‘Well, what do you think of our cousins?’
‘He’s a good chap. I thought he seemed rather gone on you.’
‘Did you now? When would you like them to come over?’
‘Any time.’
‘Next week?’
‘Yes.’
Seeing that he did not mean to be drawn, she lapsed into savouring the day’s slowly sinking light and beauty. The high land, Wantage, and Faringdon way, was glamoured by level sunlight; and Wittenham Clumps bastioned-up the rise ahead. Rounding to the right, they came on the bridge. In the middle of it she touched his arm:
‘That stretch up there is where we saw the kingfishers, Hubert; d’you remember?’
Halted, they gazed up the quiet river, deserted and fit for the bright birds. Falling light sprinkled it through willows on the southern bank. The quietest river, it seemed, in the world, most subdued to the moods of men, flowing with an even clear stream among bright fields and those drooping shapely trees; having, as it were, a bland intensity of being, a presence of its own, gracious and apart.
‘Three thousand years ago,’ said Hubert suddenly, ‘this old river used to be like those I’ve seen in the wilds, an unshaped flow of water in matted jungle.’
He drove on. They had their backs to the sunlight now, and it was like driving into what had been painted for them.
And so they sped on, while into the sky crept the sunset glow, and the cleaned-up fields darkened a little, and gathered loneliness under the evening flight of birds.
At the door of Condaford Grange Dinny got out, humming: ‘ “She was a shepherdess oh! so fair,” ’ and looking into her brother’s face. He was, however, busy with the car and did not appear to see the connection.
Chapter Twelve
THE outline of a young Englishman of the inarticulate variety is difficult to grasp. The vocal variety is easily enough apprehended. Its manners and habits bulk large to the eye and have but little importance in the national life. Vociferous, critical, ingenious, knowing and advertising only its own kind, it forms an iridescence shimmering over the surface of the bog, and disguising the peat below. It constantly and brilliantly expresses almost nothing; while those whose lives are spent in the application of trained energy remain invisible, but none the less solid; for feelings continually voiced cease to be feelings, and feelings never voiced deepen with their dumbness. Hubert did not look solid, nor was he stolid; even those normal aids to the outline of the inarticulate were absent. Trained, sensitive, and no fool, he was capable of passing quiet judgement on people and events that would have surprised the vocal, but, except to himself, he never passed it. Till quite recently, indeed, he had lacked time and opportunity; but seeing him in a smoking-room, at a dinner-table, or wherever the expressive scintillate, you would know at once that neither time nor opportunity was going to make him vociferous. Going into the war, so early, as a professional, he had missed the expanding influences of the ’Varsity and London. Eight years in Mesopotamia, Egypt and India, a year of illness and the Hallorsen expedition, had given him a remote, drawn, rather embittered look. He was of the temperament that, in idleness, eats its heart out. With dog and gun or on a horse, he found it bearable, but only just; and without those adventitious aids he wilted. Three days after the return to Condaford he came to Dinny on the terrace, with The Times in his hand.
‘Look at this!’
Dinny read:
SIR,–
You will pardon me, I trust, this intrusion on your space. It has come to my knowledge that certain passages in my book, ‘Bolivia and Its Secrets’, published last July, have grievously annoyed my second-in-command, Captain Hubert Charwell, DSO, who had charge of the transport of the expedition. On re-reading these passages I certainly believe that in the vexation caused me by the partial failure of the expedition, and owing to the over-strained state in which I returned from the adventure, I have passed undue criticism on Captain Charwell’s conduct; and I wish, pending the issue of the second and amended edition which I trust will not be long delayed, to take this opportunity of publicly withdrawing in your great journal the gravamen of my written words. It is my duty and pleasure to express to Captain Charwell and the British Army of which he is a member, my sincere apology, and my regret for any pain I may have caused him.
Sir, Your obedient servant,
EDWARD HALLORSEN (Professor).
Piedmont Hotel,
London.
‘Very handsome!’ said Dinny, trembling a little.
‘Hallorsen in London! What the devil does he mean by this all of a sudden?’
She began pulling yellowed leaves out of an Agapanthus. The danger of doing things for other people was being disclosed to her.