The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3(316)
Dinny stared.
‘You see,’ continued Fleur, taking her arm, ‘thanks to the Government converting that loan, all my beautiful gilt-edgeds have gone up about ten points, so that, even after paying that nine hundred-odd, I’m still about fifteen thousand richer than I was, and they’re still going up. I’ve only told you, in confidence, because I was afraid it would weigh with you in making up your mind about Dornford. Tell me: Would it?’,
‘I don’t know,’ said Dinny dully; and she didn’t.
‘Michael says Dornford’s the freshest egg he’s come across for a long time; and Michael is very sensitive to freshness in eggs. You know,’ said Fleur, stopping suddenly, and letting go her arm, ‘you puzzle me, Dinny. Everybody can see what you’re cut out for – wife and mother. Of course, I know what you’ve been through, but the past buries its dead. It is so, I’ve been through it, too. It’s the present and the future that matter, and we’re the present, and our children are the future. And you specially – because you’re so stuck on tradition and continuity and that – ought to carry on. Anybody who lets a memory spoil her life – forgive me, old thing, but it’s rather obviously now or never with you. And to think of you with “never” chalked against you is too bleak. I’ve precious little moral sense,’ continued Fleur, sniffing at a rose, ‘but I’ve a lot of the commoner article, and I simply hate to see waste.’
Dinny, touched by the look in those hazel eyes with the extraordinarily clear whites, stood very still, and said quietly:
‘If I were a Catholic, like him, I shouldn’t have any doubt.’
‘The cloister?’ said Fleur sharply: ‘No! My mother’s a Catholic, but – No! Anyway, you’re not a Catholic. No, my dear – the hearth. That title was wrong, you know. It can’t be both.’
Dinny smiled. ‘I do apologize for worrying people so. Do you like these Angèle Pernets?’
She had no talk with Dornford all that Saturday, preoccupied as he was with the convictions of the neighbouring farmers. But after dinner, when she was scoring for the four who were playing Russian pool, he came and stood beside her.
‘Hilarity in the home,’ she said, adding nine presented by Fleur to the side on which she was not playing: ‘How did you find the farmers?’
‘Confident.’
‘Con –?’
‘That whatever’s done will make things worse.’
‘Oh! Ah! They’re so used to that, you see.’
‘And what have you been doing all day, Dinny?’
‘Picked flowers, walked with Fleur, played with “Cuffs”, and dallied with the pigs…. Five on to your side, Michael, and seven on to the other. This is a very Christian game – doing unto others as you would they should do unto you.’
‘Russian pool!’ murmured Dornford: ‘Curious name nowadays for anything so infected with religion.’
‘Apropos, if you want to go to Mass tomorrow, there’s Oxford.’
‘You wouldn’t come with me?’
‘Oh! Yes. I love Oxford, and I’ve only once heard a Mass. It takes about three-quarters of an hour to drive over.’
His look at her was much as the spaniel Foch gave when she returned to him after absence.
‘Quarter past nine, then, in my car…’
When next day they were seated side by side, he said:
‘Shall we slide the roof back?’
‘Please.’
‘Dinny, this is like a dream.’
‘I wish my dreams had such a smooth action.’
‘Do you dream much?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nice or nasty?’
‘Oh! like all dreams, a little of both.’
‘Any recurrent ones?’
‘One. A river I can’t cross.’
‘Ah! like an examination one can’t pass. Dreams are ruthlessly revealing. If you could cross that river in your dream, would you be happier?’
‘I don’t know.’
There was a silence, till he said:
‘This car is a new make. You don’t have to change gears in the old way. But you don’t care for driving, do you?’
‘I’m an idiot at it.’
‘You’re not modern, you see, Dinny.’
‘No. I’m much less efficient than most people.’
‘In your own way I don’t know anybody so efficient.’
‘You mean I can arrange flowers.’
‘And see a joke; and be – a darling.’
It seemed to Dinny the last thing she had been able to be for nearly two years, so she merely replied:
‘What was your college at Oxford?’