‘Money’s the only essential for that Uncle.’
‘Dinny, you’re getting cynical. Men like to have the sanction of religion. But that wouldn’t be Desert’s reason; a fastidious creature, if I remember.’
‘Does religion matter, Uncle, so long as people don’t interfere with each other?’
‘Well, some Moslems’ notions of woman’s rights are a little primitive. He’s liable to wall her up if she’s unfaithful. There was a sheikh when I was in Marakesh – gruesome.’
Dinny shuddered.
‘ “From time immemorial”, as they say,’ went on Sir Lawrence, ‘religion has been guilty of the most horrifying deeds that have happened on this earth. I wonder if young Desert has taken up with it to get him access to Mecca. I shouldn’t think he believes anything. But you never know – it’s a queer family.’
Dinny thought: ‘I can’t and won’t talk about him.’
‘What proportion of people in these days do you think really have religion, Uncle!’
‘In northern countries? Very difficult to say. In this country ten to fifteen per cent of the adults, perhaps. In France and southern countries, where there’s a peasantry, more, at least on the surface.’
‘What about the people who came this afternoon?’
‘Most of them would be shocked if you said they weren’t Christians, and most of them would be still more shocked if you asked them to give half their goods to the poor, and that would only make them well disposed Pharisees, or was it Sadducees!’
‘Are you a Christian, Uncle Lawrence?’
‘No, my dear; if anything a Confucian, who, as you know, was simply an ethical philosopher. Most of our caste in this country, if they only knew it, are Confucian rather than Christian. Belief in ancestors, and tradition, respect for parents, honesty, moderation of conduct, kind treatment of animals and dependents, absence of self-obtrusion, and stoicism in face of pain and death.’
‘What more,’ murmured Dinny, wrinkling her nose, ‘does one want except the love of beauty?’
‘Beauty? That’s a matter of temperament.’
‘But doesn’t it divide people more than anything?’
‘Yes, but willy nilly. You can’t make yourself love a sunset.’
‘ “You are wise, Uncle Lawrence, the young niece said.” I shall go for a walk and shake the wedding-cake down.’
‘And I shall stay here, Dinny, and sleep the champagne off.’
Dinny walked and walked. It seemed an odd thing to be doing alone. But the flowers in the Park were pleasing, and the waters of the Serpentine shone and were still, and the chestnut trees were coming alight. And she let herself go on her mood, and her mood was of love.
Chapter Seven
LOOKING back on that second afternoon in Richmond Park, Dinny never knew whether she had betrayed herself before he said so abruptly:
‘If you believe in it, Dinny, will you marry me?’
It had so taken her breath away that she sat growing paler and paler, then colour came to her face with a rush.
‘I’m wondering why you ask me. You know nothing of me.’
‘You’re like the East. One loves it at first sight, or not at all, and one never knows it any better.’
Dinny shook her head: ‘Oh! I am not mysterious.’
‘I should never get to the end of you; no more than of one of those figures over the staircase in the Louvre. Please answer me, Dinny.’
She put her hand in his, nodded, and said: ‘That must be a record.’
At once his lips were on hers, and when they left her lips she fainted.
This was without exception the most singular action of her life so far and coming to almost at once, she said so.
‘It’s the sweetest thing you could have done.’
If she had thought his face strange before, what was it now? The lips, generally contemptuous, were parted and quivering, the eyes, fixed on her, glowed; he put up his hand and thrust back his hair, so that she noticed for the first time a scar at the top of his forehead. Sun, moon, stars, and all the works of God stood still while they were looking each into the other’s face.
At last she said:
‘The whole thing is most irregular. There’s been no court-ship; not even a seduction.’
He laughed and put his arm around her. Dinny whispered:
‘ “Thus the two young people sat wrapped in their beatitude.” My poor mother!’
‘Is she a nice woman?’
‘A darling. Luckily she’s fond of father.’
‘What is your father like?’
‘The nicest General I know.’
‘Mine is a hermit. You won’t have to realize him. My brother is an ass. My mother ran away when I was three, and I have no sisters. It’s going to be hard for you, with a nomadic, unsatisfactory brute like me.’