‘Perhaps not.’
Michael made a restless tour of his little room.
‘I think the whole thing is way below any question of just yes or no. It’s a case of wounded pride, and when you’ve got that, the other emotions don’t run straight. You ought to know that, sir. You must have had similar cases, when fellows have been court-martialled.’
The word seemed to strike the General with the force of a revelation. He stared at his nephew and did not answer.
‘Wilfrid,’ said Michael, ‘is being court-martialled, and it isn’t a short sharp business like a real court-martial – it’s a desperate long-drawn-out affair, with no end to it that I can grasp.’
‘I see,’ said the General, quietly: ‘But he should never have let Dinny in for it.’
Michael smiled. ‘Does love ever do what’s correct?’
‘That’s the modern view, anyway.’
‘According to report, the ancient one, too.’
The General went to the window and stood looking out.
‘I don’t like to go and see Dinny,’ he said, without turning round; ‘it seems like worrying her. Her mother feels the same. And there’s nothing we can do.’
His voice, troubled not for himself, touched Michael.
‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that in some way it’ll all be over very soon. And whichever way will be better for them and all of us than this.’
The General turned round.
‘Let’s hope so. I wanted to ask you to keep in touch with us, and not let Dinny do anything without letting us know. It’s very hard waiting down there. I won’t keep you now; and thank you, it’s been a relief. Good-bye, Michael!’
He grasped his nephew’s hand, squeezed it firmly, and was gone.
Michael thought: ‘Hanging in the wind! There’s nothing worse. Poor old boy!’
Chapter Thirty-three
COMPSON GRICE, who had no mean disposition and a certain liking for Michael, went out to lunch mindful of his promise. A believer in the power of meals to solve difficulties, he would normally have issued an invitation and obtained his information over the second or third glass of really old brandy. But he was afraid of Wilfrid. Discussing his simple sole meunière and half-bottle of Chablis, he decided on a letter. He wrote it in the Club’s little green-panelled writing-room, with a cup of coffee by his side and a cigar in his mouth.
The Hotch Potch Club.
Friday.
DEAR DESERT,
In view of the remarkable success of The Leopard and the probability of further large sales, I feel that I ought to know definitely what you would like me to do with the royalty cheques when they fall due. Perhaps you would be so good as to tell me whether you contemplate going back to the East, and if so when; and at the same time let me have an address to which I can remit with safety. Possibly you would prefer that I should simply pay your royalties into your bank, whatever that is, and take their receipt. Hitherto our financial transactions have been somewhat lean, but The Leopard will certainly have – indeed, is already having – an influence on the sales of your two previous books; and it will be advisable that you should keep me in touch with your whereabouts in future. Shall you be in Town much longer? I am always delighted to see you, if you care to look in.
With hearty congratulations and best wishes,
I am, sincerely yours,
COMPSON GRICE.
This letter, in his elegant and upright hand, he addressed to Cork Street and sent at once by the club messenger. The remains of his recess he spent sounding in his rather whispering voice the praises of his French Canadian product, and then took a taxi back to Covent Garden. A clerk met him in the lobby.
‘Mr Desert is waiting up in your room, sir.’
‘Good!’ said Compson Grice, subduing a tremor and thinking: ‘Quick work!’
Wilfrid was standing at a window which commanded a slanting view of Covent Garden market; and Grice was shocked when he turned round – the face was so dark and wasted and had such a bitter look: the hand, too, had an unpleasant dry heat in the feel of it.
‘So you got my letter?’ he said.
‘Thanks. Here’s the address of my bank. Better pay all cheques into it and take their receipt.’
‘You don’t look too fearfully well. Are you off again?’
‘Probably. Well, good-bye, Grice. Thanks for all you’ve done.’
Compson Grice said, with real feeling: ‘I’m terribly sorry it’s hit you so hard.’
Wilfrid shrugged and turned to the door.
When he was gone his publisher stood, twisting the bank’s address, in his hands. Suddenly he said out loud: ‘I don’t like his looks; I absolutely don’t!’ And he went to the telephone….
Wilfrid walked north; he had another visit to pay. He reached the museum just as Adrian was having his cup of ‘Dover’ tea and bun.
‘Good!’ said Adrian, rising. ‘I’m glad to see you. There’s a spare cup. Do sit down.’
He had experienced the same shock as Grice at the look on Desert’s face and the feel of his hand.
Wilfrid took a sip of tea. ‘May I smoke?’ He lighted a cigarette, and sat, hunched in his chair. Adrian waited for him to speak.
