Over the River eotc-3 Read online

  The village church bell began ringing now. Marvellous how her father and mother continued to go every Sunday, hoping—she supposed—for the best; or was it because if they didn’t the village wouldn’t, and the church would fall into disuse, or at least behind the chapel? It was nice to lie here in one’s own old room, feel safe, and warm, and idle, with a dog on one’s feet! Till next Saturday she was at bay, like a chased vixen taking advantage of every cover; and Clare drew taut her lips, as a vixen does at sight of hounds. Go back he must—he had said—with her or without. Well, it would be without!

  Her sense of asylum was rudely shaken about four o’clock, when, returning from a walk with the dogs, she saw a car outside and was met by her mother in the hall.

  “Jerry’s with your father.”

  “Oh!”

  “Come up to my room, dear.”

  In that first-floor room adjoining her bedroom Lady Charwell’s personality had always more scope than in the rest of the old, tortuous, worn-down house, so full of relics and the past tense. This room’s verbena-scented, powder-blue scheme had a distinct if faded elegance. It had been designed; the rest of the house had grown, emerging here and there into small oases of modernity, but for the most part a wilderness strewn with the débris of Time.

  Clare turned and turned a china figure, in front of the wood fire. She had not foreseen this visit. Now were conjoined the forces of creed, convention, and comfort, and against them was only a defence that it was hateful to lay bare. She waited for her mother to speak.

  “You see, darling, you haven’t told us anything.”

  But how tell one who looked and spoke like that? She flushed, went pale, and said: “I can only say there’s a beast in him. I know it doesn’t show; but there is, Mother, there is!”

  Lady Charwell, too, had flushed. It did not suit her, being over fifty.

  “Your father and I will help you all we can, dear; only, of course, it is so important to take a right decision now.”

  “And I, having made a wrong one already, can only be trusted to make another? You’ve got to take my word, Mother; I simply can’t talk about it, and I simply won’t go back with him.”

  Lady Charwell had sat down, a furrow between her grey-blue eyes which seemed fixed on nothing. She turned them on her daughter, and said, hesitating:

  “You’re sure it’s not just the beast that is in nearly all men?”

  Clare laughed.

  “Oh! no. I’m not easily upset.”

  Lady Charwell sighed.

  “Don’t worry, Mother dear; it’ll be all right once we’ve got this over. Nothing really matters nowadays.”

  “So they say, but one has the bad habit still of believing that it does.”

  At this near approach to irony Clare said quickly: “It matters that one should keep one’s self-respect. Really, with him I couldn’t.”

  “We’ll say no more then. Your father will want to see you. You’d better take your things off.”

  Clare kissed her and went out. There was no sound from below, and she went on up to her room. She felt her will-power stiffening. The days when men disposed of their women folk were long over, and—whatever Jerry and her father were concocting—she would not budge! When the summons came, she went to the encounter, blade-sharp, and hard as stone.

  They were standing in the General’s office-like study, and she felt at once that they were in agreement. Nodding to her husband, she went over to her father.

  “Well?”

  But Corven spoke first.

  “I leave it to you, sir.”

  The General’s lined face looked mournful and irritated. He braced himself. “We’ve been going into this, Clare. Jerry admits that you’ve got much on your side, but he’s given me his word that he won’t offend you again. I want to appeal to you to try and see his point of view. He says, I think rightly, that it’s more to your interest even than to his. The old ideas about marriage may have gone, but, after all, you both took certain vows—but leaving that aside—”

  “Yes,” said Clare.

  The General twirled his little moustache, and thrust the other hand deep into his pocket.

  “Well, what on earth is going to happen to you both? You can’t have a divorce—there’s your name, and his position, and—after only eighteen months. What are you going to do? Live apart? That’s not fair to you, or to him.”

  “Fairer to both of us than living together will be.”

  The General glanced at her hardened face. “So you say now; but we’ve both of us had more experience than you.”

  “That was bound to be said sooner or later. You want me to go back with him?”

