‘Of course I would, Betty. Nearly all the best people have them nowadays.’
‘You will ’ave your joke. No, I shouldn’t like it. I’d as soon wear a wig. But my ’air’s as thick as ever. I’m wonderful for my age. I’ve got a lot to be thankful for; it’s only my stummick, an’ that’s like as if there was somethin’ there.’
Dinny saw the pain and darkness in her eyes.
‘How is Benjamin, Betty?’
The eyes changed, became amused and yet judgematic, as if she were considering a child.
‘Oh! Father’s all right, Miss; ’e never ’as anything the matter except ’is rheumatiz; ’e’s out now doin’ a bit o’ diggin’.’
‘And how’s Goldie?’ said Dinny, looking lugubriously at a goldfinch in a cage. She hated to see birds in cages, but had never been able to bring herself to say so to these old people with their small bright imprisoned pet. Besides, didn’t they say that if you released a tame goldfinch, it would soon be pecked to death?
‘Oh! ’ said the old lady, ‘ ’e thinks ’e’s someone since you give him that bigger cage.’ Her eyes brightened. ‘Fancy the Captain married, Miss Dinny, and that dreadful case against him an’ all – whatever are they thinkin’ about? I never ’eard of such a thing in all my life. One of the Cherrell’s to be put in Court like that. It’s out of all knowledge.’
‘It is, Betty.’
‘I’m told she’s a fine young lady. And where’ll they be goin’ to live?’
‘Nobody knows yet; we have to wait for this case to be over. Perhaps down here, or perhaps he’ll get a post abroad. They’ll be very poor, of course.’
‘Dreadful; it never was like that in old days. The way they put upon the gentry now – oh, dear! I remember your great-grandfather, Miss Dinny, drivin’ four-in-hand when I was a little bit of a thing. Such a nice old gentleman – curtly, as you might say.’
Such references to the gentry never ceased to make Dinny feel uneasy, only too well aware that this old lady had been one of eight children brought up by a farm worker whose wages had been eleven shillings a week, and that she and her husband now existed on their Old Age pensions, after bringing up a family of seven.
‘Well, Betty dear, what can you digest, so that I can tell cook?’
‘Thank you kindly, Miss Dinny; a nice bit of lean pork do seem to lie quiet sometimes.’ Again her eyes grew dark and troubled. ‘I ’ave such dreadful pain; really sometimes I feel I’d be glad to go ’ome.’
‘Oh! no, Betty dear. With a little proper feeding I know you’re going to feel better.’
The old lady smiled below her eyes.
‘I’m wonderful for my age, so it’d never do to complain. And when are the bells goin’ to ring for you, Miss Dinny?’
‘Don’t mention them, Betty. They won’t ring of their own accord – that’s certain.’
‘Ah! People don’t marry young, and ’ave the families they did in my young days. My old Aunt ’ad eighteen an’ reared eleven.’
‘There doesn’t seem room or work for them now, does there?’
‘Aye! The country’s changed.’
‘Less down here than in most places, thank goodness.’ And Dinny’s eyes wandered over the room where these two old people had spent some fifty years of life; from brick floor to raftered ceiling it was scrupulously clean and had a look of homely habit.
‘Well, Betty, I must go. I’m staying in London just now with a friend, and have to get back there this evening. I’ll tell cook to send some little things that’ll be better for you than pork even. Don’t get up!’
But the little old woman was on her feet, her eyes looking out from her very soul.
‘I am that glad to ’ave seen you, Miss Dinny. God bless you! And I do ’ope the Captain won’t ’ave any trouble with those dreadful people.’