‘Sorry to butt in on you like this,’ said Wilfrid, at last, ‘but I’m going back into the blue. I wanted to know which would hurt Dinny least – just to clear out or to write.’
Adrian lived through a wretched and bleak minute.
‘You mean that if you see her you can’t trust yourself.’ Desert gave a shivering shrug.
‘It’s not that exactly. It sounds brutal, but I’m so fed up that I don’t feel anything. If I saw her – I might wound her. She’s been an angel. I don’t suppose you can understand what’s happened in me. I can’t myself. I only know that I want to get away from everything and everybody.’
Adrian nodded.
‘I was told you’d been ill – you don’t think that accounts for your present feeling? For God’s sake don’t make a mistake in your feelings now!’
Wilfrid smiled.
‘I’m used to malaria. It’s not that. You’ll laugh, but I feel like bleeding to death inside. I want to get to where nothing and nobody remind me. And Dinny reminds me more than anyone.’
‘I see,’ said Adrian gravely. And he was silent, passing his hand over his bearded chin. Then he got up and began to walk about.
‘Do you think it’s fair to Dinny or yourself not to try what seeing her might do?’
Wilfrid answered, almost with violence: ‘I tell you, I should hurt her.’
‘You’ll hurt her any way; her eggs are all in one basket. And look here, Desert! You published that poem deliberately. I always understood you did so as a form of expiation, even though you had asked Dinny to marry you. I’m not such a fool as to want you to go on with Dinny if your feelings have really changed; but are you sure they have?’
‘My feelings haven’t changed. I simply have none. Being a pariah dog has killed them.’
‘Do you realize what you’re saying?’
‘Perfectly! I knew I was a pariah from the moment I recanted, and that whether people knew it or not didn’t matter. All the same – it has mattered.’
‘I see,’ said Adrian again, and came to a standstill. ‘I suppose that’s natural.’
‘Whether it is to others, I don’t know; it is to me. I am out of the herd, and I’ll stay there. I don’t complain. I side against myself.’ He spoke with desperate energy.
Adrian said, very gently: ‘Then you just want to know how to hurt Dinny least? I can’t tell you: I wish I could. I gave you the wrong advice when you came before. Advice is no good, anyway. We have to wrestle things out for ourselves.’
Wilfrid stood up. ‘Ironical, isn’t it! I was driven to Dinny by my loneliness. I’m driven away from her by it. Well, good-bye, sir; I don’t suppose I shall ever see you again. And thanks for trying to help me.’
‘I wish to God I could.’
Wilfrid smiled
the sudden smile that gave him his charm.
‘I’ll try what one more walk will do. I may see some writing on the wall. Anyway, you’ll know I didn’t want to hurt her more than I could help. Good-bye!’
Adrian’s tea was cold and his bun uneaten. He pushed them away. He felt as if he had failed Dinny, and yet for the life of him could not see what he could have done. That young man looked very queer! ‘Bleeding to death inside!’ Gruesome phrase! And true, judging by his face! Fibre sensitive as his, and a consuming pride! ‘Going back into the blue.’ To roam about in the East – a sort of Wandering Jew; become one of those mysterious Englishmen found in out-of-the-way places, with no origins that they would speak of, and no future but their present. He filled a pipe and tried his best to feel that, after all, in the long run Dinny would be happier unmarried to him. And he did not succeed. There was only one flowering of real love in a woman’s life, and this was hers. He had no doubt on that point. She would make shift – oh! yes; but she would have missed ‘the singing and the gold’. And, grabbing his battered hat, he went out. He strode along in the direction of Hyde Park; then, yielding to a whim, diverged towards Mount Street.
When Blore announced him his sister was putting the last red stitches in the tongue of one of the dogs in her French tapestry. She held it up.
‘It ought to drip. He’s looking at that bunny. Would blue drips be right?’
‘Grey, Em, on that background.’
Lady Mont considered her brother sitting in a small chair with his long legs hunched up.
‘You look like a war correspondent – camp stools, and no time to shave. I do want Dinny to be married, Adrian. She’s twenty-six. All that about bein’ yellow. They could go to Corsica.’
Adrian smiled. Em was so right, and yet so wrong!
‘Con was here today,’ resumed his sister, ‘he’s been seein’ Michael. Nobody knows anythin’. And Dinny just goes for walks with Kit and Dandy, Fleur says, and nurses Catherine, and sits readin’ books without turnin’ the page.’
Adrian debated whether to tell her of Desert’s visit to him.
