by Martin Boyd
She had no reply to this letter. She thought that he might have written a short note before the ship left Fremantle, as he would have known from her telegram a week earlier that she was not coming. Then she thought that he might have waited until he had time to digest her letter, and have written from Colombo. When no letter came from there she thought that he had spoken the truth, and that he would not forgive her.
She did not tell Wolfie that she had intended to leave him. She thought this might be unfair. It was certainly more agreeable to herself, but her mind was not sufficiently afflicted by Puritanism to think that therefore it must be wrong. She came, on the contrary, to the conclusion that it would be wrong to tell him, as it would be gratuitous cruelty to let him know, at a time when he was being avoided by many of his former friends, that his wife also had intended to leave him.
Because of the tabu which attached to him as a German, they decided at last to sell the house at Brighton and move into the country. Steven offered them one of the farms at Westhill, which had become vacant owing to the two young men who rented it leaving for the war.
In addition to its isolation, it had the advantage that half the people in the neighbourhood had names as German as their own, and that they had known Diana since childhood.
A few months after they had moved in here, she had a letter from Russell. He said that he had not written before, not because he had vindictive feelings, but because he had not known what to say. He was writing now to tell her that he was engaged to Miss Rockingham, who, as Diana knew, had travelled home on the ship with him. They were to be married on the day after he was writing. He had a temporary commission in the Grenadier Guards. He would always remember the happy times he had spent with her in Melbourne, and particularly their last afternoon at Mornington.
Diana wrote to congratulate him on his marriage, and to tell him her own news:
“We came up here because it was difficult for Wolfie in Melbourne. It is twenty minutes walk from Westhill, and we only see Steven and Laura and people we know well. Harry has repudiated his parentage and changed his name to Fingal. This is much admired, but it was a shock to Wolfie. Cynthia on the other hand, is in disgrace for her kindness to him at the theatre, and is called a pro-German. So it is better to be away. Our little house is on a cleared hill-top, and on a fine day we can see far into Gippsland. It is something like the farmhouse in the picture “Winter Sunlight”, which you said one day might be my spiritual home. I think you were right. I suppose one is always most at home in the places one has lived in as a child. I used to ride over here when I was ten, as Mrs Schmidt, who lived here then, used to give us a special sort of apple tart she made.
“I am so glad that you are marrying Miss Rockingham. I liked her very much. She was so graceful in every way, not only in her movements. As she is a friend of the Wyckhams, I expect you will see Josie sometimes. I hope you do.”
He replied to her letter, and after that they corresponded regularly, writing four or five letters each a year. She wondered if Miss Rockingham (she found it hard to think of his wife by any other name) objected, but when she heard from Josie that her establishments in Belgrave Square and Derbyshire were on such a considerable scale, she doubted that they saw each other’s correspondence. It all seemed very remote to her, as she sat with Wolfie at lunch on the veranda, while the winter sunlight gleamed on the hock bottle, and tinged with pale gold the far purple forests of Gippsland.
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