The General nodded and got up. ‘Beast of a day!’ he said, and put his hand on his wife’s shoulder: ‘Don’t let this worry you, Liz. They can but tell the truth. I’ll go to the study and have another shot at that new pigsty. You might look in later, Dinny ..’
At all critical times Dinny felt more at home in Mount Street than she did at Condaford. Sir Lawrence’s mind was so much more lively than her father’s; Aunt Em’s inconsequence at once more bracing and more soothing than her mother’s quiet and sensible sympathy. When a crisis was over, or if it had not begun, Condaford was perfect, but it was too quiet for nerve storms or crucial action. As country houses went, it was, indeed, old-fashioned, inhabited by the only county family who had been in the district for more than three of four generations. The Grange had an almost institutional repute. ‘Condaford Grange’ and ‘the Cherrells of Condaford’ were spoken of as curiosities. The week-ending or purely sporting existence of the big ‘places’ was felt to be alien to them. The many families on the smaller ‘places’ round seemed to make country life into a sort of cult, organizing tennis and bridge parties, village entertainments and looking of each other up; getting their day’s shooting here and there, supporting the nearest golf course, attending meets, hunting a bit, and so forth. The Charwells, with their much deeper roots, yet seemed to be less in evidence than almost anyone. They would have been curiously missed, but, except to the villagers, they hardly seemed real.
In spite of her always active life at Condaford Dinny often felt there, as one does waking in the still hours of the night, nervous from the very quietude; and in such troubles as Hubert’s, three years before, her own crisis of two years ago, or this of Clare’s, she craved at once to be more in the swim of life.
Having dropped Clare at her Mews, she went on in the taxi, and arrived at Mount Street before dinner.
Michael and Fleur were there, and the conversation turned and turned from literature to politics. Michael was of opinion that the papers were beginning to pat the country’s back too soon, and that the Government might go to sleep. Sir Lawrence was glad to hear that they were still awake.
Lady Mont said suddenly: ‘The baby, Dinny?’
‘Frightfully well, thank you, Aunt Em. He walks.’
‘I was countin’ up the pedigree, and he makes the twenty-fourth Cherrell of Condaford; and before that they were French. Is Jean havin’ any more?’
‘You bet,’ said Fleur. ‘I never saw a young woman more like it.’
‘There’ll be nothin’ for them.’
‘Oh, she’ll wangle their futures all right.’
‘Such a singular word,’ said Lady Mont.
‘Dinny, how’s Clare?’
‘All right.’
‘Any developments?’ And Fleur’s clear eyes seemed to slide into her brain.
‘Yes, but –’
Michael’s voice broke the silence.
‘Dornford has a very neat idea, Dad; he thinks –’
The neat idea of Dornford was lost on Dinny, wondering whether or not to take Fleur into her confidence. She knew no one of quicker brain, or of a judgement on social matters more cynically sound. Further, she could keep a secret. But it was Clare’s secret, and she decided to speak to Sir Lawrence first.
Late that night she did so. He received the news with his eyebrows.
‘All night in a car, Dinny? That’s a bit steep. I’ll get on to the lawyers at ten o’clock tomorrow. “Very young” Roger Forsyte, Fleur’s cousin, is there now; I’ll get hold of him, he’s likely to have more credulity than the hoarier members. You and I will go along too, to prove our faith.’
‘I’ve never been in the City.’
‘Curious place; built upon the ends of the earth. Romance and the bank rate. Prepare for a mild shock.’
‘Do you think they ought to defend?’
Sir Lawrence’s lively eyes came to rest on her face.
‘If you ask me whether I think they’ll be believed – no. But at least we can divide opinion on the question.’
‘You do believe them yourself, don’t you?’
‘I plank on you there, Dinny. Clare wouldn’t try to take you in.’
Thinking back to her sister’s face, and to young Croom’s, Dinny had a revulsion of feeling. ‘They are telling the truth, and they look like it. It would be wicked not to believe them.’
‘No end to that sort of wickedness in this wicked world. You look tired, my dear; better go to bed.’
In that bedroom, where she had spent so many nights at the time of her own trouble, Dinny had again that half-waking nightmare, the sense of being close to Wilfrid and unable to reach him, and the refrain: ‘One more river, one more river to cross,’ kept running in her tired head.…