‘For me to discover England to him,’ she thought; ‘for him to discover the East to me.’
A gale of last November had brought down some beech trees. Looking at their wide flat roots exposed, Dinny remembered Fleur saying that selling timber was the only way to meet death duties. But Dad was only sixty-two! Jean’s cheeks the night of their arrival, when Aunt Em quoted the ‘multiply exceedingly’. A child coming! Surely a son. Jean was the sort to have sons. Another generation of Cherrells in direct line! If Wilfrid and she had a child! What then? One could not wander about with babes. A tremor of insecurity went through her. The future, how uncharted! A squirrel crossed close to her still figure and scampered up a trunk. Smiling, she watched it, lithe, red, bushy-tailed. Thank God, Wilfrid cared for animals! ‘When to God’s fondouk the donkeys are taken.’ Condaford, its bird life, woods and streams, mullions, magnolias, fantails, pastures green, surely he would like it! But her father and mother, Hubert and Jean; would he like them? Would they like him? They would not – too unshackled, too fitful, and too bitter; all that was best in him he hid away, as if ashamed of it; and his yearning for beauty they would not understand! And his change of religion, even though they would not know what he had told her, would seem to them strange and disconcerting!
Condaford Grange had neither butler nor electric light, and Dinny chose the moment when the maids had set decanters and dessert on the polished chestnut wood, lit by candles.
‘Sorry to be personal,’ she said, quite suddenly; ‘but I’m engaged.’
No one answered. Each of those four was accustomed to say and think – not always the same thing – that Dinny was the ideal person to marry, so none was happier for the thought that she was going to be married. Then Jean said:
‘To whom, Dinny?’
‘Wilfrid Desert, the second son of Lord Mullyon – he was Michael’s best man.’
‘Oh! but –!’
Dinny was looking hard at the other three. Her father’s face was impassive, as was natural, for he did not know the young man from Adam; her mother’s gentle features wore a fluttered and enquiring look; Hubert’s an air as if he were biting back vexation.
Then Lady Cherrell said: ‘But, Dinny, when did you meet him?’
‘Only ten days ago, but I’ve seen him every day since. I’m afraid it’s a first-sight case like yours, Hubert. We remembered each other from Michael’s wedding.’
Hubert looked at his plate. ‘You know he’s become a Moslem, or so they say in Khartoum.’
Dinny nodded.
‘What!’ said the General.
‘That’s the story, sir.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, I’ve never seen him. He’s been a lot about in the East.’
On the point of saying: ‘One might just as well be Moslem as Christian, if one’s not a believer,’ Dinny stopped. It was scarcely a testimonial to character.
‘I can’t understand a man changing his religion,’ said the General bluntly.
‘There doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm,’ murmured Dinny.
‘My dear, how can there be when we don’t know him?’
‘No, of course, Mother. May I ask him down? He can support a wife; and Aunt Em says his brother has no issue.’
‘Dinny!’ said the General.
‘I’m not serious, darling.’
‘What is serious,’ said Hubert, ‘is that he seems to be a sort of Bedouin – always wandering about.’
‘Two can wander about, Hubert.’
‘You’ve always said you hate to be away from Condaford.’
‘I remember when you said you couldn’t see anything in marriage, Hubert. And I’m sure both you and Father said that at one time, Mother. Have any of you said it since?’
‘Cat!’
With that simple word Jean closed the scene.
But at bedtime in her mother’s room, Dinny said:
‘May I ask Wilfrid down, then?’
‘Of course, when you like. We shall be only too anxious to see him.’
‘I know it’s a shock, Mother, coming so soon after Clare; still, you did expect me to go some time.’
Lady Cherrell sighed: ‘I suppose so.’
‘I forgot to say that he’s a poet, a real one.’
‘A poet?’ repeated her mother, as if this had put the finishing touch to her disquiet.
‘There are quite a lot in Westminster Abbey. But don’t worry, he’ll never be there.’
‘Difference in religion is serious, Dinny, especially when it comes to children.’
