“Dear Blore! I’m afraid I must go up now, I’ve had rather a tiring day.”
“Quite, Miss. Pleasant dreams!”
“Good-night!”
Pleasant dreams! Perhaps the dreams might be, but would reality? What uncharted country was she not entering with just a star to guide! And was it a fixed star, or some flaring comet? At least five men had wanted to marry her, all of whom she had felt she could sum up, so that a marriage would have been no great risk. And now she only wanted to marry one, but there he was, an absolutely uncertain quantity except that he could rouse in her a feeling she had never had before. Life was perverse. You dipped your finger in a lucky bag, and brought out—what? To-morrow she would walk with him. They would see trees and grass together; scenery and gardens, pictures, perhaps; the river, and fruit blossom. She would know at least how his spirit and her own agreed about many things she cared for. And yet, if she found they didn’t agree, would it make any difference to her feeling? It would not.
‘I understand now,’ she thought, ‘why we call lovers dotty. All I care about is that he should feel what I feel, and be dotty too. And of course he won’t—why should he?’
CHAPTER 5
The drive to Richmond Park, over Ham Common and Kingston Bridge to Hampton Court, and back through Twickenham and Kew, was remarkable for alternation between silence and volubility. Dinny was, as it were, the observer, and left to Wilfrid all the piloting. Her feelings made her shy, and it was apparent that he was only able to expand if left to his free will—the last person in the world to be drawn out. They duly lost themselves in the maze at Hampton Court, where, as Dinny said,
“Only spiders who can spin threads out of themselves, or ghosts who can tails unfold, would have a chance.”
On the way back they got out at Kensington Gardens, dismissed the hired car, and walked to the tea kiosk. Over the pale beverage he asked her suddenly whether she would mind reading his new poems in manuscript.
“Mind? I should love it.”
“I want a candid opinion.”
“You will get it,” said Dinny. “When can I have them?”
“I’ll bring them round to Mount Street and drop them in your letter-box after dinner.”
“Won’t you come in this time?”
He shook his head.
When he left her at Stanhope Gate, he said abruptly:
“It’s been a simply lovely afternoon. Thank you!”
“It is for me to thank you.”
“You! You’ve got more friends than quills upon the fretful porpentine. It’s I who am the pelican.”
“Adieu, pelican!”
“Adieu, flowering wilderness!”
The words seemed musical all the way down Mount Street.
A fat unstamped envelope was brought in about half-past nine with the last post. Dinny took it from Blore, and slipping it under The Bridge of San Luis Rey, went on listening to her aunt.
“When I was a girl I squeezed my own waist, Dinny. We suffered for a principle. They say it’s comin’ in again. I shan’t do it, so hot and worryin’; but you’ll have to.”
“Not I.”
“When the waist has settled down there’ll be a lot of squeezin’.”
“The really tight waist will never come in again, Auntie.”
“And hats. In 1900 we were like eggstands with explodin’ eggs in them. Cauliflowers and hydrangeas, and birds of a feather, enormous. They stuck out. The Parks were comparatively pure. Sea-green suits you, Dinny; you ought to be married in it.”
“I think I’ll go up, Aunt Em. I’m rather tired.”
“That’s eatin’ so little.”
“I eat enormously. Good-night, dear.”
Without undressing she sat down to the poems, nervously anxious to like them, for she knew that he would see through any falsity. To her relief they had the tone she remembered in his other volumes, but were less bitter and more concerned with beauty. When she had finished the main sheaf, she came on a much longer poem entitled ‘The Leopard,’ wrapped round in a blank sheet of paper. Was it so wrapped to keep her from reading it; why, then, had he enclosed it? She decided that he had been doubtful, and wanted her verdict. Below the title was written the line:
“Can the leopard change its spots?”
It was the story of a young monk, secretly without faith, sent on a proselytising expedition. Seized by infidels, and confronted with the choice between death or recantation, he recants and accepts the religion of his captors. The poem was seared with passages of such deep feeling that they hurt her. It had a depth and fervour which took her breath away; it was a paean in praise of contempt for convention faced with the stark reality of the joy in living, yet with a haunting moan of betrayal running through it. It swayed her this way and that; and she put it down with a feeling almost of reverence for one who could so express such a deep and tangled spiritual conflict. With that reverence were mingled a compassion for the stress he must have endured before he could have written this and a feeling, akin to that which mothers feel, of yearning to protect him from his disharmonies and violence.
They had arranged to meet the following day at the National Gallery, and she went there before time, taking the poems with her. He came on her in front of Gentile Bellini’s ‘Mathematician.’ They stood for some time looking at it without a word.
“Truth, quality, and decorative effect. Have you read my stuff?”
“Yes. Come and sit down, I’ve got them here.”
They sat down, and she gave him the envelope.
“Well?” he said; and she saw his lips quivering.
“Terribly good, I think.”
“Really?”
“Even truly. One, of course, is much the finest.”
“Which?”
Dinny’s smile said: “You ask that?”
“The Leopard?”
“Yes. It hurt me, here.”
“Shall I throw it out?”
By intuition she realised that on her answer he would act, and said feebly: “You wouldn’t pay attention to what I said, would you?”
“What you say shall go.”
“Then of course you can’t throw it out. It’s the finest thing you’ve done.”
“Inshallah!”
“What made you doubt?”
“It’s a naked thing.”
“Yes,” said Dinny, “naked—but beautiful. When a thing’s naked it must be beautiful.”
“Hardly the fashionable belief.”
“Surely a civilised being naturally covers deformities and sores. There’s nothing fine in being a savage that I can see, even in art.”
“You run the risk of excommunication. Ugliness is a sacred cult now.”
“Reaction from the chocolate box,” murmured Dinny.
“Ah! Whoever invented those lids sinned against the holy ghost—he offended the little ones.”
“Artists are children, you mean?”
“Well, aren’t they? or would they carry on as they do?”
“Yes, they do seem to love toys. What gave you the idea for that poem?” His face had again that look of deep waters stirred, as when Muskham had spoken to them under the Foch statue.
“Tell you some day, perhaps. Shall we go on round?”
When they parted, he said: “To-morrow’s Sunday. I shall be seeing you?”
“If you will.”
“What about the Zoo?”
“No, not the Zoo. I hate cages.”
“Quite right. The Dutch garden near Kensington Palace?”
“Yes.”
And that made the fifth consecutive day of meeting.
For Dinny it was like a spell of good weather, when every night you go to sleep hoping it will last, and every morning wake up and rub your eyes seeing that it has.
Each day she responded to his: “Shall I see you tomorrow?” with an “If you will;” each day she concealed from everybody with care whom she was seeing, and how, and when; and it all seemed to her so unlike herself that she would think: ‘Who is this young woman who goes out stealthily like this, and meets a young man, and comes back feeling as if she had been treading on air? Is it some kind of a long dream I’m having?’ Only, in dreams one didn’t eat cold chicken and drink tea.