“A strain,” she went on, “may crop out after generations that have seemed free from it. It’s awfully interesting. I should like to see your brother, if he’s so unlike you.”
Dinny smiled.
“I’ll get him to drive over from Condaford and fetch me. You may not think him worth your wiles.”
And at this moment the men came in.
“They do so look,” murmured Dinny, “as if they were saying: ‘Do I want to sit next to a female, and if so, why?’ Men are funny after dinner.”
Sir Lawrence’s voice broke the hush:
“Saxenden, you and the Squire for Bridge?”
At those words Aunt Wilmet and Lady Henrietta rose automatically from the sofa where they had been having a quiet difference, and passed towards where they would continue the motion for the rest of the evening; they were followed closely by Lord Saxenden and the Squire.
Jean Tasburgh grimaced: “Can’t you just see Bridge growing on people like a fungus?”
“Another table?” said Sir Lawrence: “Adrian? No. Professor?”
“Why, I think not, Sir Lawrence.”
“Fleur, you and I then against Em and Charles. Come along, let’s get it over.”
“You can’t see it growing on Uncle Lawrence,” murmured Dinny. “Oh! Professor! Do you know Miss Tasburgh?”
Hallorsen bowed.
“It’s an amazing night,” said young Tasburgh on her other side: “Couldn’t we go out?”
“Michael,” said Jean, rising, “we’re going out.”
The night had been justly described. The foliage of holmoaks and elms clung on the dark air unstirring; stars were diamond bright, and there was no dew; the flowers had colour only when peered into; and sounds were lonely—the hooting of an owl from away towards the river, the passing drone of a chafer’s flight. The air was quite warm, and through the cut cypresses the lighted house stared vaguely. Dinny and the sailor strolled in front.
“This is the sort of night,” he said, “when you can see the Scheme a bit. My old Governor is a dear old boy, but his Services are enough to kill all belief. Have you any left?”
“In God, do you mean?” said Dinny: “Ye-es, without knowing anything about it.”
“Don’t YOU find it impossible to think of God except in the open and alone?”
“I HAVE been emotionalised in church.”
“You want something beyond emotion, I think; you want to grasp infinite invention going on in infinite stillness. Perpetual motion and perpetual quiet at the same time. That American seems a decent chap.”
“Did you talk about cousinly love?”
“I kept that for you. One of our great-great-great-great-grandfathers was the same, under Anne; we’ve got his portrait, terrible, in a wig. So we’re cousins—the love follows.”
“Does it? Blood cuts both ways. It certainly makes every difference glare out.”
“Thinking of Americans?”
Dinny nodded.
“All the same,” said the sailor, “there isn’t a question in my mind that in a scrap I’d rather have an American with me than any other kind of foreigner. I should say we all felt like that in the Fleet.”
“Isn’t that just because of language being the same?”
“No. It’s some sort of grain and view of things in common.”
“But surely that can only apply to British-stock Americans?”
“That’s still the American who counts, especially if you lump in the Dutch and Scandinavian-stock Americans, like this fellow Hallorsen. We’re very much that stock ourselves.”
“Why not German–Americans, then?”
“To some extent. But look at the shape of the German head. By and large, the Germans are Central or Eastern Europeans.”
“You ought to be talking to my Uncle Adrian.”
“Is that the tall man with the goatee? I like his face.”
“He’s a dear,” said Dinny. “We’ve lost the others and I can feel dew.”
“Just one moment. I was perfectly serious in what I said at dinner. You ARE my ideal, and I hope you’ll let me pursue it.”
Dinny curtsied.
“Young Sir, you are very flattering. ‘But—’ she went on with a slight blush—‘I would point out that you have a noble profession—’”
“Are you never serious?”
“Seldom, when the dew is falling.”
He seized her hand.
“Well, you will be one day; and I shall be the cause of it.”
Slightly returning the pressure of his hand, Dinny disengaged hers, and walked on.
“Pleached alley—can you stand that expression? It seems to give joy to so many people.”
“Fair cousin,” said young Tasburgh, “I shall be thinking of you day and night. Don’t trouble to answer.”
And he held open a French window.
Cicely Muskham was at the piano, and Michael standing behind her.
Dinny went up to him.
“If I go to Fleur’s sitting-room now, could you show Lord Saxenden where it is, Michael? If he doesn’t come by twelve, I shall go to bed. I must sort out the bits I want to read to him.”
“All right, Dinny. I’ll leave him on the door-mat. Good luck!”
Fetching the diary, Dinny threw open the window of the little sitting-room and sat down to make her selections. It was half-past-ten, and not a sound disturbed her. She selected six fairly long passages which seemed to illustrate the impossible nature of her brother’s task. Then, lighting a cigarette, she waited, leaning out. The night was neither more nor less ‘amazing’ than it had been, but her own mood was deeper. Perpetual motion in perpetual quiet? If that, indeed, were God, He was not of much immediate use to mortals but why should He be? When Saxenden tailored the hare and it had cried, had God heard and quivered? When her hand was pressed, had He seen and smiled? When Hubert in the Bolivian wilds had lain fever-stricken, listening to the cry of the loon, had He sent an angel with quinine? When that star up there went out billions of years hence, and hung cold and lightless, would He note it on his shirt-cuff? The million million leaves and blades of grass down there that made the texture of the deeper darkness, the million million stars that gave the light by which she saw that darkness, all—all the result of perpetual motion in endless quiet, all part of God. And she herself, and the smoke of her cigarette; the jasmine under her nose, whose colour was invisible, and the movement of her brain, deciding that it was not yellow; that dog barking so far away that the sound was as a thread by which the woof of silence could be grasped; all—all endowed with the purpose remote, endless, pervading, incomprehensible, of God!
She shivered and withdrew her head. Sitting down in an armchair, with the diary in her lap, she gazed round the room. Fleur’s taste had remodelled it; there was fine colour in the carpet, the light was softly shaded and fell pleasantly on her sea-green frock and hands resting on the diary. The long day had tired her. She lay back tilting up her face, looking drowsily at the frieze of baked China Cupids with which some former Lady Mont had caused the room to be encircled. Fat funny little creatures they seemed to her—thus tied by rosy chains to the perpetual examination of each other’s behinds from stated distances. Chase of the rosy hours, of the rosy—! Dinny’s eyelids drooped, her lips opened, she slept. And the discreet light visiting her face and hair and neck revealed their negligence in slumber, their impudent daintiness, as of the fair Italians, so very English, whom Botticelli painted. A tendril of short ripe hair had come apart, a smile strayed off and on to the parted lips; eyelashes, a little darker than the hair, winked flutteringly on cheeks which seemed to have a sort of transparence; and in the passing of her dreams, the nose twitched and quivered as if mocking at its slight tiptilt. Uplifted thus, the face looked as if but a twist were needed to pluck it from its white stalk of neck…
With a start her head came to the erect. He who had been ‘Snubby Bantham’ was standing in the middle of the room, regarding her with a hard blue unwinking stare.