Over the River eotc-3 Page 2

  “His name is Dornford—a new man, quite decent.”

  “Will he want canvassers?”

  “Rather!”

  “All right. That’ll be something to do for a start. Is this National Government any use?”

  “They talk of ‘completing their work’; but at present they don’t tell us how.”

  “I suppose they’ll quarrel among themselves the moment a constructive scheme is put up to them. It’s all beyond me. But I can go round saying ‘Vote for Dornford.’ How’s Aunt Em?”

  “She’s coming to stay tomorrow. She suddenly wrote that she hadn’t seen the baby; says she’s feeling romantic—wants to have the priest’s room, and will I see that ‘no one bothers to do her up behind, and that.’ She’s exactly the same.”

  “I often thought about her,” said Clare. “Extraordinarily restful.”

  After that there was a long silence, Dinny thinking about Clare and Clare thinking about herself. Presently, she grew tired of that and looked across at her sister. Had Dinny really got over that affair of hers with Wilfrid Desert of which Hubert had written with such concern when it was on, and such relief when it was off? She had asked that her affair should never be spoken of, Hubert had said, but that was over a year ago. Could one venture, or would she curl up like a hedgehog? ‘Poor Dinny!’ she thought: ‘I’m twenty-four, so she’s twenty-seven!’ And she sat very still looking at her sister’s profile. It was charming, the more so for that slight tip-tilt of the nose which gave to the face a touch of adventurousness. Her eyes were as pretty as ever—that cornflower blue wore well; and their fringing was unexpectedly dark with such chestnut hair. Still, the face was thinner, and had lost what Uncle Lawrence used to call its ‘bubble and squeak.’ ‘I should fall in love with her if I were a man,’ thought Clare, ‘she’s GOOD. But it’s rather a sad face, now, except when she’s talking.’ And Clare drooped her lids, spying through her lashes: No! one could not ask! The face she spied on had a sort of hard-won privacy that it would be unpardonable to disturb.

  “Darling,” said Dinny, “would you like your old room? I’m afraid the fantails have multiplied exceedingly—they coo a lot just under it.”

  “I shan’t mind that.”

  “And what do you do about breakfast? Will you have it in your room?”

  “My dear, don’t bother about me in any way. If anybody does, I shall feel dreadful. England again on a day like this! Grass is really lovely stuff, and the elm trees, and that blue look!”

  “Just one thing, Clare. Would you like me to tell Dad and Mother, or would you rather I said nothing?”

  Clare’s lips tightened.

  “I suppose they’ll have to know that I’m not going back.”

  “Yes; and something of the reason.”

  “Just general impossibility, then.”

  Dinny nodded. “I don’t want them to think you in the wrong. We’ll let other people think that you’re home for your health.”

  “Aunt Em?” said Clare.

  “I’ll see to her. She’ll be absorbed in the baby, anyway. Here we are, very nearly.”

  Condaford Church came into view, and the little group of houses, mostly thatched, which formed the nucleus of that scattered parish. The home-farm buildings could be seen, but not the Grange, for, situate on the lowly level dear to ancestors, it was wrapped from the sight in trees.

  Clare, flattening her nose against the window, said:

  “It gives you a thrill. Are you as fond of home as ever, Dinny?”

  “Fonder.”

  “It’s funny. I love it, but I can’t live in it.”

  “Very English—hence America and the Dominions. Take your dressing-case, and I’ll take the suitcase.”

  The drive up through the lanes, where the elms were flecked by little golden patches of turned leaves, was short and sweet in the lowered sunlight, and ended with the usual rush of dogs from the dark hall.

  “This one’s new,” said Clare, of the black spaniel sniffing at her stockings.

  “Yes, Foch. Scaramouch and he have signed the Kellogg Pact, so they don’t observe it. I’m a sort of Manchuria.” And Dinny threw open the drawing-room door.

  “Here she is, Mother.”

  Advancing towards her mother, who stood smiling, pale and tremulous, Clare felt choky for the first time. To have to come back like this and disturb their peace!

  “Well, Mother darling,” she said, “here’s your bad penny! You look just the same, bless you!”

