With that promise to her credit she went back to Condaford the following day and gave herself to mitigation of the atmosphere she found there. Her father and mother, living their ordinary lives, were obviously haunted and harassed. Her mother, sensitive and secluded, was just shrinking from publicity discreditable to Clare. Her father seemed to feel that, however the case went, most people would think his daughter a light women and a liar; young Croom would be excused more or less, but a woman who allowed circumstance to take such turns would find no one to excuse her. He was clearly feeling, too, a vindictive anger against Jerry Corven, and a determination that the fellow should not be successful if he could help it. Faintly amused at an attitude so male, Dinny felt a sort of admiration at the painful integrity with which he was grasping the shadow and letting the substance go. To her father’s generation divorce still seemed the outward and visible sign of inner and spiritual disgrace. To herself love was love and, when it became aversion, ceased to justify sexual relationship. She had, in fact, been more shocked by Clare’s yielding to Jerry Corven in her rooms than by her leaving him in Ceylon. The divorce suits she had occasionally followed in the papers had done nothing to help her believe that marriages were made in heaven. But she recognised the feelings of those brought up in an older atmosphere, and avoided adding to the confusion and trouble in her people’s minds. The line she took was more practical: The thing would soon be over one way or the other, and probably the other! People paid very little attention to other people’s affairs nowadays!

“What!” said the General sardonically. “‘Night in a car’— it’s the perfect headline. Sets everybody thinking at once how they themselves would have behaved.”

She had no answer, but: “They’ll make a symposium of it, darling: The Home Secretary, the Dean of St. Paul’s, the Princess Elizabeth.”

She was disturbed when told that Dornford had been asked to Condaford for Easter.

“I hope you don’t mind, Dinny; we didn’t know whether you’d be here or not.”

“I can’t use the expression ‘I’m agreeable’ even to you, Mother.”

“Well, darling, one of these days you must go down into the battle again.”

Dinny bit her lip and did not answer. It was true, and the more disquieting. Coming from her gentle and unmanaging mother, the words stung.

Battle! Life, then, was like the war. It struck you down into hospital, turned you out therefrom into the ranks again. Her mother and father would hate ‘to lose her,’ but they clearly wanted her ‘to go.’ And this with Clare’s failure written on the wall!

Easter came with a wind ‘fresh to strong.’ Clare arrived by train on the Saturday morning, Dornford by car in the afternoon. He greeted Dinny as if doubtful of his welcome.

He had found himself a house. It was on Campden Hill. He had been terribly anxious to know Clare’s opinion of it, and she had spent a Sunday afternoon going over it with him.

“‘Eminently desirable,’ Dinny. ‘South aspect; garage and stabling for two horses; good garden; all the usual offices, centrally heated,’ and otherwise well-bred. He thinks of going in towards the end of May. It has an old tiled roof, so I put him on to French grey for shutters. Really, it’s rather nice, and roomy.”

“It sounds ‘marvellous.’ I suppose you’ll be going there instead of to the Temple?”

“Yes, he’s moving into Pump Court, or Brick Buildings — I can’t remember. When you think of it, Dinny, why shouldn’t he have been made co-respondent instead of Tony? I see much more of him.”

Otherwise allusion to ‘the case’ was foregone. It would be one of the first after the undefended suits were disposed of, and calm before the storm was reigning.

Dornford, indeed, referred to it after lunch on Sunday.

“Shall you be in court during your sister’s case, Dinny?”

“I must.”

“I’m afraid it may make you very wild. They’ve briefed Brough, and he’s particularly exasperating when he likes with a simple denial like this; that’s what they’ll rely on. Clare must try and keep cool.”

Dinny remembered ‘very young’ Roger’s wishing it had been herself and not Clare.

“I hope you’ll tell her that.”

“I’ll take her through her evidence, and cross-examine her on it. But one can’t tell the line Brough will take.”

“Shall you be in court yourself?”

“If I can, but the odds are I shan’t be free.”

“How long will it last?”

“More than a day, I’m afraid.”

Dinny sighed.

“Poor Dad! Has Clare got a good man?”

“Yes — Instone, very much hampered by her refusal to talk about Ceylon.”

