While Dolly is in the room Uncle Rudolph never moves, but sits tongue-tied staring at her. If she goes away he at once gets up and takes me by the arm and walks me off on to the terrace, where in a biting wind we pace up and down.
Our positions are completely reversed. It is I now who am the wise old relative, counselling, encouraging, listening to outpours. Up and down we pace, up and down, very fast because of the freshness of Uncle's Rudolph's feelings and also of the wind, arm in arm, I trying to keep step, he not bothering about such things as step, absorbed in his condition, his hopes, his fears—especially his fears. For he is terrified lest, having at last found the perfect woman, she won't have him. 'Why should she?' he asks almost angrily, 'Why should she? Tell me why she should.'
'I can't tell you,' I say, for Uncle Rudolph and I are now the frankest friends. 'But I can't tell you either why she shouldn't. Think how nice you are, Uncle Rudolph. And Dolly is naturally very affectionate.'
'She is perfect, perfect,' vehemently declares my uncle.
And Mrs. Barnes, who from the window watches us while we walk, looks with anxious questioning eyes at my face when we come in. What can my uncle have to talk about so eagerly to me when he is out on the terrace, and why does he stare in such stony silence at Dolly when he comes in? Poor Mrs. Barnes.
October 7th.
The difficulty about Dolly for courting purposes is that she is never to be got alone, not even into a corner out of earshot of Mrs. Barnes. Mrs. Barnes doesn't go away for a moment, except together with Dolly. Wonderful how clever she is at it. She is obsessed by terror lest the horrid marriage to the German uncle should somehow be discovered. If she was afraid of my knowing it she is a hundred times more afraid of Uncle Rudolph's knowing it. So persistent is her humility, so great and remote a dignitary does he seem to her, that the real situation hasn't even glimmered on her. All she craves is to keep this holy and distinguished man's good opinion, to protect her Dolly, her darling erring one, from his just but unbearable contempt. Therefore she doesn't budge. Dolly is never to be got alone.
'A man,' said my uncle violently to me this morning, 'can't propose to a woman before her sister.'
'You've quite decided you're going to?' I asked, keeping up with him as best I could, trotting beside him up and down the terrace.
'The minute I can catch her alone. I can't stand any more of this. I must know. If she won't have me—my God, if she won't have me—!'