  Emerging from that warm embrace, Lady Cherrell looked at her daughter shyly and said:

  “Dad’s in his study.”

  “I’ll fetch him,” said Dinny.

  In that barren abode, which still had its military and austere air, the General was fidgeting with a gadget he had designed to save time in the putting on of riding boots and breeches.

  “Well?” he said.

  “She’s all right, dear, but it IS a split, and I’m afraid complete.”

  “That’s bad!” said the General, frowning.

  Dinny took his lapels in her hands.

  “It’s not her fault. But I wouldn’t ask her any questions, Dad. Let’s take it that she’s just on a visit; and make it as nice for her as we can.”

  “What’s the fellow been doing?”

  “Oh! his nature. I knew there was a streak of cruelty in him.”

  “How d’you mean—knew it, Dinny?”

  “The way he smiled—his lips.”

  The General uttered a sound of intense discomfort.

  “Come along!” he said: “Tell me later.”

  With Clare he was perhaps rather elaborately genial and open, asking no questions except about the Red Sea and the scenery of Ceylon, his knowledge of which was confined to its spicy offshore scent and a stroll in the Cinnamon Gardens at Colombo. Clare, still emotional from the meeting with her mother; was grateful for his reticence. She escaped rather quickly to her room, where her bags had already been unpacked.

  At its dormer window she stood listening to the coorooing of the fantails and the sudden flutter and flip-flap of their wings climbing the air from the yew-hedged garden. The sun, very low, was still shining through an elm tree. There was no wind, and her nerves sucked up repose in that pigeon-haunted stillness, scented so differently from Ceylon. Native air, deliciously sane, fresh and homespun, with a faint tang of burning leaves. She could see the threading blue smoke from where the gardeners had lighted a small bonfire in the orchard. And almost at once she lit a cigarette. The whole of Clare was in that simple action. She could never quite rest and be still, must always move on to that fuller savouring which for such natures ever recedes. A fantail on the gutter of the sloped stone roof watched her with a soft dark little eye, preening itself slightly. Beautifully white it was, and had a pride of body; so too had that small round mulberry tree which had dropped a ring of leaves, with their unders uppermost, spangling the grass. The last of the sunlight was stirring in what yellowish-green foliage was left, so that the tree had an enchanted look. Seventeen months since she had stood at this window and looked down over that mulberry tree at the fields and the rising coverts! Seventeen months of foreign skies and trees, foreign scents and sounds and waters. All new and rather exciting, tantalising, unsatisfying. No rest! Certainly none in the white house with the wide verandah she had occupied at Kandy. At first she had enjoyed, then she had wondered if she enjoyed, then she had known she was not enjoying, lastly she had hated it. And now it was all over and she was back! She flipped the ash off her cigarette and stretched herself, and the fantail rose with a fluster.

  CHAPTER 3

  Dinny was ‘seeing to’ Aunt Em. It was no mean process. With ordinary people one had question and answer and the thing was over. But with Lady Mont words were not consecutive like that. She stood with a verbena sachet in her hand, sniffing, while Dinny unpacked for her.

  “This is delicious, Dinny. Clare looks rather yellow. It isn’t a baby, is it?”

  “No,
dear.”

  “Pity! When we were in Ceylon everyone was havin’ babies. The baby elephants—so enticin’! In this room—we always played a game of feedin’ the Catholic priest with a basket from the roof. Your father used to be on the roof, and I was the priest. There was never anythin’ worth eatin’ in the basket. Your Aunt Wilmet was stationed in a tree to call ‘Cooee’ in case of Protestants.”

  “‘Cooee’ was a bit premature, Aunt Em. Australia wasn’t discovered under Elizabeth.”

  “No. Lawrence says the Protestants at that time were devils. So were the Catholics. So were the Mohammedans.”

  Dinny winced and veiled her face with a corset belt.

  “Where shall I put these undies?”

  “So long as I see where. Don’t stoop too much! They were all devils then. Animals were treated terribly. Did Clare enjoy Ceylon?”

  Dinny stood up with an armful of underthings.

  “Not much.”

  “Why not? Liver?”

  “Auntie, you won’t say anything, except to Uncle Lawrence and Michael, if I tell you? There’s been a split.”

