At last Dinny got up: “Well, my dears, gloom doesn’t help. Let’s look on the bright side. They might have been scarlet instead of white as snow.”
The General said, more to himself than in reply:
“They must defend. That fellow can’t have it all his own way.”
“But, Dad, to have Clare free, with a perfectly clear conscience, would be nice and ironic, and ever so much less fuss!”
“Lie down under an accusation of that sort?”
“Her name will go even if she wins. No one can spend a night in a car with a young man with impunity. Can they, Mother?”
Lady Charwell smiled faintly.
“I agree with your father, Dinny. It seems to me revolting that Clare should be divorced when she’s done nothing except been a little foolish. Besides, it would be cheating the law, wouldn’t it?”
“I shouldn’t think the law would care, dear. However —!” And Dinny was silent, scrutinising their rueful faces, aware that they set some mysterious store by marriage and divorce which she did not, and that nothing she could say would alter it.
“The young man,” said the General, “seemed a decent fellow, I thought. He’ll have to come up and see the lawyers when we do.”
“I’d better go up with Clare tomorrow evening, Dad, and get Uncle Lawrence to arrange you a meeting with the lawyers for after lunch on Monday. I’ll telephone you and Tony Croom from Mount Street in the morning.”
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 or 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 in the smaller ‘places’ round seemed to make country life into a sort of cult, organising tennis and bridge parties, village entertainments, and the 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 judgment 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 . . . .
In that quiet and yellow backwater, the Old Jewry, the offices of Kingson Cuthcott and Forsyte were tribally invaded at four o’clock next day.
“What’s become of old Gradman, Mr. Forsyte?” Dinny heard her uncle say. “Still here?”
‘Very young’ Roger Forsyte, who was forty-two, answered, in a voice which seemed to contradict his jaw: “I believe he’s still living at Pinner, or Highgate, or wherever it was.”
“I should be glad to think so,” murmured Sir Lawrence. “Old For — er, your cousin thought a lot of him. A regular Victorian piece.”
‘Very young’ Roger smiled. “Won’t you all sit down?”
Dinny, who had never yet been in a lawyer’s office, looked at the law books along the walls, the bundles of papers, the yellowish blind, the repellent black fireplace with its little coal fire that seemed to warm nothing, the map of an estate hanging unrolled behind the door, the low wicker basket on the table, the pens and sealing-wax, and ‘very young’ Roger, and thought of an album of seaweed, compiled by her first governess. She saw her father rise and place a document in the solicitor’s hands.
“We’ve come about this.”
‘Very young’ Roger glanced at the heading of the paper and over it at Clare.
‘How does he know which of us it is?’ thought Dinny.
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