  The General looked acutely unhappy.

  “You know, my dear, that I only want what’s best for you.”

  “And Jerry has convinced you that IS the best. Well, it’s the worst. I’m not going, Dad, and there’s an end of it.”

  The General looked at her face, looked at the face of his son-inlaw, shrugged his shoulders, and began filling his pipe.

  Jerry Corven’s eyes, which had been passing from face to face, narrowed and came to rest on Clare’s. That look lasted a long time, and neither flinched.

  “Very well,” he said, at last, “I will make other arrangements. Good-bye, sir; good-bye, Clare!” And turning on his heel, he went out.

  In the silence that followed, the sound of his car crunching away on the drive could be heard distinctly. The General, smoking glumly, kept his glance averted; Clare went to the window. It was growing dark outside, and now that the crisis was over she felt unstrung.

  “I wish to God,” said her father’s voice, “that I could understand this business.”

  Clare did not move from the window: “Did he tell you he’d used my riding whip on me?”

  “What!” said the General.

  Clare turned round.

  “Yes.”

  “On YOU?”

  “Yes. That was not my real reason, but it put the finishing touch. Sorry to hurt you, Dad!”

  “By God!”

  Clare had a moment of illumination. Concrete facts! Give a man a fact!

  “The ruffian!” said the General: “The ruffian! He told me he spent the evening with you the other day; is that true?”

  A slow flush had burned up in her cheeks.

  “He practically forced himself in.”

  “The ruffian!” said the General once more.

  When she was alone again, she meditated wryly on the sudden difference that little fact about the whip had made in her father’s feelings. He had taken it as a personal affront, an insult to his own flesh and blood. She felt that he could have stood it with equanimity of someone else’s daughter; she remembered that he had even sympathised with her brother’s flogging of the muleteer, which had brought such a peck of trouble on them all. How little detached, how delightfully personal, people were! Feeling and criticising in terms of their own prejudices! Well! She was over the worst now, for her people were on her side, and she would make certain of not seeing Jerry alone again. She thought of the long look he had given her. He was a good loser, because for him the game was never at an end. Life itself—not each item of life—absorbed him. He rode Life, took a toss, got up, rode on; met an obstacle, rode over it, rode through it, took the scratches as all in the day’s work. He had fascinated her, ridden through and over her; the fascination was gone, and she wondered that it had ever been. What was he going to do now? Well! One thing was certain: somehow, he would cut his losses!

  CHAPTER 13

  One who gazes at the Temple’s smooth green turf, fine trees, stone-silled buildings, and pouter pigeons, feels dithyrambic, till on him intrudes the vision of countless bundles of papers tied round with pink tape, unending clerks in little outer chambers sucking thumbs and waiting for solicitors, calf-bound tomes stored with reports of innumerable cases so closely argued that the light-minded sigh at sight of them and think of the Café Royal. Who shall deny that the Temple harbours th
e human mind in excelsis, the human body in chairs; who shall gainsay that the human spirit is taken off at its entrances and left outside like the shoes of those who enter a mosque? Not even to its Grand Nights is the human spirit admitted, for the legal mind must not ‘slop over,’ and warning is given by the word ‘Decorations’ on the invitation cards. On those few autumn mornings when the sun shines, the inhabitant of the Temple who faces East may possibly feel in his midriff as a man feels on a hilltop, or after hearing a Brahms symphony, or even when seeing first daffodils in spring; if so, he will hastily remember where he is, and turn to: Collister v. Daverday: Popdick intervening.

  And yet, strangely, Eustace Dornford, verging on middle age, was continually being visited, whether the sun shone or not, by the feeling of one who sits on a low wall in the first spring warmth, seeing life as a Botticellian figure advancing towards him through an orchard of orange trees and spring flowers. At less expenditure of words, he was ‘in love’ with Dinny. Each morning when he saw Clare he was visited by a longing not to dictate on parliamentary subjects, but rather to lead her to talk about her sister. Self-controlled, however, and with a sense of humour, he bowed to his professional inhibitions, merely asking Clare whether she and her sister would dine with him, “on Saturday—here, or at the Café Royal?”

