Buried for Pleasure (22 page)

Here she undressed, energetically washed, put on a backless white bathing-dress with a clean white muslin frock on top of it, stuffed some underclothes and a bathing-cap into a handbag, hung a towel over one arm, emerged from the front door, re-entered it hurriedly to obtain matches, emerged again and drove to the grounds of Sanford Hall. The dower-house, a commodious place, stands some way away from the Hall itself, and Diana had to drive in through its gates to get to the lake. With a quickened pulse she looked about her to see if Robert might be visible somewhere out of doors, but he was not, and she drove on in slight though unacknowledged disappointment, the gravel drive taking her right through the gardens, where a courteous old gardener touched his cap as she passed, and out on to the rise of rough turf which overlooked the lake. Here she parked the car, and walked the remaining distance.

The lake was a small one, but ideal for bathing, since it was fed by a clean spring and discharged all its waste into a small tributary which issued in the river Spoor. Also, being out of sight of both the dower-house and the Hall, it was blissfully secluded – and if there was one type of humanity which Diana detested more than another, it was the type which stands or sits complacently and often concupiscently watching others swimming. The cool water sparkled in the sunlight. An unserviceable-looking rowboat with water in it slopped about in the ripples at the margin. And Diana, slipping off her frock and shoes and donning her bathing-cap, stood for a moment poised on the bank near it and then dived in.

The coolness of the water was sensual luxury of the most depraved kind. Savouring it, Diana swam slowly out to the centre of the lake and there lay on her back and floated, her eyes closed against the glaring afternoon light, From a confused but not unpleasant reverie she was roused by a cheerful shout from the bank, and twisting over, opening her eyes, and starting to swim again, she observed the seventeenth Earl of Sanford standing there, slim and delightful as an Adonis, his shirt open at the neck and his hands thrust into the pockets of shabby grey flannel trousers. A really determined girl, Diana reflected, would at this juncture pretend to be drowning, and by exhibiting maidenly gratitude after rescue make a subsequent romance inevitable. But really determined girls were presumably more practised than she in simulating aquatic disasters, and she had the feeling that as performed by her the manoeuvre would not carry much conviction. So she swam to the bank instead, clambered out, took off her bathing-cap, and groped in her bag for a comb.

‘Hello, Robert,' she said. ‘You look as pleased as a dog with two tails. What's happened?'

He smiled charmingly at her. ‘It
is
nice to see you, Diana. I was rather hoping you'd turn up.' With his unvarying courtesy he picked up her towel and handed it to her. ‘Something rather pleasant has happened, and I've been wanting all day to tell someone about it.'

Diana experienced a stab of apprehension and misgiving; he wasn't – for heaven's sake! – going to tell her he was engaged to someone . . . ? She rubbed her face determinedly with the towel. ‘Oh, what is it?' she asked, keeping her voice light and clear.

‘It's my Finals at Oxford. I've just heard the result. I've got a First.'

Diana looked up at his finely drawn, sunburnt face and with the utmost difficulty suppressed an impulse to burst into tears of thankfulness and relief. ‘But of course you have, Robert,' she said. ‘I always knew you would.'

He laughed, and she thought that she had never seen him so happy. ‘Then you knew more than I did.'

‘
Many
congratulations, Robert.'

‘Thank you, Diana. . . . Look here, you're not doing anything this evening, are you?'

‘I'm afraid I am. I've got several calls.'

‘Cancel them.'

‘But, Robert– –'

‘Cancel them and come on a pub crawl with me. I want to celebrate, and I want to be thoroughly vulgar and conventional about it, and I want you with me. That is' – he hesitated, reddening a little – ‘if it wouldn't bore you.'

Diana gulped, and only regained control of her voice by reminding herself that schoolgirls gulped at photographs of James Mason. ‘Oh, Robert, I'd love to,' she said.

‘Good. That's settled, then.'

‘Where and when do we meet?'

‘I'll pick you up at your cottage about six-thirty. All right?'

