Part 47 (2/2)
d.i.c.k Dennehy had the gift--the genius--of his race; he saw the fun of his own sufferings. As he surveyed the tops of Winnie's chimneys--with Winnie at his elbow, discreetly awaiting his opinion as to whether their presence enhanced the beauty of the landscape--his face wore a look of rueful amus.e.m.e.nt, instead of the simple admiration which the outlook from his study ought to have inspired in him. At the moment Tora and Stephen were having an animated wrangle in the pa.s.sage outside, relative to the merits of a dustbin, sent on approval.
”I hope I don't intrude?” said Winnie, waving her hand towards her chimney-pots.
”I'll be reminded of you, if I'm ever in danger of forgetting.”
”We could almost start a system of communication--flag-wagging, or even wireless. Anything except thought-transference! I couldn't risk that with you--though you could with me quite safely.”
”Ah, you're always teasing me, Winnie.”
”You've not been nearly enthusiastic enough about the house, you know.
Make an effort.”
”I'll be trying to say a few words on it after dinner. Will you be at dinner?”
”I shall. Tora has asked me, to entertain you.”
”You can do that--and more when you've the mind to it.”
”I must warn you at once that I take most of my meals, except breakfast, at the Patch--in brief intervals of relaxation from the Synopsis.”
d.i.c.k had heard of the Synopsis. ”You'll be learning a lot of nonsense,”
he remarked.
”Oh, I don't need the Synopsis to learn that. Just talking to people is quite enough.”
”We won't have a telegraph; we'll have a telephone, Winnie. Then I'll hear your voice and admire your conversation.” ”And not see your face,”
he had very nearly added.
Winnie demurely surveyed the landscape again. ”My chimneys are a pity, aren't they? They spoil the impression of solitude--of being alone with nature--don't they? But judging from Tora's voice--it sounds really aggrieved--I think it's time we went and umpired about the dustbin. When those two do quarrel, the contempt they express for one another's opinions is awful.”
If the situation had its pathetic side for poor d.i.c.k Dennehy, there was more than one aspect on which a sense of humour could lay hold. Besides d.i.c.k, impelled by love yet racked by conscience, and, in consequence, by chimney-pots in the middle distance, there were the Aikenheads.
Engrossed in one another, in their studies and theories, they saw nothing of what was going on under--and seemed now to Winnie as plain to see as--their noses. They had bestowed immense pains on the house, and had counted on giving d.i.c.k a triumphant surprise. His behaviour--for even after dinner he achieved but a very halting enthusiasm--was a sore disappointment. They understood neither why he was not delighted nor why, failing that, in common decency and grat.i.tude he could not make a better show of being delighted. Good-tempered as they were, they could not help betraying their feelings--Tora by a sudden and stony silence touching the house of whose beauties she had been so full; Stephen by satirical remarks about the heights of splendour on which d.i.c.k now required to be seated in his daily life and surroundings. d.i.c.k marked their vexation and understood it, but could not so transform his demeanour as to remove it, and, being unable to do that, began by a natural movement of the mind to resent it. ”They really might see that there's something else the matter,” he argued within himself in plaintive vexation. Within twenty-four hours of his arrival, the three were manifestly at odds on this false issue, and the tension threatened to become greater and greater. It was all ridiculous, a comedy of mistakes, but it might end in a sad straining of an old and dear friends.h.i.+p.
To avert this catastrophe, Winnie determined to give the go-by to coy modesty. d.i.c.k Dennehy had not told her that he loved her, but she determined to acquaint the Aikenheads with the interesting fact. What would happen after that she did not know, but it seemed the only thing to do at the moment.
After lunch on the second day of the visit, d.i.c.k Dennehy, in a desperate effort to be more gracious, said that he would go across and have another look at the house. n.o.body offered to accompany him. Tora seemed not to hear his remark; Stephen observed sarcastically that d.i.c.k might consider the desirability of adding a ball-room and a theatre, and with that returned to his labours on the Synopsis. Winnie sat smiling while d.i.c.k departed and left her alone with Tora.
”You think he's not appreciative enough about the house, don't you, Tora?” she asked.
”I think he just hates it, but I really don't know why.”
”It's not his own house that he hates; it's my chimneys.”
”Your chimneys? What in the world do you mean?”
”He can see them from his study window--just where he wants to be undisturbed.”
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