The new Member, visiting his constituency, spent Christmas at Condaford, talking almost exclusively of pigs, instinct telling him that they were just then the surest line of approach to Dinny’s heart. Clare, too, spent Christmas at home. How, apart from secretarial duties, she had spent the intervening time, was tacitly assumed. No letter had come from Jerry Corven, but it was known from the papers that he was back in Ceylon. During the days between Christmas and the New Year the habitable part of the old house was full: Hilary, his wife, and their daughter Monica; Adrian and Diana, with Sheila and Ronald, now recovered from the measles – no such family gathering had been held for years. Even Sir Lionel and Lady Alison drove down for lunch on New Year’s Eve. With such an overwhelming Conservative majority it was felt that 1932 would be important. Dinny was run off her legs. She gave no sign of it, but had less an air of living in the past. So much was she the party’s life and soul that no one could have told she had any of her own. Dornford gazed at her in speculation. What was behind that untiring cheerful selflessness? He went so far as to ask of Adrian, who seemed to be her favourite.
‘This house wouldn’t work without your niece, Mr Cherrell.’
‘It wouldn’t. Dinny’s a wonder.’
‘Doesn’t she ever think of herself?’
Adrian looked at him sideways. The pale-brown, rather hollow-cheeked face, with its dark hair, and hazel eyes, was sympathetic; for a lawyer and a politician, he looked sensitive. Inclined, however, to a sheepdog attitude where Dinny was concerned, he answered with caution:
‘Why no, no more than reason; indeed, not so much.’
‘She looks to me sometimes as if she’d been through something pretty bad.’
Adrian shrugged. ‘She’s twenty-seven.’
‘Would you mind awfully telling me what it was? This isn’t curiosity. I’m – well, I’m in love with her, and terrified of butting in and hurting her through ignorance.’
Adrian took a long gurgling pull at his pipe.
‘If you’re in dead earnest –’
‘Absolutely dead earnest.’
‘It might save her a pang or two. She was terribly in love, the year before last, and it came to a tragic end.’
‘Death?’
‘No. I can’t tell you the exact story, but the man had done something that placed him, in a sense – or at all events he thought so – outside the pale; and he put an end to their engagement rather than involve Dinny, and went off to the Far East. It was a complete cut. Dinny has never spoken of it since, but I’m afraid she’ll never forget.’
‘I see. Thank you very much. You’ve done me a great service.’
‘Sorry if it’s hurt,’ murmured Adrian; ‘but better, perhaps, to have one’s eyes open.’
‘Much.’
Resuming the tune on his pipe, Adrian stole several glances at his silent neighbour. That averted face wore an expression not exactly dashed or sad, but as if contending deeply with the future. ‘He’s the nearest approach,’ he thought, ‘to what I should like for her – sensitive, quiet, and plucky. But things are always so damnably perverse!’
‘She’s very different from her sister,’ he said at last.
Dornford smiled.
‘Ancient and modern.’
‘Clare’s a pretty creature, though.’
‘Oh, yes, and lots of qualities.’
‘They’ve both got grit. How does she do her work?’
‘Very well; quick in the uptak’, good memory, heaps of savoir-faire.’
‘Pity she’s in such a position. I don’t know why things went wrong, and I don’t see how they can come right.’
‘I’ve never met Corven.’
‘Quite nice to meet; but, by the look of him, a streak of cruelty.’
‘Dinny says he’s vindictive.’
Adrian nodded. ‘I should think so. And that’s bad when it comes to divorce. But I hope it won’t – always a dirty business, and probably the wrong person tarred. I don’t remember a divorce in our family.’
‘Nor in mine, but we’re Catholics.’
‘Judging by your experience in the Courts, should you say English morality is going downhill?’
‘No. On the upgrade, if anything.’
‘But surely the standard is slacker?’
‘People are franker, not quite the same thing.’
‘You lawyers and judges, at all events,’ said Adrian, ‘are exceptionally moral men.’
‘Oh! Where did you get that from?’
‘The papers.’
Dornford laughed.
‘Well!’ said Adrian, rising. ‘Let’s have a game of billiards….’