The Colonel leant his head on his hand and half smiled at this expression of what he regarded as one of the major fallacies of love. “My poor darling,” he murmured.
“Daddy, you do understand, don’t you, that theoretically Mark is absolutely on your side? Because… well, because the facts of any case always should be demonstrated. I mean, that’s the scientific point of view.”
The Colonel’s half-smile twisted, but he said nothing.
’’And I agree, too, absolutely,” Rose said, “other things being equal.”
“Ah!” said the Colonel.
“But they’re not, darling,” Rose cried out, “they’re nothing like equal. In terms of human happiness, they’re all cockeyed. Mark says his grandmother’s so desperately worried that with all this coming on top of Sir Harold’s death and everything she may crack up altogether.”
The Colonel’s study commanded a view of his own spinney and of that part of the valley that the spinney did not mask: Bottom Bridge and a small area below it on the right bank of the Chyne. Rose went to the window and looked down. “She’s down there somewhere,” she said, “sketching in Bottom Meadow on the far side. She only sketches when she’s fussed.”
“She’s sent me a chit. She wants me to go down and talk to her at eight o’clock when I suppose she’ll have done a sketch and hopes to feel less fussed. Damned inconvenient hour but there you are. I’ll cut dinner, darling, and try the evening rise. Ask them to leave supper for me, will you, and apologies to Kitty.”
“O.K.,” Rose said with forced airiness. “And, of course,” she added, “there’s the further difficulty of Mark’s papa.”
“George.”
“Yes, indeed, George. Well, we know he’s not exactly as bright as sixpence, don’t we, but all the same he is Mark’s papa, and he’s cutting up most awfully rough and…”
Rose caught back her breath, her lips trembled, and her eyes filled with tears. She launched herself into her father’s arms and burst into a flood of tears. “What’s the use,” poor Rose sobbed, “of being a brave little woman? I’m not in the least brave. When Mark asked me to marry him, I said I wouldn’t because of you and there I was, so miserable that when he asked me again I said I would. And now, when we’re so desperately in love, this happens. We have to do them this really frightful injury. Mark says of course they must take it and it won’t make any difference to us, but of course it will, and how can I bear to be married to Mark and know how his people feel about you when next to Mark, my darling, darling Daddy, I love you best in the world? And his father,” Rose wept, “his father says that if Mark marries me, he’ll never forgive him and that they’ll do a sort of Montague and Capulet thing at us and, darling, it wouldn’t be much fun for Mark and me, would it, to be star-crossed lovers?”
“My poor baby,” murmured the agitated and sentimental Colonel, “my poor baby!” And he administered a number of unintentionally hard thumps between his daughter’s shoulder blades.
“It’s so many people’s happiness,” Rose sobbed. “It’s all of us.”
Her father dabbed at her eyes with his own handkerchief, kissed her and put her aside. In his turn he went over to the window and looked down at Bottom Bridge and up at the roofs of Nunspardon. There were no figures in view on the golf course.
“You know, Rose,” the Colonel said in a changed voice, “I don’t carry the whole responsibility. There is a final decision to be made, and mine must rest upon it. Don’t hold out too many hopes, my darling, but I suppose there is a chance. I’ve time to get it over before I talk to Lady Lacklander, and indeed I suppose I should. There’s nothing to be gained by any further delay. I’ll go now.”
He went to his desk, unlocked a drawer and took out an envelope.
Rose said, “Does Kitty…?”
“Oh, yes,” the Colonel said. “She knows.”
“Did you tell her, Daddy?”
The Colonel had already gone to the door. Without turning his head and with an air too casual to be convincing, he said, “O, no. No. She arranged to play a round of golf with George, and I imagine he elected to tell her. He’s a fearful old gas-bag is George.”
“She’s playing now, isn’t she?”
“Is she? Yes,” said the Colonel, “I believe she is. He came to fetch her, I think. It’s good for her to get out.”
“Yes, rather,” Rose agreed.
Her father went out to call on Mr. Octavius Danberry-Phinn. He took his fishing gear with him as he intended to go straight on to his meeting with Lady Lacklander and to ease his troubled mind afterwards with the evening rise. He also took his spaniel Skip, who was trained to good behaviour when he accompanied his master to the trout stream.
Lady Lacklander consulted the diamond-encrusted watch which was pinned to her tremendous bosom and discovered that it was now seven o’clock. She had been painting for half an hour and an all-too-familiar phenomenon had emerged from her efforts.
“It’s a curious thing,” she meditated, “that a woman of my character and determination should produce such a puny affair. However, it’s got me in better trim for Maurice Cartarette, and that’s a damn’ good thing. An hour to go if he’s punctual, and he’s sure to be that.”
She tilted her sketch and ran a faint green wash over the foreground. When it was partly dry, she rose from her stool, tramped some distance away to the crest of a hillock, seated herself on her shooting-stick and contemplated her work through a lorgnette tricked out with diamonds. The shooting-stick sank beneath her in the soft meadowland so that the disk which was designed to check its descent was itself imbedded to the depth of several inches. When Lady Lacklander returned to her easel, she merely abandoned her shooting-stick, which remained in a vertical position and from a distance looked a little like a giant fungoid growth. Sticking up above intervening hillocks and rushes, it was observed over the top of his glasses by the longsighted Mr. Phinn when, accompanied by Thomasina Twitchett, he came nearer to Bottom Bridge. Keeping on the right bank, he began to cast his fly in a somewhat mannered but adroit fashion over the waters most often frequented by the Old ’Un. Lady Lacklander, whose ears were as sharp as his, heard the whirr of his reel and, remaining invisible, was perfectly able to deduce the identity and movements of the angler. At the same time, far above them on Watt’s Hill, Colonel Cartarette, finding nobody but seven cats at home at Jacob’s Cottage, walked round the house and looking down into the little valley at once spotted both Lady Lacklander and Mr. Phinn, like figures in Nurse Kettle’s imaginary map, the one squatting on her camp stool, the other in slow motion near Bottom Bridge.
“I’ve time to speak to him before I see her,” thought the Colonel. “But I’ll leave it here in case we don’t meet.” He posted his long envelope in Mr. Phinn’s front door, and then, greatly troubled in spirit, he made for the river path and went down into the valley, the old spaniel, Skip, walking at his heels.
Nurse Kettle, looking through the drawing-room window at Uplands, caught sight of the Colonel before he disappeared beyond Commander Syce’s spinney. She administered a final tattoo with the edges of her muscular hands on Commander Syce’s lumbar muscles and said, “There goes the Colonel for the evening rise. You wouldn’t have stood that amount of punishment two days ago, would you?”
“No,” a submerged voice said, “I suppose not.”
“Well! So that’s all I get for my trouble.”
“No, no! Look here, look here!” he gabbled, twisting his head in an attempt to see her. “Good heavens! What are you saying?”
“All right. I know. I was only pulling your leg. There!” she said. “That’s all for to-day and I fancy it won’t be long before I wash my hands of you altogether.”
“Of course I can’t expect to impose on your kindness any longer.”