‘Why, Mother? No child has any religion worth speaking of till it’s grown up, and then it can choose for itself. Besides, by the time my children, if I have any, are grown up, the question will be academic.’
‘Dinny!’
‘It’s nearly so even now, except in ultra-religious circles. Ordinary people’s religion becomes more and more just ethical.’
‘I don’t know enough about it to say, and I don’t think you do.’
‘Mother, dear, stroke my head.’
‘Oh! Dinny, I do hope you’ve chosen wisely.’
‘Darling, it chose me.’
That she perceived was not the way to reassure her mother, but as she did not know one, she took her good night kiss and went away.
In her room she sat down and wrote:
Condaford Grange: Friday.
DARLING,
This is positively and absolutely my first love-letter, so you see I don’t know how to express myself. I think I will just say ‘I love you’ and leave it at that. I have spread the good tidings. They have, of course, left everyone guessing, and anxious to see you as soon as possible. When will you come? Once you are here the whole thing will seem to me less like a very real and very lovely dream. This is quite a simple place. Whether we should live in style if we could, I can’t say. But three maids, a groom-chauffeur, and two gardeners are all our staff. I believe you will like my mother, and I don’t believe you will get on very well with my father or brother, though I expect his wife Jean will tickle your poetic fancy, she’s such a vivid creature. Condaford itself I’m sure you’ll love. It has the real ‘old’ feeling. We can go riding; and I want to walk and talk with you and show you my pet nooks and corners. I hope the sun will shine, as you love it so much. For me almost any sort of day does down here; and absolutely any will do if I can be with you. The room you will have is away by itself and supernaturally quiet; you go up to it by five twisty steps, and it’s called the priest’s room, because Anthony Charwell, brother of the Gilbert who owned Condaford under Elizabeth, was walled up there and fed from a basket let down nightly to his window. He was a conspicuous Catholic priest, and Gilbert was a Protestant, but he put his brother first, as any decent body would. When he’d been there three months they took the wall down one night, and got him across country all the way south to the Beaulieu river and ‘aboard the lugger’. The wall was put up again to save appearances and only done away with by my great-grandfather, who was the last of us to have any money to speak of. It seemed to prey on his nerves, so he got rid of it. They still speak of him in the village, probably because he drove four-in-hand. There’s a bath-room at the bottom of the twisty steps. The window was enlarged, of course, and the view’s jolly from it, especially now, at lilac and apple-blossom time. My own room, if it interests you to know, is somewhat cloistral and narrow, but it looks straight over the lawns to the hill-rise and the woods beyond. I’ve had it ever since I was seven, and I wouldn’t change for anything, until you’re making me
‘brooches and toys for my delight
Of birds’ song at morning and starshine at night.’
I almost think that little ‘Stevenson’ is my favourite poem; so you see, in spite of my homing tendency, I must have a streak of the wanderer in me. Dad, by the way, has a great feeling for Nature, likes beasts and birds and trees. I think most soldiers do – it’s rather odd. But, of course, their love is on the precise and knowledgeable rat
her than the aesthetic side. Any dreaminess they incline to look on as ‘a bit barmy’. I have been wondering whether to put my copies of your poems under their noses. On the whole I don’t think; they might take you too seriously. There is always something about a person more ingratiating than his writings. I don’t expect to sleep much tonight, for this is the first day that I haven’t seen you since the world began. Goodnight, my dear, be blessed and take my kiss.
Your
DINNY.
P.S.—I have looked you out the photo where I approximate most to the angels, or rather where my nose turns up least – to send tomorrow. In the meantime here are two snaps. And when, sir, do I get some of you?
D.
And that was the end of this to her far from perfect day.
Chapter Nine
SIR LAWRENCE MONT, recently elected to Burton’s Club whereon he had resigned from the Aeroplane, retaining besides only ‘Snooks’ (so-called), The Coffee House and the Parthenaeum, was accustomed to remark that, allowing himself another ten years of life, it would cost him twelve shillings and sixpence every time he went into any of them.
