‘And do you think men easily take offence?’
‘Yes! If you wound them on their pride. But aren’t women the same? Only our two prides are a bit different.’
Connie pondered this. She began again to have some misgiving about her going away. After all, was she not giving her man the go-by, if only for a short time? And he knew it. That’s why he was so queer and sarcastic.
Still! the human existence is a good deal controlled by the machine of external circumstance. She was in the power of this machine. She couldn’t extricate herself all in five minutes. She didn’t even want to.
Hilda arrived in good time on Thursday morning, in a nimble two-seater car, with her suit-case strapped firmly behind. She looked as demure and maidenly as ever, but she had the same will of her own. She had the very hell of a will of her own, as her husband had found out. But the husband was now divorcing her. Yes, she even made it easy for him to do that, though she had no lover. For the time being, she was ‘off’ men. She was very well content to be quite her own mistress: and mistress of her two children, whom she was going to bring up ‘properly’, whatever that may mean.
Connie was only allowed a suit-case, also. But she had sent on a trunk to her father, who was going by train. No use taking a car to Venice. And Italy much too hot to motor in, in July. He was going comfortably by train. He had just come down from Scotland.
So, like a demure arcadian field-marshal, Hilda arranged the material part of the journey. She and Connie sat in the upstairs room, chatting.
‘But Hilda!’ said Connie, a little frightened. ‘I want to stay near here tonight. Not here: near here!’
Hilda fixed her sister with grey, inscrutable eyes. She seemed so calm: and she was so often furious.
‘Where, near here?’ she asked softly.
‘Well, you know I love somebody, don’t you?’
‘I gathered there was something.’
‘Well he lives near here, and I want to spend this last night with him. I must! I’ve promised.’ Connie became insistent.
Hilda bent her Minerva-like head in silence. Then she looked up.
‘Do you want to tell me who he is?’ she said.
‘He’s our game-keeper,’ faltered Connie, and she flushed vividly, like a shamed child.
‘Connie!’ said Hilda, lifting her nose slightly with disgust: a motion she had from her mother.
‘I know: but he’s lovely really. He-he-he really understands tenderness,’ said Connie, trying to apologize for him.
Hilda, like a ruddy, rich-coloured Athena, bowed her head and pondered. She was really violently angry. But she dared not show it, because Connie, taking after her father, would straightway become obstreperous and unmanageable.
It was true, Hilda did not like Clifford: his cool assurance that he was somebody! She thought he made use of Connie shamefully and impudently. She had hoped her sister would leave him. But, being solid Scotch middle class, she loathed any ‘lowering’ of oneself or the family.
She looked up at last.
‘You’ll regret it,’ she said,
‘I shan’t,’ cried Connie, flushed red. ‘He’s quite the exception. I really love him. He’s lovely as a lover.’
Hilda still pondered.
‘You’ll get over him quite soon,’ she said, ‘and live to be ashamed of yourself because of him.’
‘I shan’t! I hope I’m going to have a child of his.’
‘Connie!’ said Hilda, hard as a hammer-stroke, and pale with anger.
‘I shall if I possibly can. I should be fearfully proud if I had a child by him.’
It was no use talking to her. Hilda pondered.
‘And doesn’t Clifford suspect?’ she said.
‘Oh no! Why should he?’
‘I’ve no doubt you’ve given him plenty of occasion for suspicion,’ said Hilda.
‘Not it all.’
‘And tonight’s business seems quite gratuitous folly. Where does the man live?’
‘In the cottage at the other end of the wood.’
‘Is he a bachelor?’
‘No! His wife left him.’
‘How old?’
‘I don’t know. Older than me.’
Hilda became more angry at every reply, angry as her mother used to be, in a kind of paroxysm. But still she hid it.
‘I would give up tonight’s escapade if I were you,’ she advised calmly.
‘I can’t! I must stay with him tonight, or I can’t go to Venice at all. I just can’t.’
Hilda heard her father over again, and she gave way, out of mere diplomacy. And she consented to drive to Mansfield, both of them, to dinner, to bring Connie back to the lane-end after dark, and to fetch her from the lane-end the next morning, herself sleeping in Mansfield, only half an hour away, good going. But she was furious. She stored it up against her sister, this balk in her plans.
Connie flung an emerald-green shawl over her window-sill.
On the strength of her anger, Hilda warmed toward Clifford. After all, he had a mind. And if he had no sex, functionally, all the better: so much the less to quarrel about! Hilda wanted no more of that sex business, where men became nasty, selfish little horrors. Connie really had less to put up with than many women if she did but know it.
And Clifford decided that Hilda, after all, was a decidedly intelligent woman, and would make a man a first-rate helpmate, if he were going in for politics for example. Yes, she had none of Connie’s silliness, Connie was more a child: you had to make excuses for her, because she was not altogether dependable.