can do it? For the fun of boasting about “my boy at Eton”? Or because-?’
‘Peter! When Mr Murbles drew up that monstrous great long will for you, after we were engaged-’
‘Oh, Harriet!’
‘How did you leave your property? I mean, the real estate?’
‘All right,’ he said, with a groan, ‘the murder’s out. Entailed-I admit it. But Murbles expects that every man-damn it, don’t laugh like that, I couldn’t argue the point with Murbles-and every contingency was provided for.’
A town, with a wide stone bridge, and lights reflected in the river-taking memory no further back than that morning. The Dowager’s closed car, with the Dowager discreetly seated beside the chauffeur; herself in cloth of gold and a soft fur cloak, and Peter, absurdly upright in morning dress, with a gardenia in his lapel, balancing a silk hat on his knee. ‘Well, Harriet, we’ve passed the Rubicon. Any qualms?’
‘No more than when we went up the Cherwell that night and moored on the far bank, and you asked the same question.’
‘Thank God! Stick to it, sweetheart. Only one more river.’
‘And that’s the river of Jordan.’
‘If I kiss you now I shall lose my head and something irreparable will happen to this accursed hat. Let us be very strange and well bred-as if we were not married at all.’
One more river.
‘Are we getting anywhere near?’
‘Yes-this is Great Pagford, where we used to live. Look! that’s our old house with the three steps up to the door-there’s a doctor there still, you can see the surgery lamp… After two miles you take the right hand turn for Pagford Parva, and sharp left by a big barn and straight on up the lane.
When she was quite small, Dr Vane had had a dogcart-just like doctors in old-fashioned books. She had gone along this road, ever so many times, sitting beside him, sometimes allowed to pretend to hold the reins. Later on, it had been a car-a small and noisy one, very unlike this smooth, long-bonneted monster. The doctor had had to start on his rounds in good time, so as to leave a margin for break-downs. The second car had been more reliable-a pre-war Ford. She had learnt to drive that one. If her father had lived, he would be getting on for seventy-his strange new son-in-law would have been calling him ‘sir’. An odd way, this, to be coming home, and not home. This was Paggleham, where the old woman lived who had such terrible rheumatism in her hands-old Mrs, Mrs, Mrs Warner, that was it-she must have gone long ago.
‘That’s the barn, Peter.’
‘Right you are. Is that the house?’
The house where the Batesons had lived-a dear old couple, a pleasantly tottering Darby and Joan pair, always ready to welcome little Miss Vane and give her strawberries and seedy-cake. Yes-the house-a huddle of black gables, with two piled chimney-stacks blotting out the stars. One would open the door and step straight in, through the sanded entry into the big kitchen with its wooden settles and its great oak rafters, hung with home-cured hams. Only, Darby and Joan were dead by now, and Noakes (she vaguely remembered him-a hard-faced, grasping man who hired out bicycles) would be waiting to receive them. But-there was no light in any of the windows at Talboys. ‘We’re a bit late,’ said Harriet, nervously; ‘he may have given us up.’
‘Then we shall firmly hand ourselves back to him,’ said Peter cheerfully. ‘People like you and me are not so easily got rid of. I told him, any time after eight o’clock. This looks like the gate.’
Bunter climbed out and approached the gate in eloquent silence. He had known it; he had felt it in his bones; the arrangements had fallen through. At whatever cost, even if he had had to strangle pressmen with his bare hands, he ought to have come ahead to see to things. In the glare of the headlights a patch of white paper showed clearly on the top bar of the gate; he looked suspiciously at it, removed, with careful fingers, the tin-tack that secured it to the wood and brought it, still without a word, to his master.