‘Lovely.' And Diana, watching him, saw that almost imperceptibly his ebullience was beginning to subside. ‘Heavens, I know what's going to happen,' she thought, suddenly panicky. ‘As soon as he cools down, he's going to start regretting the impulse that made him invite me out; and he's far too courteous to cancel the arrangement on that account, so we shall spend the whole evening drearily arguing about the Government, like a couple of strangers in a railway compartment. . . . Oh, Lord, am I
really
so unattractive?'

But all she said was: ‘I – I think I'd better get dressed new.'

‘Yes, of course you'd better,' Robert assented, with as much haste as if he had suddenly perceived her to be completely nude. ‘I'll go away.'

‘No, you needn't do that. Just turn your back for a minute.'

For the time being, however, there was to be no opportunity of getting dressed. As Diana spoke, a liveried butler of great stateliness appeared over the rise from the direction of the dower-house and glided up to them, bearing a visiting-card on a salver. This he presented with impassive ceremony to Lord Sanford, who earnestly thanked him for his trouble.

‘And you know, Houghton,' he added, ‘there's no need, when you bring me a thing like this, to put it on a salver. That's only a relic of the days when the upper classes considered that things were soiled by servants touching them. . . . There's a most interesting book' – Lord Sanford eyed his butler dubiously – ‘which tells you all about things like that.'

‘Would you by any chance be referring to Veblen's
Theory of the Leisure Class
, my Lord?'

Lord Sanford was somewhat taken aback. ‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I was. Have you read it?'

‘Yes, my lord. And if I might venture the remark . . .'

Houghton paused for the requisite permission.

‘Of course, Houghton. This is a free country.'

‘I had not recently observed that, my lord. . . . But about Veblen's book, what I was going to say was that its assertions, though plausible, are wholly unproved. And in my opinion, the same author's
The Engineers and the Price System
is a very much more important and illuminating work.'

‘Ah,' said Lord Sanford rather unhappily. It was evident that he was not acquainted with this essay; he stared, embarrassed, at the visiting-card. ‘Let's see, who's this? . . . Oh, Professor Fen. Perhaps' – he gazed indecisively about him – ‘you would ask Professor Fen if he would care to join us here.'

‘Very good, my lord.'

‘And Houghton, I've told you before that there's no need to address me as “my lord”.'

‘No, my lord.'

‘If there are to be distinctions in society, they should be based on achievement and not on birth.'

Momentarily forgetting himself, Houghton made a low, longish, inflected sound, which Diana interpreted as ‘lotofbloodynonsense.' Then, recovering, ‘Quite so, my lord,' he observed, bowed obsequiously and departed. Lord Sanford gazed after him in despair.

‘I never know what to make of Houghton,' he said ruefully. ‘Or the other servants, for that matter. You'd think they'd be glad to be rid of all these . . . these emblems of servility, but in fact they seem determined to stick to them at all costs.'

Diana suppressed a desire to giggle. ‘But, my dear Robert,' she said, ‘hasn't it yet occurred to you that they may actually
enjoy
what you call “the emblems of servility”?'

‘Well, that's even worse. A system which makes people enjoy being servile ought to be abolished.'

‘I didn't say they enjoyed being servile. They aren't servile. The only servile person in the house is you.'

‘You may be right about that,' Lord Sanford admitted after some thought. ‘But all the same, Diana, it's disgraceful that five people should devote their whole lives to looking after me, and doing things for me which I could quite well do for myself. As you know, I've tried to get rid of them, but they just won't go.'

‘Oh, Robert, of course they won't go; they're on velvet,' Diana pointed out. ‘And it just isn't true to say they devote their whole lives to looking after you. Most of their time's spent doing something quite different.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Looking after each other, of course. It's a most luxurious cooperative arrangement, and if they went off and took independent jobs it'd collapse altogether.'

‘Yes, I see
that
,' said Lord Sanford, who was an intellectually honest young man. ‘It is a good arrangement. But it'd work equally well – better, in fact – if I wasn't involved in it all.'

