Страница 60 из 61
Di
“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.”
Di
She had no talk with Dornford all that Saturday, preoccupied as he was with the convictions of the neighbouring farmers. But after di
“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, Di
“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.”
“Di
“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, Di
“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 Di
“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.
“I’m afraid,” said Dornford suddenly, “I don’t want to go to Mass. I don’t get so many chances to be with you, Di
“Well, it IS rather lovely for indoors.”
They turned off to the left, and, passing through Dorchester, came to the river by the bend and bluffs at Clifton. Leaving the car, they procured a punt and after drifting a little, moored it to the bank.
“This,” said Di
“No, but it’s often better.”
“I wish we’d brought Foch; he likes any kind of vehicle where he can sit on one’s feet and get a nice sick feeling.”
But in that hour and more on the river they hardly talked at all. It was as if he understood—which, as a fact, he did not—how, in that drowsing summer silence, on water half in sunlight, half in shade, she was coming closer to him than ever before. There was, indeed, to Di
By the time they were back at the Grange, it had been one of the most silent and satisfactory mornings she had ever known. But between his: “Thank you, Di
Bidding him ‘Good night’ at the foot of the stairs, she felt a keen pleasure at the dashed look on his face, and an equally keen sense that she was ‘a beast.’ She entered her bedroom in a curious turmoil, at odds with herself, and him, and all the world.
“Damn!” she muttered, feeling for the switch.
A low laugh startled her. Clare, in her pyjamas, was perched on the window-seat, smoking a cigarette.
“Don’t turn up, Di
Three wide-opened casements laid bare the night under a teazle-blue heaven trembling with stars. Di
“Where have you been ever since lunch? I didn’t even know you were back.”
“Have a gasper? You seem to want soothing.”
Di
“I do. I’m sick of myself.”
“So was I,” murmured Clare, “but I feel better.”
“What have you been doing, then?”
Again Clare laughed, and in the sound was something that made Di
“Seeing Tony Croom?”
Clare leaned back and her throat showed pale.
“Yes, my dear. The Ford and I went over. Di
“Oh!” said Di
Her sister’s voice, warm and languid, and satisfied, made her cheeks go hot and her breath come quickly.
“Yes, I prefer him as lover to a friend. How sane is the law—it knew what we ought to have been! And I like his converted cottages. Only there’s a fireplace upstairs that still wants opening up.”
“Are you going to get married, then?”
“My dear, how can we? No, we shall live in sin. Later, I suppose, we shall see. I think this ‘nisi’ period is very thoughtful. Tony will come up in the middle of the week, and I shall go down at the week-end. And all so legal.”
Di
“I’m happier than I’ve been for ever so long. It doesn’t do to make other people wretched. Also, women ought to be loved, it suits them somehow. Men, too.”
Di
“Good-night, old thing! Rub noses.”