In the Mountains Part 27

'That's what your being in love does,' said Dolly. 'It grabs.'

'But you've been grabbed yourself, and you liked it. Uncle Rudolph is certainly bent on grabbing you.'

'Yes. But the man gets over it quicker. He grabs and has done with it, and then settles down to the real things,--affection and kindness. A woman hasn't ever done with it. She can't let go. And the poor thing, because she what you call loves, is so dreadfully vulnerable, and gets so hurt, so hurt--'

Dolly began kissing me and stroking my hair.

'I think though,' I said, while she was doing this, 'I'd rather have loved thoroughly--you can call it grabbing if you like, I don't care what ugly words you use--and been vulnerable and got hurt, than never once have felt--than just be a sort of amiable amoeba--'

'Has it occurred to you,' interrupted Dolly, continuing to kiss me--her cheek was against mine, and she was stroking my hair very tenderly--'that if I marry that dear little uncle of yours I shall be your aunt?'

_October 13th._

Well, then, if Dolly is ready to marry my uncle and my uncle is dying to marry Dolly, all that remains to be done is to remove Mrs. Barnes for an hour from the hall. An hour would be long enough, I think, to include everything,--five minutes for the proposal, fifteen for presenting Siegfried, thirty-five for explaining Juchs, and five for the final happy mutual acceptances.

This very morning I must somehow manage to get Mrs. Barnes away. How it is to be done I can't think; especially for so long as an hour. Yet Juchs and Siegfried couldn't be rendered intelligible, I feel, in less than fifty minutes between them. Yes; it will have to be an hour.

I have tried over and over again the last few days to lure Mrs. Barnes out of the hall, but it has been useless. Is it possible that I shall have to do something unpleasant to myself, hurt myself, hurt something that takes time to bandage? The idea is repugnant to me; still, things can't go on like this.

I asked Dolly last night if I hadn't better draw Mrs. Barnes's attention to my uncle's lovelorn condition, for obviously the marriage would be a solution of all her difficulties and could give her nothing but extraordinary relief and joy; but Dolly wouldn't let me. She said that it would only agonise poor Kitty to become aware that my uncle was in love, for she would be quite certain that the moment he heard about Juchs horror would take the place of love. How could a dean of the Church of England, Kitty would say, bring himself to take as wife one who had previously been married to an item in the forbidden list of the Tables of Affinity? And Juchs being German would only, she would feel, make it so much more awful. Besides, said Dolly, smiling and shaking her head, my uncle mightn't propose at all. He might change again. I myself had been astonished, she reminded me, at the sudden violent change he had already undergone from unction to very nearly swearing; he might easily under-go another back again, and then what a pity to have disturbed the small amount of peace of mind poor Kitty had.

'She hasn't any, ever,' I said; impatiently, I'm afraid.

'Not very much,' admitted Dolly with wistful penitence. 'And it has all been my fault.'

But what I was thinking was that Kitty never has any peace of mind because she hasn't any mind to have peace in.

I didn't say this, however.

I practised tact.

_Later._

Well, it has come off. Mrs. Barnes is out of the hall, and at this very moment Uncle Rudolph and Dolly are alone together in it, proposing and being proposed to. He is telling her that he wors.h.i.+ps her, and in reply she is gently drawing his attention to Siegfried and Juchs. How much will he mind them? Will he mind them at all? Will his love triumphantly consume them, or, having swallowed Siegfried, will he find himself unable to manage Juchs?

Oh, I love people to be happy! I love them to love each other! I do hope it will be all right! Dolly may say what she likes, but love is the only thing in the world that works miracles. Look at Uncle Rudolph. I'm more doubtful, though, of the result than I would have been yesterday, because what brought about Mrs. Barnes's absence from the hall has made me nervous as to how he will face the disclosing of Juchs.

While I'm waiting I may as well write it down,--by my clock I count up that Dolly must be a third of the way through Siegfried now, so that I've still got three quarters of an hour.

This is what happened:

The morning started badly, indeed terribly. Dolly, bored by being stared at in silence, said something about more wool and went upstairs quite soon after breakfast. My uncle, casting a despairing glance at the window past which the snow was driving, scowled for a moment or two at Mrs. Barnes, then picked up a stale _Times_ and hid himself behind it.

