Dinny sat with closed eyes, acutely feeling the remains of moisture on her cheeks.
“But she never would have done that,” she said, huskily, “not waved a flag and cheered. Never! She might have mixed in the crowd, but never that!”
“No, that’s a stage touch. Pity! But a jolly good act. Really good!”
“Those poor gay raddled singing girls, getting more and more wretched and raddled, and that ‘Tipperary’ whistling! The war must have been AWFUL!”
“One got sort of exalted.”
“Did that feeling last?”
“In a way. Does that seem rather horrible to you?”
“I never can judge what people ought to feel. I’ve heard my brother say something of the kind.”
“It wasn’t the ‘Into Battle’ feeling either—I’m not the fighting man. It’s a cliché to say it was the biggest thing that will ever be in one’s life.”
“You still feel that?”
“It has been up to now. But—! I must tell you while I’ve a chance—I’m in love with you, Dinny. I know nothing about you, you know nothing about me. That doesn’t make any difference. I fell in love with you at once; it’s been getting deeper ever since. I don’t expect you to say anything, but you might think about it now and then…”
Clare shrugged her shoulders.
“Did people really go on like that at the Armistice? Tony! Did people—?”
“What?”
“Really go on like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where were you?”
“At Wellington, my first term. My father was killed in the war.”
“Oh! I suppose mine might have been, and my brother. But even then! Dinny says my mother cried when the Armistice came.”
“So did mine, I believe.”
“The bit I liked best was that between the son and the girl. But the whole thing makes you feel too much. Take me out, I want a cigarette. No, we’d better not. One always meets people.”
“Damn!”
“Coming here with you was the limit. I’ve promised solemnly not to give offence for a whole year. Oh! cheer up! You’ll see lots of me…”
“‘Greatness, and dignity, and peace,’” murmured Dinny, standing up, “and the greatest of these is ‘dignity.’”
“The hardest to come by, anyway.”
“That girl singing in the night club, and the jazzed sky! Thank you awfully, Mr. Dornford. I shan’t forget this play easily.”
“Nor what I said to you?”
“It was very sweet of you, but the aloe only blooms once in a hundred years.”
“I can wait. It’s been a wonderful evening for me.”
“Those two!”
“We’ll pick them up in the hall.”
“Do you think England ever had greatness and dignity and peace?”
“No.”
“But ‘There’s a green hill far away, without a city wall.’ Thank you—I’ve had this cloak three years.”
“Charming it is!”
“I suppose most of these people will go on to night clubs now.”
“Not five per cent.”
“I should like a sniff of home air to-night, and a long look at the stars…”
Clare turned her head.
“Don’t, Tony!”
“How then?”
“You’ve been with me all the evening.”
“If only I could take you home!”
“You can’t, my dear. Squeeze my little finger, and pull yourself together.”
“Clare!”
“Look! They’re just in front—now vanish! Get a good long drink at the Club and dream of horses. There! Was that close enough? Good-night, dear Tony!”
“God! Good-night!”
CHAPTER 15
Time has been compared with a stream, but it differs—you cannot cross it, grey and even-flowing, wide as the world itself, having neither ford nor bridge; and though, according to philosophers, it may flow both up and down, the calendar as yet follows it but one way.
November, then, became December, but December did not become November. Except for a cold snap or two the weather remained mild. Unemployment decreased; the adverse balance of trade increased; seven foxes escaped for every one killed; the papers fluttered from the storms in their tea-cups; a great deal of income tax was paid; still more was not; the question: “Why has prosperity gone to pot?” continued to bewilder every mind; the pound went up, the pound went down. In short, time flowed, but the conundrum of existence remained unsolved.
At Condaford the bakery scheme was dropped. Every penny that could be raised was to be put into pigs, poultry and potatoes. Sir Lawrence and Michael were now deep in the ‘Three P. Plan,’ and Dinny had become infected. She and the General spent all their days preparing for the millennium which would follow its adoption. Eustace Dornford had expressed his adherence to the proposition. Figures had been prepared to show that in ten years one hundred millions a year could be knocked off Britain’s purchasing bill by graduated prohibition of the import of these three articles of food, without increasing the cost of living. With a little organisation, a fractional change in the nature of the Briton, and the increase of wheat offals, the thing was as good as done. In the meantime, the General borrowed slightly on his life assurance policy and paid his taxes.
The new Member, visiting his constituency, spent Christmas at Condaford, talking almost exclusively of pigs, instinct telling him that they were just then the surest line of approach to Dinny’s heart. Clare, too, spent Christmas at home. How, apart from secretarial duties, she had spent the intervening time, was tacitly assumed. No letter had come from Jerry Corven, but it was known from the papers that he was back in Ceylon. During the days between Christmas and the New Year the habitable part of the old house was fulclass="underline" Hilary, his wife, and their daughter Monica; Adrian and Diana, with Sheila and Ronald, now recovered from the measles—no such family gathering had been held for years. Even Sir Lionel and Lady Alison drove down for lunch on New Year’s Eve. With such an overwhelming Conservative majority it was felt that 1932 would be important. Dinny was run off her legs. She gave no sign of it, but had less an air of living in the past. So much was she the party’s life and soul that no one could have told she had any of her own. Dornford gazed at her in speculation. What was behind that untiring cheerful selflessness? He went so far as to ask of Adrian, who seemed to be her favourite.
“This house wouldn’t work without your niece, Mr. Cherrell.”
“It wouldn’t. Dinny’s a wonder.”
“Doesn’t she ever think of herself?”
Adrian looked at him sideways. The pale-brown, rather hollow-cheeked face, with its dark hair, and hazel eyes, was sympathetic; for a lawyer and a politician, he looked sensitive. Inclined, however, to a sheepdog attitude where Dinny was concerned, he answered with caution:
“Why no, no more than reason; indeed, not so much.”
“She looks to me sometimes as if she’d been through something pretty bad.”
Adrian shrugged. “She’s twenty-seven.”
“Would you mind awfully telling me what it was? This isn’t curiosity. I’m—well, I’m in love with her, and terrified of butting in and hurting her through ignorance.”
Adrian took a long gurgling pull at his pipe.
“If you’re in dead earnest—”
“Absolutely dead earnest.”
“It might save her a pang or two. She was terribly in love, the year before last, and it came to a tragic end.”
“Death?”
“No. I can’t tell you the exact story, but the man had done something that placed him, in a sense—or at all events he thought so—outside the pale; and he put an end to their engagement rather than involve Dinny, and went off to the Far East. It was a complete cut. Dinny has never spoken of it since, but I’m afraid she’ll never forget.”
“I see. Thank you very much. You’ve done me a great service.”
“Sorry if it’s hurt,” murmured Adrian; “but better, perhaps, to have one’s eyes open.”
“Much.”
Resuming the tune on his pipe, Adrian stole several glances at his silent neighbour. That averted face wore an expression not exactly dashed or sad, but as if contending deeply with the future. ‘He’s the nearest approach,’ he thought, ‘to what I should like for her—sensitive, quiet, and plucky. But things are always so damnably perverse!’