‘On the contrary, it wouldn't work at all. Someone's got to pay them the salaries they live on.'

‘Yes, Diana, but look here – –'

And it was at that point, quite without premonition, sudden exasperation overwhelmed Diana – exasperation, not with Lord Sanford's views on servants, but with the fact that they were back again in the old groove.

‘Robert!' she interrupted.

‘Yes, Diana?'

‘Kiss me, please.'

For an instant his face was a study in stupefaction. And then his expression changed to one of such relief and delight that Diana's heart sang.

He did what was required.

Their mumbled endearments were too extrinsically futile to be worth reproducing here. And their first contact gave them such mutual satisfaction that they immediately repeated it, at much greater length.

‘Of course you'll marry me,' said Lord Sanford with an air of surprise.

‘Of course,' Diana agreed. ‘Tell me, darling, are you frightened of young women?'

‘Terrified.'

‘I'll try to let you down lightly. . . . Darling, what are you going to do next?'

Lord Sanford made certain suggestions.

‘No, not
that
,' said Diana, blushing slightly. ‘I mean, now you've got your First.'

‘I think,' said Lord Sanford gravely, ‘that as soon as we're married it would be a good idea for us to go off and be cook and gardener to a Trades Union official – For the Cause, you understand.'

‘Oh, darling, that would be heavenly. Well, fairly heavenly.'

‘It would be torture of the most refined and abominable sort,' said Lord Sanford with conviction. ‘Actually, I shall try for a Fellowship at Oxford. There are lots of Socialist Fellows. There's Cole, and there's – –'

‘Cole will be sufficient for now. Kiss me again.'

‘Professor Fen – –'

‘Damn Professor Fen,' said Diana unjustly. Lord Sanford kissed her again.

They were still at it when Fen came into sight. He did not discreetly retire, but bore relentlessly down on them, with Jane Persimmons' box under his arm, like a dragon making for a defenceless and succulent child. Having sent his card, he felt he had given all the warning of his approach which decency required, and he was not prepared to skulk about until they were in a posture to receive him. He was only five yards off when they became aware of him, and hurriedly disengaged themselves.

‘Oh, Professor Fen,' said Diana unintelligently. ‘It's you.'

‘So it is,' said Lord Sanford, not much less inanely. ‘Good afternoon, sir.'

Fen shook him by the hand, which was still damp from contact with Diana's undried body. ‘I hope,' he said urbanely, ‘that I don't intrude?'

‘Good Lord, no.' The seventeenth Earl spoke with such heartiness as to suggest that Fen's absence had been the only flaw in an otherwise perfect afternoon. ‘Not in the least. I hope you've come to tea.'

‘That's very kind. But first, I'm afraid, there's rather an important matter I want to discuss with you.'

‘Yes, of course.' Lord Sanford glanced at Diana. ‘Perhaps I ought to tell you that Diana – Miss Merrion – has just consented to marry me: so from now on, anything that concerns me concerns her, too.'

Fen looked at them benignantly. ‘Well, I think that's a very good scheme,' he said. ‘Getting married, I mean. Of course, it mostly doesn't work out very well,' he added by way of encouragement, ‘but yours may be an exceptional case. I'll send you a wedding present, if I remember. But as regards my errand here' – he became more serious – ‘it might perhaps be the easier way, my lord, if you were to hear of it first and then to tell Diana subsequently.'

‘If you really think so – –'

‘On the whole, I do.'

‘Well, you can talk while I get dressed,' said Diana, ‘and afterwards we can all have tea together.'

‘Or a drink,' said Fen, who never hesitated to make his requirements known. ‘Your engagement calls, I fancy, for a drink, and even if it didn't, I should still want one.'

‘A drink, of course,' Lord Sanford agreed good-naturedly. ‘And now, sir . . .'

Diana retired into a convenient thicket, and the two men strolled slowly along the lake-side. ‘There's no need for me to do any talking,' said Fen. ‘The contents of this box explain themselves.

All I need say is that the box is the property of a girl called Jane Persimmons.'