  Lady Mont buried her nose in the verbena bag.

  “Oh!” she said: “His mother looked it. D’you believe in ‘like mother like son’?”

  “Not too much.”

  “I always thought seventeen years’ difference too much, Dinny. Lawrence says people say: ‘Oh! Jerry Corven!’ and then don’t say. So, what was it?”

  Dinny bent over a drawer and arranged the things.

  “I can’t go into it, but he seems to be quite a beast.”

  Lady Mont tipped the bag into the drawer, murmuring: “Poor dear Clare!”

  “So, Auntie, she’s just to be home for her health.”

  Lady Mont put her nose into a bowl of flowers. “Boswell and Johnson call them ‘God-eat-yers.’ They don’t smell. What disease could Clare have—nerves?”

  “Climate, Auntie.”

  “So many Anglo–Indians go back and back, Dinny.”

  “I know, but for the present. Something’s bound to happen. So not even to Fleur, please.”

  “Fleur will know whether I tell her or not. She’s like that. Has Clare a young man?”

  “Oh! no!” And Dinny lifted a puce-coloured wrapper, recalling the expression of the young man when he was saying good-bye.

  “On board ship,” murmured her Aunt dubiously.

  Dinny changed the subject.

  “Is Uncle Lawrence very political just now?”

  “Yes, so borin’. Things always sound so when you talk about them. Is your candidate here safe, like Michael?”

  “He’s new, but he’ll get in.”

  “Married?”

  “No.”

  Lady Mont inclined her head slightly to one side and scrutinised her niece from under half-drooped lids.

  Dinny took the last thing out of the trunk. It was a pot of antiphlogistine.

  “That’s not British, Auntie.”

  “For the chest. Delia puts it in. I’ve had it, years. Have you talked to your candidate in private?”

  “I have.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Rather under forty, I should say.”

  “Does he do anything besides?”

  “He’s a K.C.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Dornford.”

  “There were Dornfords when I was a girl. Where was that? Ah! Algeciras! He was a Colonel at Gibraltar.”

  “That would be his father, I expect.”

  “Then he hasn’t any money.”

  “Only what he makes at the Bar.”

  “But they don’t—under forty.”

  “He does, I think.”

  “Energetic?”

  “Very.”

  “Fair?”

  “No, darkish. He won the Bar point-to-point this year. Now, darling, will you have a fire at once, or last till dressing time?”

  “Last. I want to see the baby.”

  “All right, he ought to be just in from his pram. Your bathroom’s at the foot of these stairs, and I’ll wait for you in the nursery.”

  The nursery was the same mullion-windowed, low-pitched room as that wherein Dinny and Aunt Em herself had received their first impressions of that jigsaw puzzle called life; and in it the baby was practising his totter. Whether he would be a Charwell or a Tasburgh when he grew up seemed as yet uncertain. His nurse, his aunt and his great-aunt stood, in triangular admiration, for him to fall alternatively into their outstretched hands.

  “He doesn’t crow,” said Dinny.

  “He does in the morning, Miss.”

  “Down he goes!” said Lady Mont.

  “Don’t cry, darling!”

  “He never cries, Miss.”

  “That’s Jean. Clare and I cried a lot till we were about seven.”

  “I cried till I was fifteen,” said Lady Mont, “and I began again when I was forty-five. Did you cry, Nurse?”

  “We were too large a family, my lady. There wasn’t room like.”

  “Nanny had a lovely mother—five sisters as good as gold.”

  The nurse’s fresh cheeks grew fresher; she drooped her chin, smiling, shy as a little girl.

  “Take care of bow legs!” said Lady Mont: “That’s enough totterin’.”

  The nurse, retrieving the still persistent baby, placed him in his cot, whence he frowned solemnly at Dinny, who said:

  “Mother’s devoted to him. She thinks he’ll be like Hubert.”

  Lady Mont made the sound supposed to attract babies.

  “When does Jean come home again?”

  “Not till Hubert’s next long leave.”

  Lady Mont’s gaze rested on her niece.

  “The rector says Alan has another year on the China station.”