‘Good-bye, Betty dear, and remember me to Benjamin,’ and pressing the old lady’s hand Dinny went out to where the dogs were waiting for her on the flagged pathway. As always after such visits she felt humble and inclined to cry. Roots! That was what she missed in London, what she would miss in the ‘great open spaces’. She walked to the bottom of a narrow straggling beechwood, and entered it through a tattered gate that she did not even have to open. She mounted over the damp beech mast which smelled sweetly as of husks; to the left a grey-blue sky was rifted by the turning beeches, and to her right stretched fallow ground where a squatting hare turned and raced for the hedgerow; a pheasant rose squawking before one of the dogs and rocketed over the wood. She emerged from the trees at the top, and stood looking down at the house, long and stone-coloured, broken by magnolias and the trees on the lawn; smoke was rising from two chimneys, and the fantails speckled with white one gable. She breathed deeply, and for full ten minutes stood there, like a watered plant drawing up the food of its vitality. The scent was of leaves and turned earth and of rain not far away; the last time she had stood there had been at the end of May, and she had inhaled that scent of summer which is at once a memory and a promise, an aching and a draught of delight….
After an early tea she started back, in the now closed car, sitting beside Fleur.
‘I must say,’ said that shrewd young woman, ‘Condaford is the most peaceful place I was ever in. I should die of it, Dinny. The rurality of Lippinghall is nothing thereto.’
‘Old and mouldering, um?’
‘Well, I always tell Michael that your side of his family is one of the least expressed and most interesting phenomena left in England. You’re wholly unvocal, utterly out of the limelight. Too unsensational for the novelists, and yet you’re there, and go on being there, and I don’t quite know how. Every mortal thing’s against you, from Death Duties down to gramophones. But you persist generally at the ends of the earth, doing things that nobody knows or cares anything about. Most of your sort haven’t even got Condafords now to come home and die in; and yet you still have roots, and a sense of duty. I’ve got neither, you know, I suppose that comes of being half French. My father’s family – the Forsytes – may have roots, but they haven’t a sense of duty – not in the same way; or perhaps it’s a sense of service that I mean. I admire it, you know, Dinny, but it bores me stiff. It’s making you go and blight your young life over this Ferse business. Duty’s a disease, Dinny; an admirable disease.’
‘What do you think I ought to do about it?’
‘Have your instincts out. I can’t imagine anything more ageing than what you’re doing now. As for Diana, she’s of the same sort – the Montjoys have a kind of Condaford up in Dumfriesshire – I admire her for sticking to Ferse, but I think it’s quite crazy of her. It can only end one way, and that’ll be the more unpleasant the longer it’s put off.’
‘Yes; I feel she’s riding for a bad fall, but I hope I should do the same.’
‘I know I shouldn’t,’ said Fleur, cheerfully.
‘I don’t believe that anybody knows what they’ll do about anything until it comes to the point.’
‘The thing is never to let anything come to a point.’
Fleur spoke with a tang in her voice, and Dinny saw her lips harden. She always found Fleur attractive, because mystifying.
‘You haven’t seen Ferse,’ she said, ‘and without seeing him you can’t appreciate how pathetic he is.’
‘That’s sentiment, my dear. I’m not sentimental.’
‘I’m sure you’ve had a past, Fleur; and you can’t have had that without being sentimental.’
Fleur gave her a quick look, and trod on the accelerator.
‘Time I turned on my lights,’ she said.
For the rest of the journey she talked on Art, Letters, and other unimportant themes. It was nearly eight o’clock when she dropped Dinny at Oakley Street.
Diana was in, already dressed for dinner.
‘Dinny,’ she said, ‘he’s out.’
Chapter Twenty-five
PORTENTOUS – those simple words!
‘After you’d gone this morning he was in a
great state – seemed to think we were all in a conspiracy to keep things from him.’
‘As we were,’ murmured Dinny.
‘Mademoiselle’s going upset him again. Soon after, I heard the front door bang – he hasn’t been back since. I didn’t tell you, but last night was dreadful. Suppose he doesn’t come back?’
‘Oh! Diana, I wish he wouldn’t.’
‘But where has he gone? What can he do? Whom can he go to? O God! It’s awful!’
Dinny looked at her in silent distress.
‘Sorry, Dinny! You must be tired and hungry. We won’t wait dinner.’
In Ferse’s ‘lair’, that charming room panelled in green shot with a golden look, they sat through an anxious meal. The shaded light fell pleasantly on their bare necks and arms, on the fruit, the flowers, the silver; and until the maid was gone they spoke of indifferent things.
‘Has he a key?’ asked Dinny.
‘Yes.’
