The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3(248)

‘Have we any? Man-made, anyway. By nature we’ve only got feelings.’

‘I’ve none now.’

‘Sure?’

Clare laughed. ‘Oh! well, in hand, anyhow.’ She put on her dress, and Dinny took her place at the mirror….

The slum parson does not dine out to observe human nature. He eats. Hilary Charwell, having spent the best part of his day, including meal-times, listening to the difficulties of parishioners who had laid up no store for the morrow because they had never had store enough for today, absorbed the good food set before him with perceptible enjoyment. If he was aware that the young woman whom he had married to Jerry Corven had burst her bonds, he gave no sign of it. Though seated next to her, he never once alluded to her domestic existence, conversing freely on the election, French art, the timber wolves at Whipsnade Zoo, and a new system of building schools with roofs that could be used or not as the weather dictated. Over his face, long, wrinkled, purposeful, and shrewdly kind, flitted an occasional smile, as if he were summing something up; but he gave no indication of what that something was, except that he looked across at Dinny, as though saying: ‘You and I are going to have a talk presently.’

No such talk occurred, for he was summoned by telephone to a death-bed before he had finished his glass of port. Mrs Hilary went with him.

The two sisters settled down to bridge with their Uncle and Aunt, and at eleven o’clock went up to bed.

‘Armistice day,’ said Clare, turning into her bedroom. ‘Did you realize?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was in a bus at eleven o’clock. I noticed two or three people looking funny. How can one be expected to feel anything? I was only ten when the war stopped.’

‘I remember the Armistice,’ said Dinny, ‘because Mother cried. Uncle Hilary was with us at Condaford. He preached on: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” ’

‘Who serves except for what he can get from it?’

‘Lots of people do hard jobs all their lives for mighty little return.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Why do they?’

‘Dinny, I sometimes feel as if you might end up religious. Unless you marry, you will.’

‘ “Get thee to a nunnery, go!” ’

‘Seriously, ducky, I wish I could see more of “the old Eve” in you. In my opinion you ought to be a mother.’

‘When doctors find a way without preliminaries.’

‘You’re wasting yourself, my dear. At any moment that you liked to crook your little finger, old man Dornford would fall on his knees to you. Don’t you like him?’

‘As nice a man as I’ve seen for a long time.’

‘ “Murmured she coldly, turning towards the door.” Give me a kiss.’

‘Darling,’ said Dinny, ‘I do hope things are going to be all right. I shan’t pray for you, in spite of my look of decline; but I’ll dream that your ship comes home.’





Chapter Fourteen




YOUNG CROOM’S second visit to England’s Past at Drury Lane was the first visit of the other three members of Dornford’s little dinner party, and by some fatality, not unconnected with him who took the tickets, they were seated two by two; young Croom with Clare in the middle of the tenth row, Dornford and Dinny in returned stalls at the end of the third….

‘Penny for your thoughts, Miss Cherrell?’

‘I was thinking how the English face has changed since 1900.’

‘It’s the hair. Faces in pictures a hundred to a hundred and fifty years ago are much more like ours.’

‘Drooping moustaches and chignons do hide expression, but was there the expression?’

‘You don’t think the Victorians had as much character?’

‘Probably more, but surely they suppressed it; even in their dresses, always more stuff than was needed; frock-coats, high collars, cravats, bustles, button boots.’

‘The leg was on their nerves, but the neck wasn’t.’

‘I give you the woman’s necks. But look at their furniture: tassels, fringes, antimacassars, chandeliers, enormous sideboards. They did play hide-and-seek with the soul, Mr Dornford.’

‘And every now and then it popped out, like little Edward after unclothing himself under his mother’s dining-table at Windsor.’

‘He never did anything quite so perfect again.’

‘I don’t know. He was another Restoration in a mild way. Big opening of floodgates under him.’…

‘He has sailed, hasn’t he, Clare?’

‘Yes, he’s sailed all right. Look at Dornford! He’s fallen for Dinny completely. I wish she’d take to him.’