Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle

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.