The Tree of Heaven Part 34

Palmerston-Swete came first. Then Lady Victoria Threlfall. Then Dorothea. Then sixteen other women.

Drayton did not look at them. He did not see what happened when the Cabinet Minister met his wife. He did not see the sixteen other women.

He saw nothing but Dorothea walking by herself.

She had no hat on. Her clothes were as the great raid had left them, a month ago. Her serge coat was torn at the breast pocket, the three-cornered flap hung, showing the white lining. Another three-cornered flap hung from her right knee. She carried her small, hawk-like head alert and high. Her face had the incomparable bloom of youth. Her eyes shone. They and her face showed no memory of the prison-cell, the plank-bed, and the prison walls; they showed no sense of Drayton's decency in coming to meet her, no sense of anything at all but of the queerness, the greatness and the glory of the world--of him, perhaps, as a part of it. She stepped into the car as if they had met by appointment for a run into the country. "I shan't hurt your car. I'm quite clean, though you mightn't think it. The cells were all right this time."

He disapproved of her, yet he adored her.

"Dorothy," he said, "do you want to go to that banquet?"

"No, but I've got to. I must go through with it. I swore I'd do the thing completely or not at all."

"It isn't till nine. We've three whole hours before we need start."

"What are you going to do with me?"

"I'm going to take you home first. Then I suppose I shall have to drive you down to that beastly banquet."

"That won't take three and a half hours. It's a heavenly morning. Can't we do something with it?"

"What would you like to do?"

"I'd like to stop at the nearest coffee-stall. I'm hungry. Then--Are you frightfully sleepy?"

"Me? Oh, Lord, no."

"Then let's go off somewhere into the country." They went.

They pulled up in a green lane near Totteridge to finish the buns they had brought with them from the coffee-stall.

"Did you ever smell anything like this lane? Did you ever eat anything like these buns? Did you ever drink anything like that divine coffee? If epicures had any imagination they'd go out and obstruct policemen and get put in prison for the sake of the sensations they'd have afterwards."

"That reminds me," he said, "that I want to talk to you. No--but seriously."

"I don't mind how seriously you talk if I may go on eating."

"That's what I brought the buns for. So that I mayn't be interrupted.

First of all I want to tell you that you haven't taken me in. Other people may be impressed with this Holloway business, but not me. I'm not moved, or touched, or even interested."

"Still," she murmured, "you did get up at three o'clock in the morning."

"If you think I got up at three o'clock in the morning to show my sympathy, you're mistaken."

"Sympathy? I don't need your sympathy. It was worth it, Frank. There isn't anything on earth like coming out of prison. Unless it is going in."

"That won't work, Dorothy, when I know why you went in. It wasn't to prove your principles. Your principles were against that sort of thing.

It wasn't to get votes for women. You know as well as I do that you'll never get them that way. It wasn't to annoy Mr. Asquith. You knew Mr.

Asquith wouldn't care a hang. It was to annoy me."

"I wonder," she said dreamily, "if I shall _ever_ be able to stop eating."

"You can't take me in. I know too much about it. You said you were going to keep out of rows. You weren't going on that deputation because it meant a row. You went because I asked you not to go."

"I did; and I should go again tomorrow for the same reason."

"But it isn't a reason. It's not as if I'd asked you to go against your conscience. Your conscience hadn't anything to do with it."

"Oh, hadn't it! I went because you'd no right to ask me not to."

"If I'd had the right you'd have gone just the same."

"What do you mean by the right?"

"You know perfectly well what I mean."

"Of course I do. You mean, and you meant that if I'd married you you'd have had the right, not just to ask me not to, but to prevent me. That was what I was out against. I'd be out against it tomorrow and the next day, and for as long as you keep up that att.i.tude."

"And yet--you said you loved me."

"So I did. So I do. But I'm out against that too."

"Good Lord, against what?"

"Against your exploiting my love for your purposes."

"My poor dear child, what do you suppose I wanted?"

She had reached the uttermost limit of absurdity, and in that moment she became to him helpless and pathetic.

"I knew there was going to be the most infernal row and I wanted to keep you out of it. Look here, you'd have thought me a rotter if I hadn't, wouldn't you?

"Of course you would. And there's another thing. You weren't straight about it. You never told me you were going."

"I never told you I wasn't."

"I don't care, Dorothy; you weren't straight. You ought to have told me."

"How could I tell you when I knew you'd only go trying to stop me and getting yourself arrested."

"Not me. They wouldn't have touched me."

"How was I to know that? If they had I should have dished you. And I'd have stayed away rather than do that. I didn't tell Michael or Nicky or Father for the same reason."

"You'd have stayed at home rather than have dished me? Do you really mean that?"

"Of course I mean it. And I meant it. It's you," she said, "who don't care."