He stood looking at her, and she was moved by the expression on his face. Pain and puzzlement were peering through its hardwood browned mask.
“I’m sorry things are as they are,” she said, impulsively.
“One’s nature is a hell of a thing, Dinny, and one’s never free from it. Well, good-bye and good luck!”
She put out her hand. He gave it a squeeze, turned and walked off.
Dinny stood for some unhappy moments beside a little birch tree whose budding leaves seemed to tremble up towards the sunshine. Queer! To be sorry for him, for Clare, for young Croom, and be able to do nothing to help!
She walked back to South Square as fast as she could.
Fleur met her with: “Well?”
“I’m afraid I can only talk to Clare about it.”
“I suppose it’s an offer to drop it if Clare will go back. If she’s wise she will.”
Dinny closed her lips resolutely.
She waited till bed-time, and then went to Clare’s room. Her sister had just got into bed, on the foot of which Dinny sat down, and began at once:
“Jerry asked me to see him. We met in Hyde Park. He says he’ll drop the case if you’ll go back—on your own terms.”
Clare raised her knees and clasped them with her hands.
“Oh! And what did you say?”
“That I’d ask you.”
“Did you gather why?”
“Partly, I think he really wants you; partly, he doesn’t much believe in the evidence.”
“Ah!” said Clare, drily: “Nor do I. But I’m not going back.”
“I told him I didn’t think you would. He said we were ‘implacable.’”
Clare uttered a little laugh.
“No, Dinny. I’ve been through all the horrors of this case. I feel quite stony, don’t care whether we lose or win. In fact, I believe I’d rather we lost.”
Dinny grasped one of her sister’s feet through the bedclothes. She was in two minds whether to speak of the feeling Corven’s face had roused in her.
Clare said uncannily:
“I’m always amused when people think they know how husbands and wives ought to behave towards each other. Fleur was telling me about her father and his first wife; she seemed to think the woman made a great fuss for nothing much. All I can say is that to think you can judge anybody else’s case is just self-righteous idiocy. There’s never any evidence to judge from, and until cine-cameras are installed in bedrooms,” she added, “there never will be. You might let him know, Dinny, that there’s nothing doing.”
Dinny got up.
“I will. If only the thing were over!”
“Yes,” said Clare, tossing back her hair, “if only—! But whether we shall be any further on, when it is, I don’t know. God bless the Courts of Law.”
That bitter invocation went up daily from Dinny, too, during the next fortnight, while the undefended causes, of which her sister’s might have been one, were softly and almost silently vanishing away. Her note to Corven said simply that her sister had answered: ‘No.’ No reply came to it.
At Dornford’s request she went with Clare to see his new house on Campden Hill. To know that he had taken it with the view of having a home for her, if she would consent to share it, kept her expressionless, except to say that it was all very nice, and to recommend a bird shelter in the garden. It was roomy, secluded, airy, and the garden sloped towards the south. Distressed at being so colourless, she was glad to come away; but the dashed and baffled look on his face when she said: ‘Good-bye’ hurt her. In their bus, going home, Clare said:
“The more I see of Dornford, Dinny, the more I believe you could put up with him. He’s got very light hands; he lets your mouth alone. He really is a bit of an angel.”
“I’m sure he is.” And through Dinny’s mind, in the jaunting bus, passed and passed four lines of verse:
But on her face was that withdrawn expression which Clare knew better than to try and penetrate.
Waiting for an event, even when it primarily concerns others, is a process little desirable. For Dinny it had the advantage of taking her thoughts off her own existence and concentrating them on her people’s. The family name, for the first time in her experience, was confronted with a really besmirching publicity, and she the chief recipient of her clan’s reaction. She felt thankful that Hubert was not in England. He would have been so impatient and upset. In the publicity attendant on his own trouble, four years ago, there had been much more danger of disaster, but much less danger of disgrace. For however one might say that divorce was nothing in these days, a traditional stigma still clung to it in a country far from being as modern as it supposed itself to be. The Charwells of Condaford, at all events, had their pride and their prejudices, above all they loathed publicity.
When Dinny, for instance, went to lunch at St. Augustine’s-inthe-Meads, she found a very peculiar atmosphere. It was as if her Uncle and Aunt had said to each other: ‘This thing has to be, we suppose, but we can’t pretend either to understand or to approve of it.’ With no bluff matter-of-fact condemnation, nor anything churchy or shocked about their attitude, they conveyed to Dinny the thought that Clare might have been better occupied than in getting into such a position.
Walking away with Hilary to see a party of youths off to Canada from Euston Station, Dinny was ill at ease, for she had true affection and regard for her overworked unparsonical Uncle. Of all the members of her duty-bound family, he most embodied the principle of uncomplaining service, and however she might doubt whether the people he worked for were not happier than he was himself, she instinctively believed that he lived a real life in a world where not very much was ‘real.’ Alone with her he voiced his feelings more precisely.
“What I don’t like, Dinny, about this business of Clare’s is the way it will reduce her in the public eye to the level of the idle young woman who has nothing better to do than to get into matrimonial scrapes. Honestly, I’d prefer her passionately in love and flinging her cap over the windmill.”
“Cheer up, Uncle,” murmured Dinny, “and give her time. That may yet come.”
Hilary smiled.
“Well! Well! But you see what I mean. The public eye is a mean, cold, parroty thing; it loves to see the worst of everything. Where there’s real love I can accept most things; but I don’t like messing about with sex. It’s unpleasant.”
“I don’t think you’re being just to Clare,” said Dinny with a sigh; “she cut loose for real reasons; and YOU ought to know, Uncle, that attractive young women can’t remain entirely unfollowed.”
“Well,” said Hilary shrewdly, “I perceive that you’re sitting on a tale you could unfold. Here we are. If you knew the bother I’ve had to get these youths to consent to go, and the authorities to consent to take them, you’d realise why I wish I were a mushroom, springing up over-night and being eaten fresh for breakfast.”
Whereon, they entered the station, and proceeded towards the Liverpool train. A little party of seven youths in cloth caps, half in and half out of a third-class carriage, were keeping up their spirits in truly English fashion, by passing remarks on each other’s appearance and saying at intervals: “Are we daown-‘earted? Naoo!”
They greeted Hilary with the words:
“‘Ello, Padre!… Zero hour! Over the top!… ‘Ave a fag, sir?”
Hilary took the ‘fag.’ And Dinny, who stood a little apart, admired the way in which he became at once an integral part of the group.
“Wish you was comin’ too, sir!”
“Wish I were, Jack.”
“Leavin’ old England for ever!”
“Good old England!”
“Sir?”
“Yes, Tommy?”
She lost the next remarks, slightly embarrassed by the obvious interest she was arousing.