Dinny, when she left those two on the verge of acquaintanceship, had paused, in two minds, and then gone north to St Augustine’s-in-the-Meads. Her instinct was to sap the opposition of the outlying portions of her family, so as to isolate the defences of her immediate people. She moved towards the heart of practical Christianity with a certain rather fearful exhilaration.
Her Aunt May was in the act of dispensing tea to two young ex-Collegians before their departure to a club where they superintended the skittles, chess, draughts, and ping-pong of the neighbourhood.
‘If you want Hilary, Dinny, he had two committees, but they might collapse, because he’s almost the whole of both.’
‘You and uncle know about me, I suppose?’
Mrs Hilary nodded. She was looking very fresh in a sprigged dress.
‘Would you mind telling me what uncle feels about it?’
‘I’d rather leave that to him, Dinny. We neither of us remember Mr Desert very well.’
‘People who don’t know him well will always misjudge him. But neither you nor uncle care what other people think.’ She said this with a guileless expression which by no means deceived Mrs Hilary, accustomed to Women’s Institutes.
‘We’re neither of us very orthodox, as you know, Dinny, but we do both of us believe very deeply in what Christianity stands for, and it’s no good pretending we don’t.’
Dinny thought a moment.
‘Is that more than gentleness and courage and self-sacrifice, and must one be a Christian to have those?’
‘I’d rather not talk about it. I should be sorry to say anything that would put me in a position different from Hilary’s.’
‘Auntie, how model of you!’
Mrs Hilary smiled. And Dinny knew that judgement in this quarter was definitely reserved.
She waited, talking of other things, till Hilary came in. He was looking pale and worried. Her aunt gave him tea, passed a hand over his forehead, and went out.
Hilary drank off his tea and filled his pipe with a knot of tobacco screwed up in a circular paper.
‘Why corporations, Dinny? Why not three doctors, three engineers, three architects, an adding machine, and a man of imagination to work it and keep them straight?’
‘Are you in trouble, Uncle?’
‘Yes, gutting houses on an overdraft is ageing enough, without corporational red tape.’
Looking at his worn but smiling face, Dinny thought: ‘I can’t bother him with my little affairs.’ ‘You and Aunt May couldn’t spare time, I suppose, to come to the Chelsea Flower Show on Tuesday?’
‘My goodness!’ said Hilary, sticking one end of a match into the centre of the knob and lighting the knob with the other end, ‘how I would love to stand in a tent and smell azaleas!’
‘We thought of going at one o’clock, so as to avoid the worst of the crush. Aunt Em would send for you.’
‘Can’t promise, so don’t send. If we’re not at the main entrance at one, you’ll know that Providence has intervened. And now, what about you? Adrian has told me.’
‘I don’t want to bother you, Uncle.’
Hilary’s shrewd blue eyes almost disappeared. He expelled a cloud of smoke.
‘Nothing that concerns you will bother me, my dear, except in so far as it’s going to hurt you. I suppose you must, Dinny?’
‘Yes, I must.’
Hilary sighed.
‘In that case it remains to make the best of it. But the world loves the martyrdom of others. I’m afraid he’ll have a bad Press, as they say.’
‘I’m sure he will.’
‘I can only just remember him, as a rather tall, scornful young man in a buff waistcoat. Has he lost the scorn?’
Dinny smiled.
‘It’s not the side I see much of at present.’
‘I sincerely trust,’ said Hilary, ‘that he has not what they call devouring passions.’
‘Not so far as I have observed.’
‘I mean, Dinny, that once that type has eaten its cake, it shows all the old Adam with a special virulence. Do you get me?’
‘Yes. But I believe it’s a “marriage of true minds” with us.’
‘Then, my dear, good luck! Only, when people begin to throw bricks, don’t resent it. You’re doing this with your eyes open, and you’ll have no right to. Harder to bear than having your own toe trodden on is seeing one you love batted over the head. So catch hold of yourself hard at the start, and go on catching hold, or you’ll make it worse for him. If I’m not wrong, Dinny, you can get very hot about things.’
‘I’ll try not to. When Wilfrid’s book of poems comes out, I want you to read one called “The Leopard”; it gives his state of mind about the whole thing.’