He entered Burton’s, however, on the afternoon after Dinny had told him of her engagement, took up a list of the members, and turned to D. ‘Hon. Wilfrid Desert.’ Quite natural, seeing the Club’s pretension to the monopoly of travellers. ‘Does Mr Desert ever come in here?’ he said to the porter.
‘Yes, Sir Lawrence, he’s been in this last week; before that I don’t remember him for years.’
‘Usually abroad. When does he come in as a rule?’
‘For dinner, mostly, Sir Lawrence.’
‘I see. Is Mr Muskham in?’
The porter shook his head. ‘Newmarket today, Sir Lawrence.’
‘Oh! Ah! How on earth you remember everything!’
‘Matter of ’abit, Sir Lawrence.’
‘Wish I had it.’ Hanging up his hat, he stood for a moment before the tape in the hall. Unemployment and taxation going up all the time, and more money to spend on cars and sports than ever. A pretty little problem! He then sought the Library as the room where he was least likely to see anybody; and the first body he saw was that of Jack Muskham, who was talking, in a voice hushed to the level of the locality, to a thin dark little man in a corner.
‘That,’ thought Sir Lawrence, cryptically, ‘explains to me why I never find a lost collar-stud. My friend the porter was so certain Jack would be at Newmarket, and not under that chest of drawers, that he took him for someone else when he came in.’
Reaching down a volume of Burton’s Arabian Nights, he rang for tea. He was attending to neither when the two in the corner rose and came up to him.
‘Don’t get up, Lawrence,’ said Jack Muskham with some languor; ‘Telfourd Yule, my cousin Sir Lawrence Mont.’
‘I’ve read thrillers of yours, Mr Yule,’ said Sir Lawrence, and thought: ‘Queer-looking little cuss!’
The thin, dark, smallish man, with a face rather like a monkey’s, grinned. ‘Truth whips fiction out of the field,’ he said.
‘Yule,’ said Jack Muskham, with his air of superiority to space and time, ‘has been out in Arabia, going into the question of how to corkscrew a really pure-strain Arab mare or two out of them for use here. It’s always baffled us, you know. Stallions, yes; mares never. It’s much the same now in Nejd as when Palgrave wrote. Still, we think we’ve got a rise. The owner of the best strain wants an aeroplane, and if we throw in a billiard table we believe he’ll part with at least one daughter of the sun.’
‘Good God!’ said Sir Lawrence. ‘By what base means? We’re all Jesuits, Jack!’
‘Yule has seen some queer things out there. By the way, there’s one I want to talk about. May we sit down?’
He stretched his long body out in a long chair, and the dark little man perched himself on another, with his black twinkling eyes fixed on Sir Lawrence, who had come to uneasy attention without knowing why.
‘When,’ said Jack Muskham, ‘Yule here was in the Arabian desert, he heard a vague yarn among some Bedouins about an Englishman having been held up somewhere by Arabs and forced to become a Moslem. He had rather a row with them, saying no Englishman would do that. But when he was back in Egypt he went flying into the Libyan desert, met another lot of Bedouins coming from the south, and came on precisely the same yarn, only more detailed, because they said it happened in Darfur, and they even had the man’s name – Desert. Then, when he was up in Khartoum, Yule found it was common talk that young Desert had changed his religion. Naturally he put two and two together. But there’s all the difference in the world, of course, between voluntarily swapping religions and doing it at the pistol’s point. An Englishman who does that lets down the lot of us.’
Sir Lawrence, who during this recital had tried every motion for his monocle with which he was acquainted, dropped it and said: ‘But, my dear Jack, if a man is rash enough to become a Mohammedan in a Mohammedan country, do you suppose for a minute that gossip won’t say he was forced to?’
Yule, who had wriggled on to the very verge of his chair, said:
‘I thought that; but the second account was extremely positive. Even to the month and the name of the Sheikh who forced the recantation; and I found that Mr Desert had in fact returned from Darfur soon after the month mentioned. There may be nothing in it; but whether there is or not, I needn’t tell you that an undenied story of that kind grows by telling and does a lot of harm, not only to the man himself, but to our prestige. There seems to me a sort of obligation on one to let Mr Desert know what the Bedawi are spreading about him.’
