John Galsworthy - Over the River

“Yes,” said Clare.

The General twirled his little moustache, and thrust the other hand deep into his pocket.

“Well, what on earth is going to happen to you both? You can’t have a divorce—there’s your name, and his position, and—after only eighteen months. What are you going to do? Live apart? That’s not fair to you, or to him.”

“Fairer to both of us than living together will be.”

The General glanced at her hardened face. “So you say now; but we’ve both of us had more experience than you.”

“That was bound to be said sooner or later. You want me to go back with him?”

The General looked acutely unhappy.

“You know, my dear, that I only want what’s best for you.”

“And Jerry has convinced you that IS the best. Well, it’s the worst. I’m not going, Dad, and there’s an end of it.”

The General looked at her face, looked at the face of his son-inlaw, shrugged his shoulders, and began filling his pipe.

Jerry Corven’s eyes, which had been passing from face to face, narrowed and came to rest on Clare’s. That look lasted a long time, and neither flinched.

“Very well,” he said, at last, “I will make other arrangements. Good-bye, sir; good-bye, Clare!” And turning on his heel, he went out.

In the silence that followed, the sound of his car crunching away on the drive could be heard distinctly. The General, smoking glumly, kept his glance averted; Clare went to the window. It was growing dark outside, and now that the crisis was over she felt unstrung.

“I wish to God,” said her father’s voice, “that I could understand this business.”

Clare did not move from the window: “Did he tell you he’d used my riding whip on me?”

“What!” said the General.

Clare turned round.

“Yes.”

“On YOU?”

“Yes. That was not my real reason, but it put the finishing touch. Sorry to hurt you, Dad!”

“By God!”

Clare had a moment of illumination. Concrete facts! Give a man a fact!

“The ruffian!” said the General: “The ruffian! He told me he spent the evening with you the other day; is that true?”

A slow flush had burned up in her cheeks.

“He practically forced himself in.”

“The ruffian!” said the General once more.

When she was alone again, she meditated wryly on the sudden difference that little fact about the whip had made in her father’s feelings. He had taken it as a personal affront, an insult to his own flesh and blood. She felt that he could have stood it with equanimity of someone else’s daughter; she remembered that he had even sympathised with her brother’s flogging of the muleteer, which had brought such a peck of trouble on them all. How little detached, how delightfully personal, people were! Feeling and criticising in terms of their own prejudices! Well! She was over the worst now, for her people were on her side, and she would make certain of not seeing Jerry alone again. She thought of the long look he had given her. He was a good loser, because for him the game was never at an end. Life itself—not each item of life—absorbed him. He rode Life, took a toss, got up, rode on; met an obstacle, rode over it, rode through it, took the scratches as all in the day’s work. He had fascinated her, ridden through and over her; the fascination was gone, and she wondered that it had ever been. What was he going to do now? Well! One thing was certain: somehow, he would cut his losses!

One who gazes at the Temple’s smooth green turf, fine trees, stone-silled buildings, and pouter pigeons, feels dithyrambic, till on him intrudes the vision of countless bundles of papers tied round with pink tape, unending clerks in little outer chambers sucking thumbs and waiting for solicitors, calf-bound tomes stored with reports of innumerable cases so closely argued that the light-minded sigh at sight of them and think of the Café Royal. Who shall deny that the Temple harbours the human mind in excelsis, the human body in chairs; who shall gainsay that the human spirit is taken off at its entrances and left outside like the shoes of those who enter a mosque? Not even to its Grand Nights is the human spirit admitted, for the legal mind must not ‘slop over,’ and warning is given by the word ‘Decorations’ on the invitation cards. On those few autumn mornings when the sun shines, the inhabitant of the Temple who faces East may possibly feel in his midriff as a man feels on a hilltop, or after hearing a Brahms symphony, or even when seeing first daffodils in spring; if so, he will hastily remember where he is, and turn to: Collister v. Daverday: Popdick intervening.

And yet, strangely, Eustace Dornford, verging on middle age, was continually being visited, whether the sun shone or not, by the feeling of one who sits on a low wall in the first spring warmth, seeing life as a Botticellian figure advancing towards him through an orchard of orange trees and spring flowers. At less expenditure of words, he was ‘in love’ with Dinny. Each morning when he saw Clare he was visited by a longing not to dictate on parliamentary subjects, but rather to lead her to talk about her sister. Self-controlled, however, and with a sense of humour, he bowed to his professional inhibitions, merely asking Clare whether she and her sister would dine with him, “on Saturday—here, or at the Café Royal?”

“Here would be more original.”

“Would you care to ask a man to make a fourth?”

“But won’t you, Mr. Dornford?”

“You might like someone special.”

“Well, there’s young Tony Croom, who was on the boat with me. He’s a nice boy.”

“Good! Saturday, then. And you’ll ask your sister?”

Clare did not say: “She’s probably on the doorstep,” for, as a fact, she was. Every evening that week she was coming at half-past six to accompany Clare back to Melton Mews. There were still chances, and the sisters were not taking them.

On hearing of the invitation Dinny said: “When I left you late that night I ran into Tony Croom, and we walked back to Mount Street together.”

“You didn’t tell him about Jerry’s visit to me?”

“Of course not!”

“It’s hard on him, as it is. He really is a nice boy, Dinny.”

“So I saw. And I wish he weren’t in London.”

Clare smiled. “Well, he won’t be for long; he’s to take charge of some Arab mares for Mr. Muskham down at Bablock Hythe.”

“Jack Muskham lives at Royston.”

“The mares are to have a separate establishment in a milder climate.”

Dinny roused herself from memories with an effort.

“Well, darling, shall we strap-hang on the Tube, or go a bust in a taxi?”

“I want air. Are you up to walking?”

“Rather! We’ll go by the Embankment and the Parks.”

They walked quickly, for it was cold. Lamplit and star-covered, that broad free segment of the Town had a memorable dark beauty; even on the buildings, their daylight features abolished, was stamped a certain grandeur.

Dinny murmured: “London at night IS beautiful.”

“Yes, you go to bed with a beauty and wake up with a barmaid. And, what’s it all for? A clotted mass of energy like an ant-heap.”

“‘So fatiguin’,’ as Aunt Em would say.”

“But what IS it all for, Dinny?”

“A workshop trying to turn out perfect specimens; a million failures to each success.”

“Is that worth while?”

“Why not?”

“Well, what is there to BELIEVE in?”

“Character.”

“How do you mean?”

“Character’s our way of showing the desire for perfection. Nursing the best that’s in one.”

“Hum!” said Clare. “Who’s to decide what’s best within one?”