“Good Lord!” ejaculated Henry and his father together.

“What on earth is she going to do in the play?” asked Jocelyn.

“Now, Jocelyn, we mustn’t be uncharitable,” said Miss Prentice, with a cold glint of satisfaction in her eye. “I dare say poor Idris would make quite a success of a small part.”

“I’m too old,” said Jocelyn.

“What nonsense, dear. Of course you’re not. We’ll find something that suits you.”

“I’m damned if I’ll make love to the Campanula,” said the squire, ungallantly. Eleanor assumed her usual expression for the reception of bad language, but it was coloured by that glint of complacency.

“Please, Jocelyn,” she said.

“What’s Dinah going to do?” asked Henry.

“Well, as dear Dinah is almost a professional—”

“She is a professional,” said Henry.

“Such a pity, yes,” said. Miss Prentice.

“Why?”

“I’m old-fashioned enough to think that the stage is not a very nice profession for a gentlewoman, Henry. But of course Dinah must act in our little piece. If she isn’t too grand for such humble efforts.”

Henry opened his mouth and shut it again. The squire said, “Here they are.”

There was the sound of a car pulling up on the gravel drive outside, and two cheerful toots on an out-of-date klaxon.

“I’ll go and bring them in,” offered Henry.

iii

Henry went out through the hall. When he opened the great front door the upland air laid its cold hand on his face. He smelt frost, dank earth, and dead leaves. The light from the house showed him three figures climbing out of a small car. The rector, his daughter Dinah, and a tall woman in a shapeless fur coat — Idris Campanula. Henry produced the right welcoming noises and ushered them into the house. Taylor, the butler, appeared, and laid expert hands on the rector’s shabby overcoat. Henry, his eyes on Dinah, dealt with Miss Campanula’s furs. The hall rang with Miss Campanula’s conversation. She was a large arrogant spinster with a firm bust, a high-coloured complexion, coarse grey hair, and enormous bony hands. Her clothes were hideous but expensive, for Miss Campanula was extremely wealthy. She was supposed to be Eleanor Prentice’s great friend. Their alliance was based on mutual antipathies and interests. Each adored scandal and each cloaked her passion in a mantle of conscious rectitude. Neither trusted the other an inch, but there was no doubt that they enjoyed each other’s company. In conversation their technique varied widely. Eleanor never relinquished her air of charity and when she struck, the blow always fell obliquely. But Idris was one of those women who pride themselves on their outspokenness. Repeatedly did she announce that she was a downright sort of person. She was particularly fond of saying that she called a spade a spade, and in her more daring moments would add that her cousin, General Campanula, had once told her that she went further than that and called it a “B. shovel.” She cultivated an air of bluff forthrightness that should have deceived nobody, but actually passed as true currency among the simpler of her acquaintances. The truth was that she reserved to herself the right of broad speech, but would have been livid with rage if anybody had replied in kind.

The rector, a widower whose classic handsomeness made him the prey of such women, was, so Dinah had told Henry, secretly terrified of both these ladies who loomed so large in parochial affairs. Eleanor Prentice had a sort of coy bedside manner with the rector. She spoke to him in a dove-smooth voice and frequently uttered little musical laughs. Idris Campanula was bluff and proprietary, called him “my dear man” and watched him with an intensity that made him blink, and aroused in his daughter a conflicting fury of disgust and compassion.

Henry laid aside the fur coat and hurried to Dinah. He had known Dinah all his life, but while he was at Oxford and later, when he did a course with a volunteer air-reserve unit, he had seen little of her. When he returned to Pen Cuckoo, Dinah had finished her dramatic course, and had managed to get into the tail end of a small repertory company where she remained for six weeks. The small repertory company then fell to pieces and Dinah returned home, an actress. Three weeks ago he had met her unexpectedly on the hills above Cloudyfold, and with that encounter came love. He had felt as if he saw her for the first time. The bewildering rapture of discovery was still upon him. To meet her gaze, to speak to her, to stand near her, launched him upon a flood of bliss. His sleep was tinged with the colour of his love and when he woke he found her already waiting in his thought. “She is my whole desire,” he said to himself. And, because he was not quite certain that she loved him in return, he had been afraid to declare himself until yesterday, in the shabby, charming old drawing-room at the rectory, when Dinah had looked so transparently into his eyes that he began to speak of love. And then, through the open door, he had seen Eleanor, a still figure, in the dark hall beyond. Dinah saw Eleanor a moment later and, without a word to Henry, went out and welcomed her. Henry himself had rushed out of the rectory and driven home to Pen Cuckoo in a white rage. He had not spoken to Dinah since then, and now he looked anxiously at her. Her wide grey eyes smiled at him.

“Dinah?”

“Henry?”

“When can I see you?”

“You see me now,” said Dinah.

“Alone. Please?”

“I don’t know. Is anything wrong?”

“Eleanor.”

“Oh, Lord!” said Dinah.

“I must talk to you. Above Cloudyfold where we met that morning? To-morrow, before breakfast. Dinah, will you?”

“All right,” said Dinah. “If I can.”

Idris Campanula’s conversation flowed in upon their consciousness. Henry was suddenly aware that she had asked him some sort of question.

“I’m so sorry,” he began. “I’m afraid I — ”

“Now, Henry,” she interrupted, “where are we to go? You’re forgetting your duties, gossiping there with Dinah.” And she laughed her loud rocketting bray.

“The study, please,” said Henry. “Will you lead the way?”

She marched into the study, shook hands with Jocelyn and exchanged pecks with Eleanor Prentice.

“Where’s Dr. Templett?” she asked.

“He hasn’t arrived yet,” answered Miss Prentice. “We must always make allowances for our medical men, mustn’t we?”

“He’s up beyond Cloudyfold,” said the rector. “Old Mrs. Thrinne is much worse. The third Cain boy has managed to run a nail through his big toe. I met Templett in the village and he told me. He said I was to ask you not to wait.”

“Beyond Cloudyfold?” asked Miss Prentice sweetly. Henry saw her exchange a glance with Miss Campanula.

“Mrs. Ross doesn’t have tea till five,” said Miss Campanula, “which I consider a silly ostentation. We certainly will not wait for Dr. Templett. Ha!”

“Templett didn’t say anything about going to Mrs. Ross’s,” said the rector, innocently, “though to be sure it is on his way.”

“My dear good man,” said Miss Campanula, “if you weren’t a saint — however! I only hope he doesn’t try and get her into our play.”

“Idris dear,” said Miss Prentice. “May I?”

She collected their attention and then said very quietly:

“I think we are all agreed, aren’t we, that this little experiment is to be just among ourselves? I have got several little plays here for five and six people and I fancy Dinah has found some too.”

“Six,” said Miss Campanula very firmly. “Five characters won’t do, Eleanor. We’ve three ladies and three men. And if the rector — ”

“No,” said the rector, “I shall not appear. If there’s any help I can give behind the scenes, I shall be only too delighted, but I really don’t want to appear.”

“Three ladies and three men, then,” said Miss Campanula. “Six.”