John Galsworthy - Flowering Wilderness

“And Con says,” went on Lady Mont, “that he can’t make two ends meet this year—Clare’s weddin’ and the Budget, and Jean expectin’– he’ll have to cut down some trees, and sell the horses. We’re hard up, too. It’s lucky Fleur’s got so much. Money is such a bore. What do you think?”

Adrian gave a start.

“Well, no one expects a good thing nowadays, but one wants enough to live on.”

“It’s havin’ dependants. Boswell’s got a sister that can only walk with one leg; and Johnson’s wife’s got cancer—poor thing! And everybody’s got somebody or somethin’. Dinny says at Condaford her mother does everythin’ in the village. So how it’s to go on, I don’t know. Lawrence doesn’t save a penny.”

“We’re falling between two stools, Em; and one fine day we shall reach the floor with a bump.”

“I suppose we shall live in almshouses.” And Lady Mont lifted her work up to the light. “No, I shan’t make it drip. Or else go to Kenya; they say there’s somethin’ that pays there.”

“What I hate,” said Adrian with sudden energy, “is the thought of Mr. Tom Noddy or somebody buying Condaford and using it for week-end cocktail parties.”

“I should go and be a Banshee in the woods. There couldn’t be Condaford without Cherrells.”

“There dashed well could, Em. There’s a confounded process called evolution; and England is its home.”

Lady Mont sighed, and, getting up, swayed over to her parakeet.

“Polly! You and I will go and live in an almshouse.”

When Compson Grice telephoned to Michael, or rather to Fleur, for Michael was not in, he sounded embarrassed.

“Is there any message I can give him, Mr. Grice?”

“Your husband asked me to find out Desert’s movements. Well, Desert’s just been in to see me, and practically said he was off again; but—er—I didn’t like his looks, and his hand was like a man’s in fever.”

“He’s been having malaria.”

“Oh! Ah! By the way, I’m sending you a book I’m sure you’ll like; it’s by that French Canadian.”

“Thank you, very much. I’ll tell Michael when he comes in.”

And Fleur stood thinking. Ought she to pass this on to Dinny? Without consulting Michael she did not like to, and he, tied tightly to the House just now, might not even be in to dinner. How like Wilfrid to keep one on tenterhooks! She always felt that she knew him better than either Dinny or Michael. They were convinced of a vein of pure gold in him. She, for whom he had once had such a pressing passion, could only assess that vein at nine carat. ‘That, I suppose,’ she thought, rather bitterly, ‘is because my nature is lower than theirs.’ People assessed others according to their own natures, didn’t they? Still, it was difficult to give high value to one whose mistress she had not become, and who had then fled into the blue. There was always extravagance in Michael’s likings; in Dinny—well, Dinny she did not really understand.

And so she went back to the letters she was writing. They were important, for she was rallying the best and brightest people to meet some high-caste Indian ladies who were over for the Conference. She had nearly finished when she was called to the telephone by Michael, asking if there were any message from Compson Grice. Having given him what news there was, she went on:

“Are you coming in to dinner?… Good! I dread dining alone with Dinny; she’s so marvellously cheerful, it gives me the creeps. Not worry other people and all that, of course; but if she showed her feelings more it would worry us less… Uncle Con!… That’s rather funny, the whole family seems to want now the exact opposite of what they wanted at first. I suppose it’s the result of watching her suffer… Yes, she went in the car to sail Kit’s boat on the Round Pond; they sent Dandy and the boat back in the car, and are walking home… All right dear boy. Eight o’clock; don’t be late if you can help it… Oh! here ARE Kit and Dinny. Good-bye!”

Kit had come into the room. His face was brown, his eyes blue, his sweater the same colour as his eyes, his shorts darker blue; his green stockings were gartered below his bare knees, and his brown shoes had brogues; he wore no cap on his bright head.

“Auntie Dinny has gone to lie down. She had to sit on the grass. She says she’ll be all right soon. D’you think she’s going to have measles? I’ve had them, Mummy, so when she’s isulated I can still see her. We saw a man who frightened her.”

“What sort of man?”

“He didn’t come near; a tall sort of man; he had his hat in his hand, and when he saw us, he almost ran.”

“How do you know he saw you?”

“Oh! he went like that, and scooted.”

“Was that in the Park?”

“Yes.”

“Which?”

“The Green Park.”

“Was he thin, and dark in the face?”

“Yes; do you know him too?”

“Why ‘too,’ Kit? Did Auntie Dinny know him?”

“I think so; she said: ‘Oh!’ like that, and put her hand here. And then she looked after him; and then she sat down on the grass. I fanned her with her scarf. I love Auntie Dinny. Has she a husband?”

“No.”

When he had gone up, Fleur debated. Dinny must have realised that Kit would describe everything. She decided only to send up a message and some sal volatile.

The answer came back: “I shall be all right by dinner.”

But at dinner-time a further message came to say she still felt rather faint: might she just go to bed and have a long night?

Thus it was that Michael and Fleur sat down alone.

“It was Wilfrid, of course.”

Michael nodded.

“I wish to God he’d go. It’s so wretched—the whole thing! D’you remember that passage in Turgenev, where Litvinov watches the train smoke curling away over the fields?”

“No. Why?”

“All Dinny’s tissue going up in smoke.”

“Yes,” said Fleur between tight lips. “But the fire will burn out.”

“And leave—?”

“Oh! She’ll be recognisable.”

Michael looked hard at the partner of his board. She was regarding the morsel of fish on her fork. With a little set smile on her lips she raised it to her mouth and began champing, as if chewing the cud of experience. Recognisable! Yes, SHE was as pretty as ever, though more firmly moulded, as if in tune with the revival of shape. He turned his eyes away, for he still squirmed when he thought of that business four years ago, of which he had known so little, suspected so much, and talked not at all. Smoke! Did all human passion burn away and drift in a blue film over the fields, obscure for a moment the sight of the sun and the shapes of the crops and the trees, then fade into air and leave the clear hard day; and no difference anywhere? Not quite! For smoke was burnt tissue, and where fire had raged there was alteration. Of the Dinny he had known from a small child up, the outline would be changed—hardened, sharpened, refined, withered? And he said:

“I must be back at the House by nine, the Chancellor’s speaking. Why one should listen to him, I don’t know, but one does.”

“Why you should listen to anyone will always be a mystery. Did you ever know any speaker in the House change anyone’s opinions?”

“No,” said Michael with a wry smile, “but one lives in hopes. We sit day after day talking of some blessed measure, and then take a vote, with the same result as if we’d taken it at the end of the first two speeches. And that’s gone on for hundreds of years.”

“So filial!” said Fleur. “Kit thinks Dinny is going to have measles. He’s asking, too, if she has a husband… Coaker, bring the coffee, please. Mr. Mont has to go.”