In the Mountains Part 26

'You're not kind to Mrs. Barnes,' I said to him this afternoon. 'You've made her quite unnatural. She is cowed.'

'I am unable to like her,' said my uncle shortly.

'You are quite wrong not to. She has had bitter troubles, and is all goodness. I don't think I ever met anybody so completely unselfish.'

'I wish she would go and be unselfish in her own room, then,' said my uncle.

'I don't know you,' I said, shrugging my shoulders. 'You arrived here dripping unction and charitableness, and now--'

'Why doesn't she give me a chance?' he cried. 'She never budges. These women who stick, who can't bear to be by themselves--good heavens, hasn't she prayers she ought to be saying, and underclothes she ought to mend?'

'I don't believe you care so very much for Dolly after all,' I said, 'or you would be kind to the sister she is so deeply devoted to.'

This sobered him. 'I'll try,' said my uncle; and it was quite hard not to laugh at the change in our positions--I the grey-beard now, the wise rebuker, he the hot-headed yet well-intentioned young relative.

_October 11th._

I think guests ought to like each other; love each other if they prefer it, but at least like. They too have their duties, and one of them is to resist nourishing aversions; or, if owing to their implacable dispositions they can't help nourishing them, oughtn't they to try very hard not to show it? They should consider the helpless position of the hostess, she who, at any rate theoretically, is bound to be equally attached to them all.

Before my uncle came it is true we had begun to fester, but we festered nicely. Mrs. Barnes and I did it with every mark of consideration and politeness. We were ladies. Uncle Rudolph is no lady; and this little house, which I daresay looks a picture of peace from outside with the snow falling on its roof and the firelight shining in its windows, seethes with elemental pa.s.sions. Fear, love, anger--they all dwell in it now, all brought into it by him, all coming out of the mixture, so innocuous one would think, so likely, one would think, to produce only the fruits of the spirit,--the mixture of two widows and one clergyman.

Wonderful how much can be accomplished with small means. Also, most wonderful the centuries that seem to separate me from those July days when I lay innocently on the gra.s.s watching the clouds pa.s.s over the blue of the delphinium tops, before ever I had set eyes on Mrs. Barnes and Dolly, and while Uncle Rudolph, far away at home and not even beginning to think of a pa.s.sport, was being normal in his Deanery.

He has, I am sure, done what he promised and tried to be kinder to Mrs.

Barnes, and I can only conclude he was not able to manage it, for I see no difference. He glowers and glowers, and she immovably knits. And in spite of the silence that reigns except when, for a desperate moment, I make an effort to be amusing, there is a curious feeling that we are really living in a state of m.u.f.fled uproar, in a constant condition of barely suppressed brawl. I feel as though the least thing, the least touch, even somebody coughing, and the house will blow up. I catch myself walking carefully across the hall so as not to shake it, not to knock against the furniture. How secure, how peaceful, of what a great and splendid simplicity do those July days, those pre-guest days, seem now!

_October 12th._

I went into Dolly's bedroom last night, crept in on tiptoe because there is a door leading from it into Mrs. Barnes's room, caught hold firmly of her wrist, and led her, without saying a word and taking infinite care to move quietly, into my bedroom. Then, having shut her in, I said, 'What are you going to do about it?'

She didn't pretend not to understand. The candour of Dolly's brow is an exact reflection of the candour of her mind.

'About your uncle,' she said, nodding. 'I like him very much.'

'Enough to marry him?'

'Oh quite. I always like people enough to marry them.' And she added, as though in explanation of this perhaps rather excessively amiable tendency, 'Husbands are so kind.'

'You ought to know,' I conceded.

'I do,' said Dolly, with the sweetest reminiscent smile.

'Uncle Rudolph is only waiting to get you alone to propose,' I said.

Dolly nodded. There was nothing I could tell her that she wasn't already aware of.

'As you appear to have noticed everything,' I said, 'I suppose you have also noticed that he is very much in love with you.'

'Oh yes,' said Dolly placidly.

'So much in love that he doesn't seem even to remember that he's a dignitary of the Church, and when he's alone with me he behaves in a way I'm sure the Church wouldn't like at all. Why, he almost swears.'

'_Isn't_ it a good thing?' said Dolly, approvingly.

'Yes. But now what is to be done about Siegfried--'

'Dear Siegfried,' murmured Dolly.

'And Juchs--'

'Poor darling,' murmured Dolly.

'Yes, yes. But oughtn't Uncle Rudolph to be told?'

'Of course,' said Dolly, her eyes a little surprised that I should want to know anything so obvious.

'You told me it would kill Kitty if I knew about Juchs. It will kill her twice as much if Uncle Rudolph knows.'

'Kitty won't know anything about it. At least, not till it's all over.

My dear, when it comes to marrying I can't be stuck all about with secrets.'

'Do you mean to tell my uncle yourself?'

'Of course,' said Dolly, again with surprise in her eyes.

'When?'

'When he asks me to marry him. Till he does I don't quite see what it has to do with him.'

'And you're not afraid--you don't think your second marriage will be a great shock to him? He being a dean, and nourished on Tables of Affinity?'

'I can't help it if it is. He has got to know. If he loves me enough it won't matter to him, and if he doesn't love me enough it won't matter to him either.'

'Because then his objections to Juchs would be greater than his wish to marry you?'

'Yes,' said Dolly, smiling. 'It would mean,' she went on, 'that he wasn't fond of me _enough_.'

'And you wouldn't mind?'

Her eyes widened a little. 'Why should I mind?'

'No. I suppose you wouldn't, as you're not in love.'

I then remarked that, though I could understand her not being in love with a man my uncle's age, it was my belief that she had never in her life been in love. Not even with Siegfried. Not with anybody.

Dolly said she hadn't, and that she liked people much too much to want to grab at them.

'Grab at them!'