  “Here would be more original.”

  “Would you care to ask a man to make a fourth?”

  “But won’t you, Mr. Dornford?”

  “You might like someone special.”

  “Well, there’s young Tony Croom, who was on the boat with me. He’s a nice boy.”

  “Good! Saturday, then. And you’ll ask your sister?”

  Clare did not say: “She’s probably on the doorstep,” for, as a fact, she was. Every evening that week she was coming at half-past six to accompany Clare back to Melton Mews. There were still chances, and the sisters were not taking them.

  On hearing of the invitation Dinny said: “When I left you late that night I ran into Tony Croom, and we walked back to Mount Street together.”

  “You didn’t tell him about Jerry’s visit to me?”

  “Of course not!”

  “It’s hard on him, as it is. He really is a nice boy, Dinny.”

  “So I saw. And I wish he weren’t in London.”

  Clare smiled. “Well, he won’t be for long; he’s to take charge of some Arab mares for Mr. Muskham down at Bablock Hythe.”

  “Jack Muskham lives at Royston.”

  “The mares are to have a separate establishment in a milder climate.”

  Dinny roused herself from memories with an effort.

  “Well, darling, shall we strap-hang on the Tube, or go a bust in a taxi?”

  “I want air. Are you up to walking?”

  “Rather! We’ll go by the Embankment and the Parks.”

  They walked quickly, for it was cold. Lamplit and star-covered, that broad free segment of the Town had a memorable dark beauty; even on the buildings, their daylight features abolished, was stamped a certain grandeur.

  Dinny murmured: “London at night IS beautiful.”

  “Yes, you go to bed with a beauty and wake up with a barmaid. And, what’s it all for? A clotted mass of energy like an ant-heap.”

  “‘So fatiguin’,’ as Aunt Em would say.”

  “But what IS it all for, Dinny?”

  “A workshop trying to turn out perfect specimens; a million failures to each success.”

  “Is that worth while?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, what is there to BELIEVE in?”

  “Character.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Character’s our way of showing the desire for perfection. Nursing the best that’s in one.”

  “Hum!” said Clare. “Who’s to decide what’s best within one?”

  “You have me, my dear.”

  “Well, I’m too young for it, anyway.”

  Dinny hooked her arm within her sister’s.

  “You’re older than I am, Clare.”

  “No, I’ve had more experience perhaps, but I haven’t communed with my own spirit and been still. I feel in my bones that Jerry’s hanging round the Mews.”

  “Come into Mount Street, and we’ll go to a film.”

  In the hall Blore handed Dinny a note.

  “Sir Gerald Corven called, Miss, and left this for you.”

  Dinny opened it.

  “DEAR DINNY,—

  “I’m leaving England tomorrow instead of Saturday. If Clare will change her mind I shall be very happy to take her. If not, she must not expect me to be long-suffering. I have left a note to this effect at her lodgings, but as I do not know where she is, I wrote to you also, so as to be sure that she knows. She or a message from her will find me at the Bristol up to three o’clock tomorrow, Thursday. After that ‘à la guerre comme à la guerre.’

  “With many regrets that things are so criss-cross and good wishes to yourself,

  “I am,

  “Very sincerely yours,

  “GERALD CORVEN.”

  Dinny bit her lip.

  “Read this!”

  Clare read the note.

  “I shan’t go, and he can do what he likes.”

  While they were titivating themselves in Dinny’s room, Lady Mont came in.

  “Ah!” she said: “Now I can say my piece. Your Uncle has seen Jerry Corven again. What are you goin’ to do about him, Clare?”

  As Clare swivelled round from the mirror, the light fell full on cheeks and lips whose toilet she had not quite completed.

  “I’m never going back to him, Aunt Em.”

  “May I sit on your bed, Dinny? ‘Never’ is a long time, and—er—that Mr. Craven. I’m sure you have principles, Clare, but you’re too pretty.”

