He was moving towards the door, when the General said:
“One moment. What do you mean by love?”
Involuntarily Dinny clasped her hands: An appalling question! Young Croom turned round. His face was motionless.
“I know what you mean, sir,” he said huskily: “Desire and that, or more? Well! More, or I couldn’t have stood that night in the car.” He turned again to the door.
Dinny moved and held it open for him. She followed him into the hall, where he was frowning and taking deep breaths. She slipped her hand through his arm and moved him across to the wood fire. They stood, looking down into the flames, till she said:
“I’m afraid that was rather dreadful. But soldiers like to have things straight out, you know. Anyway—I know my father—you made what’s called a good impression.”
“I felt a ghastly kind of wooden idiot. Where is Clare? Here?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see her, Miss Cherrell?”
“Try calling me Dinny. You can see her; but I think you’d better see my mother too. Let’s go to the drawing-room.”
He gave her hand a squeeze.
“I’ve always felt you were a brick.”
Dinny grimaced. “Even bricks yield to a certain pressure.”
“Oh! sorry! I’m always forgetting my ghastly grip. Clare dreads it. How is she?”
With a faint shrug and smile, Dinny said:
“Doing as well as can be expected.”
Tony Croom clutched his head.
“Yes, I feel exactly like that, only worse; in those cases there’s something to look forward to and—here? D’you think she’ll ever really love me?”
“I hope so.”
“Your people don’t think that I pursued her—I mean, you know what I mean, just to have a good time?”
“They won’t after today. You are what I was once called—transparent.”
“You? I never quite know what you’re thinking.”
“That was a long time ago. Come!”
CHAPTER 22
When young Croom had withdrawn into the sleet and wind of that discomforting day, he left behind him a marked gloom. Clare went to her room saying her head was bad and she was going to lie down. The other three sat among the tea-things, speaking only to the dogs, sure sign of mental disturbance.
At last Dinny got up: “Well, my dears, gloom doesn’t help. Let’s look on the bright side. They might have been scarlet instead of white as snow.”
The General said, more to himself than in reply:
“They must defend. That fellow can’t have it all his own way.”
“But, Dad, to have Clare free, with a perfectly clear conscience, would be nice and ironic, and ever so much less fuss!”
“Lie down under an accusation of that sort?”
“Her name will go even if she wins. No one can spend a night in a car with a young man with impunity. Can they, Mother?”
Lady Charwell smiled faintly.
“I agree with your father, Dinny. It seems to me revolting that Clare should be divorced when she’s done nothing except been a little foolish. Besides, it would be cheating the law, wouldn’t it?”
“I shouldn’t think the law would care, dear. However—!” And Dinny was silent, scrutinising their rueful faces, aware that they set some mysterious store by marriage and divorce which she did not, and that nothing she could say would alter it.
“The young man,” said the General, “seemed a decent fellow, I thought. He’ll have to come up and see the lawyers when we do.”
“I’d better go up with Clare tomorrow evening, Dad, and get Uncle Lawrence to arrange you a meeting with the lawyers for after lunch on Monday. I’ll telephone you and Tony Croom from Mount Street in the morning.”
The General nodded and got up. “Beast of a day!” he said, and put his hand on his wife’s shoulder: “Don’t let this worry you, Liz. They can but tell the truth. I’ll go to the study and have another shot at that new pigsty. You might look in later, Dinny…”
At all critical times Dinny felt more at home in Mount Street than she did at Condaford. Sir Lawrence’s mind was so much more lively than her father’s; Aunt Em’s inconsequence at once more bracing and more soothing than her mother’s quiet and sensible sympathy. When a crisis was over, or if it had not begun, Condaford was perfect, but it was too quiet for nerve storms or crucial action. As country houses went, it was, indeed, old-fashioned, inhabited by the only county family who had been in the district for more than three or four generations. The Grange had an almost institutional repute. “Condaford Grange” and “the Cherrells of Condaford” were spoken of as curiosities. The week-ending or purely sporting existence of the big ‘places’ was felt to be alien to them. The many families in the smaller ‘places’ round seemed to make country life into a sort of cult, organising tennis and bridge parties, village entertainments, and the looking of each other up; getting their day’s shooting here and there, supporting the nearest golf course, attending meets, hunting a bit, and so forth. The Charwells, with their much deeper roots, yet seemed to be less in evidence than almost anyone. They would have been curiously missed, but, except to the villagers, they hardly seemed real.
In spite of her always active life at Condaford Dinny often felt there, as one does waking in the still hours of the night, nervous from the very quietude; and in such troubles as Hubert’s, three years before, her own crisis of two years ago, or this of Clare’s, she craved at once to be more in the swim of life.
Having dropped Clare at her Mews, she went on in the taxi, and arrived at Mount Street before dinner.
Michael and Fleur were there, and the conversation turned and turned from literature to politics. Michael was of opinion that the papers were beginning to pat the country’s back too soon, and that the Government might go to sleep. Sir Lawrence was glad to hear that they were still awake.
Lady Mont said suddenly: “The baby, Dinny?”
“Frightfully well, thank you, Aunt Em. He walks.”
“I was countin’ up the pedigree, and he makes the twenty-fourth Cherrell of Condaford; and before that they were French. Is Jean havin’ any more?”
“You bet,” said Fleur. “I never saw a young woman more like it.”
“There’ll be nothin’ for them.”
“Oh, she’ll wangle their futures all right.”
“Such a singular word,” said Lady Mont.
“Dinny, how’s Clare?”
“All right.”
“Any developments?” And Fleur’s clear eyes seemed to slide into her brain.
“Yes, but—”
Michael’s voice broke the silence.
“Dornford has a very neat idea, Dad; he thinks—”
The neat idea of Dornford was lost on Dinny, wondering whether or not to take Fleur into her confidence. She knew no one of quicker brain, or of a judgment on social matters more cynically sound. Further, she could keep a secret. But it was Clare’s secret, and she decided to speak to Sir Lawrence first.
Late that night she did so. He received the news with his eyebrows.
“All night in a car, Dinny? That’s a bit steep. I’ll get on to the lawyers at ten o’clock tomorrow. ‘Very young’ Roger Forsyte, Fleur’s cousin, is there now; I’ll get hold of him, he’s likely to have more credulity than the hoarier members. You and I will go along too, to prove our faith.”
“I’ve never been in the City.”
“Curious place; built upon the ends of the earth. Romance and the bank rate. Prepare for a mild shock.”
“Do you think they ought to defend?”
Sir Lawrence’s lively eyes came to rest on her face.
“If you ask me whether I think they’ll be believed—no. But at least we can divide opinion on the question.”
“You DO believe them yourself, don’t you?”
“I plank on you there, Dinny. Clare wouldn’t try to take YOU in.”
Thinking back to her sister’s face, and to young Croom’s, Dinny had a revulsion of feeling. “They ARE telling the truth, and they look like it. It would be wicked not to believe them.”