‘Shall I ring up Uncle Adrian?’
‘What can he do? If Ronald does come in, it will be more dangerous if Adrian is here.’
‘Alan Tasburgh told me he would come any time if anyone was wanted.’
‘No, let’s keep it to ourselves tonight. Tomorrow we can see.’
Dinny nodded. She was scared, and more scared of showing it, for she was there to strengthen Diana by keeping cool and steady.
‘Come upstairs and sing to me,’ she said, at last.
Up in the drawing-room Diana sang ‘The Sprig of Thyme’, ‘Waley, Waley’, ‘The Bens of Jura’, ‘Mowing the Barley’, ‘The Castle of Dromore’, and the beauty of the room, of the songs, of the singer, brought to Dinny a sense of unreality. She had gone into a drowsy dream, when, suddenly, Diana stopped.
‘I heard the front door.’
Dinny got up and stood beside the piano.
‘Go on, don’t say anything, don’t show anything.’
Diana began again to play, and sing the Irish song ‘Must I go bound and you go free.’ Then the door was opened, and, in a mirror at the end of the room, Dinny saw Ferse come in and stand listening.
‘Sing on,’ she whispered.
‘Must I go bound, and you go free?
Must I love a lass that couldn’t love me?
Oh! was I taught so poor a wit
As love a lass would break my heart.’
And Ferse stood there listening. He looked like a man excessively tired or overcome with drink; his hair was disordered and his lips drawn back so that his teeth showed. Then he moved. He seemed trying to make no noise. He passed round to a sofa on the far side and sank down on it. Diana stopped singing. Dinny, whose hand was on her shoulder, felt her trembling with the effort to control her voice.
‘Have you had dinner, Ronald?’
Ferse did not answer, staring across the room with that queer and ghostly grin.
‘Play on,’ whispered Dinny.
Diana played the Red Sarafan; she played the fine simple tune over and over, as if making hypnotic passes towards that mute figure. When, at last, she stopped, there followed the strangest silence. Then Dinny’s nerve snapped and she said, almost sharply:
‘Is it raining, Captain Ferse?’
Ferse passed his hand down his trouser, and nodded.
‘Hadn’t you better go up and change them, Ronald?’
He put his elbows on his knees, and rested his head on his hands.
‘You must be tired, dear; won’t you go to bed? Shall I bring you something up?’
And still he did not move. The grin had faded off his lips; his eyes were closed. He looked like a man suddenly asleep, as some overdriven beast of burden might drop off between the shafts.
‘Shut the piano,’ whispered Dinny; ‘let’s go up.’
Diana closed the piano without noise and rose. With their arms linked they waited, but he did not stir.
‘Is he really asleep?’ whispered Dinny.
Ferse started up. ‘Sleep! I’m for it. I’m for it again. And I won’t stand it. By God! I won’t stand it!’
He stood a moment transfigured with a sort of fury; then, seeing them shrink, sank back on the sofa and buried his face in his hands. Impulsively Diana moved towards him.
Ferse looked up. His eyes were wild.
‘Don’t!’ he growled out. ‘Leave me alone! Go away!’
At the door Diana turned and said:
‘Ronald, won’t you see someone? Just to make you sleep – just for that.’
Ferse sprang up again. ‘I’ll see no one. Go away!’
They shrank out of the room, and up in Dinny’s bedroom stood with their arms round each other, quivering.
‘Have the maids gone to bed?’
‘They always go early, unless one of them is out.’
‘I think I ought to go down and telephone, Diana.’
‘No, Dinny, I will. Only to whom?’
That was, indeed, the question. They debated it in whispers. Diana thought her doctor; Dinny thought Adrian or Michael should be asked to go round to the doctor and bring him.
‘Was it like this before the last attack?’
‘No. He didn’t know then what was before him. I feel he might kill himself, Dinny.’
‘Has he a weapon?’
‘I gave his Service revolver to Adrian to keep for me.’
‘Razors?’
‘Only safety ones; and there’s nothing poisonous in the house.’
Dinny moved to the door.
‘I must go and telephone.’
‘Dinny, I can’t have you – ’
‘He wouldn’t touch me. It’s you that are in danger. Lock the door while I’m gone.’