  Clare put down her lipstick.

  “Sweet of you, Aunt Em; but really I know what I’m about.”

  “So comfortin’! When I say that myself, I’m sure to make a gaffe.”

  “If Clare promises, she’ll perform, Auntie.”

  Lady Mont sighed. “I promised my father not to marry for a year. Seven months—and then your uncle. It’s always somebody.”

  Clare raised her hands to the little curls on her neck.

  “I’ll promise not to ‘kick over’ for a year. I ought to know my own mind by then; if I don’t, I can’t have got one.”

  Lady Mont smoothed the eiderdown.

  “Cross your heart.”

  “I don’t think you should,” said Dinny quickly.

  Clare crossed her fingers on her breast.

  “I’ll cross where it ought to be.”

  Lady Mont rose.

  “She ought to stay here to-night, don’t you think, Dinny?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll tell them, then. Sea-green IS your colour, Dinny. Lawrence says I haven’t one.”

  “Black and white, dear.”

  “Magpies and the Duke of Portland. I haven’t been to Ascot since Michael went to Winchester—savin’ our pennies. Hilary and May are comin’ to dinner. They won’t be dressed.”

  “Oh!” said Clare suddenly: “Does Uncle Hilary know about me?”

  “Broad-minded,” murmured Lady Mont. “I can’t help bein’ sorry, you know.”

  Clare stood up.

  “Believe me, Aunt Em, Jerry’s not the sort of man who’ll let it hurt him long.”

  “Stand back to back, you two; I thought so—Dinny by an inch.”

  “I’m five foot five,” said Clare, “without shoes.”

  “Very well. When you’re tidy, come down.”

  So saying, Lady Mont swayed to the door, said to herself: “Solomon’s seal—remind Boswell,” and went out.

  Dinny returned to the fire, and resumed her stare at the flames.

  Clare’s voice, close behind her, said: “I feel inclined to sing, Dinny. A whole year’s holiday from everything. I’m glad Aunt Em made me promise. But isn’t she a scream?”

  �
�Emphatically not. She’s the wisest member of our family. Take life seriously and you’re nowhere. She doesn’t. She may want to, but she can’t.”

  “But she hasn’t any real worries.”

  “Only a husband, three children, several grandchildren, two households, three dogs, some congenital gardeners, not enough money, and two passions—one for getting other people married, and one for French tapestry; besides trying hard not to get fat on it all.”

  “Oh! she’s a duck all right. What d’you advise about these ‘tendrils,’ Dinny? They’re an awful plague. Shall I shingle again?”

  “Let them grow at present, we don’t know what’s coming; it might be ringlets.”

  “Do you believe that women get themselves up to please men?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “To excite and annoy each other, then?”

  “Fashion mostly; women are sheep about appearance.”

  “And morals?”

  “Have we any? Man-made, anyway. By nature we’ve only got feelings.”

  “I’ve none now.”

  “Sure?”

  Clare laughed. “Oh! well, in hand, anyhow.” She put on her dress, and Dinny took her place at the mirror…

  The slum parson does not dine out to observe human nature. He eats. Hilary Charwell, having spent the best part of his day, including meal-times, listening to the difficulties of parishioners who had laid up no store for the morrow because they had never had store enough for today, absorbed the good food set before him with perceptible enjoyment. If he was aware that the young woman whom he had married to Jerry Corven had burst her bonds, he gave no sign of it. Though seated next to her, he never once alluded to her domestic existence, conversing freely on the election, French art, the timber wolves at Whipsnade Zoo, and a new system of building schools with roofs that could be used or not as the weather dictated. Over his face, long, wrinkled, purposeful, and shrewdly kind, flitted an occasional smile, as if he were summing something up; but he gave no indication of what that something was, except that he looked across at Dinny, as though saying: “You and I are going to have a talk presently.”

  No such talk occurred, for he was summoned by telephone to a death-bed before he had finished his glass of port. Mrs. Hilary went with him.