“That’s definite, you know. She won’t.”

“I like her for it, but I’m afraid it’s fatal.”

“So be it!” said Dinny: “I want her free. The person most to be pitied is Tony Croom.”

“Why?”

“He’s the only one of the three in love.”

“I see,” said Dornford, and was silent. Dinny felt sorry.

“Would you care for a walk?”

“Simply love it!”

“We’ll go up through the woods, and I’ll show you where the Cherrell killed the boar and won the de Campfort — our heraldic myth. Had you any family legend in Shropshire?”

“Yes, but the place has gone — sold when my father died; six of us and no money.”

“Oh!” said Dinny, “horrible when families are uprooted.”

Dornford smiled.

“Live donkeys are better than dead lions.”

While they were going up through the coverts he talked about his new house, subtly ‘pumping’ her for expressions of her taste.

They came out into a sunken roadway leading on to a thorn-bush-covered down.

“Here’s the place. Virgin forest then, no doubt. We used to picnic here as children.”

Dornford took a deep breath. “Real English view — nothing spectacular, but no end good.”

“Lovable.”

“That’s the word.”

He spread his raincoat on the bank. “Sit down and let’s have a smoke.”

Dinny sat down.

“Come on part of it yourself, the ground’s not too dry.”

While he sat there, with his hands hugging his knees and his pipe fuming gently, she thought: ‘The most self-controlled man I ever came across, and the gentlest, except Uncle Adrian.’

“If only a boar would come along,” he said, “it would be prime!”

“Member of Parliament kills boar on spur of Chilterns,” murmured Dinny, but did not add: “Wins lady.”

“Wind’s off the gorse. Another three weeks and it’ll be green down there. Pick of the year — this, or the Indian summer, I never know. And yours, Dinny?”

“Blossom time.”

“Um; and harvest. This ought to be glorious then — quite a lot of cornland.”

“It was just ripe when the war broke out. We came up picnicking two days before, and stayed till the moon rose. How much do you think people really fought for England, Mr. Dornford?”

“Practically all — for some nook or other of it; many just for the streets, and buses, and smell of fried fish. I fought mainly, I think, for Shrewsbury and Oxford. But Eustace is my name.”

“I’ll remember. We’d better go down now, or we shall be late for tea.”

And, all the way home, they contended with birds’ songs and the names of plants.

“Thanks for my treat,” he said.

“I’ve enjoyed it, too.”

That walk had, indeed, a curiously soothing effect on Dinny. So, she could talk with him without question of love-making.

Bank holiday was sou’-westerly. Dornford spent a quiet hour with Clare over her evidence, and then went riding with her in the rain. Dinny’s morning went in arranging for spring cleaning and the chintzing of the furniture while the family were up in town. Her mother and father were to stay at Mount Street, she and Clare with Fleur. In the afternoon she pottered with the General round the new pigsties, progressing as slowly as a local builder, anxious to keep his men in work, could make them. She was not alone again with Dornford until after tea.

“Well,” he said, “I think your sister will do, if she keeps her temper.”

“Clare can be very cutting.”

“Yes, and there’s an underlying sentiment among lawyers against being cut up by outsiders in each other’s presence; even judges have it.”

“They won’t find her a ‘butterfly on the wheel.’”

“It’s no good getting up against institutions, you know; they carry too many guns.”

“Oh! well,” said Dinny, with a sigh, “it’s on the knees of the gods.”

“Which are deuced slippery. Could I have a photograph of you, preferably as a little girl?”

“I’ll see what we’ve got — I’m afraid only snaps; but I think there’s one where my nose doesn’t turn up too much.”

She went to a cabinet, took a drawer out bodily, and put it on the covered billiard table.

“The family snap-hoard — choose!”

He stood at her side and they turned them over.

“I took most of them, so there aren’t many of me.”

“Is that your brother?”

“Yes, and this — just before he went to the war. This is Clare the week before she was married. Here’s one of me, with some hair. Dad took that when he came home, the spring after the war.”

“When you were thirteen?”

“Fourteen nearly. It’s supposed to be like Joan of Arc being taken in by voices.”
............