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Withdrawing from the night, Di
When her sister had gone, she moved restlessly up and down her dark room.
“It doesn’t do to make people wretched!… Women ought to be loved… Men, too.” Quite a minor prophet! Converted by lightning, like Paul on his way to wherever it was. Up and down, up and down, till at last, quite tired, she turned on the light, threw off her clothes, and sat down in a wrapper to brush her hair. Brushing away at it, she stared at her image in the glass with fascination, as if she had not seen herself for a long time. The fever with which she had been infected seemed still in her cheeks and eyes and hair, she looked u
Someone said: “Who is that? Is anyone there?”
A figure stood in the open window; by the voice she knew that it was Dornford, and said:
“Only me.”
“ONLY you!”
She saw him come in and stand beside the chair, looking down. He was still in his evening clothes, and, with his back to the faint light, she could hardly see his face at all.
“Anything the matter, Di
“Just couldn’t sleep. And you?”
“I’ve been finishing a bit of work in the library. I went out on the terrace for a breath, and saw this window open.”
“Which of us is going to say: ‘How marvellous’?”
Neither of them said anything. But Di
Suddenly, Dornford put his hands to his head and turned his back on her.
“Forgive my being like this,” she murmured, “I naturally didn’t expect—”
He turned round again, and dropped on his knees beside her. “Di
She put her hands on his hair and said quietly: “—it’s the begi
CHAPTER 39
Adrian sat writing to his wife.
“Condaford: August 10.
“MY VERY DEAR,—
“I promised to give you a true and particular account of how Di
“At the top of the nave, in the more holy positions, came our own gang, County and would-be County. The more I looked at County the more I thought how merciful that the states of life into which it has pleased God to call us have prevented the Charwells of our generation from looking County. Even Con and Liz, who have to stick down here all the time, haven’t got quite the hang of it. Remarkable, if you think, that there is such a thing as ‘County’ left; but I suppose it’ll last while there’s ‘huntin’ and shootin’. I remember, as a boy, out hunting (when I could screw a mount out of our stables or somebody else’s), I used to lurk out of reach of people for fear of having to talk to them, their words and music were so trying. Better to be human than County or even would-be County. I must say that Clare, after all her jollification in the courts, carried it off amazingly, and so far as I could see, nobody had the nerve to show any of the feelings which, as a fact, at this time of day, they probably hadn’t got. Then, a little less holy, came the village in force—Di
“The reception was held on the terrace and lawn; everybody came, schoolchildren and all, a quaint mix-up, but jolly, it seemed to me. I didn’t know I was so fond of the old place. However much one may believe in levelling-up chances, there’s something about old places. They can’t be re-created if they’re once let slip, and they focus landscape in a queer kind of way. Some villages and landscapes seem to have no core—you can’t explain why, but they feel hollow, and shallow and flat. A real old place puts heart into a neighbourhood. If the people who live in it are not just selfish pigs, it means a lot in a quiet way to people who have no actual ownership in it. The Grange is a sort of anchor to this neighbourhood. I doubt if you’d find a single villager, however poor, who grudged its existence, or wouldn’t feel the worse for its ruination. Generations of love and trouble, and goodness knows not too much money, have been spent on it, and the result is something very hand-made and special. Everything’s changing, and has got to change, no doubt, and how to save the old that’s worth saving, whether in landscape, houses, ma
“The silence in my room, when I got up here at last, was stu
“Your ever loving
“ADRIAN.”