And before Diana could stop her, she slid out. The lights still burned, and she stood a moment. Her room was on the second floor, facing the street. Diana’s bedroom and that of Ferse were on the drawing-room floor below. She must pass them to reach the hall and the little study where the telephone was kept. No sound came up. Diana had opened the door again and was standing there; and, conscious that at any moment she might slip past her and go down, Dinny ran forward and began descending the stairs. They creaked and she stopped to take off her shoes. Holding them in her hand she crept on past the drawing-room door. No sound came thence; and she sped down to the hall. She noticed Ferse’s hat and coat thrown across a chair, and, passing into the study, closed the door behind her. She stood a moment to recover breath, then, turning on the light, took up the directory. She found Adrian’s number and was stretching out her hand for the receiver when her wrist was seized, and with a gasp she turned to face Ferse. He twisted her round and stood pointing to the shoes still in her hand.
‘Going to give me away,’ he said, and, still holding her, took a knife out of his side pocket. Back, at the full length of her arm, Dinny looked him in the face. Somehow she was not so scared as she had been; her chief feeling was a sort of shame at having her shoes in her hand.
‘That’s silly, Captain Ferse,’ she said, icily. ‘You know we’d neither of us do you any harm.’
Ferse flung her hand from him, opened the knife, and with a violent effort severed the telephone wire. The receiver dropped on the floor. He closed the knife and put it back into his pocket. Dinny had the impression that with action he had become less unbalanced.
‘Put on your shoes,’ he said.
She did so.
‘Understand me, I’m not going to be interfered with, or messed about. I shall do what I like with myself.’
Dinny remained silent. Her heart was beating furiously, and she did not want her voice to betray it.
‘Did you hear?’
‘Yes. No one wants to interfere with you, or do anything you don’t like. We only want your good.’
‘I know that good,’ said Ferse. ‘No more of that for me.’ He went across to the window, tore a curtain aside, and looked out. ‘It’s raining like hell,’ he said, then turned and stood looking at her. His face began to twitch, his hands to clench. He moved his head from
side to side. Suddenly he shouted: ‘Get out of this room, quick! Get out, get out!’
As swiftly as she could without running Dinny slid to the door, closed it behind her and flew upstairs. Diana was still standing in the bedroom doorway. Dinny pushed her in, locked the door, and sank down breathless.
‘He came out after me,’ she gasped, ‘and cut the wire. He’s got a knife; I’m afraid there’s mania coming on. Will that door hold if he tries to break it down? Shall we put the bed against it?’
‘If we do we should never sleep.’
‘We shall never sleep, anyway,’ and she began dragging at the bed. They moved it square against the door.
‘Do the maids lock their doors?’
‘They have, since he’s been back.’
Dinny sighed with relief. The idea of going out again to warn them made her shudder. She sat on the bed looking at Diana, who was standing by the window.
‘What are you thinking of, Diana?’
‘I was thinking what I should be feeling if the children were still here.’
‘Yes, thank heaven, they’re not.’
Diana came back to the bed and took Dinny’s hand. Grip and answering grip tightened till they were almost painful.
‘Is there nothing we can do, Dinny?’
‘Perhaps he’ll sleep, and be much better in the morning. Now there’s danger I don’t feel half so sorry for him.’
Diana said stonily: ‘I’m past feeling. I wonder if he knows yet that I’m not in my own room? Perhaps I ought to go down and face it.’
‘You shan’t!’ And taking the key from the lock Dinny thrust it into the top of her stocking: its cold hardness rallied her nerves.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘we’ll lie down with our feet to the door. It’s no good getting worn out for nothing.’
A sort of apathy had come over both of them, and they lay a long time thus, close together under the eiderdown, neither of them sleeping, neither of them quite awake. Dinny had dozed off at last when a stealthy sound awakened her. She looked at Diana. She was asleep, really asleep, dead asleep. A streak of light from outside showed at the top of the door, which fitted loosely. Leaning on her elbow she strained her ears. The handle of the door was turned, and softly shaken. There was a gentle knocking.
The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3 Page 20