“This place has a soul, Dinny. It may be the fantails on the stone roof, or perhaps the deep way it’s settled in, but you catch it at once.”
She left her hand in his longer than she had meant to.
“It’s being so overgrown. There’s the smell, too—old hay and flowering verbena, and perhaps the mullions being crumbled.”
“You look well, Dinny.”
“I am, thank you. You haven’t had time for Wimbledon, I suppose?”
“No. But Clare’s been going—she’s coming straight from it with the young Monts.”
“What did you mean in your letter by ‘restive’?”
“Well, as I see Clare, she must be in the picture, and just now she isn’t.”
Dinny nodded.
“Has she said anything to you about Tony Croom?”
“Yes. She laughed and said he’d dropped her like a hot potato.”
Dinny took his hat and hung it up.
“About those costs?” she said, without turning.
“Well, I went to see Forsyte specially, but I got nothing out of him.”
“Oh! Would you like a wash, or would you rather go straight up? Dinner’s at quarter-past eight. It’s half-past seven now.”
“Straight up, if I may.”
“You’re in a different room; I’ll show you.”
She preceded him to the foot of the little stairway leading to the priest’s room.
“That’s your bathroom. Up here, now.”
“The priest’s room?”
“Yes. There’s no ghost.” She crossed to the window. “See! He was fed here at night from the roof. Do you like the view? Better in the spring when the blossom’s out, of course.”
“Lovely!” He stood beside her at the window, and she could see his hands clenched so hard on the stone sill that the knuckles showed white. A bitter wind swept through her being. Here she had dreamed of standing with Wilfrid beside her. She leaned against the side of the embrasured window and closed her eyes. When she opened them he was facing her, she could see his lips trembling, his hands clasped behind him, his eyes fixed on her face.” She moved across to the door.
“I’ll have your things brought up and unpacked at once. Would you answer me one question: Did you pay those costs yourself?”
He gave a start and a little laugh, as if he had been suddenly switched from tragedy to comedy.
“I? No. Never even thought of it.”
“Oh!” said Dinny again. “You’ve lots of time.” And she went down the little stairway.
Did she believe him? Whether she believed him or not, did it make any difference? The question would be asked and must be answered. ‘One more river—one more river to cross!’ And at the sound of the second car she went hurrying down the stairs.
CHAPTER 38
During that strange week-end, with only Michael and Fleur at ease, Dinny received one piece of enlightenment as she strolled in the garden.
“Em tells me,” said Fleur, “you’re all worked up about those costs—she says YOU think Dornford paid them, and that it’s giving you a feeling of obligation?”
“Oh? Well, it IS worrying, like finding you owe nothing to your dressmaker.”
“My dear,” said Fleur, “for your strictly private ear, I paid them. Roger came to dinner and made a song about hating to send in such a bill to people who had no money to spare, so I talked it over with Michael and sent Roger a cheque. My Dad made his money out of the Law, so it seemed appropriate.”
Dinny stared.
“You see,” continued Fleur, taking her arm, “thanks to the Government converting that loan, all my beautiful gilt-edgeds have gone up about ten points, so that, even after paying that nine hundred-odd, I’m still about fifteen thousand richer than I was, and they’re still going up. I’ve only told YOU, in confidence, because I was afraid it would weigh with you in making up your mind about Dornford. Tell me: Would it?”
“I don’t know,” said Dinny dully; and she didn’t.
“Michael says Dornford’s the freshest egg he’s come across for a long time; and Michael is very sensitive to freshness in eggs. You know,” said Fleur, stopping suddenly, and letting go her arm, “you puzzle me, Dinny. Everybody can see what you’re cut out for—wife and mother. Of course, I know what you’ve been through, but the past buries its dead. It is so, I’ve been through it, too. It’s the present and the future that matter, and we’re the present, and our children are the future. And you specially—because you’re so stuck on tradition and continuity and that—ought to carry on. Anybody who lets a memory spoil her life—forgive me, old thing, but it’s rather obviously now or never with you. And to think of you with ‘never’ chalked against you is too bleak. I’ve precious little MORAL sense,” continued Fleur, sniffing at a rose, “but I’ve a lot of the commoner article, and I simply hate to see waste.”
Dinny, touched by the look in those hazel eyes with the extraordinarily clear whites, stood very still, and said quietly:
“If I were a Catholic, like him, I shouldn’t have any doubt.”
“The cloister?” said Fleur sharply: “No! My mother’s a Catholic, but—No! Anyway, you’re not a Catholic. No, my dear—the hearth. That title was wrong, you know. It can’t be both.”
Dinny smiled. “I do apologise for worrying people so. Do you like these Angèle Pernets?”
She had no talk with Dornford all that Saturday, preoccupied as he was with the convictions of the neighbouring farmers. But after dinner, when she was scoring for the four who were playing Russian pool, he came and stood beside her.
“Hilarity in the home,” she said, adding nine presented by Fleur to the side on which she was not playing: “How did you find the farmers?”
“Confident.”
“Con—?”
“That whatever’s done will make things worse.”
“Oh! Ah! They’re so used to that, you see.”
“And what have YOU been doing all day, Dinny?”
“Picked flowers, walked with Fleur, played with ‘Cuffs,’ and dallied with the pigs… Five on to your side, Michael, and seven on to the other. This is a very Christian game—doing unto others as you would they should do unto you.”
“Russian pool!” murmured Dornford: “Curious name nowadays for anything so infected with religion.”
“Apropos, if you want to go to Mass tomorrow, there’s Oxford.”
“You wouldn’t come with me?”
“Oh! Yes. I love Oxford, and I’ve only once heard a Mass. It takes about three-quarters of an hour to drive over.”
His look at her was much as the spaniel Foch gave when she returned to him after absence.
“Quarter past nine, then, in my car…”
When next day they were seated side by side, he said: “Shall we slide the roof back?”
“Please.”
“Dinny, this is like a dream.”
“I wish my dreams had such a smooth action.”
“Do you dream much?”
“Yes.”
“Nice or nasty?”
“Oh! like all dreams, a little of both.”
“Any recurrent ones?”
“One. A river I can’t cross.”
“Ah! like an examination one can’t pass. Dreams are ruthlessly revealing. If you could cross that river in your dream, would you be happier?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a silence, till he said:
“This car is a new make. You don’t have to change gears in the old way. But you don’t care for driving, do you?”
“I’m an idiot at it.”
“You’re not modern, you see, Dinny.”
“No. I’m much less efficient than most people.”
“In your own way I don’t know anybody so efficient.”
“You mean I can arrange flowers.”
“And see a joke; and be—a darling.”
It seemed to Dinny the last thing she had been able to be for nearly two years, so she merely replied:
“What was your college at Oxford?”
“Oriel”
And the conversation lapsed.
Some hay was stacked and some still lying out, and the midsummer air was full of its scent.