The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3(175)
Compson Grice said coldly:
‘Whether it will do us harm or good remains to be seen.’
‘Bosh!’ said Michael. ‘Everybody will read the thing now, blast them! Have you seen Wilfrid today?’
‘He lunched with me.’
‘How’s he looking?’
Tempted to say ‘Like Asrael!’ Compson Grice substituted: ‘Oh! all right – quite calm.’
‘Calm as hell! Look here, Grice! If you don’t stand by him and help him all you can through this, I’ll never speak to you again.’
‘My dear fellow,’ said Compson Grice, with some dignity, ‘what do you suppose?’ And, straightening his waistcoat, he passed into the card room.
Michael, muttering, ‘Cold-blooded fish!’ hurried in the direction of Cork Street. ‘I wonder if the old chap would like to see me,’ he thought.
But at the very mouth of the street he recoiled and made for Mount Street instead. He was informed that both his father and mother were out, but that Miss Dinny had come up that morning from Condaford.
‘All right, Blore. If she’s in I’ll find her.’
He went up and opened the drawing-room door quietly. In the alcove, under the cage of her aunt’s parakeet, Dinny was sitting perfectly still and upright, like a little girl at a lesson, with her hands crossed on her lap and her eyes fixed on space. She did not see him till his hand was on her shoulder.
‘Penny!’
‘How does one learn not to commit murder, Michael?’
‘Ah! Poisonous young brute! Have your people seen The Phase?’
Dinny nodded.
‘What was the reaction?’
‘Silence, pinched lips.’
Michael nodded.
‘Poor dear! So you came up?’
‘Yes, I’m going to the theatre with Wilfrid.’
‘Give him my love, and tell him that if he wants to see me I’ll come at any moment. Oh! and, Dinny, try to make him feel that we admire him for spilling the milk.’
Dinny looked up, and he was moved by the expression on her face.
‘It wasn’t all pride that made him, Michael. There’s something egging him on, and I’m afraid of it. Deep down he isn’t sure that it wasn’t just cowardice that made him renounce. I know he can’t get that thought out of his mind. He feels he’s got to prove, not to others so much as to himself, that he isn’t a coward. Oh! I know he isn’t. But so long as he hasn’t proved it to himself and everybody, I don’t know what he might do.’
Michael nodded. From his one interview with Wilfrid he had formed something of the same impression.
‘Did you know that he’s told his publisher to make a public admission?’
‘Oh!’ said Dinny blankly. ‘What then?’
Michael shrugged.
‘Michael, will anyone grasp the situation Wilfrid was in?’
‘The imaginative type is rare. I don’t pretend I can grasp it. Can you?’
‘Only because it happened to Wilfrid.’
Michael gripped her arm.
‘I’m glad you’ve got the old-fashioned complaint, Dinny, not just this modern “physiological urge”.’
Chapter Twenty
WHILE Dinny was dressing her aunt came to her room.
‘Your uncle read me that article, Dinny. I wonder!’
‘What do you wonder, Aunt Em?’
‘I knew a Coltham – but he died.’
‘This one will probably die, too.’
‘Where do you get your boned bodies, Dinny? So restful.’
‘Harridge’s.’
‘Your uncle says he ought to resign from his club.’
‘Wilfrid doesn’t care two straws about his club; he probably hasn’t been in a dozen times. But I don’t think he’ll resign.’
‘Better make him.’
‘I should never dream of “making” him do anything.’
‘So awkward when they use black balls.’
‘Auntie, dear, could I come to the glass?’
Lady Mont crossed the room and took up the slim volume from the bedside table.
‘The Leopard! But he did change them, Dinny.’
‘He did not, Auntie; he had no spots to change.’
‘Baptism and that.’
‘If baptism really meant anything, it would be an outrage on children till they knew what it was about.’
‘Dinny!’
‘I mean it. One doesn’t commit people to things entirely without their consent; it isn’t decent. By the time Wilfrid could think at all he had no religion.’
‘It wasn’t the givin’ up, then, it was the takin’ on.’
‘He knows that.’
‘Well,’ said Lady Mont, turning towards the door, ‘I think it served that Arab right; so intrudin’! If you want a latch-key ask Blore.’