Overture to Death

“It takes me differently. I can hardly speak. I expect I’m turning purple, and my top lip seems to be twitching.”

“It’ll go off in a minute,” said Dinah. “Henry, what would you do if you suddenly knew you had dominion over all you survey? That sounds Biblical. I mean, suppose you could alter the minds — and that means the destinies — of all the people living down there — what would you do?”

“Put it into Cousin Eleanor’s heart to be a missionary in Polynesia.”

“Or into Miss Campanula’s to start a nudist circle in Chipping.”

“Or my father might go surrealist.”

“No, but honestly, what would you do?” Dinah insisted.

“I don’t know. I suppose I would try and simplify them. People seem to me to be much too busy and complicated.”

“Make them kinder?”

“Well, that might do it, certainly.”

“It would do it. If Miss Campanula and your Cousin Eleanor left off being jealous of each other, and if Dr. Templett was sorrier for his wife, and if Mrs. Ross minded more about upsetting other people’s applecarts, we wouldn’t have any more scenes like the one last night.”

“Perhaps not,” Henry agreed. “But you wouldn’t stop them falling in love, if you can call whatever they feel for each other, falling in love. I’m in love with you, as I suppose you know. It makes me feel all noble minded and generous and kind; but, just the same, if I had a harem of invalid wives, they wouldn’t stop me telling you I loved you, Dinah. Dinah, I love you so desperately.”

“Do you, Henry?”

“You’d never believe how desperately. This is all wrong. I’d thought out the way I’d tell you. First we were to have a nice conversation and then, when we’d got to the right place, I was going to tell you.”

“All elegant like?”

“Yes. But it’s too much for me.”

“It’s too much for me, too,” said Dinah.

They faced each other, two solitary figures. All their lives they were to remember this moment, and yet they did not see each other’s face very clearly, for their sight was blurred by the agitation in their hearts.

“Oh, Dinah,” said Henry. “Darling, darling Dinah, I do love you so much.”

He reached out his hand blindly and touched her arm. It was a curious tentative gesture. Dinah cried out: “Henry, my dear.”

She raised his hand to her cold cheek.

“Oh, God!” said Henry, and pulled her into his arms.

Jocelyn’s groom, hacking quietly along the road to Cloudyfold, looked up and saw two figures locked together against the wintry sky.

ii

“We must come back to earth,” said Dinah. “There’s the church clock. It must be eight.”

“I’ll kiss you eight times to wind up the spell,” said Henry. He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, the tips of her ears, and he kissed her twice on the mouth.

“There!” he muttered. “The spell’s wound up.”

“Don’t!” cried Dinah.

“What, my darling?”

“Don’t quote from Macbeth. It couldn’t be more unlucky!”

“Who says so?”

“In the theatre everybody says so.”

“I cock a snook at them! We’re not in the theatre: we’re on top of the world.”

“All the same, I’m crossing my thumbs.”

“When shall we be married?”

“Married?” Dinah caught her breath;, and Henry’s pure happiness was threaded with a sort of wonder when he saw that she was no longer lost in bliss.

“What is it?” he said. “What has happened? Does it frighten you to think of our marriage?”

“It’s only that we have come back to earth,” Dinah said sombrely. “I don’t know when we’ll be married. You see, something pretty difficult has happened.”

“Good Lord, darling, what are you going to falter in my ear? Not a family curse, or dozens of blood relations stark ravers in lunatic asylums?”

“Not quite. It’s your Cousin Eleanor.”

“Eleanor!” cried Henry. “She scarcely exists.”

“Wait till you hear. I’ve got to tell you now. I’ll tell you as we go down.”

“Say first that you’re as happy as I am.”

“I couldn’t be happier.”

“I love you, Dinah.”

“I love you, Henry.”

“The world is ours,” said Henry. “Let us go down and take it.”

iii

They followed the shoulder of the hill by a path that led down to the rectory garden. Dinah went in front, and their conversation led to repeated halts.

“I’m afraid,” Dinah began, “that I don’t much care for your Cousin Eleanor.”

“You astonish me, darling,” said Henry. “For myself, I regard her as a prize bitch.”

“That’s all right, then. I couldn’t mention this before you’d declared yourself, because it’s all about us.”

“You mean the day before yesterday when she lurked outside your drawing-room door? Dinah, if she hadn’t been there, what would you have done?”

This led to a prolonged halt.

“The thing is,” said Dinah presently, “she must have told your father.”

“So she did.”

“He’s spoken to you?”

“He has.”

“Oh, Henry!”

“That sounds as if you were settling a quotation. Yes, we had a grand interview. ‘What is this I hear, sir, of your attentions to Miss Dinah Copeland?’ ‘Forgive me, sir, but I refuse to answer you.’ ‘Do you defy me, Henry?’ ‘With all respect, sir, I do!’ That sort of thing.”

“He doesn’t want it?”

“Eleanor has told him he doesn’t, blast her goggling eyes!”

“Why? Because I’m the poor parson’s daughter, or because I’m on the stage, or just because he hates the sight of me?”

“I don’t think he hates the sight of you.”

“I suppose he wants you to marry a proud heiress.”

“I suppose he does. It doesn’t matter a tuppe

“But it does. You haven’t heard. Miss Prentice came to see Daddy last night.”

Henry stopped dead and stared at her.

“She said — she said — ”

“Go on.”

“She told him we were meeting, and that you were keeping it from your father, but he’d found out and was terribly upset and felt we’d both been very underhand and — oh, she must have been absolutely foul! She must have sort of hinted that we were — ” Dinah boggled at this and fell silent.

“That we were living in roaring sin?” Henry suggested.

“Yes.”

“My God, the minds of these women! Surely the rector didn’t pay any attention.”

“She’s so loathesomely plausible. Do you remember the autumn day, weeks ago, soon after I came back, when you drove me to Moorton Bridge and we picnicked and didn’t come back till the evening?”

“Every second of it.”

“She’d found out about that. There was no reason why the whole world shouldn’t know, but I hadn’t told Daddy about it. It had been such a glowing, marvellous day that I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Me, too.”

“Well, now, you see, it looks all fishy and dubious, and Daddy feels I have been behaving in an underhand ma

“He didn’t believe — ”

“No, of course he didn’t believe that. But, all the same, you know he’s frightfully muddled about sex.”

“They all are,” said Henry, with youthful gloom.

“And with Eleanor and Idris hurling their inhibitions in his teeth — ”

“I know. Well, anyway, the upshot was, he forbade me to see you alone. I said I wouldn’t promise. It was the first really deadly row we’ve ever had. I fancy he prayed about it for hours after I’d gone to bed. It’s very vexing to lie in bed knowing somebody in the room below is praying away like mad about you. And, you see, I adore the man. At one moment I thought I would say my own prayers, but the only thing I could think of was the old Commination Service. You know: ‘Cursed is he that smiteth his neighbour secretly. Amen.’ ”