‘Well, he’s over here,’ said Sir Lawrence, gravely.
‘I know,’ said Jack Muskham, ‘I saw him the other day, and he’s a member of this Club.’
Through Sir Lawrence was passing waves of infinite dismay. What a sequel to Dinny’s ill-starred announcement! To his ironic, detached personality, capricious in its likings, Dinny was precious. She embroidered in a queer way his plain-washed feelings about women; as a young man he might even have been in love with her, instead of being merely her uncle by marriage. During this silence he was fully conscious that both the other two were thoroughly uncomfortable. And the knowledge of their disquiet deepened the significance of the matter in an odd way.
At last he said: ‘Desert was my boy’s best man. I’d like to talk to Michael about it, Jack. Mr Yule will say nothing further at present, I hope.’
‘Not on your life,’ said Yule. ‘I hope to God there’s nothing in it. I like his verse.’
‘And you, Jack?’
‘I don’t care for the look of him; but I’d refuse to believe that of an Englishman till it was plainer than the nose on my face, which is saying a good bit. You and I must be getting on, Yule, if we’re to catch that train to Royston.’
This speech of Jack Muskham’s further disturbed Sir Lawrence, left alone in his chair. It seemed so entirely to preclude leniency of judgment among the ‘pukka sahibs’ if the worst were true.
At last he rose, found a small volume, sat down again and turned its pages. The volume was Sir Alfred Lyall’s Verses Written in India, and he looked for the poem called ‘Theology in Extremis’.
He read it through, restored the volume, and stood rubbing his chin. Written, of course, more than forty years ago, and yet doubtful if its sentiments were changed by an iota! There was that poem, too, by Dogle, about the Corporal in the Buffs who, brought before a Chinese General and told to ‘kow-tow’ or die, said: ‘We don’t do that sort of thing in the Buffs,’ and died. Well! That was the standard even today, among people of any caste or with any tradition. The war had thrown up innumerable instances. Could young Desert really have betrayed the tradition? It seemed improbable. And yet, in spite of his excellent war record, might there be a streak of yellow in him? Or was it, rather, that at times a flow of revolting bitterness carried him on to complete cynicism, so that he flouted almost for the joy of flouting?
With a strong mental effor
t Sir Lawrence tried to place himself in a like dilemma. Not being a believer, his success was limited to the thought: ‘I should immensely dislike being dictated to in such a matter.’ Aware that this was inadequate, he went down to the hall, shut himself up in a box, and rang up Michael’s house. Then, feeling that if he lingered in the Club he might run into Desert himself, he took a cab to South Square.
Michael had just come in from the House; they met in the hall; and, with the instinct that Fleur, however acute, was not a fit person to share this particular consultation, Sir Lawrence demanded to be taken to his son’s study. He commenced by announcing Dinny’s engagement, which Michael heard with as strange a mixture of gratification and disquietude as could be seen on human visage.
‘What a little cat, keeping it so dark!’ he said. ‘Fleur did say something about her being too limpid just now; but I never thought! One’s got so used to Dinny being single. To Wilfrid, too! Well, I hope the old son has exhausted the East.’
‘There’s this question of his religion,’ said Sir Lawreenc gravely.
‘I don’t know why that should matter much; Dinny’s not fervent. But I never thought Wilfrid cared enough to change his. It rather staggered me.’
‘There’s a story.’
When his father had finished, Michael’s ears stood out and his face looked haggard.
‘You know him better than anyone,’ Sir Lawrence concluded: ‘What do you think?’
‘I hate to say it, but it might be true. It might even be natural for him; but no one would ever understand why. This is pretty ghastly, Dad, with Dinny involved.’
‘Before we fash ourselves, my dear, we must find out if it’s true. Could you go to him?’
The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3 Page 38
