These Delights (2 page)

She took off her ho
rn
-rimmed glasses for a moment to smile at Diana, a quiet, reserved woman in her early forties, with hair already slightly greying, done in an unfashionable bun.

“Good morning, Diana,” she said. “Luke will give you a glass of sherry while I just finish off these accounts. We still have some of the Manzanilla left.”

They sipped their sherry, talking idly, while Diana’s eyes roamed round the room making mental notes. That wall could come down, to take in the little study next door. It would make a delightful room then, suitably furnished. The moulded stone fireplace was really a gem, but there were too many books. There should be no time for books in a busy farmer’s life.

“There—that’s done for the week.” Hester shut her ledger and took up her glass of sherry. “Well, Diana, how are things?”

“Very good, except that I can’t persuade Luke to let me start at once on the farm alterations.” Diana’s voice sounded rueful, but she laughed. “I’d no idea he could be so stubborn. Can’t you use your influence, Hester? It does seem so silly to waste all this time just because of some stupid scruple.”

Hester’s eyes, grey and a little abstracted, like her brother’s, were grave as they rested on the girl’s face.

“I wouldn’t dream of interfering,” she said quietly. “You and Luke must settle your own affairs.”

Diana seemed suddenly conscious of her untidy hair.

“I simply must tidy before lunch. I feel most unlike myself,” she said, laughing a little self-consciously. “Could you possibly lend me a hair-net, Hester? I left mine dangling in a tree.”

“I think so. Come along upstairs.”

Hester took the girl up to her bedroom and watched her while she combed her dark hair into the neat roll she always affected, adjusting a hair-net carefully over the glossy waves with little pats and twists.

“Do
you
resent my money, like Luke?” Diana demanded suddenly, wheeling round from the dressing-table, and it was not at all what she had meant to say, but something in the older woman’s grave regard pricked her.

“Luke doesn’t resent your money. He’s quite a sane person,” Hester replied with humor. “But you must remember, Diana, that most men prefer to be independent of women. The farm has got on very well without all these suggested improvements, and I think Luke probably feels he would prefer to ran things his own way.”

“Meaning that you think I’m trying to run
him
?”

“Well, my dear, it might look a little like that to an outsider.”

“But it’s for his sake as much as my own. There are such possibilities here. You and Luke—well, it does seem to me that you’ve just been content to drift. I want to
do
things, to spur him on to do things and get the best out of life.”

Hester smiled.

“Yes, Diana, I know. I don’t doubt you’ll be very good for us. Shall we go down?” she said.

They ate Corky’s excellent fish pie with leisurely enjoyment, discussing the farm and lo
cal
affairs. Corky, in his white coat, waited on them, an unnecessary office which he had always insisted on performing. He was an odd mixture of well-trained servant and irrepressible individualist, and thought nothing of joining in the conversation if he imagined it concerned him. Corky, thought Diana, avoiding his enquiring eye, was too invaluable to be dismissed, even if Luke would have considered such a thing, but he must be taken in hand.

“Did you tell Diana about the letter?” Hester asked suddenly.

Luke looked up and smiled.

“No, I
cl
ean forgot,” he said. “The letter’s our only piece of outside news for you, Diana.”

“Oh, really?” She was all attention. “Who’s it from?”

“A cousin of ours, Dennis
Jordan
.”

“I didn’t know you had a cousin,” she said with surprise. “And you’ve never spoken of a Dennis Jordan. What does he do?”

“I don’t think he does anything in the sense you mean,” Luke replied with a smile. “He’s always been a rolling stone, painted a little, wrote a little. I shouldn’t be surprised
if he even hadn’t acted a little. I haven’t seen
him
for years.”

“Oh, a dabbler,” said Diana, disappointed. “What does he want—money?”

L
uke looked surprised.

“Oh, no, I don’t think he’s ever asked me for money. He wants to send his three children on a visit to the farm.”

Diana put down her fork and began to laugh.

“What an anticlimax!” she exclaimed. “I thought you were going to produce a really exciting piece of news.”

“Well, it will be quite an innovation for us,” said Hester mildly.

Diana glanced at her sharply.

“But you’re not going to have them, are you?” she asked.

“Why not?”

“Well—three children! It’s a bit of an undertaking.”

“Oh, children usually find plenty to amuse them on a farm.”

“But, Hester, you haven’t the facilities. Who will look after them when you and Luke are busy? You’ll find them terribly in the way.”

“I imagine,” Hester replied a little dryly, “they are capable of looking after themselves to some extent. They aren’t babes-in-arms.”

“How old are they?”

“Well, I’m a bit vague,” Luke said.
“I’ve
only seen one of them, and that was years ago when she was a baby. Let me see, she must be about fourteen now, then there were the other two, so
I
imagine they range between fourteen and nine or ten. Their mother died when the boy was born. The older two are girls.”

“But why,” asked Diana helplessly, “have we never heard of them before? It’s all so vague.”

“Yes, I’m afraid it is a bit vague,” Luke admitted. “I hadn’t thought of them for years. They’ve lived mostly in Algeria, so we’ve never kept in touch.”

“Are they still in Algeria?”

“No. They’re in France now—in Douai. The situation in Algeria became a
b
it difficult, so they decided to leave.
And now, Dennis tells me, he’s a sick man and has to go into a sanatorium for a time.”

Diana looked a little flushed.

“Well, I must say, I think it’s pretty cool,” she said. “After all these years to want to dump his family on you at a moment’s notice. Haven’t they any other relations they can go to?”

