‘We’ll say no more then. Your father will want to see you. You’d better take your things off.’
Clare kissed her and went out. There was no sound from below, and she went on up to her room. She felt her will-power stiffening. The days when men disposed of their women folk were long over, and – whatever Jerry and her father were concocting – she would not budge! When the summons came, she went to the encounter, blade-sharp, and hard as stone.
They were standing in the General’s office-like study, and she felt at once that they were in agreement. Nodding to her husband, she went over to her father.
‘Well?’
But Corven spoke first.
‘I leave it to you, sir.’
The General’s lined face looked mournful and irritated. He braced himself. ‘We’ve been going into this, Clare. Jerry admits that you’ve got much on your side, but he’s given me his word that he won’t offend you again. I want to appeal to you to try and see his point of view. He says, I think rightly, that it’s more to your interest even than to his. The old idea about marriage may have gone, but, after all, you both took certain vows – but leaving that aside –’
‘Yes,’ said Clare.
The General twirled his little moustache, and thrust the other hand deep into his pocket.
‘Well, what on earth is going to happen to you both? You can’t have a divorce – there’s your name, and his position, and – after only eighteen months. What are you going to do? Live apart? That’s not fair to you, or to him.’
‘Fairer to both of us than living together will be.’
The General glanced at her hardened face. ‘So you say now; but we’ve both of us had more experience than you.’
‘That was bound to be said sooner or later. You want me to go back with him?’
The General looked acutely unhappy.
‘You know, my dear, that I only want what’s best for you.’
‘And Jerry has convinced you that is the best. Well, it’s the worst. I’m not going, Dad, and there’s an end of it.’
The General looked at her face, looked at the face of his son-in-law, shrugged his shoulders, and began filling his pipe.
Jerry Corven’s eyes, which had been passing from face to face, narrowed and came to rest on Clare’s. That look lasted a long time, and neither flinched.
‘Very well,’ he said, at last, ‘I will make other arrangements. Good-bye, sir; good-bye, Clare!’ And turning on his heel, he went out.
In the silence that followed, the sound of his car crunching away on the drive could be heard distinctly. The General smoking glumly, kept his glance averted; Clare went to the window. It was growing dark outside, and now that the crisis was over she felt unstrung.
‘I wish to God,’ said her father’s voice, ‘that I could understand this business.’
Clare did not move from the window: ‘Did he tell you he’d used my riding whip on me?’
‘What!’ said the General.
Clare turned round.
‘Yes.’
‘On you?’
‘Yes. That was not my real reason, but it put the finishing touch. Sorry to hurt you, Dad!’
‘By God!’
Clare had a moment of illumination. Concrete facts! Give a man a fact!
‘The ruffian!’ said the General: ‘The ruffian! He told me he spent the evening with you the other day; is that true?’
A slow flush had burned up in her cheeks.
‘He practically forced himself in.’
‘The ruffian!’ said the General once more.
When she was alone again, she meditated wryly on the sudden difference that little fact about the whip had made in her father’s feelings. He had taken it as a personal affront, an insult to his own flesh and blood. She felt that he could have stood it with equanimity of someone else’s daughter; she remembered that he had even sympathized with her brother’s flogging of the muleteer, which had brought such a peck of trouble on them all. How little detached, how delightfully personal, people were! Feeling and criticizing in terms of their own prejudices! Well! She was over the worst now, for her people were on her side, and she would make certain of not seeing Jerry alone again. She thought of the long look he had given her. He was a good loser, because for him the game was never at an end. Life itself – not each item of life – absorbed him. He rode Life, took a toss, got up, rode on; met an obstacle, rode over it, rode through it, took the scratches as all in the day’s work. He had fascinated her, ridden through and over her; the fascination was gone, and she wondered that it had ever been. What was he going to do now? Well! One thing was certain: somehow, he would cut his losses 1