To make up for his really dreadful scowl at Mrs. Barnes I began a pleasant conversation with her, but at once she checked me, saying, 'Sh--sh--,' and deferentially indicating, with her knitting needle, my reading uncle.

Incensed by such slavishness, I was about to rebel and insist on talking when he, stirred apparently by something of a bloodthirsty nature that he saw in the _Times_, exclaimed in a very loud voice, 'Search as I may--and I have searched most diligently--I can't find a single good word to say for Germans.'

It fell like a bomb. He hasn't mentioned Germans once. I had come to feel quite safe. The shock of it left me dumb. Mrs. Barnes's knitting needles stopped as if struck. I didn't dare look at her. Dead silence.

My uncle lowered the paper and glanced round at us, expecting agreement, impatient of our not instantly saying we thought as he did.

'Can _you_?' he asked me, as I said nothing, being petrified.

I was just able to shake my head.

'Can _you_?' he asked, turning to Mrs. Barnes.

Her surprising answer--surprising, naturally, to my uncle--was to get up quickly, drop all her wool on the floor, and hurry upstairs.

He watched her departure with amazement. Still with amazement, when she had disappeared, his eyes sought mine.

Why, he said, staring at me aghast, 'why--the woman's a pro-German!'

In my turn I stared aghast.

'Mrs. _Barnes_?' I exclaimed, stung to quite a loud exclamation by the grossness of this injustice.

'Yes,' said my uncle, horrified. 'Yes. Didn't you notice her expression?

Good heavens--and I who've taken care not to speak to a pro-German for five years, and had hoped, G.o.d willing, never to speak to one again, much less--' he banged his fists on the arms of the chair, and the _Times_ slid on to the floor--'much less be under the same roof with one.'

'Well then, you see, G.o.d wasn't willing,' I said, greatly shocked.

Here was the ecclesiastic coming up again with a vengeance in all the characteristic anti-Christian qualities; and I was so much stirred by his readiness to believe what he thinks is the very worst of poor, distracted Mrs. Barnes, that I flung caution to the winds and went indignantly on: 'It isn't Mrs. Barnes who is pro-German in this house--it's Dolly.'

'What?' cried my uncle.

'Yes,' I repeated, nodding my head at him defiantly, for having said it I was scared, 'it's Dolly.'

'Dolly?' echoed my uncle, grasping the arms of his chair.

'Perhaps pro-German doesn't quite describe it,' I hurried on nervously, 'and yet I don't know--I think it would. Perhaps it's better to say that she is--she is of an unprejudiced international spirit--'

Then I suddenly realised that Mrs. Barnes was gone. Driven away. Not likely to appear again for ages.

I got up quickly. 'Look here, Uncle Rudolph,' I said, making hastily, even as Mrs. Barnes had made, for the stairs, 'you ask Dolly about it yourself. I'll go and tell her to come down. You ask her about being pro-German. She'll tell you. Only--' I ran back to him and lowered my voice--'propose first. She won't tell you unless you've proposed first.'

Then, as he sat clutching the arms of his chair and staring at me, I bent down and whispered, 'Now's your chance, Uncle Rudolph. You've settled poor Mrs. Barnes for a bit. She won't interrupt. I'll send Dolly--goodbye--good luck!'

And hurriedly kissing him I hastened upstairs to Dolly's room.

Because of the door leading out of it into Mrs. Barnes's room I had to be as cautious as I was last night. I did exactly the same things: went in on tiptoe, took hold of her firmly by the wrist, and led her out without a word. Then all I had to do was to point to the stairs, and at the same time make a face--but a kind face, I hope--at her sister's shut door, and the intelligent Dolly did the rest.

She proceeded with a sober dignity pleasant to watch, along the pa.s.sage in order to be proposed to. Practice in being proposed to has made her perfect. At the top of the stairs she turned and smiled at me,--her dimple was adorable. I waved my hand; she disappeared; and here I am.

Forty minutes of the hour are gone. She must be in the very middle now of Juchs.