‘And Con says,’ went on Lady Mont, ‘that he can’t make two ends meet this year – Clare’s weddin’ and the Budget, and Jean expectin’ – he’ll have to cut down some trees, and sell the horses. We’re hard up, too. It’s lucky Fleur’s got so much. Money is such a bore. What do you think?’
Adrian gave a start.
‘Well, no one expects a good thing nowadays, but one wants enough to live on.’
‘It’s havin’ dependants. Boswell’s got a sister than can only walk with one leg; and Johnson’s wife’s got cancer – poor thing! And everybody’s got somebody or somethin’. Dinny says at Condaford her mother does everythin’ in the village. So how it’s to go on, I don’t know. Lawrence doesn’t save a penny.’
‘We’re falling between two stools, Em; and one fine day we shall reach the floor with a bump.’
‘I suppose we shall live in almshouses.’ And Lady Mont lifted her work up to the light. ‘No, I shan’t make it drip. Or else go to Kenya; they say there’s somethin’ that pays there.’
‘What I hate,’ said Adrian with sudden energy, ‘is the thought of Mr Tom Noddy or somebody buying Condaford and using it for week-end cocktail parties.’
‘I should go and be a Banshee in the woods. There couldn’t be Condaford without Cherrells.’
‘There dashed well could, Em. There’s a confounded process called evolution; and England is its home.’
Lady Mont sighed, and, getting up, swayed over to her parakeet.
‘Polly! You and I will go and live in an almshouse.’
Chapter Thirty-four
WHEN Compson Grice telephoned to Michael, or rather to Fleur, for Michael was not in, he sounded embarrassed.
‘Is there any message I can give him, Mr Grice?’
‘Your husband asked me to find out Desert’s movements. Well, Desert’s just been in to see me, and practically said he was off again; but – er – I didn’t like his looks, and his hand was like a man’s in fever.’
‘He’s been having malaria.’
‘Oh! Ah! By the way, I’m sending you a book I’m sure you’ll like; it’s by that French Canadian.’
‘Thank you, very much. I’ll tell Michael when he comes in.’
And Fleur stood thinking. Ought she to pass this on to Dinny? Without consulting Michael she did not like to, and he, tied tightly to the House just now, might not even be in to dinner. How like Wilfrid to keep one on tenterhooks! She always felt that she knew him better than either Dinny or Michael. They were convinced of a vein of pure gold in him. She, for whom he had once had such a pressing passion, could only assess that vein at nine carat. ‘That, I suppose,’ she thought, rather bitterly, ‘is because my nature is lower than theirs.’ People assessed others according to their own natures, didn’t they? Still, it was difficult to give high value to one whose mistress she had not become, and who had then fled into the blue. There was always extravagance in Michael’s likings; in Dinny – well, Dinny she did not really understand.
And so she went back to the letters she was writing. They were important, for she was rallying the best and brightest people to meet some high-caste Indian ladies who were over for the Conference. She had nearly finished when she was called to the telephone by Michael, asking if there were any message from Compson Grice. Having given him what news there was, she went on:
‘Are you coming in to dinner?… Good! I dread dining alone with Dinny; she’s so marvellously cheerful, it gives me the creeps. Not worry other people and all that, of course; but if she showed her feelings more it would worry us less… Uncle Con! … That’s rather funny, the whole family seems to want now the exact opposite of what they wanted at first. I suppose it’s the result of watching her suffer… Yes, she went in the car to sail Kit’s boat on the Round Pond; they sent Dandy and the boat back in the car, and are walking home… All right dear boy. Eight o’clock; don’t be late if you can help it… Oh! Here are Kit and Dinny. Good-bye!’
Kit had come into the room. His face was brown, his eyes blue, his sweater the same colour as his eyes, his shorts darker blue; his green stockings were gartered below his bare knees, and his brown shoes had brogues; he wore no cap on his bright head.
‘Auntie Dinny has gone to lie down. She had to sit on the grass. She says she’ll be all right soon. D’you think she’s going to have measles? I’ve had them, Mummy, so when she’s isolated I can still see her. We saw a man who frightened her.’
‘What sort of man?’
‘He didn’t come near; a tall sort of man; he had his hat in his hand, and when he saw us, he almost ran.’
‘How do you know he saw you?’
‘Oh! he went like that, and scooted.’
‘Was that in the Park?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which?’
‘The Green Park.’
‘Was he thin, and dark in the face?’
‘Yes; do you know him too?’
‘Why “too”, Kit? Did Auntie Dinny know him?’