“Not that I know of. There’s an aunt in a convent somewhere, and another cousin with a job and a two-roomed flat. We are the only possible people who can offer them a home. Besides, I like children. It will cheer the place up to have them about, and Hester doesn’t mind.”

“Well, what about Corky? He’s the one who will have all the trouble and extra work.”

“Corky doesn’t mind, either, do you Corky?” Luke said, as the little man came in with the pudding.

“Mind wot, sir?” Corky sounded suspicious. “If it’s asking me to change me evening when I’m all fixed up for the darts match at the local, then I do mind, and tell you, straight.”

“No, Corky, we wouldn’t dream of interfering with your evening off,” Luke laughed. “Miss Sale was asking if you minded the prospect of having the children here for the summer.”

“Ow,
kids
!
That’s different. I like kids—liven the place up a bit and probably break all the bloomin’ crocks. ‘Ere’s your apple pud, and I swiped some cream off of the dairy when Mr. Bowden wasn’t looking.” Corky, sounding cheerful and much relieved that his evening off was safe, placed the pudding in front of Hester and departed to the kitchen, forgetting to hand round the plates.

“Poor Corky!” laughed Hester. ‘You gave him
quite a turn, as he would express it
hims
elf.”

“Well, I think you’re both crazy,” Diana said, “and if you have any sense, Luke, you’ll refuse. Do be guided by me for once, and write a tactful letter explaining that it’s not a convenient moment.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said Luke gently. “I’ve already sent a wire telling them to come.”

“I see,” said Diana briefly, and her mouth set in uncompromising lines, making her look older and harder for the moment.

Hester glanced at her a little curiously, but she said nothing, and presently, when, lapsing into a rather uncomfortable silence, they had finished the meal, she made some excuse to leave them together and went up to her room.

There was a little loggia at the back of the house where Luke and Hester liked to sit on summer evenings and stare contentedly across the small but charming garden which Hester had made, to the fields and moor beyond. It was filled now with the bright May sunlight, and Luke set a chair for Diana, then sat down in his own weather-beaten wicker one and filled a pipe.

He glanced at her a little curiously once or twice without speaking, then, when his pipe was going well he asked gently:

“Why don’t you want the children to come here, Diana?”

She moved impatiently.

“It’s hardly that,” she said. “After all, I won’t have to look after them. It’s just that
—”

“It’s just that for some unexplained reason you don’t want them.”

She was restless, getting up and leaning against one of the stone pillars of the loggia as far from him as she could get.

“All right, I’ll be honest. I don’t want them,” she said. “They’ll be underfoot eve
r
y time I come here. They’ll take up your spare time, and I’ll hardly ever see you alone.”

“Darling, I won’t let them interfere with us,” he told her. “They’ll be off on their own for the most part if the weather is fine, and after all, it’s only for the summer.”

“Supposing,” she said slowly, “that I had agreed to marry you quickly, what would have happened then? You surely wouldn’t have expected me to look after a pack of children immediately I returned from my honeymoon?”

“Of course not,” he said quietly. “That would have been up to you to decide. But the question didn’t arise, did it?”

She brushed this aside, fastening only on her grievance. “You mean if we were going to be married this summer, and I had agreed, you wouldn’t have minded having three noisy children to share the first weeks of our married life?”

His eyes suddenly twinkled.

“You make it sound very formidable. We don’t even know if they are noisy.”

“All children are noisy,” she said impatiently. “But you haven’t answered me. Wouldn’t you have minded?”

“No, I don’t think so, as a temporary arrangement,” he said.

His eyes became abstracted and he had the uneasy feeling that he should mind. Marriage, especially to Diana, meant a certain amount of readjustment, and three strangers, however self-effacing, would scarcely assist the process.

He was about to qualify his last remark when she spoke quickly and angrily.

“Sometimes I don’t understand you at all,” she said. “You seem so
—
s
o indifferent and unenterprising about the things that matter, and so stupidly stubborn about the things that don’t.”

“Yes, I’m afraid you must find me very unsatisfactory,” he replied. “I wonder why you want to marry me.”

“Because—oh, Luke, you can be the most irritating man I know!” She sounded perilously near to tears and he glanced at her curiously. He had never known her cry. “I want to marry you for the same reason you want to marry me, I suppose. Because we’re fond of one another—well, love one another, if you like. I’m not good at expressing my emotions, but then, neither are you.”

“You don’t always give me much opportunity,” he said a little wryly. “I think you’re frightened of emotion, and that’s half your trouble, Diana.”

She stared at him resentfully.

“You know very well that we are neither of us emotional kind of people. That’s way—that’s why I can bear being engaged to you.”

“Only can bear it?” One eyebrow lifted quizzically.

“I don’t mean it like that
.
You know very well what I mean, the kind of person I am.”

“Not always. And I sometimes think you have no idea of the kind of person
I
am. Darling, I think we’re almost quarrelling.”

“I don’t want to quarrel,” she cried. “I only want you to see things in a reasonable light—to understand the things that matter and the thi
ngs
that don’t.”

He changed his position slightly, and the chair creaked wheezily as he moved.

“But I find that the question of the children
is
important,” he said, “just as the question of you not spending money on the farm until you part-own it is important to me. In the children’s case, I could hardly refuse if I wished. They have no mother, very little money, and a father who has to go into a sanatorium. What else could they do but come here in the circumstances?”

She was silent, having no answer. Luke was right, she supposed. Viewed in that light there was no other alternative, and she was not his wife yet to dispute his decisions.