I Capture the Castle (47 page)

He said Topaz would arrange it for me. I know he is leaving money with her for all of us—he made her feel that she ought to take it to shield Father from anxiety. Oh, he is indeed a most gracious and generous “patron”!

“And you must write to me for anything you want,” he added.

“Anyway, I shall be back soon.”

“I wonder.”

He looked at me quickly and asked what I meant.

I wished I hadn’t said it. For weeks now I have feared that having been hurt so much by Rose may have put him off living in England.

“I just wondered if America might claim you,” I said.

He didn’t answer for so long that I visualized him gone for ever and the Fox-Cottons installed at Scoatney as they so much want to be.

“Perhaps I shall never see him again,” I thought, and suddenly felt so cold that I gave a little shiver.

Simon noticed it and moved closer, pulling the rug up around us both. Then he said:

“I shall come back all right. I could never desert

I said I knew he loved it dearly.

“Dearly and sadly. In a way, it’s like loving a beautiful, dying woman. One knows the spirit of such houses can’t survive very much longer.”

Then we spoke of the autumn—he hoped he would he in time to catch a glimpse of it in New England.

“Is it more beautiful than this?” I asked.

“No. But it’s less melancholy. So many of the loveliest things in England are melancholy.” He stared across the fields, then added quickly—”Not that I’m melancholy this afternoon. I never am, when I’m with you. Do you know this is our third conversation on Belmotte mound?”

I knew it very well.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” I said, trying to sound casual. I don’t think I managed it, because he suddenly slipped his arm round me. The still afternoon seemed stiller, the late sunlight was like a blessing. As long as I live I shall remember that silent minute.

At last he said: “I wish I could take you to America with me. Would you like to come?”

For a second, I thought it was just a joking remark, but he asked me again—”Would you—Cassandra?” Then something about the way he spoke my name made me sure that if I said yes, he would ask me to marry him. And I couldn’t do it-though I don’t think I fully knew why until now.

I said, in as normal a voice as I could manage: “If only I were trained already, I could come as your secretary. Though I don’t know that I’d care to be away from Father too long this year.”

I thought that if I put it that way he wouldn’t know I had guessed what was in his mind. But I think he did, because he said very quietly: “Oh, wise young judge.” Then we talked quite ordinarily about a car he is lending to Father and about our all going over to Scoatney whenever we feel like it. I didn’t say very much myself—most of my mind was wondering if I had made a dreadful mistake.

When he got up to go he wrapped the rug tightly round me, then told me to slip out my hand.

“It’s not a little green hand this time,” he said as he took it in his. I said, “Simon, you know I’d love to see America if ever the circumstances were well favorable.”

He turned my hand over and kissed the palm, then said: I’ll report on them when I come back.”

And then he went quickly down the mound. As his car drove along the lane, a sudden gust of wind sprang up and blew brown leaves from the hedges and trees, so that a cloud of them seemed to be following him.

I didn’t make any mistake. I know that when he nearly asked me to marry him it was only an impulse—just as it was when he kissed me on Midsummer Eve; a mixture of liking me very much and longing for Rose. It is part of a follow-my-leader game of second-best we have all been playing—Rose with Simon, Simon with me, me with Stephen, and Stephen, I suppose, with that detestable Leda Fox-Cotton. It isn’t a very good game; the people you play it with are apt to get hurt. Perhaps even Leda has, though I can’t say the thought of that harrows me much.

But why, oh why, must Simon still love Rose his When she has so little in common with him and I have so much his Part of me longs to run after him to Scoatney and cry “Yes, yes, yes!” A few hours ago, when I wrote that I could never mean anything to him, such a chance would have seemed heaven on earth. And surely I could give him-a sort of contentment?

That isn’t enough to give. Not for the giver.

The daylight is going. I can hardly see what I am writing and my fingers are cold. There is only one more page left in my beautiful blue leather manuscript book; but that is as much as I shall need.

I don’t intend to go on with this journal; I have grown out of wanting to write about myself. I only began today out of a sense of duty-I felt I ought to finish Rose’s story off tidily. I seem to have finished my own off, too, which I didn’t quite bargain for …… What a preposterous self-pitying remark—with Simon still in the world, and a car being lent to us and a flat in London! Stephen has a flat there, too, now; just a little one. He wandered about with the goats so satisfactorily that he is to speak lines in his next picture. If I stay at the Cottons’ flat I can go out with him sometimes and be very, very kind to him, though in a determinedly sisterly way. Now I come to think of it, the winter ought to be very exciting, particularly with Father so wonderfully cheerful or else so refreshingly violent. And there are thousands of people to write about who aren’t me …… It isn’t a bit of use my pretending I’m not crying, because I am…… Pause to mop up.

Better now.

Perhaps it would really be rather dull to be married and settled for life. Liar! It would be heaven.

Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with “I love you, I love you”—like Father’s page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn’t warrant a waste of good paper.

There is a light down in the castle kitchen. Tonight I shall have my bath in front of the fire, with Simon’s gramophone playing. Topaz has it on now, much too loud-to bring Father back to earth in time for tea—but it sounds beautiful from this distance. She is playing the Berceuse from Stravinsky’s “The Firebird.” It seems to say, “What shall I do his Where shall I go?”

You will go in to tea, my girl—and a much better tea than you would have come by this time last year.

A mist is rolling over the fields. Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?

There was mist on Midsummer “Eve, mist when we drove into the dawn.

He said he would come back.

Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.

THE END.

Dorothy Gladys “Dodie” Smith was born in 1896 in Lancashire, England and she was one of the most successful female dramatists of her generation. She wrote “Autumn,”

“Crocus,” and “Dear Octopus,” among other plays, but her first novel, I Capture the Castle (little Brown, 1948) was written when she lived in America during the ‘40’s and marked her crossover debut from playwright to novelist. The novel became an immediate success and was produced as a play in 1954. Her other novels were The Town in Bloom, It Ends With Revelations, A Tale of Two Families, and The Girl in the CandleLit Bath. Today however, she is best known for her stories for young readers, The Hundred and One Dalmatians heine mann 1956) and The Starlight Barking heine mann 1967; Simon and Schuster, 1968). The Hundred and One Dalmatians was inspired by Dodie’s own Dalmatian named Pongo, and became the basis of two Disney films. The Starlight Barking is also available in paperback from St. Martin’s Press.

Dodie Smith died in 1990.