‘I think so; she said: “Oh!” like that, and put her hand here. And then she looked after him; and then she sat down on the grass. I fanned her with her scarf. I love Auntie Dinny. Has she a husband?’
‘No.’
When he had gone up, Fleur debated. Dinny must have realized that Kit would describe everything. She decided only to send up a message and some sal volatile.
The answer came back: ‘I shall be all right by dinner.’
But at dinner-time a further message came to say she still felt rather faint: might she just go to bed and have a long night?
Thus it was that Michael and Fleur sat down alone.
‘It was Wilfrid, of course.’
Michael nodded.
‘I wish to God he’d go. It’s so wretched – the whole thing! D’you remember that passage in Turgenev, where Litvinov watches the train smoke curling away over the fields?’
‘All Dinny’s tissue going up in smoke.’
‘Yes,’ said Fleur between tight lips. ‘But the fire will burn out.’
‘And leave –?’
‘Oh! She’ll be recognizable.’
Michael looked hard at the partner of his board. She was regarding the morsel of fish on her fork. With a little set smile on her lips she raised it to her mouth and began champing, as if chewing the cud of experience. Recognizable! Yes, she was as pretty as ever, though more firmly moulded, as if in tune with the revival of shape. He turned his eyes away, for he still squirmed when he thought of that business four years ago, of which he had known so little, suspected so much, and talked not at all. Smoke! Did all human passion burn away and drift in a blue film over the fields, obscure for a moment the sight of the sun and the shapes of the crops and the trees, then fade into air and leave the clear hard day; and no difference anywhere? Not quite! For smoke was burnt tissue, and where fire had raged there was alteration. Of the Dinny he had known from a small child up, the outline would be changed – hardened, sharpened, refined, withered? And he said:
‘I must be back at the House by nine, the Chancellor’s speaking. Why one should listen to him, I don’t know, but one does.’
‘Why you should listen to anyone will always be a mystery. Did you ever know any speaker in the House change anyone’s opinions?’
‘No,’ said Michael with a wry smile, ‘but one lives in hopes. We sit day after day talking of some blessed measure, and then take a vote, with the same result as if we’d taken it at the end of the first two speeches. And that’s gone on for hundreds of years.’
‘So filial!’ said Fleur. ‘Kit thinks Dinny is going to have measles. He’s asking, too, if she has a husband…. Coaker, bring the coffee, please. Mr Mont has to go.’
When he had kissed her and gone, Fleur went up to the nurseries. Catherine was the soundest of sleepers, and it was pleasant to watch her, a pretty child with hair that would probably be like her own and eyes so hesitating between grey
and hazel that they gave promise of becoming ice-green. One small hand was crumpled against her cheek, and she breathed lightly as a flower. Nodding to the nurse, Fleur pushed open the door into the other nursery. To wake Kit was dangerous. He would demand biscuits, and, very likely, milk, want light conversation, and ask her to read to him. But in spite of the door’s faint creaking he did not wake. His bright head was thrust determinedly into the pillow from under which the butt of a pistol protruded. It was hot, and he had thrown back the clothes, so that, by the glimmer of the night-light, his blue-pyjama’d figure was disclosed to the knees. His skin was brown and healthy, and he had a Forsyte’s chin. Fleur moved up and stood quite close. He looked ‘such a duck’, thus determinedly asleep in face of the opposition put up by his quickening imagination. With feathered finger-tips she gripped the sheet, pulled it up, and gingerly let it down over him; then stood back with her hands on her hips, and one eyebrow raised. He was at the best age in life, and would be for another two years until he went to school. No sex to bother him as yet! Everybody kind to him; everything an adventure out of books. Books! Michael’s old books, her own, the few written since fit for children. He was at the wonderful age! She looked swiftly round the twilit room. His gun and sword lay ready on a chair! One supported disarmament, and armed children to the teeth! His other toys, mostly mechanized, would be in the schoolroom. No; there on the window-sill was the boat he had sailed with Dinny, its sails still set; and there on a cushion in the corner was ‘the silver dog’, aware of her but too lazy to get up. She could see the slim feather of his tail cocked and waving gently at her. And, afraid lest she might disturb this admirable peace, she blew a kiss to both of them and stole back through the door. Nodding again to the nurse, she inspected Catherine’s eyelashes and went out. Down the stairs she tip-toed to the floor on which was Dinny’s room, above her own. Was it unfeeling not to look in and ask if there were anything she wanted? She moved closer to the door. Only half past nine! She could not be asleep. Probably she would not sleep at all. It was hateful to think of her lying there silent and unhappy. Perhaps to talk
The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3 Page 55