  Dinny, dangling a bead chain over the baby, paid no attention. Never since the summer evening last year, when she came back home after Wilfrid’s flight, had she made or suffered any allusion to her feelings. No one, perhaps not even she herself, knew whether she was heart-whole once more. It was, indeed, as if she had no heart. So long, so earnestly had she resisted its aching, that it had slunk away into the shadows of her inmost being, where even she could hardly feel it beating.

  “What would you like to do now, Auntie? He has to go to sleep.”

  “Take me round the garden.”

  They went down and out on to the terrace.

  “Oh!” said Dinny, with dismay, “Glover has gone and beaten the leaves off the little mulberry. They were so lovely, shivering on the tree and coming off in a ring on the grass. Really gardeners have no sense of beauty.”

  “They don’t like sweepin’. Where’s the cedar I planted when I was five?”

  They came on it round the corner of an old wall, a spreading youngster of nearly sixty, with flattening boughs gilded by the level sunlight.

  “I should like to be buried under it, Dinny. Only I suppose they won’t. There’ll be something stuffy.”

  “I mean to be burnt and scattered. Look at them ploughing in that field. I do love horses moving slowly against a skyline of trees.”

  “‘The lowin’ kine,’” said Lady Mont irrelevantly.

  A faint clink came from a sheepfold to the East.

  “Listen, Auntie!”

  Lady Mont thrust her arm within her niece’s.

  “I’ve often thought,” she said, “that I should like to be a goat.”

  “Not in England, tied to a stake and grazing in a mangy little circle.”

  “No, with a bell on a mountain. A he-goat, I think, so as not to be milked.”

  “Come and see our new cutting bed, Auntie. There’s nothing now, of course, but dahlias, godetias, chrysanthemums, Michaelmas daisies, and a few pentstemons and cosmias.”

  “Dinny,” said Lady Mont, from among the dahlias, “about Clare? They say divorce is very easy now.”

  “Until you try for it, I expect.”

  “There’s desertion and that.” />
  “But you have to BE deserted.”

  “Well, you said he made her.”

  “It’s not the same thing, dear.”

  “Lawyers are so fussy about the law. There was that magistrate with the long nose in Hubert’s extradition.”

  “Oh! but he turned out quite human.”

  “How was that?”

  “Telling the Home Secretary that Hubert was speaking the truth.”

  “A dreadful business,” murmured Lady Mont, “but nice to remember.”

  “It had a happy ending,” said Dinny quickly.

  Lady Mont stood, ruefully regarding her.

  And Dinny, staring at the flowers, said suddenly: “Aunt Em, somehow there must be a happy ending for Clare.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The custom known as canvassing, more peculiar even than its name, was in full blast round Condaford. Every villager had been invited to observe how appropriate it would be if they voted for Dornford, and how equally appropriate it would be if they voted for Stringer. They had been exhorted publicly and vociferously, by ladies in cars, by ladies out of cars, and in the privacy of their homes by voices speaking out of trumpets. By newspaper and by leaflet they had been urged to perceive that they alone could save the country. They had been asked to vote early, and only just not asked to vote often. To their attention had been brought the startling dilemma that whichever way they voted the country would be saved. They had been exhorted by people who knew everything, it seemed, except how it would be saved. Neither the candidates nor their ladies, neither the mysterious disembodied voices, nor the still more incorporeal print, had made the faintest attempt to tell them that. It was better not; for, in the first place, no one knew. And, in the second place, why mention the particular when the general would serve? Why draw attention, even, to the fact that the general is made up of the particular; or to the political certainty that promise is never performance? Better, far better, to make large loose assertion, abuse the other side, and call the electors the sanest and soundest body of people in the world.

  Dinny was not canvassing. She was ‘no good at it,’ she said; and, perhaps, secretly she perceived the peculiarity of the custom. Clare, if she noticed any irony about the business, was too anxious to be doing something to abstain. She was greatly helped by the way everybody took it. They had always been ‘canvassed,’ and they always would be. It was a harmless enough diversion to their ears, rather like the buzzing of gnats that did not bite. As to their votes, they would record them for quite other reasons—because their fathers had voted this or that before them, because of something connected with their occupation, because of their landlords, their churches, or their trades unions; because they wanted a change, while not expecting anything much from it; and not a few because of their common sense.